Spirits of the Old Town. Through places of metaphysical fame

At night in this city one must be careful and delicate, so as not to disturb its oldest residents…

What do the psychics say about houses with “bad energy”? Well, in Amsterdam there is hardly a spot left untouched by it. And all because the city is very old. And can an old city really manage without spirits and ghosts? Of course not. We will walk through the places where they appear to people from time to time, trying to tell us their forgotten secrets: eerie, strange, and sometimes even funny 👻

Perhaps we will even feel the light chill of their breath… and hear the legends that have lived in Amsterdam for many, many centuries. The city falls asleep. The Ghosts wake up.

Can a medieval city really manage without a witch? One of them was exposed by… the children she had bewitched. For more than a month the whole city followed in suspense the incredible and unheard-of events unfolding around the oldest church in town.

The most popular tourist attraction today is the A’DAM Tower. The best view over the city, the most extreme entertainment in Amsterdam, and the coolest nightclub as well. And it is precisely there that one can sometimes hear sharp, eerie sounds that drown out even the loud music and send a chill down your spine. Why?

Every Amsterdammer knows this translucent, sorrowful girl named Helena. And they know exactly where to find her — right beside her own house, where her bodily form once lived, back in the eighteenth century. On the street that was named after her. And what happened to Helena, and how she came to such an eternal life, I will tell you.

A ghost “wild but rather likeable” lives right here, beside the great Lutheran church on the Singel canal. He differs a little from most of his colleagues we have met — because he makes mischief with imagination and does no fatal harm to passers-by. But that is if one believes one legend. The second is a little more sinister.

Once upon a time almost everyone firmly believed in the existence of ghosts. But in our case the key word is “almost”. Because there were bold men and women who, even if they did believe, were somehow not afraid at all. More than that: they tried to make the ghosts work for them, in the simplest and most convenient way.

Long, long ago, in the Dark Ages, a Minorite monastery and the Church of the Grey Friars stood here. And things sometimes happened inside that were very, very frightening. Neither the monastery nor the church has existed for a long time. But the memory of those times still lives on in the name of the street where they stood. And sometimes in strange sounds at night.