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Hotel Ghost

Wouldn't you have to be comatose to break wind powerfully enough to rattle fans and furniture and not know it?
Even if one of the cats had been responsible, the shock waves would be palpable to a slumbering snail it seems.
 
Oi, you lot! :pitch:

I was just lying down. As I recall, my head had barely hit the pillow as I'd normally get comfy then set off a podcast or whatever on the bedside Mac.

Anyway, if I'd been asleep and done that without even noticing - what a tragic waste. :dunno:
 
I have just bumped into a series of websites claiming that the Parador de Cardona, in Spain, was heavily haunted.

As a side note, Spanish "paradores de turismo" are old buildings, often medieval castles or cloisters, which have been turned into hotels as a means to finance their preservation. So, finding ghost tales about these places was to be expected. What is interesting here is that the hotel chain has a page dedicated to its haunted venues here : https://paradores.es/fr/node/6996

Strangely enough, this official page is available in French, German and Spanish, but not in English ... It tells that one room (room 712) of the parador de Cardona, in Aragon, is said to be so haunted that only those who specifically request to sleep there are offered the option to sleep there. According to the site, for decades, the furniture in the room used to travel by itself, and every morning, all the heavy furniture would be found gathered in the middle of the closed room by the hotel staff. There is also a very traditional tale attached to the place : a lady of the castle had been starved to death because she had fallen in love with a Moor prince. His catholic father wouldn't allow their mariage so he jailed her in the current room 712, where she died. It is supposedly her ghost who haunts the place ... Too folklorically good to be true, isn't it ?

There are a few old reviews on Tripadvisor alluding to the place being haunted, but nothing really spectacular. And I think the latest reference to the hanutings dates from 2011.

The Parador website mentions another interesting haunted hotel : at Olite, it says that the ghost of a prince keeps the lamp lighting his portrait always on, even when the hotel staff unplugs the electric cable. That's an unusual tale, and it would be easy to fact-check if you ever visit the place.

I once travelled through 6 or 7 Paradores about twenty years ago and did not encounter any weird phenomena. But I did not visit those listed as haunted on the parador website ...
 
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AmStramGram said:
I have just bumped into a series of websites claiming that the Parador de Cardona, in Spain, was heavily haunted.

As a side note, Spanish "paradores de turismo" are old buildings, often medieval castles or cloisters, which have been turned into hotels as a means to finance their preservation. So, finding ghost tales about these places was to be expected. What is interesting here is that the hotel chain has a page dedicated to its haunted venues here : https://paradores.es/fr/node/6996

Strangely enough, this official page is available in French, German and Spanish, but not in English ... It tells that one room (room 712) of the parador de Cardona, in Aragon, is said to be so haunted that only those who specifically request to sleep there are offered the option to sleep there. According to the site, for decades, the furniture in the room used to travel by itself, and every morning, all the heavy furniture would be found gathered in the middle of the closed room by the hotel staff. There is also a very traditional tale attached to the place : a lady of the castle had been starved to death because she had fallen in love with a Moor prince. His catholic father wouldn't allow their mariage so he jailed her in the current room 712, where she died. It is supposedly her ghost who haunts the place ... Too folklorically good to be true, isn't it ?

There are a few old reviews on Tripadvisor alluding to the place being haunted, but nothing really spectacular. And I think the latest reference to the hanutings dates from 2011.

The Parador website mentions another interesting haunted hotel : at Olite, it says that the ghost of a prince keeps the lamp lighting his portrait always on, even when the hotel staff unplugs the electric cable. That's an unusual tale, and it would be easy to fact-check if you ever visit the place.

I once travelled through 6 or 7 Paradores about twenty years ago and did not encounter any weird phenomena. But I did not visit those listed as haunted on the parador website ...
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I wonder - is the 'lady starved to death for loving the wrong man' the Spanish equivalent of 'walled up for loving a monk' or 'hanging self because not allowed to marry the stable boy'? Interesting that the 'loving a Moor prince' was outside the social norm in the same way as monks or stable boys.
 
catseye said:
I wonder - is the 'lady starved to death for loving the wrong man' the Spanish equivalent of 'walled up for loving a monk' or 'hanging self because not allowed to marry the stable boy'? Interesting that the 'loving a Moor prince' was outside the social norm in the same way as monks or stable boys.
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This tale probably originates in the "romantic" era, e.g the 19th century. It sounds very characteristic of literary romanticism to me. In Western Europe, that was a time of idealisation of oriental culture.

