INVESTIGATION AND RESULTS
DRAGSHOLM CASTLE, DENMARK
Like many castles hundreds of years old, Dragsholm Castle has experienced its share of horror. This horror no doubt fueled the fires of legends. One story involved the daughter of the Count of the castle several hundred years ago. The daughter had gotten pregnant through a liaison with the stable boy. The Count was not pleased, and expressed his displeasure by killing the stable boy and burying his daughter alive in one of the walls of the castle. Centuries later, during renovations of the castle, a young woman's skeleton was discovered buried behind a wall on the fourth floor. Over the years, unfortunate people had languished in the castle's dungeon at different times, and to stir some modern terror into the mix, during the Second World War the Nazis had occupied the castle.
Besides historical sightings of apparitions, the modern Dragsholm phenomena include recurrent perceptions of 'light forms' and cold chills felt in or just outside one particular room (called the 'Grey Lady' room), and very loud booming sounds from the courtyard heard independently by several people over the years.
RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION
In their roles as 'sensitives,' neither Radin or Moody experienced anything unusual in or around the castle. Even wandering around the castle in the wee hours of the morning did not evoke any unusual subjective experiences. Radin's electromagnetic and radiation readings throughout the multi-story, multi-wing castle, on all floors and in all rooms, also discovered nothing conspicuously unusual.
The only curious observation was first noticed from the outside of the castle: One of the windows on the third floor had been carefully sealed over with bricks and mortar and then painted to match the rest of the outside wall. Inside this room, a false wall had been constructed which hid the window. The wall felt quite solid, and did not sound hollow when we tapped on it, but it clearly was not part of the original room. As far as we could see from surveying the Castle from the outside, the room with the false wall had the only bricked-over window in the entire structure.
The owners of the castle did not know when the wall was build, or why. One speculation was that when the castle was occupied by the Nazis, they supposedly installed hidden escape routes in some of the walls. Perhaps this was such an escape route. Another possibility, given the grim history of Dragsholm Castle, was that another unfortunate person had been interred in this false wall. As it turned out, we learned that this very same room was historically associated with the sightings of a ghost known as the 'Grey Lady'.
Figure 1 shows an electric field intensity contour map for the Dragsholm Castle's 'Grey Lady' room. The electric field is in units of kV/meter, with a sensitivity of about 1 volt/meter. The maximum field strength in this room was fairly small, about 3 volts/meter. One of the higher intensity locations in the room, at approximately (0,1) following the (x,y) coordinates on this figure, was associated with an electrical fuse box located outside the room in the hallway. The other higher intensity field was located at (6,0) and was probably associated with electrical wires inside the wall.
Figure 2 shows the radiation levels in the 'Grey Lady'
room, where each radiation sample was the mean count of ionizing particles (alpha, beta, gamma, x-ray) detected in 50 sequential 10-second periods. These overall radiation levels were not excessive, but the increasing levels of radiation towards the right side of the room is somewhat unexpected. It is possible that the rise in radiation may be related to a higher concentration of granite-based stone in the right wall, but given that the outside walls in this castle are one to three meters of solid stone, including granite, it is not clear why an inside wall would have higher concentrations of granite than the outside wall.
ENGSÖ CASTLE, SWEDEN
The history of Engsö Castle is not as ghastly as Dragsholm Castle, but there was an intriguing story of a 'cursed stone'. Inside the church belonging to the Castle was a small podium with a smooth, round, metallic-looking stone about a foot in diameter. This rock was historically associated with a curse: If anyone touches it, they would die in three days. This reportedly had happened in the far past, which created a demonic association with the stone. More recently, in the 1980s the priest of the church, demonstrating to the congregation why they shouldn't believe in such nonsense, touched the stone and then died mysteriously three days later. Needless to say, few people today are courageous enough to tempt fate, so no one touches the stone, and it stays within the protective confines of the church 'just in case'.
Radin measured the magnetic and radiation levels of the stone, thinking it might be a meteorite with unusual properties or possibly it contained high levels of ionizing radiation, either one of which might account for lethal contact. Fortunately, nothing peculiar was measured (but nor did Radin touch the stone!).
PHYSICAL INVESTIGATION
There were two physical observations of interest at Engsö Castle:
- There were significantly higher radiation levels everywhere around and inside the castle than at any other site we visited in Scandinavia, and
- correlations between electric and magnetic fields were weakly positive outside a room on the third floor where the Engsö Castle Countess had twice seen a ghost, but strongly negative inside the same room. In general, such correlations are not unexpected, but why they would be positive in one location and negative within a few meters is unknown. This deserves further investigation, especially since this part of the castle had no electrical power (i.e., there were no power cables, outlets, lamps, etc.).
Figure 3 shows time series measurements of electric field, in kV/meter, and magnetic field, in mGauss, near the ghost room. The linear correlation between the two curves is r = 0.136, t = 1.907 (194 df), p = 0.0580 (two-tailed). This graph represents about 30 minutes of continuous recording. These measurements were taken just outside the door of the ghost room with no one in the Castle, thus the electric and magnetic field fluctuations observed here were probably due to small changes in atmospheric electric potentials and conventional variations in geomagnetic flux.
Figure 4 shows a second time series measurement of electric and magnetic fields taken inside the ghost room. The linear correlation between the two curves is r = -0.238, t = -3.433 (197 df), p = 0.0007 (two-tailed). The fluctuations observed here were small, and as in the first time series measurements, were probably due to small fluctuations in environmental conditions. However, why this series resulted in a significant negative correlation is unknown. A third, longer time series taken in the same location later in the day resulted in an unremarkable correlation of r = -0.013, t = -0.422, 1082 df, p = 0.673 (two-tailed).
The last observation of interest is shown in Figure 5. This shows the average background ionizing radiation rates in 50 repetitions of 10-second samples, plus and minus one standard error, in Denmark (Dragsholm Castle and Lerchenborg Castle [footnote -> link?: Lerchenborg Castle, actually a Manor House, was about an hour's drive from Dragsholm Castle, Denmark. We paid a short visit to this site because it had [italics: no] history of haunting at all, and could thus act as a 'control'. No unusual physical readings or subjective impressions were noted at this site.]), Sweden (Engsö Castle and Stockholm), and Scotland (the town of Gullane, about 30 miles outside of Edinburgh). By inspection, the radiation levels at Engsö Castle were significantly greater than at any other site that we visited. In Engsö Castle, average radiation levels inside and outside the 'ghost room' were essentially the same: outside average = 5.047 (N = 28), inside average = 4.958 (N = 11).
SUBJECTIVE RESULTS
Two subjective experiences were of special interest. Without informing Moody about the experiences of others, Roll requested him to walk around the castle looking for areas that 'felt' unusual in any way Moody ended up on the third floor. Looking into the main room from the hallway landing, he experienced a peculiar shift in his visual field. This turned out to be the same place where the owner of the castle had seen an apparition of a female three times (she had experienced no other sightings).[footnote -> link?: Moody's and Radin's experiences are described in more detail in another report.]
Later, Radin independently roamed around the castle. The castle was very quiet and had a heavy, substantial feeling throughout, which he attributed to the massive rock walls. He felt nothing unusual in the dungeon, or on the first, second or fourth floors. But there was something odd about the third floor. His described an odd sort of rumbling feeling, as though there was a motor hidden deep within the floor or the walls, creating an infra-sound vibration. This rumbling sensation was strongest in a room immediately adjacent to the ghost room that, unbeknownst to him, Dr. Moody had also selected.