Burg Bernstein — the White Lady on the stairs

OVERVIEW

Burg Bernstein, high above the Tauchental, is the highest castle in Burgenland, first recorded in the 13th century. It withstood Turkish sieges in 1529 and 1532 and a weeks-long siege by Stephen Bocskay's Hungarians, Turks and Tatars in 1604. The Batthyánys held it from 1644; in 1892 it was sold to Eduard von Almásy, of the family of the desert explorer László Almásy, and part became a hotel in 1953.

HISTORY

A powder-magazine explosion in 1617 led to its baroque rebuilding; its Knights' Hall has a fine stucco ceiling of the early 17th century. The White Lady of Bernstein has been reported repeatedly since the 19th century. A book by 'W. Erwemweig' (Anton von Gyömörey, 1927) and a Burgenland saga collection (1931) say she was seen from 1859; she reportedly appeared in 1912 before the lord's family and many villagers during the village fire brigade's torchlight procession, often just before the First World War, and for the last time for a long while in 1921. Later isolated sightings are reported up to 1990.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

She is described as a slight woman with flowing hair, hands folded against her left cheek, wearing a 'párta' (a Hungarian diadem-like headdress) and wrapped in a white veil; some said her hands hid a neck wound or the hilt of a stiletto. She appears in the evenings, floats up the stairs and kneels at the chapel altar before vanishing. Baroness R. H. described seeing her on 16 June 1912 at a quarter past ten: the dark stairwell suddenly filled with steady yellow light, a figure formed in it and climbed slowly step by step, 'all light in light', and melted away at the top. The publisher Johannes Illig studied the testimonies in 1929 and concluded it was genuine place-bound haunting — figures that grabbed at her found nothing, and her appearances came with a rustling as of silk and a cold draught. A legend explains her as a 16th-century lady of the Újlaki family, an Italian, killed by her husband for adultery; the name 'Catalina Giovanna Frescobaldi', given her by a novelist in 1912, is pure speculation — the real wife of Lorenz of Újlak was a Pongrácz and outlived him. Photographs of 1913 show little more than a bright outline.

VISITING

The castle is a hotel with a restaurant (booking required); the alchemist's kitchen and the 16th-century torture chamber, with museum exhibits, can be visited.