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207: Creepy Medieval Castles
63 Plays5 days ago
It's been a minute since we did a castle haunt or horror, so here are two very cool, eerie castles to live up to our name!
Quick into of obligatory bitch session and catch-up, this time we go on about annoying and aging bodies, can anyone relate to that? Taking meds with side effects and lucky if they don't hurt your damn liver! Side shout-out to a couple comments from last episode and we're off to Germany!
Kelsey takes us to Eltz Castle, Wierschem, Germany, and it's long, long history that we skip over for the good parts. One medieval family lived here forever somehow, if only we had a mockumentary called Medieval Family! Ghosts, George R.R. Martin bashing, and stolen kisses com into conversation and that's normal for us.
On to Bran Castle and Bram Stoker's Dracula. A tangential connection maybe, but Vlad Dracule has had our fascination for a long time too so we hope you don't mind the side quests into Dracula, haunts and a little history. Plus the great Question: Do you get impaled up the ass??Torso? do you all know??
Darkcast Promo of the Week: Love and Murder Podcast
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:01
Speaker
Darkcast Network. Indie pods with a dark side.
00:00:25
Speaker
You are listening to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic as fuck. And I'm your host, Alanna. And I'm Kelsey. We're bringing in the noise, bringing in the funk.
00:00:38
Speaker
and With my raspy voice today. also have one of them little cryptids on my desk. Did you get this from me or someone else? Because they're like those little reticulated ones.
00:00:53
Speaker
They shake. All their little limbs flop about. But they're like 3D printed ones. Yeah, like a Yeah. I don't remember getting you one. I've gotten some for other people, like Nightmare Before Christmas ones and stuff. Oh, so what do you get? Like a swampy thing.
00:01:12
Speaker
oh yeah. It's like a creature from the Black Lagoon looking a guy. i think so. Squish boy. I will take a picture for Instagram because I got that guy. i don't remember when. Who got me the swamp creature?
00:01:26
Speaker
Mom? Ressa? And then i have a little, like, he looks like a little Yeti sitting down, like figurine guy. He's cute. And then also for Christmas, somebody got me a grow a Sasquatch. So I still have to grow my Sasquatch.
00:01:46
Speaker
Is it like a squishy thing or is it like one of those chia pets where it's just the fur? Oh, no. Yeah, it's like the water. put it in the water it gets big.
Balancing Podcasting and Personal Life
00:02:01
Speaker
Yes, we are recording this one. I'm a little late because it's gonna come out pretty shortly after we in a couple days yeah um sorry about that I've I've been having a bit of a busy week with stuff and telling Kelsey kids are leaving the nest and all these things and yeah it's just been a little weird so I didn't get as much done and then it's like oh my god i have to finish my notes like we've been yeah we need to record we did our two weeks go by so fast it's i know you're blinking there's another two weeks and it's really made me like lazy like i feel like i can just be like oh i'll do the notes later you know what it used to be like well got notes and then type and then record and then edit and then oh yeah life by the pod
00:02:57
Speaker
I uh with my work schedule I maybe have what one part of a day a week that I can work on anything like I think i posted our
00:03:19
Speaker
Facebook or stuff for the last episode I think I did Facebook and YouTube and the website like almost three or four days after the episode actually came out because that was the first chance I had. It's like, I don't want to do it before work because, you know, going through everything, it's like sometimes 45 minutes to an hour. It's like, oh, if I only have like three hours before work, i don't want to spend a third of it sitting there doing this. so then it's like, OK, well, that'll be like another two days before that gets done.
00:03:55
Speaker
It's like, damn. Yeah, you can't really set aside a day or a half day when you only have one to two days off a week. Usually it's just tough for most people. slow yeah Yeah, especially like it wouldn't be a big deal if I always had evenings off. But yeah, if I'm working till 9.30pm, then like the last thing I want to do when I come home is work on something else.
00:04:20
Speaker
No, I know. And I feel like I should have more it's like the illusion of having more time doing the four-day work week because you'll get three days off but you're still working the same amount of hours and you're still tired yeah come home after working 10 hours like i did today and and i'm like kelsey can we record today oh no she's like gonna be a little tired i'm like that's okay yeah i told you i do yeah They don't normally do it at work, but I closed last night and then I opened this morning. so yeah, I went to sleep but sometime between 1130 and midnight. And then I woke up at 430 in the morning to get ready for work again. i was like, oh, that's cool.
00:05:06
Speaker
i know. Sometimes I think about like what time I go to bed and what time like my alarm clock goes off and stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, you're lucky if you're allowing yourself to get like seven hours of sleep if it's not the weekend. I used to I used to have the luxury of almost always being able to get seven, eight hours of sleep. But the at least the last year, absolutely not.
00:05:31
Speaker
A lot of times I'm getting like five, six hours now. So, you yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
Or four and a half.
00:05:43
Speaker
Oh, come on You still bounce back. You're 30? 31 now. Damn it. It's ancient. I need my sleep.
00:05:56
Speaker
I need my sleep. but yeah you're Probably around the time where you'll start to not remember your age like I do, where I second guess myself. Wait. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. People are always like, I can't party like I used to and then go into work the next day.
00:06:13
Speaker
ah no that was never me i'm i was never the the party person i don't know it's just like oh yeah it depends right just if you have the stuff in your system to keep you going then it's easy the i i had to skip all that freaking
00:06:39
Speaker
damn it compromised immune systems i know medical conditions everything blood work all the time can't can't drink on medication for i'm not supposed to technically have more than one drink a week so it's like and then they're like oh well like i hope you understand you can't save up your one drink a week and then it's like okay but i can can't i Like, damn, that's rough though. Yeah. so serious I don't know. I've never had a problem.
00:07:12
Speaker
Like, I've never noticed that my medication doesn't work as good. yeah. Like, when we went on holidays. thought you meant drinking problem. I was like, no, we know. No, like, when I was on the holidays, there was probably a lot of days I was having seven, eight drinks a day. And that's when you have to take every day? That Yeah.
00:07:33
Speaker
that me um What?
00:07:40
Speaker
but um They're both processed like through your liver, so... Yeah, it it like can cause problems if you're drinking a lot. And then... Makes sense.
00:07:52
Speaker
ah Yeah, but I've never noticed a problem. like I didn't notice any problems. I've been on the same medication at the same dosage for almost 10 years, and I've never noticed a problem of me drinking...
00:08:05
Speaker
meat drinking like when I was on holidays and having five or six minimum drinks a day for like a week, ah i did not notice my, i was feeling any different than when I don't drink at all for a month at a time. So I feel like if I did, I wouldn't do it, but yeah I've never had a problem.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, you do. But I know I'm not supposed to. Well, no, in certain ones, when you hear about, when they're like, don't mix them with medication, people are like, yeah, yeah. And then it's like antibiotics or something, and they do, and they're like, and then I was fucked. And you're like, yeah. Yeah. there's something No, this is just more so like, the medication is just really hard on your liver and anything, so you don't want to put it under like excessive stress, so...
00:08:51
Speaker
like, yeah, it's understandable. Right. I like have the, I bought the the extra strength ibuprofen and not only were they a little bit too big, the liquid gels, I don't like them. It's like,
00:09:07
Speaker
this may cause like stomach bleeding or something. and you're like, Oh, you have to put that on the packaging. Fun. ah Yeah. That's why, uh, when you have like stomach problems or anything, they always tell you to take acetaminophen or a Tylenol. You're not supposed to take Advil or anything. Cause it's a lot harder on your, yeah like GI tract and everything. so yeah, that's,
00:09:35
Speaker
always fun i always tell people like oh if you have stomach problems like just don't ever take advil it's not it's not good on your stomach especially if you're having to take pain medication on an empty stomach like ah not with a meal or something or like within an hour of eating it's probably not good to take advil on an empty stomach ever i really want yeah oh yeah who I feel like we've gone far enough off. Yeah, I won't take any meds on an empty stomach.
00:10:07
Speaker
I've just discovered that puking up when the medication's still in there sometimes can be really horrible. And I just have a cast iron stomach, I tell you. Or so my mom says.
00:10:19
Speaker
But yeah not so much nowadays. no ah You're just like, oh, heartburn. gotta get Gotta have a Tums. Yeah.
00:10:31
Speaker
I think so. You eat too much greasy food and you're like, I have acid reflux now. Yeah. I think mine is indigestion, but I don't even want to know.
00:10:42
Speaker
i don't even want to know. Everyone said they got heartburn when they were pregnant. And I was like, I don't think I did, but maybe i just didn't recognize what the feeling was. Oh, yeah. I totally forgot about that.
