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Haunted places in Netherlands
What are the most haunted places in Netherlands? The best-known are The Flying Dutchman and Will-o’-the-Wisp.
The Netherlands gave its name to the most famous phantom ship of all, the Flying Dutchman, doomed in legend to sail the seas forever. Closer to home, Dutch folklore knows the dwaallicht, the will-o’-the-wisp that leads travellers astray over bogs and marshes, and the witte wieven, the ‘white’ or ‘wise’ women whose spirits were said to haunt burial mounds and misty heaths in the east of the country.
- 2 hauntings
Haunted places in Netherlands
The Flying Dutchman
The ghost ship doomed to beat against the storms off the Cape of Good Hope forever – the sea’s most famous phantom, from sailors’ yarns to Wagner. Folklore
Will-o’-the-Wisp
Pale flickering lights over marshes and bogs that lure travellers off the path – folklore’s ghost lights, and a puzzle chemists are still trying to solve. FolkloreThe ghost lore of Netherlands
Many old towns have their own ghost stories – of canal houses, castles and battle-scarred mansions – and ghost walks are popular in cities such as Amsterdam and Utrecht.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Drenthe and the eastern heaths
Ancient burial mounds and misty moorland are the traditional haunts of the witte wieven.
- The Peel and other raised bogs
Former peat marshes where travellers once feared the dwaallicht, the Dutch will-o’-the-wisp.
- Huissen, Gelderland
Home of the Binnenveld mansion, a listed building on the front line of the 1944 Battle of Arnhem known locally as ‘the haunted house of Huissen’.
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