Is anyone there? This is the key question of almost every horror fiction and one of the sentences to avoid in haunted houses in real life (in movies it is usually a fatal mistake). Just because you should not risk it, even if you do not believe in witches, you know ... "they do fly on brooms!" From the center of Lisbon to Sintra, we made a special itinerary of sites that may be considered unfit for more impressionable souls. Even if they are full of people, the ghosts and the spirits wander around and no corner of the street is totally safe.
"I should have written that it was not delayed." The words were uttered in the late nineteenth century by the tobacco worker Custódio Gomes, after a newspaper refused to publish a report about the living conditions of these workers. The newspaper A Voz do Operário was born shortly after, in 1879. Today the building that stands in the street with the same name houses a school and the ghost of Custódio — it is said that he liked the project so much that he refused to leave it.
Who has never heard reports of supernatural sightings in the most artistic place in Lisbon? There is an apparently busy ghost (or ghosts, no one knows for sure) that makes the elevators work at night, closing doors or scribbling marks on the floor (maybe trying to compete with the college students) and who spreads white feathers wherever he goes. The faculty is located in a former convent founded in 1217.
Better known as the House of Witches (the conical roof lends itself to this idea), this neo-Gothic building in the middle of Serra de Sintra, built between 1866 and 1869, served as the setting for Roman Polanski supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate. It is said that it has seven underground floors where a secret society meets — and there is also a legend saying that one of the three copies of a book written by the devil was written here. The chalet is private property and visitors are not allowed.
This house on the road that connects Cascais to Lisbon tells one of the region's best-known ghost stories. A blind girl, daughter of the first owners, might have accidentally fallen into the sea. And there are those who swear having seen her wandering around with a doll in her hand.
It is one of the oldest ghost stories in Lisbon. Cruz dos Quatro Caminhos (that can be translated as Cross of the Four Paths), which is nowadays Rua dos Sapadores, used to be a forgotten part of the city. Before the advent of electricity, it was known for its permanent gloom after sunset, giving place to rumours about witches reuniting by a cross of Christ.
It's not hard to imagine ghost stories being set up in this mansion built in 1903 on Marginal Avenue. Occultists present the house as haunted, which is manifested through flashing lights and window shutters that open without anyone’s help. But the people who live there guarantee that everything is a lie.
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