Spotlight Houses of horror

Home grown horror

WHISPERING, WAILING, STRANGE KNOCKING AND DOORS THAT OPEN AND CLOSE ON THEIR OWN. EVEN UTRECHT HAS HOUSES OF HORROR. WE’VE FOUND SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING CITY LEGENDS FOR YOU; PAST AND PRESENT!

By Nynke van Spiegel

According to storyteller Bart de Wit, the gothic churches and Romanesque monasteries in the city centre form the perfect backdrop for passing on folklore with spooky undertones. He doesn’t actually believe in ghosts, but he likes to tell a ghost story or two during the Ghost Walks he hosts in the historic centre of Utrecht. The tale of the Wittebroodskind, for example, otherwise known as the ghost of the former Maria Church. This church was built in the eleventh century on the site of the Pandhof 1 , behind Mariaplaats, on the instructions of Bishop Koenraad. ‘The building had developed a tricky problem: it was subsiding’, says Bart. ‘The architect, a man named Pleberus, had a solution that he guaranteed would work. But it was a secret and very expensive. The Bishop obviously wanted more details. He bribed the baker on Oudegracht, which was where Pleberus’ daughter bought their bread. The baker got the secret out of the child; the clue was to wrap the pillars in ox hide. Koenraad decided to stop paying Pleberus, and the architect was so incensed that he beat his daughter to death with a white loaf. She has been known as the Wittebroodskind

(the white loaf child) ever since. One of the pillars in the original Maria Church had a hole in it, where it is said that you could hear the child wailing and crying.’ There’s a painting of the central nave and choir of the Maria Church, painted by J.P. Saenredam in 1641, hanging in the Rijksmuseum. In the foreground on the left, you see two women dressed in blue next to a pillar. You can also see the image of an ox – possibly a reference to Pleberus’ ox hides? This just happens to be the spot where the ghost of the girl can be heard. Even now, 379 years later, the Wittebroodskind is still restless. The Maria Church has long gone, but they say that you can still hear her sighing in the cloisters of the Pandhof.

CREAKING FLOORBOARDS

Another source of ghost stories is Paushuize 2 (papal residence) on Kromme Nieuwegracht. This monumental building was built in the sixteenth century by Adriaan Floriszoon Boeyens, who later became the Netherlands’ first and only Pope (Adrian VI). He never actually lived there. In the late eighteenth century, Paushuize was converted into lodgings. Hortense, the wife of King Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, sometimes slept there during her travels – there’s even a room named after her. She apparently enjoyed staying there so much that she wanted her soul to stay there after her death. Stairs in a basement of the building lead to a blind wall. It is said that the ghost of Hortense resides behind this wall and occasionally comes out to haunt the building. This is accompanied by mysterious noises such as creaking floorboards, clattering doors and whispering. But in 2013,

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IT IS SAID THAT YOU CAN STILL HEAR A GIRL SIGHING IN THE CLOISTERS OF THE PANDHOF

a group of ghosthunters was commissioned by the Utrecht School of Journalism to investigate Paushuize. They concluded that more than one spirit roamed Paushuize, after seeing and photographing the ghost of an 18-month-old child and detecting a woman who had committed suicide there. They also felt fear in spots where people had been beheaded, for example.

FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Not all of the eery local legends originate from the past. Some of them are more modern, and are set in ordinary houses and flats. Like the tale of the séance held on Ivoordreef in Overvecht, where Ms Van der Stroet and five members of her family

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took turns with an upturned glass. It was October 1987, summoning the spirits was ‘in’. People used letter cards placed in a circle so that the spirit could spell out words using an upturned glass. Words from the other side, obviously. In the case of Ms Van der Stroet, this got completely out of hand. She was interviewed by De Limburger newspaper about her experience: ‘The doors in the house started opening and closing. The toilet door locked itself. Alarm clocks fell onto the floor in the children’s bedrooms. When we picked them up, they just fell off again. Plants fell from the walls. It was terrifying. And then a ghost turned up. One of us had spelled the word ‘death’ with the letters, and this really pushed the ghost’s buttons. He called out that he would murder her, over and over again.’ The family called the police, some officers came round to check but didn’t know what to do. They eventually found a medium to drive out the spirit.

EXORCISING JINNI

In Kanaleneiland, there’s a house which local residents say has been haunted for years. A few years ago, it was a hot topic on the Marokko Community online forum. The terraced house on Aziëlaan was bought by a man who very quickly sold it again for no apparent reason. It was purchased by a housing corporation, but tenants never stayed there for long. It’s said that some tenants woke up to find a fully prepared breakfast waiting for them downstairs, things broke spontaneously, and lights went on and off while no-one was at home. A group of lads that tried to break in panicked and ran away. Even the imams who tried to exorcise the Jinni (supernatural creatures from Arabian culture) fled the house screaming in sheer terror. Unfortunately, the story ends here so we don’t know the present status of the house or its tenants. But it’s definitely one of many juicy urban legends that make this city so exciting.