Several writers of the period claimed that the southern califate of Al Andalus was a kind of paradise of intercultural tolerance and prosperity, which serious historians nowadays contest. Oh sure, the area was prosperous, but Christians and Jews were discriminated in various ways : for instance they could not ride horses so as not to ride higher than a Muslim citizen. Regarding clothes, they were only allowed to wear a limited number of colours. And so on ... Life was not much better on the Christian side. Bigotry and violence was present on both sides of the frontier. So the whole idea of a poor princess being persecuted by her intolerant father because she fell in love by a Moor prince charming sounds really 19th century to me. It's probably an "exotic" projection of recent ideas over a distant and poorly understood medieval context.

I found a page in English about this story. Here it is : http://castleandpalacehotels.com/countries/spain/spain_regions/cataluna_aragon/cardona.html

According to this page, the evil father was count Ramon Folc de Cardona (1040 - 1086). This count indeed had a daughter who died at a young age : countess Ermessinda (died in 1095, aged 24). However, this countess did marry a Catalan noble, Deodat Claramunt, and gave him a child, who inherited the Cardona castle. I did not find any details about the cause of the lady's death, but at that time it was not uncommon for ladies to die in childbirth. So I find the tale of the Moor prince historically doubtful, unless it concerns another princess ...

Besides, the 1080s were a time of constant warfare in the area. The closest Moor princes, Al Mustain of Zaragoza and Al Mundir of Lerida, were probably too busy trying to survive the onslaught, caught as they were between the resurgent Christian kingdoms and the southern Almohads. Not the best of times to go court minor countesses ...
 
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AmStramGram said:
This tale probably originates in the "romantic" era, e.g the 19th century. It sounds very characteristic of literary romanticism to me. In Western Europe, that was a time of idealisation of oriental culture.

Several writers of the period claimed that the southern califate of Al Andalus was a kind of paradise of intercultural tolerance and prosperity, which serious historians nowadays contest. Oh sure, the area was prosperous, but Christians and Jews were discriminated in various ways : for instance they could not ride horses so as not to ride higher than a Muslim citizen. Regarding clothes, they were only allowed to wear a limited number of colours. And so on ... Life was not much better on the Christian side. Bigotry and violence was present on both sides of the frontier. So the whole idea of a poor princess being persecuted by her intolerant father because she fell in love by a Moor prince charming sounds really 19th century to me. It's probably an "exotic" projection of recent ideas over a distant and poorly understood medieval context.

I found a page in English about this story. Here it is : http://castleandpalacehotels.com/countries/spain/spain_regions/cataluna_aragon/cardona.html

According to this page, the evil father was count Ramon Folc de Cardona (1040 - 1086). This count indeed had a daughter who died at a young age : countess Ermessinda (died in 1095, aged 24). However, this countess did marry a Catalan noble, Deodat Claramunt, and gave him a child, who inherited the Cardona castle. I did not find any details about the cause of the lady's death, but at that time it was not uncommon for ladies to die in childbirth. So I find the tale of the Moor prince historically doubtful, unless it concerns another princess ...

Besides, the 1080s were a time of constant warfare in the area. The closest Moor princes, Al Mustain of Zaragoza and Al Mundir of Lerida, were probably too busy trying to survive the onslaught, caught as they were between the resurgent Christian kingdoms and the southern Almohads. Not the best of times to go court minor countesses ...
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However, it was a feudal system. In some areas along the frontier, Christian nobles swore allegiance to Muslim overlords and vice versa. There was also considerable intermarriage amongst Christian and Muslim nobility, particularly with the practice of Muslim noblemen taking noble Christian wives.
 
