What happened
Książ, the third-largest castle in Poland, belonged for centuries to the Hochberg family. Its most famous resident was Mary Theresa Olivia Cornwallis-West, known as Daisy – an English aristocrat and wife of Hans Heinrich XV. According to castle legend, her husband bought her a pearl necklace several metres long in Paris and hired divers to stage a “romantic” pearl hunt. One of them supposedly drowned and, before dying, cursed the woman for whom he had given his life. Daisy died in 1943 in Wałbrzych, when the castle was already in Nazi hands and tunnels were being dug beneath it. Guides say that a figure in a dark dress is seen during night tours. The castle has other ghosts too: Janek, a Hochberg servant who disappeared without a trace – legend says a hunchback's skeleton was later found under a floor – and a woman in the park who went mad with grief after losing a treasure that fell into the Pełcznica river.
Witnesses
Guides and participants of night tours of the castle; the legends are retold by the daily “Rzeczpospolita” and Lower Silesian guidebooks.
Explanations and hypotheses
Daisy's life is well documented: she divorced her husband in 1922 and spent her last years in Wałbrzych, where she died on 29 June 1943. The tale of the cursed pearls and the ghost in black has no basis in the sources – it is part of the legend built around a colourful figure, amplified by the film “Magnat” and the mystery of the wartime tunnels. Night tours with ghost stories are now one of the castle's attractions, and historians point out that the real tragedy of Książ was its wartime devastation and the forced labour of prisoners from a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Wojciech Wybranowski, Nasze zjawy lepsze od Halloween („Rzeczpospolita”, 2012)
- BBC Travel – Daisy von Pless: The English princess you've never heard of (2024)
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