GHOST HUNTING - among the Castles of the Duchy of Parma & Piacenza

AVAILABLE: upon request

WHERE: Province of Parma

FROM: Parma

DURATION: 3 days - 2 nights

TYPE OF TOUR: Private, educational, experiential

MEETING: Safe point at motorway exit Parma centro (if self-drive); Your hotel downtown / train station (if car&driver selected)

ROCCA MELI LUPI DI SORAGNA, dwelling of the ghost of Donna Cenerina

Wife of marquise Diofebo II Meli Lupi, she was murdered by her brother-in-law in 1573. A cruel murder which upset the quiet life of that time and remained unpunished. And this is may be the reason why the ghost started to walk around the rooms of the Rocca to foretell oncoming mournful events destined to shake the life of the family members.
A typical lunch at a trattoria will be more than deserved after such thrilling moments.

CASTLE OF MONTECHIARUGOLO, dwelling of Fata Bema
This sourceress, who showed up at the castle for the first time in 1593 when Ranuccio Farnese I, Duke of Parma, came to visit the counts Torelli, proposed  to read his hand. Duke Ranuccio, literally terrified by the supernatural, immediately had her arrested so that the poor girl started a series of escapes and peregrinations  to avoid a planned execution.  Bema ended her life in Montechiarugolo anyway, beloved and taken in great esteem by the local people and especially by the young brides whom she started to appear as a kind ghost  just before the wedding day to instruct them on their new life. Which, they tell, is still happening nowadays.

CASTLE OF PADERNA
A big mystery sorrounds the small church of the Holy Mary: built before the XI century with a greek cross plan, it seems a perfect cube designed upon multiples of number 3. Moreover, in the middle of the church there seems to be an incredibly strong natural magnetic field. And that’s not all: the Castle’s ancient walls house the ghost of “Confalonieri”, a guy who passed by on his way from the Castle of Turro and was murdered there in such a brutal way that his screams are told to  have been heard in a radius of a thousand meters.
 

CASTLE OF RIVALTA
The protagonist of this small medieval borough is a cook called Giuseppe, stabbed and strangled here by an unknown killer in the far 18th century, who then threw his body down in a deep pit. According to one of the most popular stories, his body was found some time later and since then he seems to have been more or less regularily  heard in the castle’s corridors. “Sounds like when you beat onto fresh meat to make steaks” says Count Orazio Zanardi Landi with a smile. Some other times the locala testify how  all lights are turned on and off even with no electric power on. A really strange matter that seems to have been wtinessed by nonetheless than some members of the Royal Family of England at the time when they where occasional guests at the Castle.
 

CASTLE OF AGAZZANO, haunted by the presence of Count Pier Maria Scotti,
better known as  "Il Buso". Count Pier maria Scotti was first stabbed and then thrown in the moat in 1514 by two guys called Astorri Visconte and Giovanni da Birago, who then managed to get possession of the manor. Despite his brutal death end,  Buso appears to be a harmless ghost whom all stories describe as a tall guy with a dark shield, leather trousers, high boots, a helmet with a light blue feather and a sword in his hand. He’s been spotted while walking within the castle walls with a serious, catious attitude. Or running around sword in hand and disappearing among sounds of beaten metal and mournful laments. 

CASTLE OF GROPPARELLO
Rosania Fulgosio, in the far 12 hundreds, is told to have been walled in alive by her husband Pietrone da Cagnano in a hidden place in the foundations of the castle as a punishment for having betrayed him with Lancillotto Anguissola, old love of hers. Since then her spirit moves around letting her laments be heard during my nights.
 

FORTRESS OF BARDI  
A romantic and tragic event s the one related to Moroello, a knight living in the castle toward the end of the 14 hundreds. Since his love for the 16 yeasr old Soleste was not returned because of their different social status, he had left for a war mission. When his troop came back under the enemies coat of arms without him, Soleste thought he had dies and threw herself down the walls of the castle. Moroello, who was instead coming back in victory, came to know about her death and killed himself in turn. 
The extraordinary thing, though, is that his ghost seems to have been taken in a photograph while moving around the castle: two supernaural researchers from Bologna have apparently caught him by means of a special thermosensitive equipment… only with a little shiver down the spine.