00:10:54
Speaker
I know my sister-in-law, when she was pregnant with my niece, had really, really bad heartburn. And then don't really remember it being a thing when she had my nephew.
00:11:06
Speaker
so interesting. Every prego's different. Like every pregnancy. I mean, like literally same woman. Sorry. We're like tangent-a-thons.
Listener Feedback and Podcasting Tools
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:21
Speaker
yeah ah it so It's our ah pre-show banter. Pre-show? It's still the show. That's why you guys tune in. It is. I didn't mean to get off on intestinal tracks and shit.
00:11:37
Speaker
Just trying to avoid talking about the serious, you know, serious things and things. just want to have fun. Yeah. Um...
00:11:48
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, I don't know. ah was Was there anything else we want to talk about pod? I know last time i talked to you, i we had a nice ah comment on Spotify that when I was on our Spotify for creators. Yeah, where you can see if people comment and stuff and actually alerts you. you're like, oh, yeah. um I don't think, i you know what? I don't think I'm signed into it now because my stupid computer probably signed me out.
00:12:14
Speaker
But it was very nice and I... wanted to shout them out and i do remember it was something along the lines of they were very happy to have us back because they didn't realize how much we were in their routine which was very sweet yeah very sweet love a nice comment repeat listeners almost said repeat offenders ah basically that's not not what i meant No, I don't think this is the right website either. Spotify for artists. Hello. Nope.
00:12:51
Speaker
Friggin Spotify.
00:12:55
Speaker
I don't know anymore, man. I'll look it up after. Maybe after we get back from the break, I can show up the specific. Yeah, we've used too many recording things. so We were using Sandcaster. No, that's what we're using now. we were using. Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
anchor that we were using spotify no and i'm still using clean feed for a while now we're using zedcaster no and i'm not even though i wasn't even wanting to open it up to record it was to it's because that's where you go to look at your spotify comments and your spotify analytics for your podcast oh yeah god who cares it's been you guys don't it's been a journey yeah no we are happy to be we're trying we'll try to keep back on our two week schedule um and uh let you know if there's any other you know stuff that comes up yeah hopefully oh back into more of a routine yes and we did just post onto patreon which you might have noticed showing up in the spotify feed if you listen on spotify please don't forget to rate us but yes it'll show you all the patreon exclusive episodes you can get now
00:14:09
Speaker
They'll just show up as locked in the feed. And we just dropped our one. i would call it our February one, I guess. Because I just dropped it. But yeah, it was a pretty fun one where we had some cuddly saves. And you know yeah brought some animal content, which I always enjoy. And then I went through my Ask Reddit, what's the weirdest things you found in autopsies? And oh, I don't know. Just go look. that I put it all in the description. Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was lots of fun. Yeah. I didn't know how long that episode was going to end up being and I was shocked when I said it was an hour and 20 minutes. I was like, damn, we thought this was going to be a short episode.
00:14:50
Speaker
no We're incapable of doing anything that's not 90 minutes.
00:14:57
Speaker
It's true. We talked a lot about or some movie tangents and I complained that i I had a sleepless night where I'd been listening to so much of the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1 soundtrack that I had a David Bowie song stuck in my head that I did not know the words to, did not really care for, and had been playing on my tre in my head radio for so long that when I was doing the editing two days ago, I was like, it's still on and off in my head. And yes, the song is... Oh, that really sucks.
00:15:27
Speaker
Moon Age Daydream. So I'm calling it my Moon Age Daydream Nightmare.
00:15:33
Speaker
it's It's in Guardians and it's it's the only play like the first part of it in the movie because it's just like the um it starts like I'm an alligator I'm a mama papa coming for you yeah I'm a space murderer Anyway It's not my fault that it's catchy but now it's going to be stuck in my head again So thanks very much
00:15:59
Speaker
No offense to Damien Bowie. I just was like, literally this song is in my head and I can't sleep and I'm like, someone's torturing me from outside of my brain. Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
But anyway, you you guys are here for the castles. That's what... We are doing castles. Yay. Yeah, it's been a moment. Been... i don't know how long. Somebody can let us know.
00:16:24
Speaker
i want to scroll through our list of episodes right now. I mean... if We do some, but yeah, was gonna say at least we we do get known for doing like more historical stuff.
00:16:37
Speaker
Castles, crimes and weird history and mystery. oh As long as we don't get labeled a political podcast or something. on Yeah, it even feels weird when you have to pick up two categories.
Exploring Burg Eltz Castle
00:16:52
Speaker
And if from the generic ones, there's like true crime and maybe comedy that...
00:16:56
Speaker
applies you're like even that together come on little gross make some more like with how many millions basically podcasts there are now make some better categories please could we just be edutainment possibly yeah kind of learn something maybe i don't know yeah something figure that out then somebody get on that Oh, after our last episode, a brief mention my brother telling me that that that he had watched something or heard something about Caravaggio and how he was murdered and all this stuff. And I was like, wait, wait, what? I was like, I recorded that episode a month ago. i don't know anything. Yeah, I did not remember. I don't remember.
00:17:49
Speaker
if if it was not a big part of my segment, but I did a couple different things. So that's my fault. Fake chairs, fake faken's, fake car. Oh, yeah. I remember now.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah. Everyone's just trying to cash in on it, right? Everything. Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
We're faking it till we make it over here. We've been faking it for years. yeah but all right. Tell us a story. Yeah.
00:18:24
Speaker
ah Uh, this is, gonna take you to Germany. was like, are we going the way back machine? o Yeah, come back. Come on a journey with me to Germany.
00:18:38
Speaker
Cut to memory. That's funny. Yeah, just the, um, the camera begins to, uh, become blurry and suddenly when it refocuses, we're in Germany.
00:18:50
Speaker
yeah.
00:18:53
Speaker
at the uh borg elts or elts castle i chose it because it looked well for two reasons one of the reasons was it just looked really pretty it's probably one of those ones that comes up on the list yeah you're like oh yeah i think i've heard of it too yeah i might have come across it And it's located in Wiersheim, Germany.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it's pretty popular because it's one of the few castles in the area that wasn't destroyed during a siege. And it can still be visited. They have tours and everything going on. So it's pretty cool. If you want to go visit it, you can.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah. That's the thing. Things get bombed in wars. Yeah. And there was, i didn't get into a whole lot of it. There have been different restorations and like some parts of it that oh yeah did get damaged. There was like a kind of popular,
00:19:59
Speaker
um like battle between a a family and then like somebody that lived nearby I think and there's a whole bunch of details on it but it's a very very old castle we're talking like 800 years of history and stuff so I'm just not gonna get into that because I'm sorry I can't cover 800 years it's too much I ran into a similar issue, yes. Yeah, it's just like, we'd be here for nine hours.
00:20:32
Speaker
and
00:20:37
Speaker
ah It's kind of interesting, though, because I guess the castle itself is on these grounds, and... ah But it's all kind of considered the Borg castle.
00:20:53
Speaker
or Borg Elt. And the castle grounds actually consist of multiple buildings that were built or added to at different times. And the oldest building was a simple manor that was built in the ninth century.
00:21:09
Speaker
Just a simple kind of manor.
00:21:14
Speaker
Sorry. So very old. And then 1157, this Emperor Frederick, think it's fred Frederick the First Barbarossa. He issued a deem of donation to Rudolf von Eltz and Everything I read, i still never really understood what this meant, but it sound sounded like that the the manor had been built and then it was like given to the Elts family this year you're at in 1157. Oh, fun.
00:22:01
Speaker
oh but Sorry if I'm not understanding that properly because I tried. So many people will be like, ugh, no. No.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, God, we're going to get cancelled because I couldn't couldn't read this freaking castle's website properly. put I'll put it on our Reddit and somebody will correct us inevitably. Yeah. Somebody always knows better on Reddit.
00:22:28
Speaker
Sorry. Kudos. So I got my information from like ah the littlehouseofhorrors.com. They have like a nice little thing about the castle. And then the Borg Elts...
00:22:41
Speaker
website was also phenomenal they had a whole history where you could go back like every few years and read about all the restorations and then they had separate thing that was talking about who lived in the castle in like every single year all the way back to this so it was insane because again it's like 800 years and it's too much yeah yeah but fantastic work uh good good effort on there I really appreciated it in trying to do research when I could pick and choose what I thought was interesting oh no that's good because my problem was it had like kind of a timeline on one of the websites and I so I started to jot things down yeah and I'm like okay cool and then like thinking that's the whole thing because it's like I'm reading from left to right and right on the website and then like scroll down and I was like oh no there's more dates Are they heavy are they doing like every couple of decades?
