The Legend of the White Lady

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Photo: visualization from the World Wide Web

The ghost of Karosta prison.

Legend has it that in 1944, during a German Wehrmacht raid, a Latvian boy was captured and imprisoned in Karosta prison due to a misunderstanding. The boy was scheduled to get married in two weeks. The bride learned that her beloved had been arrested, using various female tricks to get into the prison. When the girl arrived in cell 18, where the boy was sitting, the cellmates announced that she had arrived too late - the boy had been sentenced to death and had already been shot. The girl hanged herself in her cell out of shame and immense emotion. Since then, the prison has been haunted - inexplicable sounds can be heard, electrical switches break for no reason, mobile phones charge by themselves, heavy prison cell doors slam shut with a loud noise.... Quite often, the White Lady also appears as a bright light in a completely dark corridor, or as an ice-cold touch on a hot summer day. This white lady has been seen by almost everyone who has served their sentence here or worked as a guard. Of course, during the Soviet era, such phenomena were denied.

After Latvia regained its independence, the building was still used by the restored Latvian Armed Forces until 1997. At that time, the chief of the guard was Lieutenant Captain Aivars Feldmanis, who had also seen the White Lady. He tells of a maiden with long, red hair braided in a thick braid, who appears in a white dress. To prevent strange phenomena, the chief of the guard invited the priest of the Karosta Orthodox Cathedral. He arrived here with several liters of holy water and incense vessels. Baķuška spent the whole day in prison in prayer, consecrating each cell, each room. Holy signs were drawn on individual walls to scare away spirits. This helped for two months. Then the White Lady returned and lives here to this day.

Storyteller: Gunārs Silakaktiņš; Wrote down this story: Monta Krafte