3 minute read
Legends
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There’s a deserted house in the province of Bologna. It’s a house with a long history and many names. It’s a house that the inhabitants of the surrounding area avoid. It was wanted by the Earl Carlo Cesare Malvasia and it was built in 1624, Villa Malvasia or Casino del Trebbo or Villa Alessandri or Villa Clara, as it is known nowadays (you can read it on a plate), is a deserted crumbling place. It’s often shrouded in thick fog and it’s not enlightened. It’s a cursed house. A little girl used to live in this house, Clara. They say she could foresee the future and her father was so afraid of this ability that he decided to bury her alive inside the house’s walls. A young woman called Clara used to live in this house, they say she had an affair with a subordinate of the noble family, her behaviour pushed the noble man to bury her alive inside his house. It doesn’t matter if she was an innocent child with strange powers or a young loose morals woman because the legend goes that she was buried alive there and her ghost is still wandering around in the house. Many witnesses declare they heard the noises, the screaming, the cries and the reque- sts for help coming from this house. You can sometimes hear the sound of a piano or see the lights on although it is deserted and there’s no power in Clara’s house. It seems that her ghost also wanders around in the park and she tries to interact with the ones who can see her. Sometimes the electronic devices stop working in a mysterious way. Sometimes the people who visit this place faint or they get into a trance state and there have also been strange death episodes related to two workers who were working for the restauration of the house... and even a child who fell into a secret trapdoor in 1999. Villa Clara and its mysteries keep catching the attention of the audience thanks to the release of a horror movie by Francesco Longo, a special effects expert who’s paid homage to the legends, the mysteries and the fears that are gathered around one of the most mysterious houses of Italy. If you like this type of movies don’t miss the teaser.
Dealing with legends I often read some episodes that are not particularly iconic until I find a detail that turn these stories into a real legend. You know, there may be some truth in the legends, they are passed on from mouth to mouth and everyone enriches them with their own colours and a story can become another one, very often a legend. I’m talking about the Blue Fairy’s house, a floating deserted house on the edge of the Mare Piccolo in Taranto. According to the “legend”, the director Luigi Comencini chose this location in the 1970s to set the Blue Fairy’s house played by the actress Gina Lollobrigida in “The adventures of Pinocchio”. But, unfortunately, it’s a fake news. It’s not known exactly who started spreading this “legend”. Anyway it seems that an episode of the TV show “Linea Blu” let this news reach all the houses of the area of Taranto in 2014 thus giving it some sort of credibility. Although it looks like the real house of the TV series that is located by Lake Martignano (Rome), the floating house near Taranto was never visited by Comencini and by the beautiful actress. Maybe it was visited by other Fairies? This episode is now so rooted within the popular culture that a lot of people go near this house and they are as charmed as kids and although they know that it’s not true they keep thinking it’s the true fairy’s house. Nevertheless this stilt house is always a really charming location, lonely in the silence, faded in the sun. It’s a magic atmosphere. They say the seagulls start screeching when someone approaches the house as they wanted to warn someone inside the house, they want to warn that someone is crossing in imaginary border. As if a Fairy really lived there. It’s true? It’s false?... In any case, what’s wrong with dreaming?