00:23:45
Speaker
And I had already written down like the first bit. So I had to cut out so much because it was just boring. That was me clicking through chunks of 50 years at a time for 800 years going, Jesus Christ, I can't do this right now. Like, yeah, like ah an almanac or something.
00:24:04
Speaker
They're just like, and then I shorn the sheep. Actually, somebody, I heard someone called Almanacs the podcast of the history or something, because maybe there was a lot of them that lots people wrote. Who knows?
00:24:18
Speaker
um Yeah, so important years, 1157, seems like the Elts family gets given or the... donated the property and then the next kind of year that kept getting mentioned was 1268 and this is yeah this was off their website it was kind of cute it said the brothers Elias nicknamed the of the golden lion and Wilhelm
00:24:52
Speaker
of the Silver Lion and yes yes Theodric. It's like theoro Theo Roderick. don't know. Theodric.
00:25:04
Speaker
Interesting. Never heard that name but I like it. His nickname was... Podrick Payne.
00:25:12
Speaker
With the buffalo horns. um So three ah of the family members of the Elts family had a dispute In the year 1268 and the family at the time they were all living on the ah property, but when they had this dispute, the family actually split up the estate and the castle that was on there and they divided it among these three brothers and deemed it like three separate branches of the family and each ended up developing their own coat of arms and from that point on the castle was a so-called oh god i didn't i forgot about this word it super german
00:26:02
Speaker
Uh, Gannerbenberg? I'm so sorry. yeah Just say it with some German german conviction. Gannerbenberg! I can't. I don't know.
00:26:12
Speaker
The harsh tone. second I can't. It's a castle that's inhabited by several lines of a family at the same time. so okay.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah. Multi-generational. Yeah, home. kind of like the whole castle grounds actually isn't even that big so when the family split up in 1268 each of them were like i'm gonna build my own castle in the grounds or like these different towers and then because the grounds weren't very big they all kind of just started building upwards so they have these really nice towers and everything but each family ah didn't really like each other and they were still living on the same property but they were like operating independently and then sharing certain common areas so yeah it's kind of interesting setup one i hadn't necessarily heard of before i mean having read
00:27:13
Speaker
a lot of historical shit sometimes i think it's like yeah ah like the more like big your castle was i feel like at least the more space you could get from that family member that maybe you were married to not by love or whatever you go to your chambers and i'll go to mine like you know even on like the crown like the queen has her own fucking bedroom and so does the king and they just have a little connecting whatever yeah a sex corridor yeah
00:27:45
Speaker
So for the different branches, the family continued building on the grounds for the next 500 years, adding additions mainly upwards as the space on the grounds was limited, because it is kind of like on the top of like a cliff or like a mountain thing so it's very picturesque because it sounded surrounded by like a beautiful mountains a whole a beautiful forest and it's just like perfectly perched there and like a fairy tale castle
00:28:17
Speaker
I like that. Yeah, sometimes it's, like, so much grounds, like, like, a big field. Not a field, but you know I mean? Like, yeah, a big lawn. Yeah. That can almost too pristine. No, this with, like, a beautiful, like, road leading to it that kind of, like, drops off on each side. Like, it's basically, like, a path.
00:28:40
Speaker
Oh, that's cool, because I got... I got a cool one too. And none of them British fancy pants castles. Was described ah because like the different families building at different times over 500 years. It's described as both medieval and Renaissance styles. So it kind of, you can see like different parts of it. Like some of it's white and red and then other parts are like stone. it looks kind of cool. Yeah.
00:29:12
Speaker
And it was the home of the Counts of Elts, um which were those three family members. They were the Counts. And they were the Counts. It ah remains in the family for the next 33 generations, which is crazy. Jesus.
00:29:30
Speaker
ah Yeah. That's crazy. um Yeah, the castle was divided into several parts, each belonging to one of the three different branches of the family.
00:29:42
Speaker
And each family owned their own part of the castle, but together they shared the responsibility of the defensive fortification, because there is, like, stone walls surrounding it. Okay.
00:29:54
Speaker
And then the servants, craftsmen, and other families who supported these Elts families, they lived, I think it was little hard to understand, it it seemed like they lived in the village that was below the castle. Like, the castle's way up high, so...
00:30:11
Speaker
They lived in the village and underneath. Yeah, that's pretty smart, though. People have to come up really high to get at you. They're not going to just stop by. Yeah, that's what they talked about.
00:30:24
Speaker
It was like a really good defensive position because you could see everybody coming for quite a long ways, which made it really good that it never got destroyed and everything like that. That was part of the reason.
00:30:41
Speaker
It does look like there's just like one road in. Yeah. And it's very beautiful. You're like, that sounds like good. I it. As soon as I saw pictures, I was like, oh, fairy tale.
00:30:53
Speaker
It really Well, the turrets remind me of the, I think it's Nusschenstein, the one that this like actual um Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty one that they based off of, like that they use with Disney and stuff.
00:31:06
Speaker
think it's new schwanstein but don't ask me how to spell that but yeah it's like the the the pointy turrets yeah like it's yeah oh i love it it's yeah yeah it looks very like medieval and then there's just like yeah because the turrets have that like white red yeah like the don't know how to say it but yeah it's like that white with the brown um stripes checkered uh whatever i don't know the turrets are unique
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. So Borg Elts is located on a 70 meter or 230 foot high rock spur at the center of a highly important Roman or at the time was a highly important Roman trade route that existed between the farmlands and the markets. So it's like on the way.
00:31:59
Speaker
um I mentioned it was a very strategic position. ah Now, like, that matters a little bit less so. It kind of is just surrounded by the Eltz Forest that has actually been declared a national reserve.
00:32:16
Speaker
And the main attraction are the castle's eight towers standing up to 35 meters high. They're very popular. You could have eight fair maidens.
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:34
Speaker
Like Rapunzel. ah It's a very popular destination to visit as ah the castle remains in one piece while all other castles in the area have at least partially been destroyed during various battles over those centuries.
00:32:53
Speaker
um yeah they avoided the destruction partially because of the situation like being the vantage point there and because they ended up forming many alliances the families did in the area and then across europe so okay i guess they were pretty um kind of cutthroat about it some stuff was talking about like they weren't always aligning themselves with the best people and things but hedge your bets if you have someone on either side of the war and you're one of those people i mean you have three families that don't necessarily get along trying to look after a property so who who really knows what was going on and i'm just trying to think of all the like drama
00:33:44
Speaker
Well, and after world War ii like they bombed so many places, especially London, and the Blitz that I'm sure people would try to retaliate and you know, bomb some of Germany's castles and historic landmarks if they could.
00:33:59
Speaker
but yeah, that sucks. Yeah. So yeah, there's, like I said, a whole bunch of history if you really want to get into like the more historical side.
00:34:09
Speaker
i We can go down that rabbit hole in our own. As far as the owners, they're always called the Counts of Elts.
00:34:20
Speaker
And it as I said, it has remained in the family for 33 generations and over 800 years. um Apparently the passing of the property, I think it seems to mainly be one person at a time now. It's not still the three separate families.
00:34:36
Speaker
It seems to mainly be looked after by one person. um But the chain of like, other than like sometimes... a wife marrying into the family and then the husband ended up dying but technically through marriage it's still in the else family because they got married yeah the chain of like it remaining in the family has been fully unbroken it's never broken yeah would still consider custody i don't know yeah like obviously for 800 years which i guess is very very rare for at no point it not to have been under like the stewardship of like anybody else so
00:35:15
Speaker
No, yeah, you don't really hear about that now that I think of it. Yeah. ah So the, yeah, like I said, the how pretty it was and like fairytale looking is one of the reasons I picked it. And this story is the second reason I picked it.
The Legend of Agnes Eltz
00:35:33
Speaker
It's the story of Agnes Elts. And this is how it comes up on like the it being creepy, I guess.
00:35:44
Speaker
Oh like yeah, we did try to pick creepy castles, not necessarily haunted ones this time. and That's right. Mine might be a little bit haunted. There's like a few things, but I thought this was a really cool story. And I couldn't find it on their website.
00:36:03
Speaker
So, but I found it in a lot of the sources and things I was reading. So hopefully this is fairly... accurate uh so Agnes Elts she was the daughter of the 15th count of Elts and she was raised surrounded by only her brothers and grew up loving to play warrior and like um fighting with them and stuff which was pretty She was a tomboy, as they'd say in my day. Yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
um Eventually, I guess she was promised to this Knight of Bronzeburg like to get married, and the pair, i think over the next little while, would meet occasionally to try and get to know one another. and it didn't really go very well. bet they did.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah. um Didn't go very well. Agnes did not like this night at all. She thought he was boring. misread that. She thought he boring and would ignore him. Okay.
