If you think vampires only exist in novels or teen movies, think again. Nestled in Wallonia, the castle of Farciennes is the setting for a legend as strange as it is disturbing: that real vampires once haunted the premises. Folk tale or fact? One thing’s for sure: this tale has been unsettling minds for generations. Bruxelles Secrète takes you on a tour of this enigma worthy of the greatest fantasy tales.
This abandoned castle not far from Brussels fascinates Urbex enthusiasts.
Did a family of vampires live just a few kilometers south of Brussels? The legend is enough to make you smile… And yet, the story is truly chilling! In Farciennes (Charleroi region), an ancient castle – now decaying – is the delight of urbex enthusiasts. It is said to have once been home to a veritable family of vampires.
Work began in 1637 on this grand Mosan-style residence, built on the ruins of a former feudal castle. The castle was once surrounded by water (a detour of the Sambre, whose river flows a few meters below). Enough to make this most sinister of castles even more isolated from the world? But that didn’t stop its owners – the family of the powerful Hungarian count Károly Jozsef Batthyány – from living a prosperous life here in the 18th century. Or maybe not so prosperous?
Did vampires live in the Château de Farciennes?
Between 1724 and 1742, in the space of just twenty years, five members of the Batthyány family died. Among them were three children. All five were buried in the Chapelle Saint-Jacques in Tergnée, just across the Sambre. But more than a century later, in 1851, this same chapel was subject to demolition. During the demolition, 5 corpses were found. Four of them… with a stake through their heart!
Four nails measuring between 50 and 70 centimetres (weighing up to 2.5 kg!) were driven through the heart (the 5th body had a nail left next to its skeleton). Although the vampire legend wasn’t popularized until 1897 (with the publication of Bram Stroker’s novel “Dracula”), rumors about these strange, fanged monsters were already widespread among the crowds. The macabre discovery of these bodies continues to fuel the suspicions of a family of deceased vampires in the Farciennes region…
Many hypotheses about this family
These exhumed bodies found staked through the heart of the castle leave no room for doubt. If the stake was driven after their deaths, who was responsible for this sordid procedure? If the significance of this act suggests that it was preferable to bury the corpses in this way to prevent them coming back to life as vampires, was this fateful embalming desired by the family itself or by the population terrified by the rumors?
A Hungarian family with direct ties to Transylvania (a region of Hungary before it was ceded to Romania), one of their ancestors (Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia) nicknamed the “son of the dragon”, or “Dracula” in Romanian… The possibilities abound, but the mystery remains unsolved.