“Hey, I just realized there’s an occult castle about an hour from here. Want to go?” my husband asked me one day.
Well, of course! Weird and interesting places always are at the top of my list.
So, after about a week we head out on a dull, grey Wednesday. My least favorite time of the year is this blank space between New Year and Spring, so this seemed like a perfect diversion. Plus, a haunted castle is always a fun visit!
About Iulia Hasdeu Castle:
We were heading to Iulia Hasdeu Castle (pronounced Yoo-lee-ah Hash-day-oo), built in the late 1890’s by Bogdan Hasdeu, a well-known historian and philosopher, in the small town of Câmpina. The occult part comes in because he built it entirely by instruction from his daughter, Iulia, after she died. Part invention and part instruction by traveling psychics, Bogdan used séance and spirit writing to get instruction from Iulia on how to build what became her shrine. He also contacted her to compose music, poetry, and stories from her beyond the grave. In addition to these works attributed to Iulia, Bogdan went on to write and publish many memoirs and tributes to Iulia.
When I learned a little about Iulia herself (when she was alive, anyway) I started to understand why her father was so destroyed by her death. Iulia was a prodigy from a very young age, learning to write poetry and prose in several languages. When she was a teenager, she went to Paris, France for college and became the first Romanian to graduate from Sorbonne University. She died at the age of nineteen from tuberculosis, a common illness at the time. She was the couple’s only child, and loved by many. She had just directed her first widely successful theatre show shortly before her death.
The castle survived with almost all original possessions through the communist regime when many landmarks were dismantled and redistributed. This may have been due to the highly religious Romanian’s opinion of items associated with a ghost. After reconstruction and fundraising, Iulia Hasdeu’s tribute opened for visitors in 1994.
The Visit:
Going to the house, I was thinking we’d have to beat other visitors, but on a cold February morning we were the only ones there. The small castle is circled by a wrought iron gate and is next to a police station, surrounded by small houses. While it was probably the first building in the area, these houses grew up around it in the last 100 years. We didn’t see any people until going in the front door to find the attendant. It costs 10 lei (maybe $2.50) per person for entry, and we got a handy handheld recording device for a virtual tour.
The rooms were all with original furnishings and plenty of donated tributes to Iulia by those who knew her or her father. We were able to tour the séance room, the room dedicated to Iulia in life, the office of Bogdan, a sitting room dedicated to artifacts of the family, and the round room with an inexplicable Jesus under a cupola.
The Séance Room:
This room was where Bogdan held séances to contact Iulia, and had artifacts he used during these meetings along with samples of the spirit writing he collected. He apparently even wrote his own séance guide, kind of like a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe for psychics. The room used to have frescos on the walls of what Bogdan felt were important images to help spirits visit, but these were apparently too damaged to save. There was also a round pass-through to the office area, I’m still not sure why. Overall, this tiny room with a large window and blank walls was not what I was expecting when I found out this is where séances were held.