00:37:13
Speaker
um Yeah, so because she thought he was boring, this obviously angered him. And during a festive event that was happening, ah reportedly he pulled Agnes onto the dance floor and like kissed her in front of everybody. And she did not like that. She got really angry and smacked him in the face in front of everybody.
00:37:38
Speaker
Sounds like the start of a romantic conversation. You better just pursue her for the next three to five years, no matter how many times she says no. Okay, but literally on the romance, like whatever subreddit, it's like the common trope is the enemies to lovers.
00:37:56
Speaker
And you're like, yeah, you see that all the time when they start up with like, I can't stand you or whatever. and the next thing you know. I mean, there's a certain point where...
00:38:07
Speaker
Even if you can't stand somebody, you should still be attracted to them. If you can't stand them and you also aren't attracted to them, it's probably not going to happen. I'm sorry to tell you. No, no, this isn't sounding as sexy as I'd hoped.
00:38:20
Speaker
No, sorry. it Sorry to burst the bubble. No, that's okay. If you're grabbing a drink, you can just grab a quick little bit of a bottle of tea. Oh, yeah. All right, sorry.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, yeah, so he kisses her on the dance floor. She gets mad, smacks him in the face.
00:38:44
Speaker
ah He gets mad, storms out of the castle. Oh, and a huff, okay. Yeah. I guess it was bad enough of like a scene that the Elts family was afraid that the knight would come back and try and get revenge on them.
00:39:02
Speaker
So they ended up doubling the number of guards that they had on the castle. Okay. Yeah. so this went on for like days.
00:39:13
Speaker
So days are passing and then weeks and then finally months are going by and there's no sign of the night. So they eventually assume he lost interest.
00:39:24
Speaker
And it's like a lot of effort to go to for one spurned night or whatever. But OK. Yeah. ah Yeah, it's not very... Sensing a twist.
00:39:40
Speaker
It's not a happy ending, I'll say that much. No. oh The Elts family eventually let their guard down again as it had been months.
00:39:53
Speaker
And yeah, so they... A bunch of the guys were like They literally let their guards Sorry. Yeah, all of the guys end up going on this like three-day hunting trip.
00:40:04
Speaker
And obviously they had no way of knowing that the Knight of Bronzeburg had been waiting. And i guess on the first night after all the men left to go on that hunting trip, he and the troops that he had like been waiting with, they all attacked the castle that same night.
00:40:27
Speaker
And... It was mayhem! So they like killed the guards that were posted at the gate, stormed into the caryard courtyard, and just killed everybody that got in their way.
00:40:41
Speaker
so basically just massacred everybody that was on the property. God forbid you right reject that man.
00:40:52
Speaker
he has forces. Jesus. Right! Um, yeah, so Agnes, who had grown up, like, fighting with her brothers and everything, she was witnessing all these killings of everybody on the property, and she didn't like seeing innocent people being killed.
00:41:15
Speaker
um So she went and she got, i don't know who of her brothers, but she got one of their helmets, a breastplate, and then got one of the battle axes and began fighting the men out in the courtyard.
00:41:30
Speaker
oh cool. Yeah. But they couldn't tell it was her. And that night, the Night of Bronzeburg...
00:41:43
Speaker
um he was shocked that someone was fighting and he decided that he was going to challenge this person directly so like just started fighting them one-on-one but not really fighting them because he had a crossbow and shot them with the crossbow which killed them instantly yeah he brought a crossbow to a sword fight.
00:42:15
Speaker
And... Yeah. That's pretty shitty. Like, yeah. I assume all of, yeah, his, he had all these men and they're using whatever weapons, but he just, yeah, basically snipes her from afar.
00:42:31
Speaker
Like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So he had no way of knowing. He approaches the knight's body like wanting to see who it is and removes their helmet only then discovering it was agnes and she was already dead so he had shot her yeah well something similar happened to
00:42:56
Speaker
Of course it did. Nobody cares. i Take a drink. um But yeah, i I liked the story of Agnes. I wish I'd been able to find more details. That was the most detailed telling I could find of it.
00:43:15
Speaker
um i like that. I feel like when I was looking for a case, like I love stories that stand out to you. Yeah, with bravery and stuff like that. You're like, oh, she's cool.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, she went up against a whole whole troop of men and because she didn't want to let them get away with it. Hey, have you been... Yeah, kudos to Agnes.
00:43:41
Speaker
I swear this made me think of this. Have you watched any of the Night of the Seven Kingdoms yet? No. Game of Thrones spinoff? I have like so little interest in Game of Thrones anymore. i don't know. It's like... Oh, it reminds me of a story that happens in that book.
00:44:04
Speaker
Anyway. They just started doing an adaptation of It's pretty good, but I get it. i get the Game of Thrones fatigue. it's they're They're just... I liked the characters from reading the ah the book of it before.
00:44:18
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. It's a big tall knight called Sir Duncan the Tall, or Dunk for short, and his companion Egg, who, spoiler, is Aegon, an Aegon of the Targaryens.
00:44:34
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, kind of fun. They tromp around, and it there's a, if they end up doing this story, there's a ah lady that is, he doesn't know that she's the lady of the house because she's doing archery and stuff,
00:44:51
Speaker
when he comes down and she's a long red braid and i was like oh i hope they do this season really loved her character she's so cool i don't know it's kind of like an aria stark you know who didn't love aria much as you might have hated her ending and everyone else's like yeah i uh don't get me started pat's like oh he's basically like um george rr martin's like i don't have to finish it if i don't want or something to that effect and I was like yeah of course because he's got fuck fuck you money and you know he could die any day. Yeah he's like 90 years old.
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah his publishers can't get him do anything. He's not though he's like he's similar in age to Diana Gabaldon and she finished all of Outlander mostly. It's coming out now.
00:45:39
Speaker
Next book. Last book. but Oh damn. Anyway, sorry. um Yeah, so there's a few little tidbits of like possible hauntings, I
Hauntings and Tourism at Burg Eltz
00:45:52
Speaker
guess. Not a whole lot, but the Borg castle is said to be haunted. And the most haunted room is said to be the Countess room, which I guess belonged to Agnes.
00:46:05
Speaker
oh And I did find some cool pictures of the inside, but when I tried to look up, like, specifically the Countess room, I kept getting different pictures, so I don't actually know one. Yeah.
00:46:19
Speaker
one yeah That was kind of annoying. i was like, oh. Because apparently in in the Countess room, i guess, I don't know if they have it displayed or just in the room, but apparently they have the armor that she wore when she died and the battle axe in the room.
00:46:41
Speaker
So I thought if that was the whole thing about the tour and everything, at least they'd have that room labeled in some of the fucking pictures, but I couldn't find it. No, you gotta go pay the admission.
00:46:54
Speaker
oh um According to the staff, they say that Agnes also haunts the hallways along with the Countess room um and that they've or they report somebody turning on and off lights and opening and closing doors.
00:47:13
Speaker
Those ghosts are always looking for something. Where did I put it? a bit of make Where did I put my car keys? They all just have ADHD. The thing where you leave the room and as soon as you go through the doorway, you don't remember what you needed.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's ghosts all the time.
00:47:33
Speaker
ah They also report whispers and the sounds of children giggling heard in the hallways. The staff apparently lock all the doors in the castle up at night and then when they return in the morning sometimes they find them all to be unlocked which is kind of creepy oh yeah and annoying because you're trying to shut the place up for the night right just trying to your job they also apparently report a phantom medieval knight that can be found on horseback at the gate and some of them
00:48:16
Speaker
Like, the staff and everything believe that he is actually the Knight of Bronzeburg, and he's there looking for Agnes' forgiveness. which Not the real Knigget himself. yeah Sorry I shot you with a fucking crossbow.
00:48:36
Speaker
Can you ever forgive me? her kissing you in public without your consent. Oh my god. Jesus Christ. Every 90s movie taught us that was the way to go. Yeah. The big gesture. Did she say no? Only try 500 more times.
00:48:58
Speaker
Well, maybe that's shaped the way... To help you. i am today. He didn't kiss me up against a wall? Fuck him. Yeah.
00:49:11
Speaker
It wasn't raining? Hot. no
00:49:17
Speaker
um So if you're interested in visiting Borg Elts, it is open to the public. Hell yeah. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. It actually has a long history of tourism and people wanting to visit.
00:49:33
Speaker
There's different like emperors and all these people that would travel through that would end up visiting and people noting like visiting the castle dates all the way back to 1820.
