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Shrouded Ladies and Other Ghost - A Survey
According to a rather informal survey dating from the early '70s, "shrouded lady ghosts" are rather common in Italy.
They come in a variety of shroud colour (white, green, red, black) and are generally characterized as sensuous spirits, practicing in death the same kind of loose lifestile they held when still in the world of the living. Which is funny, since the "shrouded lady" statue often placed as a funerary monument in old Italian graveyards supposedly represents faith and chastity.
Here's some of the most famous cases.
In
Naples (Napoli), the shrouded ghost of the late queen-cum-public-scandal
Giovanna
the Second (said to be deceitful, lusty and debauched) still haunts the
places she visited with her various paramours.
In
Villa Mansi, near Lucca, a scenic artificial pond is said to be haunted
by the shrouded ghost of Lucida Mansi, one-time local beauty, still
searching
for new lovers four hundred and odd years after her untimely demise.
Countess
Matelda, haunting Poppi castle in Tuscany, is liable to grab young
men by the throat, leaving red marks upon them. As she was used to strangle
her lovers in the alcove, her current ghostly activity is rather unsurprising.
The white-shrouded ghost of a medieval lady, killed by her husband having
betrayed him with many of the soldiers manning the bastions, haunts the Southern
Appenine fortress of Vicalvi (in the Abruzzo region) - now a ruin
after the German forces used it as a base and hospital in 1943.
In
Turin, Russian princess Barbara Beloselski, who died in 1792 at the
age of 28, first appeared in search of male company in 1794, a scant two
years after burial.
In a rather well documented account, artilery lieutennant Enrico Biandrà
told how an attractive young lady, of evident foreign origin and wearing
a thin black veil over her face, sort of picked him up in a fashionable coffee
house, and asked him to escort her home - not far from San Lazzaro
graveyard.
In the following days, she often visited him in his small
apartment.
Lieutennant Biandrà's account does not give away any
detail
about their
activities in his house, apart from a passing reference about drinking a
cup of hot chocolate (at the time considered a powerful aphrodisiac).
A few days later, she asked once again to be taken home, and upon arriving
in front of San Lazzaro graveyard, she revealed herself to be a ghost,
showed
him her grave and disappeared.
Leaving him somehow shaken, we can imagine.
The princess appeared quite a few times in the following years, but her activities were never recroded with the detail that Biandrà used.
In 1830, her body was moved to another graveyard, San
Pietro,
at the time standing outside
of the town area, and a shrouded lady monument was placed on her grave.
The ghost was again sighted in the following years.
This lady's description is consistent with the one given by Biandrà, and she usually asked to her lovers to escort her somewhere not too far from her new graveyard.
In the early '70s, with an idea evidently ripped off from "Poltergeist", the Turin administration decided to dismantle the S. Pietro graveyard - now surrounded by apartment blocks and in sight of one of FIAT's main factory complexes - putting a public park in the same area instead.
Works were completed by 1977.
A black clad lady was sighted a few times in the following years, often by kids playing football in the park, but rarely if ever made the news.
Given her tastes, we can suppose that the current population of the park does not reach the required age.
But the late Princess is not the only supernatural manifestations found in Turin.
The case of the Via Bava Poltergeist, in 1900, was the starting point for a haunting fad that led to a survey of the most significant hauntings in the Turin Area by psichic researchers and antiquarians, leading to the collection of a corpus of "classic" hauntings.
The
Via Bava Poltergeist- according to witnesses, in the basement of a building
in Via Bava n.6, strange noises could be heard at night, accompanied by small
lights, objects moving without apparent causes, bottles flying from one shelf
to the other and further assorted phenomena. Experts tended to explain the
observation as the product of "forces unleashed by conflictual unconscious
circumstances in young boys and girls." Cesare Lombroso, criminologist
and
investigator of the supernatural, spent a night in the basement and concluded
that many of the observed phenomena were without objective explanation. To
be fair, we must add that Lombroso's attitude in his investigations of the
supernatural was not the most skeptical and objective possible, and in fact
he was a rather gullyble observer.
Hotel
Inghilterra - the first floor of the hotel is storically haunted by a
mischevious ghost, centering its activities in Room number Nine, later dedicated
to Saint Desiderio for protection of the guests.
La
Bela Caplera - "The Pretty Hat-maker" was a woman living in Piazza
Carlo Emanuele II (generally called Piazza Carlina by Turin people, not far
from Via Po), and there she was guillotined as an adulteress
and murderer (having killed her husband). Her ghost supposedly haunts
the attics near the square, and in Via San Francesco da Paola, where her
crying and lamenting can be heard according to witnesses.
The
ghost of Filippo San Martino di Agliè is said to haunt the Monte
dei Cappuccini, traditional seat of the monastery dominating the town
from the Turin Hill on the other side of the river.