Finally found the English page on the paradores website : https://paradores.es/en/blog/spooky-spain-paradores-haunted-hotels

* A variant of the ghost story, also from the hotel chain's website, where the ghost is called Adales, and the Moor converts to Christianity in order to marry her (not to avail) : https://paradores.es/en/blog/parador-cardona-castle-steeped-history

* Another page where the princess is said to be a Ramon Folch's daughter named Adales, and the moor prince Abdala : https://moonmausoleum.com/el-parador-de-cardona-castle-haunted-hotel/

None of these pages is provided with historical sources however. The legend is retold on the Spanish Wikipedia page, which has at least the merit to give a source : a book published in 1996. Fairly recent ... https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_de_la_'Minyona'

I did not find traces of an "Adales" in the lineage of the various Ramon Folch's of Cardona. The inspiration of the tale's "Duke" Ramon Folch was likely Viscount Ramon Folc I, father of Ermessinda, who died in 1086 while defending the castle of Malda against the moors. That would fit with some pages giving Malda as the home of the Moor prince and telling of a war caused by Ramon's refusal to marry his daughter. However, the tale as it is told is obviously fictitious, as Cardona wasn't a dukedom by then, and Malda was firmly in Christian hands since 1082 at the latest ... And then, again, there is no trace of an Adales in the Cardona family around that time.

* Finally, a rather funny traveller report on a blog : https://thejasongreene.com/staying-in-a-haunted-castle-with-the-family-a-ghostly-encounter-in-spain/
 
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AmStramGram said:
I did not find traces of an "Adales" in the lineage of the various Ramon Folch's of Cardona. The inspiration of the tale's "Duke" Ramon Folch was likely Viscount Ramon Folc I, father of Ermessinda, who died in 1086 while defending the castle of Malda against the moors.
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I found a mention to one "Adalae comitissae" (countess Adele) in a 17th century history book available on google books and mentioning the castle of Cardona (https://www.google.fr/books/edition...dq=Cardona+Adales&pg=PT13&printsec=frontcover). Author : Pierre de Marca.

The title of the (latin) text is : "Sacramentale quod fecit Raymundus Guillelmus de Odena Guillelmo Comiti ceritanie super castro de Cardona", which may mean : "Oath made by Raymud-Guillelm de Odena (Ausona ?) (to) Count Guillelm de Cerdania (a northern Catalan county, over the castle of Cardona". I am really not good at all in latin, so I may have misunderstood.

"Juro ego Raymundus Guillelmi, filius qui fui Ermengardis feminae, tibi guillelmo comiti, seniori meo, filius qui fuisti Adalae comitissae quod ab hac hora et deinceps fidelis tibi ero fine fraude & ullo malo ingenio et fine ulla decepcione et fine engan per directam fidem et deinceps fidelis tibi ero fine tuo engan de ipso castro de Cardona et de omnibus fortedis quae in eo modo funt aut erunt, quod non eum nec eas tibi tollam nec vetabo ullo ingenio nec ego nec ullus vivens homo meo assenso vel per me et adjutor tibi eum et eas ero a tener et ad aver et a defendre et a guerreiare fino tuo engan contra omnes homines vel feminas fine tuo engan. Sicut prescriptu est de te praefato comite si o tenre et o atendre ad ipsum qui debitaveris dictis vel testamento tuum honorem et istum nominatum, et hoc faciam infra triginta dies quibus mortuus fueris et ego hoc faciam fine mala contentione et fine alio lucro"

It is obviously a feudal oath in exchange for the tenure of the castle of Cardona. Bizarrely, I do not find a Raymund Guillelm in the line of the viscounts of Cardona. On the other hand, there is a Viscount Guillelm Raymund in Cerdania around the year 1090 who was both the son of an Adelaide and husband of another Adelaide according to wikipedia ... That may be a source for the character of "Adala" as the ghost of Cardona. I did not find online what the viscounts of Cerdania had to do with the castle of Cardona, which was the capital of the viscounty of Ausona, but the death of the last viscount of Cardona at the battle of Malva in 1086 had perhaps left the area in a crisis of succession, which could explain the involvement of the northern neighbour ? Without a good history book on the topic of local politics, I may not reach any satisfactory conclusion ... And since I do not speak latin, there's no way I could clarify this point alone.
 
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