00:49:46
Speaker
which is crazy yeah know people like intentionally going there not like to visit the family but just to see the castle and like like as actual like tourism like leave yeah yeah that's yeah feel like that wasn't really a thing like maybe yeah it was kind of crazy to take a cure the prairie cure or something but you weren't just like that's pretty cool yeah it was like an actual tourist attraction in itself kind of yeah pretty early all the way back to 1820 was like that's crazy people used to like take shit from murder sites and crime scenes but that was just us being disgusting sorry just made me think of that
00:50:31
Speaker
From 1850 to 1944, Counts of Elts lived in Croatia and only spent a few weeks a year at the castle.
00:50:42
Speaker
So that was like almost 100 years where people only lived there for a few weeks at a time. So it's not like when people were visit are there visiting the castle, like somebody's living there. they don't Nobody lives there anymore. What happened in 1944? Yeah.
00:50:59
Speaker
Yeah, think that I don't know, there's different like handovers that happened leading up to that, but in 1945, it became a museum, and many restorations have been completed over the last 200 years, really.
00:51:20
Speaker
um But not like major things. And the... last person or the current person that's responsible for the property, ah Jacob.
00:51:36
Speaker
He got it in 2018. um He was born in 1979 and is the 34th generation of the Elts family to be responsible for the family castle. Damn. So, yeah. They really like to...
00:51:56
Speaker
And the family tree. No. um It's kind of cool because his name, like Jacob, ah the spelling and everything like goes back really far. So when you're like reading through the lineage of the family, like that name appears almost every 50 years. It's like crazy.
00:52:15
Speaker
it's like... Yeah, when you start looking up, you're like, oh, all these names, like, repeat. you're like, oh, who's this one? This is the 17th person I've seen named this in the last 10 minutes.
00:52:30
Speaker
Yeah. Very traditional. Sometimes it's part of their culture and stuff, too. You know how, like, you'll meet a lot of, like, maybe it's French-Canadian, but, like, I think that might be why my middle name's Marie, because, like, it Marie is a typical French Canadian like or I think it might be even like you know one book said like every girl's gonna have Marie as like a first name but then they go by their middle name like there's some that like sort of almost cultural like that yeah you're like okay plus just like in Britain there's like 10 million like Marys and Williams and like Josephs and everything it's kind of funny
00:53:13
Speaker
The last thing I have is just that the Elts forest that's surrounding the castle actually this is kind of cool. So it's not just a forest. It offers numerous hiking trails. So there's like activities to do all around the castle if you're visiting it.
00:53:29
Speaker
And it also takes a bit of a walk to get there. I think something said it was maybe two kilometers, but you could take like a little trolley thing to get you there faster. So it's not like it's super accessible.
00:53:41
Speaker
um you gotta make a day trip out for sure yeah there's all these beautiful hiking trails they have mapped out you can do they also have outdoor areas for sports and recreation i think something said there's like tennis courts and shit like it's wild uh it's like okay sure why not and um yeah like inside it's kind of still decorated so they have a treasure room i guess that's full of uh gold and silver there's ivory and china items along with a bunch of like historical weapons oh cool a lot of history buffs will like historical weapons they'll be like yeah
00:54:27
Speaker
It's a poleaxe. That's a maze. yeah That's holbert. Show me the maze. ah Show me the crossbow. ah Tyrion Lannister.
00:54:40
Speaker
ah
00:54:44
Speaker
That's what I got. That's the Borg Elts Castle. Borg Elts. Is it E-L-T-Z? Yeah.
00:54:55
Speaker
Borg Elts. It's very cool. i like it. Looks pretty. i liked Agnes L's story. That was like... Yeah.
00:55:07
Speaker
Yeah, I really liked that. I was like, what a cool story. um power. Right? I thought that was cool. It was like, yeah, your brothers aren't home. your Your dad's probably not home. And this, like, asshole's attacking your castle and killing people. Like, yeah.
00:55:24
Speaker
Fight back. Damn. Damn. Yeah, it's funny. I started, oh, maybe I'll do this one. oh Oh, here's, you know, you get those listicles and I think maybe your castle came up on one and you're like, oh, that's cool story. Oh, that one looks neat. And you're like, and then one was in Scotland. I'm like, have I talked about this one? Maybe mentioned it because I know I mentioned like 17 of them that were now haunted, like castle hotels or whatever it's called.
00:55:52
Speaker
But yeah i then I went, yeah, with the one I told you about, which was in... more Eastern Europe I guess so now we're moving from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and Romania so we'll take a break very old come talk about Brawn Castle
00:56:13
Speaker
damn it try to use my tracker again it's not working must use mouse uh yeah compute just says no all right we'll be right back
00:56:36
Speaker
You meet someone, you fall in love, and then one day you wind up dead. Welcome to Love and Murder, Heartbreak to Homicide, the podcast that explores the true crime stories of relationships that started with passion and ended with murder.
00:56:51
Speaker
I'm Kai, your host, and every week I take you through a case of doomed bonds, from jealousy-fueled killings to shocking betrayal. If you like true crime with emotion, raw honesty, passionate rants, and a lot of jaw-dropping moments, this show is for you.
00:57:08
Speaker
Full episodes drop Mondays, many cases every Wednesday and Friday. Go to MurderAndLove.com. That's love and murder backwards. MurderAndLove.com. Hit follow on your platform preference and get pulled into the darkest side of love.
00:57:44
Speaker
Right here. you just wake up. woof You're very cute. I know. You're so very cute. Hot dog downstairs. He's kind of panting.
00:57:57
Speaker
think heat went up a little too much and then we had the oven on. Yeah. yeah He's just so fluffy. Does Gordo get super hot? Because he's so fluffy.
00:58:08
Speaker
ah Ah. No, not that I've ever noticed. I mean, I guess you can't really tell with cats because they don't pant to sweat. but No, he'll lie on like the floor like he won't go up yeah i Yeah, he likes to lay on the cool floor sometimes, I bet.
00:58:30
Speaker
But then sometimes it's like super, super hot and I'll be like hot and sweaty in the house, especially in the summer. And he'll just want to cuddle with me. And I'm like, buddy, like it's just too hot for you to lay on me.
00:58:44
Speaker
you're like, I can't be that much cooler. like Yeah, I'm not. I'm warm and you're warm. Warm and warm does not make cold. Oh, shit.
00:58:57
Speaker
My stupid head hurt. Are you just pawing at me? Hi. I am petting you. There we go.
00:59:08
Speaker
I am giving you attention. Okay.
00:59:16
Speaker
Okay, so to take class, we're gonna tell you about Broad Castle.
00:59:22
Speaker
Listen up, c-c-c-Gordo. Yeah, Gordo's ready.
00:59:29
Speaker
What do you He's pouring straight into the mic. Especially because he thinks he can knock it over and he probably could.
00:59:41
Speaker
I know, his face is like an inch from it.
00:59:45
Speaker
Hey.
00:59:48
Speaker
He can really stretch too.
History and Myths of Bran Castle
00:59:51
Speaker
So Bran Castle.
00:59:57
Speaker
so brown castle Braun Castle, sometimes called Braun Fortress, was built by the order of King Louis of Anjou in the late 1300s. So she old also.
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, very old. And similarly sits strategically atop a pass connecting Transylvania with Wallachia. Wallachia. yeah Oh no, pronunciation.
01:00:27
Speaker
I know. and was like, W's are V's in German. Aren't they? Yeah. and I was like, so Weiss is Weiss.
01:00:42
Speaker
What's this town or city called?
01:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, although it's like, yeah, I'm usually like, just how to pronounce this. Although, cause I try to guess like that where you're like, is it? Yeah. Wallachia and then if it's like a J, might it be pronounced like a Y. Yeah.
01:01:05
Speaker
But also I will try and get an image or two. I'm not even anywhere near the folder. It's also very, very pretty. That's all that to say.
01:01:23
Speaker
Kind of um looming on the um amidst the forest. um Similar the one you picked, but like they're both very pretty. Not so many turrets.
01:01:37
Speaker
Some turrets. Yeah. Reddish turrets.
01:01:43
Speaker
I didn't put pictures up. This is what I have been doing. Don't rub your face on the mic. That's not what it's there for.
01:01:55
Speaker
like, I can't comb my whiskers with the mic. You just cover it in hair and it's gross.
01:02:04
Speaker
Anyway, I'll put those up in a minute.