The Via Garibaldi sector of town, today totally different due to the post-war reconstruction, and formerly housing the town's Court of Miracles, was considered the most haunted area in Turin (and, by extension, in Italy)
Further hauntings in this same area, include a ghost in Via del Gallo and a female apparition, known as "lo spettro della lavandaia" (the washerwoman's ghost), on Rice Market Square. A boy accidentally killed on Via Cappel Verde still haunted the premises, moving the furniture about. Three ghosts haunted Contrada delle Maschere (The Mask District) by Saint Peter's church, belonging probably to three medioeval travellers killed in the area (three skeletons were found in the area, probably in the late 18th century); the three spectres sometimes disturbed the dreams of the locals with images of three slick black coffins. Still in Via delle Maschere, the Fucina Hotel was theatre of some reported uncanny facts connected with a poltergeist.
Historical Buildings
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It is interesting to observe that students of the occult at work on the Turin hauntings were adamant in their dismissal of the supposed apparitions of "famous spectres", judging them more a product of popular belief (what we'd call today "urban legends") than genuine revenants.
So where dismissed two "Madame Reali" (consort princesses) haunting a summer residence each, king Carlo Alberto, a michievous page haunting the royal palace and the late Laura Bon, lover of king Vittorio Emanuele II.
But these ghosts, together with many other "unreliable" apparitions, finally got their share of the public attention thanks to the many supernatural enthusiasts and would-be-ghostbusters haunting - if we can say so - the town of Turin since the 1970s.
As a new wave of interest in hauntings recently swept the town, gaining media space for the unexplained phenomena, some new entries - often less than accurately observed or studied - were added to the old list.
Such later additions to the canon include the ghosts supposedly
haunting
the first floor of the Hotel Nazionale,
in Piazza CNL, where
during the German occupation of Turin the local Gestapo unit was stationed,
and the ghost of Rosa Vercellana, alias "La Bela Rosin" (Pretty Rosie),
lover
and later wife of King Vittorio Emanuele II. The Bela Rosin ghost, dismissed
as an unreliable rumour by researchers in the early years of the century,
made the news in the early '70s, when her long abandoned mausoleum, the Pantheon
at the
southern outskirts of town, was adopted
by various cultists and self-styled Satan worshippers for their nightly
rituals. Villa della Tesoriera, today housing one of Turin's many
libraries, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a Napoleonic Army officer,
that in the villa was killed and secretly buried.
The Royal Palace in Venaria, on the northern outskirts
of Turin, is supposedly haunted by the ghost of King Vittorio Amedeo II,
riding a ghostly horse, wielding a sword and holding a candle. The spirit
was seen by many visitors, and once at least photographed - if an out of
focus shot of a horse's head can be taken as conclusive proof.
The new researches have also moved the Via Bava Poltergeist
on the other side of the road, and two doors away, to number 9, adding apocriphal
"strange deaths and strange deeds" to the facts documented by Lombroso and
others in 1900.
The female ghost haunting the Tunnels under the Pietro Micca
Museum, an underground structure dating back to the Turin Siege, has
recently received some media
coverage, but is almost certainly explained by a publicity stunt built around
some damaged photographs.
A ghostly friar appears every evening after sunfall in
front of the gates of the Madonna del Carmine church. The haunting
has been often in the news, and was widely documented by eyewitnesses' accounts
and photographs. But a correct observation of the images and a daytime walk
around the church allow the serious student to easily identify the ghost
with the shadow cast by an old style, out of work street lamp.
| The ghost of Matilde Provana haunting Palazzo Barolo
represents a curious case of a returning infestation. Elena Matilde Provana
di Druent, that died of a broken heart in 1701 haunted her family's building
as a pleasant and helpful presence for nearly a century and a half. The last
documented sighting according
to the classic sources was in 1840, when she announced that her soul was
finally at rest. But not an eternal rest, apparently, as Matilde's ghost is currently described as a regular presence in the building, wandering the halls of her ancient house in Via delle Orfane 2 on full moon nights for the delight of nighttime thrillseekers.
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The Palazzo Levaldigi ghost, tormented soul of a ballet
dancer killed (according to the documents of the time) by a stiletto wielded
by an unknown hand during a three day celebration in the late 18th century,
has also been somewhat refurbished by latter students, so that according
to current sources the poor girl died either of excess fatigue or drug abuse
(!) during a week-long orgy. Palazzo Levaldigi, current seat of a bank, is
extremely popular with occultists, both because of its finely worked gate
depicting devils and many other strange creatures (and known as "La Porta
del Diavolo", the Devil's Gate), and for the fact that
it housed a tarot factory during the 19th century.
Palazzo Madama, already mentioned thanks to the four ghosts
haunting the premises according to the classic studies, has recently been
hosting ghostly baroque dances on the first floor. The acounts come
from unnamed sources and are probably part of a publicity stunt.
Visitors of the Artillery Museum claim to have sometimes
been rebuked by a stern ghostly Savoia Dragoon, that usually stands
in front of a glass cabinet in the Flags Room, again on the first floor of
the building.
Finally a "reliable source" (are there any?) claims that recently
Church-sponsored exorcists
were called to solve the problem of a few dancing African statues
in the Ethnographic Museum.
