Castel Brando

Castel Brando

Photo: Castel Brando rated Rating: 2.0 by 2 members

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A haunted castle in the mountains of Italy.

I arrived tired and helpless after a delayed flight that seemed to take years to arrive at Marco Polo airport. The taxi driver was really sweet though as he practised his English chatting through the half hour drive. "You come for holidays" he asked? Hesitantly I replied "yes" as although the beautiful scenery has shaken off my sleepiness, I really didn't want to get into the real reason for my visit!

You start a conversation with something like " I'm checking out the place for ghosts" and some just look at you as if your nuts, others respond with a rapid fire of constant questions including their personal or recanted tales of headless corpses and things that go bump in the night. The taxi drew up to the castle entrance & I said goodbye to the guy after thanking him profusely. I only had time to put my case down and another man's voice said "welcome to the castle, in perfect English. I was so relieved as I admit my command of the Italian language amounts to zero and whilst travelling I had worried about being able to discuss hauntings and the like with the staff. No worries I thought and followed Gino into the lobby. WOW what a place. From the hill on which it rises, CastelBrando dominates the whole Valmareno valley. Erected from Roman times as a control structure to defend the important lines of communication which connected Northern Italy to the countries on the other side of the Alps, the Castle has undergone various enlargements over the centuries: it was the residence of the Da Camino family, who surrounded it entirely with imposing Guelph-style decorative battlements and built a central tower. The Castle then passed under the command of the Venetian Republic, which awarded its fiefdom first to Marin Faliero and then to the mercenary captains Giovanni Brandolino and Erasmo da Narni, better known as the Gattamelata; after the fall of Venice, it became the property of Brandolini Counts until 1959, the year in which it was sold to the Salesian fathers, who altered its structure and used it as a centre for spiritual studies. In the first half of the 16th Century Antonio Maria Brandolini, engaged engineers of considerable skill and enlarged the central part of the Castle in Sansovino style, adding elegant lines of Venetian two- and three-mullioned windows.

After checking into my room I took time to explore and armed with my recording equipment, note pad and psychic brain meter switched to on I set out to find out whether the place was really haunted.......................................