01:02:09
Speaker
It's definitely eagerly Googleable. So, yeah since the 1200s saw a big wave of migrants into Transylvania from the Asian steppes,
01:02:23
Speaker
There was a bigger need for someone to hold the pass and protect the area. And the young Hungarian state was introduced. Oh, I just thought that was kind of a fun fact. It doesn't really have to do with it. But the young Hungarian state, you know, it's not really country yet, whatever, ah was introduced to Christianity through a King Stephen, which I was just like, oh, King, Stephen. No, just made me laugh. I think I'm Stephen
01:02:52
Speaker
Why do some names sound like they shouldn't be old enough to be like King, you know, like Jamali or something modern sounding? You're like, what? Oh, I have no idea.
01:03:05
Speaker
I don't know. Gordo, you're being annoying now.
01:03:10
Speaker
And as I, as I said, when you were talking, i there was a lot of history in the one website and I accidentally wrote down too much and then just, pared it down because I was like, yeah guess what? None of this matters. All ah all it was to say you know, there was shit going on Europe's reforming, organizing the Hungarian sovereignty. That's how you say it.
01:03:35
Speaker
He's headbutting you now. He's very bored. He's like the class clown. You start to talk and he's just like, pay attention.
01:03:47
Speaker
He just went to go into his box and then so I was like, oh, okay, cool. And then he immediately came over and was like, boom, headbutt. got something to share with the class, Gordo.
01:04:02
Speaker
Meanwhile, a group called the Cumans moved into the Carpathian Mountains, making the Hungarians a bit nervous. King Andrew may have called in the Teuton Knights, but nobody seemed too sure about that.
01:04:15
Speaker
Several paragraphs in. There doesn't seem to be any real trace of these guys. No crusaders detriment left behind. So who knows?
01:04:26
Speaker
But there was a growing need for some sort of, you know, castle or whatever. Yeah.
01:04:32
Speaker
yeah Always need a castle. Oh yeah. Fort something. King Lewis ordered his construction during his duration there, which, oh yeah, this was one of the timelines that 1377 88,
01:04:47
Speaker
So yeah, I went back quite a ways also. They continued their campaign into the Balkans, class clashed with Wallachia, all the while overseeing the speedy building of the Braun Castle, and they put it exactly where it would intercept the road to Transylvania and protect Hungarian customs.
01:05:06
Speaker
Hmm.
01:05:09
Speaker
I.e. like trade goods. Not like yeah traditions. Yeah. Yeah. Just like mine. It's like in between the markets and the farmland. Perfect situation to watch over everything.
01:05:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Strategically placed. yeah Exactly. So along with an existing fort called something like Severin. Severin.
01:05:35
Speaker
And another one to be built in progress. Talmasiu. They formed a defensive chain down the southern border and it it still stands guarding Bronze Pass today, looming over the landscape even as it blends and melts into it. Because I like, yeah, it kind of seems to just like be built on that hill and then kind of like melt into the hillside, which is very cool looking. Yeah.
01:06:01
Speaker
So a bunch of Ottoman conflicts and stuff happened. oh and that's where I said that I wrote down too much of it. um But there was some haunts, which I was surprised and delighted to discover. Dracula.
01:06:19
Speaker
But also they call it Dracula's castle, even though nobody named Dracula ever really probably lived there, but that's okay. Well, still, it's still a very good inspiration. I think I covered it on, like, one of our first castle episodes. Yeah. But it was just, like, a paragraph. Like, what I think we each covered a whole bunch of castles. like Oh, I know.
01:06:44
Speaker
yeah but we were so... I'd never done a deep dive or anything on it. We were so young and innocent. yeah Every last castle episode, I remember I'm, like, I don't think I talked about any of them in depth. So stupid.
01:06:59
Speaker
Okay, no, I did not remember that. um Yeah, good for Romanian tourism and sucks not to suck modern day hungry because it's it's now considered part of Romania.
01:07:15
Speaker
um The main ghosts are the white lady. tick your bingo cards yeah lady in red the white lady the lady in something
01:07:31
Speaker
giggling children there oh yeah she seems to be a noble woman who once lived on sight legend has she was betrayed in some fashion by either a lover scandalous or even just accused wrongly of treason by someone close to Those are very different things.
01:07:53
Speaker
Yeah. It seemed to be like, suffice it to say, she was betrayed somehow. You're like, okay. So are the legends, right? I was going to say, even modern day, we only ever remember, you know, one narrative from the media, usually. Terrible.
01:08:12
Speaker
Terrible. But anyway. i There's a mysterious monk. um His ghost hangs around the old chapel and particularly in the corridors.
01:08:26
Speaker
And sadly he allegedly was bricked up alive after breaking his vows. Oh damn. i was going to say you don't hear about like monks haunting places. i don't think I've ever heard of that before. but i So a disgraced monk.
01:08:44
Speaker
okay I guess how very like Casco the Amontillado whatever that egg girl post story is. And that was all I had really found on that.
01:08:58
Speaker
Sorry. um Third, a ghost apparition has sort of a trigger warning for child death. So can't really trigger warning that without saying what it is. But during a massacre, during a brutal siege, probably those damn Ottomans, it left many children dead, unfortunately.
01:09:20
Speaker
And their ghostly laughter can be heard. big old car again. Take a shot.
01:09:30
Speaker
Similarities. However, they're often also heard in the courtyard or in the garden or seen playing hide and seek where they vanished behind the trees. Ooh, that's kind of cute and creepy.
01:09:43
Speaker
I know, that one like really gave me like an image in my head. Yeah, way to make a a fun children's game creepy.
01:09:55
Speaker
I'm like, you've seen Hide and Seek, haven't you? But I always think the movie's called that, but it's not called Hide and Seek, it's called Ready or Not. But it's basically like the horror movie version where she has to play Hide and Seek.
01:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's because that... Kind of on her honeymoon almost.
01:10:15
Speaker
that um all i remember is robert de niro is in the movie called hide and seek and i can't remember who he's well oh maybe an older one dakota fanny i don't know i got nothing that was just a shot in the dark i can never remember um yeah love that movie this reminds me of the, I will get back to it. Anyway, not a tangent, but like the, in the beginning of the intro of the deep dive podcast where they're like this is the one that no one's listened to. And we can guarantee you one thing. We're not going to Google anything. Cause we're just too damn tired. And they're like, yes, we could sit here and try to Google ourselves, but we know you're going to do it anyways. So no.
01:11:04
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So the Dracula connection, um Slat the Impaler! Slash Bram Stoker. Like, really... yeah It's hard. You've been right Bram... Bram... Bram Castle, and then you have to write Bram Stoker. and I was like, does he just like how the castle is so similar to his first name?
01:11:30
Speaker
I don't know. don't
01:11:34
Speaker
um Stupid observation. observation. But so Vlad Tepes, a.k.a. Vlad III, Vlad Dracul, slash the Impaler, as he's probably more famously known as, was born in 1431 in Sigisora, Transylvania. Probably said that wrong.
01:11:52
Speaker
Nowadays, Romania. He and his dad, Vlad. Daddy Vlad. Part of the Org of the Dragon. right My dad, Vlad. It's a sitcom.
01:12:05
Speaker
It could so be an 80s sitcom. I can hear the intro music now. It's like, do-do-do-do-do. My dad's Vlad the Impaler. Your dad's embarrassing too.
01:12:22
Speaker
Shoving spikes up people's assholes. Vlad the Impaler. Laugh crack.
01:12:29
Speaker
I didn't even get to that detail. Okay. Who doesn't know that detail? Come on. How else? Yeah. No, it is funny, though, because he's one of those ones where, like, I'm like, yeah, doesn't everybody know Vlad the Impaler? I feel like he was in, like, all our first kids' books of morbid things. But then I haven't, like, done a deep dive or anything, so...
01:12:51
Speaker
The assholes never came into my research play recently. Maybe that's just the titillating teen books. but I don't know. How else do you impale people?
01:13:08
Speaker
Torso? I don't know. um Boring. haven't even finished this paragraph.
01:13:18
Speaker
Okay. But also now I'm thinking of something I don't even think I was listening to a whole podcast. think it was an ad for a podcast where someone was like, and then they gave the command for the elephant to sit and he sat right down on my head and my head went up his asshole and I was like, that's not real. And they were like, didn't we die?
01:13:35
Speaker
He's like, I was trying to scream!
01:13:39
Speaker
Oh. What the fuck? Thanks for unearthing that memory from earlier today that I did not care look further into.
01:13:51
Speaker
And now they're Googling, do human heads fit inside elephant sasses? And now half the people that heard that are curious, like I would be, because I'm always like, what did they say?
01:14:03
Speaker
Podcast. Rewind.
01:14:07
Speaker
Please be kind. Rewind, as Erica would say. Stranger things. Okay. So the Order of the Dragon is a chival chivalric order dedicated to defending Christianity in Eastern Europe.
01:14:21
Speaker
I guess that's kind of cool as long as they're not tics about it. Yeah, they probably were. Right? Like he was part of this so he probably thought everything he did was in for the greater good or whatever.
01:14:40
Speaker
But I do think he probably killed the people they say he killed whereas when they talk about like Elizabeth Bathory and how she may have got more of a a bad rap because also yeah she was powerful or more rich than some of the people around there and they probably slandered her or something
01:15:01
Speaker
so Dracula from son of Dracule slash that means the dragon from the Latin Draco as in Malfoy so he was the second son of four bludders bluthers Blutters! Vlad the bloodthirsty.
01:15:24
Speaker
Should I just give up? to Vampires! She's got vampires line. I know. Can't speak. Can't think. um Yeah, no, he did have three other brothers, I guess.
01:15:39
Speaker
Also, really hard word to type, by the way. Always write it, Borders. Borders?
01:15:48
Speaker
It's what my fingers want to type, okay?
01:15:53
Speaker
So Vlad and one of his boarders were sent to the Ottomans to the court of Sultan Murad II at a young age. So it was said about 1442, so I guess he would have been like not even, or 10 or 11 maybe?
01:16:08
Speaker
Oh, okay. So they sent his hostages. kind of seems very Game of Thrones-y where they had wards sent to the other wards. Yeah. And this was to ensure his father's loyalty and had a major impact on Vlad's early sense of power, loyalty, probably fear, they said, stuff like that.
01:16:30
Speaker
And then Vlad returned in 1448, having been informed of the assassination of his father and elder brother at the hands of a Wallachian voyeurs or nobles the year before.
01:16:41
Speaker
So they killed his daddy. Damn. He's probably happy to not be home then. yeah been dead too true
01:16:52
Speaker
yeah so if this is like almost as like when i calculated how old he would have been he like queen elizabeth in 1456 i assume age 25 he took the throne of wallachia and then began a fierce campaign of getting and retaining power and protecting his stronghold he quickly became known for his brutality and kill count And one of the most famous accounts of his cruelty was during one invasion of the Ottoman Empire. It's all about those Ottomans, baby.
01:17:23
Speaker
Quote, when Sultan Mehmed II marched onto Wallachia with a vast army, he was met with a forest of impaled corpses, a grisly warning from Vlad.
01:17:35
Speaker
Another source said he impaled men, women, children, whoever. Sometimes he had them burnt alive. Notably, Leonikus Chalkok con deli that might be greek the there's no way to know yeah i was like this guy's the author of the histories apparently which provides this gruesome description of the ottoman massacre the sultan's army entered into the area of the impalements which was 17 stades long and seven stades wide there were large stakes there on which as it was said about 20 000 men women and children had been spitted
01:18:14
Speaker
There were infants too affixed to their mothers on the stakes and birds had made their nests in their entrails.
01:18:22
Speaker
Lovely. Really gross.
01:18:27
Speaker
But he was apparently good at strengthening the defenses. I would imagine people would be a little feared of you. I mean, i hear that and i go 20,000? 20,000 corpses? Who has the time to do that to 20,000 people?
01:18:45
Speaker
Jesus. Seriously. You have to make all the stakes, fucking pile the drive of them into the ground.
01:18:53
Speaker
That's a lot of work. At one time, you're right. You're not like, you know, just swapping them out like you're cooking dinner. Like, a I'm sorry.
01:19:09
Speaker
But he apparently also made laws to protect poor peasants from beefs from nobles and and promoted trades. So I guess there's that to be said of him. Only the ones he cared about.
01:19:20
Speaker
Someday someone defending Trump. Oh, no. just kidding.
01:19:27
Speaker
Um, he, oh, uh, yeah, his infamy spread across Europe and particularly German and Russian pamphlets would portray him as like a very bloody, brutal tro tyrant.
01:19:41
Speaker
However, he seemed to get more of a, a nice edit at home in modern day Romania, where he was written of as more of a hockey folk hero type figure. That's crazy. No. Yeah. Propaganda, right?
01:19:57
Speaker
oh Just love murdering children. And you should too. yeah He didn't really ever seem to live at the castle itself, um, yet...
01:20:12
Speaker
you know, still gets the, the name. He likely may passed through it. Um, but the inspiration does kind of seem to stand. Like when you look at it, uh, the, the story like that Bram Stoker wrote, um, he was an Irish author published Dracula in 19, 19, 1897.
01:20:34
Speaker
And, uh, Stoker's Dracula is a Transylvanian nobleman and vampire who moved to England in search of new blood to spread the undead curse. So,
01:20:46
Speaker
it to be similar
01:20:52
Speaker
the name the personality etc and it was kind of cemented in the many adaptations to come in particular the one that would yeah really define the icon status and accent of the character uh the 1931 movie with bella lugosi of course famous play dracula but with his distinct widow's peak and black cape and hungarian american accent that he became the dracula we know today so it just so happened to be like from that actual area that vlad dracula was so kind of cool ha the setting was perfect for the story to grow with romanian folklore featuring the oh is it stricolae that how you say it yeah
01:21:42
Speaker
okay the undead creatures feared by residents yeah so even though um brahm stoker had never been to romania yeah i think the strugoi still have such a strong association with the area that he probably took that and the whole vlad thing and rolled with it And as recently as 2003, there was a case reported on a body being suspected of being Strigoi, so it still kind of runs strong.
01:22:12
Speaker
um We might have touched on this when we recently did our kind of vampire... did the Yeah, I did like the vampire burials and stuff that they...
01:22:23
Speaker
Due to people that they suspect of being vampires or that could possibly come back as a vampire. Exactly. And it's exactly that kind of like superstition that we're talking about here.
01:22:34
Speaker
Yeah. Thankfully most of those things seem to all be like related to like after somebody's already dead. So it's just. Yeah. It's just desecrating a corpse. It's not it's murdering people. Okay.
01:22:51
Speaker
I know but it's crazy that it's i've I was like wow this like a case that happened within like the last 20 ish years in Romania where like a man named Peter I think Toma and yeah desecrated his death he was just a simple laborer who died after working in the fields in a remote village in southwest Romania Maritano de Sous um Never a super healthy man. He had struggled with illness and alcohol abuse and then died in an accident in December 2003.
01:23:26
Speaker
And strangely enough, not long after, it was his sister who noticed that her daughter was not well and kind of blamed it on his being a boy So scared as I'm sure she was because her daughter was ill or whatever. she was like, oh,
01:23:45
Speaker
because it's the Strigoi and they are restless spirits that suck the life out of living relatives. So yeah, they, there was like six men. They came and took out his heart, burnt it and drank the ashes in a glass of water. So Elizabeth, a neighbor, since the grim cocktail seemingly cured the girl, no one said much at first. And it's actually kind of just like kept on the down low in the place like this where would usually get the cops involved, I guess.
01:24:13
Speaker
Yeah. But then the deceased Thoma's daughter complained and they were charged with illegally exhuming the corpse. Yeah. Yeah, they still see it signs of stroboid. The child is born feet first or with placenta still attached.
01:24:32
Speaker
So it's just very strong in that region, all that to say. Basically, the like the rest of the history they had after the ottoman and invasion the castle remained mostly untouched until queen marie of romania stayed there in the 20th century and she restored and modernized the castle so there was some restoration and it definitely has not been helped by the same family no excuse me they almost never are is like somebody invades takes over the land
01:25:11
Speaker
even if you try to be incestuous.
Modern Tourism at Bran Castle
01:25:13
Speaker
No. yeah um She left it to her daughter, Princess Eliana, upon her death in 1938. And then guess who took it next?
01:25:26
Speaker
I'm setting you up. It's not the Nazis. It's the commies in 1948. ah
01:25:36
Speaker
Cold War. Anyway, but it's all that to say it's been a fortress, a confrontation station, a customs house, a museum. And that's basically what it is to today. a historic site that offers tours, night tours even. That'd be cool.
01:25:52
Speaker
You can get the full, like from the beginning to the full package. The castle entrance only starts at about 16 euros. I love that we both were like, here's the dark tourism. Yeah.
01:26:03
Speaker
And like leaned into that. Their next ticket is the torture chamber pack, which includes the castle entrance plus torture chamber access. Lovely.
01:26:16
Speaker
Do you get put on the rack and you can just like finally get all your bones cracked? Like your whole back cracked way that will never be achievable again in your entire life. just feels so good. I would do an episode on medieval torture devices because I heard a pretty interesting episode about how a lot of them were never around in medieval times and were just made up afterward to make us look like barbarians i don't know it was it was interesting i think it was on noble blood but um yeah the next one really got my interest piqued it was called the secret passage pack castle entrance plus uh torture chamber access secret time tunnel after access like what does that even mean
01:27:03
Speaker
a time tunnel or time travelers that's where my mind goes but time that's because i'm poisoned by a lander and finally you could do the dracula's full experience skip the line all of the above from 33 euros but no i did not even google what the time tunnel was and that was a lot of restraint on my part because i had already written a lot this point
01:27:27
Speaker
and yeah 33 euros for the most expensive package that doesn't even sound like that much i know but they're like from that so you know that's their low point that they're selling you on yeah i guess but it does still seem like very reasonable and i will have to ask my sister who sent me a magnet from there, which tour she got to do when she visited.
01:27:51
Speaker
she went like last year, I think. Yeah. Cool. um
01:27:58
Speaker
If, damn, look at me go. I thought I could get it done in 45 minutes and I have two more fun facts. That's it.
01:28:08
Speaker
We did it. We did the unachievable. Look how we can still going to be an hour and a half long. no I know, but like, sometimes I can talk fast and not tangent when I'm tired.
01:28:20
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So a fun fact, final first fun fact, Brown's great grandnephew is working on a Dracula prequel book. So.
01:28:31
Speaker
Oh my God. His name is Docra Stoker. hope I'm pronouncing that right. Oh, that's cool. I know. Still got the same last name. So cool.
01:28:43
Speaker
It's basing the book on his ancestors' journals and, quote, family lore that he found. And it says, I believe it's going to be called Dracule, and it will focus on Bram and his family. And the film rights have already been snapped up by Andy Muschietti.
01:29:00
Speaker
and i'm gonna go with that and he is the director of it so i think oh why is that name familiar right i thought it sounded familiar too and i'm like i don't even know if the book's published yet but it's already like yeah it's already that's the thing now there's yeah people own the rights to stuff before things are even published jesus thought they were goingnna make one a movie about that dear david crazy twitter thread i read or whatever thought we talked about that one in the pod and i was like and of course they're gonna make a movie but i don't remember ever seeing it i don't know the thing with like little boy yeah yeah the thing with like viral things is once people move on it's kind of by the time you try and make a movie about it it's like the fucking
01:29:53
Speaker
What, like Angry Birds movie? Did anybody care when they made the movie? Like three years after Angry oh Birds was the rage. Like, don't I don't know, but I do know that Rain and I were kind of excited to book the Super Mario Galaxy movie.
01:30:08
Speaker
Because they really did quite a good with Super Mario Galaxy. See, that one, I don't view as like... a thing because Mario Brothers has been around for like decades. It's not like I want to get viral, whatever. Establish IP. Yeah. Yeah.
01:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. No, I agree with you there. ah Angry Birds. um So, okay, this one was finally just happened to come up because when I was doing my notes and listening to Sinisterhood, they were doing an episode on Third Man's syndrome factor which we have covered which is like you're alone or with one other person and you feel like there's another presence with you like a second or third man quote unquote and all of a sudden she was like oh yeah and then it was wasn't like like bram stoker's cousin nick or whatever and i was like what he someone else from stoker's family had a third man experience cue me trying to google it by entering
01:31:13
Speaker
brahm stoker cousin nick third man story nothing was coming up that's because his name was henry so thanks heather on sinisterhood don't know if you were kidding but she may have just said nick erroneously um but yeah he was a cousin of brahms brahms brahms uh who was serving in the royal navy in world war ii and was captured spent three years as a prisoner of war in the ottoman empire good old ottomans again And he was often placed in solitary confinement, which drove him so crazy with only the bugs for company most days that he decided to escape. So he and two other seamen take off from camp and kept running. And they reported feeling a comforting presence along their way the whole time they were on the run, even though after 18 days they were recaptured. Then they all spoke with a spirit or presence they felt, which is kind of unusual because a lot of times a third man is like,
01:32:05
Speaker
It will actually only be one person who's alone in the wilderness and they'll feel like a second presence, not like a third. yeah Like it's not often felt like, but a whole group or two or three people. So that one was kind of cool too. And I was just like, how did that come up? When I was already doing the research on this guy, led to this guy.
01:32:25
Speaker
Synchronicities baby. But that's, that's my notes. That's my story. very cool i always like that one yeah i feel like some just like classic haunted creepy castle it's like one of the first ones most people think of yeah or you get a your book when you're a kid i think of it did you know that there was this creepy person or or like people get obsessed with the titanic because it's like the first like big disaster and like loss of life they like look at and i was like oh that's interesting that people say that because i was like
01:33:02
Speaker
I don't know, I thought that was just something that we got obsessed with as kids for a while. and then like, didn't everybody go through like a World War II phase where they were like morbidly curious about why all those people died? Or was that just me? Like, I think it's just that. Only when I had to through school.
01:33:19
Speaker
Morbidly curious, also terrified of anything that like sounded like war. part of that museum in Fredericton where it was like meant to be like you're going through like a foxhole kind of like the sounds of war around you and like you're in the trenches scared me to death I was like I probably had a fucking past life where I literally died so fast in one the world wars because it just scared me so bad oh I've never done that
01:33:47
Speaker
yeah I can watch war movies and stuff don't get me wrong i don't know but like some of that stuff like even though I would like read Anne Sprank's diary and all those other ones, like just in fascination still terrified me like to death. Yeah.
01:34:03
Speaker
don't know.
01:34:06
Speaker
Anyway. Wow. Sorry. We did it guys. We did
01:34:16
Speaker
Look at me going six pages or less. Um, so next time,
01:34:22
Speaker
We'll some time. We'll talk about some stuff. I don't know. you guys can let us know what's going on with you. And we'll maybe have some more updates. But right now i'm just happy it's February and the days are getting longer and we're all getting through it So happy about that. oh my God. makes a big difference. Excuse me.
01:34:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:48
Speaker
It's like not 4 p.m. and dark outside. I'm like, what time is it? It's got to be like 7 or 8. And I'm like, 4. Sometimes when I'm going to work now, it's even a little bit light out. Yeah.
01:35:00
Speaker
For 8 a.m. I don't have to work tomorrow, though. That was the nice thing. And then I just discovered we both didn't have to work tomorrow, but we were both tired. So now we both better go to bed.
01:35:13
Speaker
I got to wind down first, then I'll go to bed.
Personal Stories and Future Episode Plans
01:35:16
Speaker
Truly, though. Well, that sounds good. Go cuddle with the Mr. Gordo wherever he went. I don't know. He ditched me after he like walked between me and the mic and shoved his ass in my face. That's kids for you. I'm going to leave the room but sniff my butt while I'm leaving.
01:35:42
Speaker
Akita's. They're like cats that way where you're like, your tail is up now, sir. I can see your asshole. And I don't like it. Have some decorum.
01:35:55
Speaker
All right. Well, next time in a couple of weeks, we should be back for some, some crime. And yeah, some spree killers. yes Yeah, woo! So exciting! Just hold on, guys. We're all gonna make it through.
01:36:18
Speaker
We're still gonna talk about historic cases and things that aren't the here and now, I feel like. Yeah. ah Yeah, we haven't really done Spree Killers as an episode topic before. ah and if you guys have any suggestions for...
01:36:38
Speaker
true crime or paranormal episodes you'd like to see maybe drop us a ah comment message us uh we would we would love suggestions feedback true same for patreon because we kind of put out the call on there as to like what segments you guys liked while i'm trolling like the reddits am i the asshole and relationship advice yeah unpopular opinion which oh that one's always kind of interesting yeah so definitely let us know and uh yeah that's i keep it cryptic yeah bye
01:37:48
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Castles Encrypted. We love all our listeners and appreciate every subscriber, every new review, every listen, rate and download. Our music is by Kobe Off Air and our cover art is by Antonio Garcia. We are also a proud member of DirkCast Network where you can find the best and spookiest of all indie podcasts.
01:38:09
Speaker
Follow us on social media where we are at Castles Encrypted on mostly all of the things now including TikTok. Check out our bonus content on Patreon cryptid clashes, video mini-sodes of your hosts making asses of themselves, ask me anything, quizzes, other special episodes, and more. Starting at just $2 a month, you can get one to two extra episodes, depending on your level.
01:38:35
Speaker
We produce, edit, and research everything ourselves, and any support you can lend helps us to keep it cryptic.
01:39:03
Speaker
I know why are they all web files? This website won't let you save it. But those are all the clear pictures. Alright,
01:39:16
Speaker
I'm also still sort of losing my voice. So, oh no good luck to us. Alright, shall I intro?
01:39:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:34
Speaker
Oh, Mr. Yanni, what you yawning for? All you do is sleep all day.