Carl Jung Paranormal, Part 5: Haunted Cottage

September 27, 2012 by Doug Dillon 1675 0 0

Carl Gustav Jung

Living in a haunted cottage scared Carl Jung right down to his wingtip shoes, confirming his belief in things paranormal. Such experiences and coincidences will lead to a more complete theory of mind as well as the development of what he will call, Synchronicity.

For the initial posting that began this series, click here.

In the summer of 1920, Jung was invited to give a long series of lectures in London. To give these talks though, he had to find a place to stay. A friend finally located a lovely little cottage for an unusually cheap price and rented it for him.

It looked OK from the outside

During the time Jung lived at the cottage, the friend who found it for him occasionally visited overnight, as did others. Evidently, everyone enjoyed being there but Jung.

At the end of his first week of giving lectures, Jung went to bed around 11 PM. Tired but not actually very sleepy, he just lay there in bed. Seconds later, he found he wasn’t able to move. Not only that but the room seemed stuffy and some sort of bad smell filled the air.

With only candlelight to see by

Finally willing himself to get up, he lit a candle. Immediately the smell went away but he only slept after dawn broke.

That incessant drip

That next night, the same things happened as before, while other people were staying with him —stuffiness in the room, hard for him to move and the bad smell. Added to all that, however, was a constant dripping sound—one drip every two seconds, according to Jung. He thought the roof must be leaking. Haunted cottage?

The floor showed nothing

Again, willing himself to get out of bed, he lit a candle and searched for the leak. The dripping sound continued as he looked around.

The ceiling showed nothing so he followed the sound of the drips. When he located the exact spot where the noise came from on the floor, the sound stopped. The thing is, there was no water anywhere. That next morning he asked his guests if they slept well and they all said they had.

A dog running around the room?

Unhappily for Jung, all the above phenomena happened the following night with more added. This time there were loud noises, like rustling, creaking and knocking. He also had the distinct sensation that a dog was running around his room. The poor man was only able to sleep at dawn when all the haunted cottage commotion came to a complete stop. Apparently, no one else in the house heard, smelled or felt any of this.

The locals knew about the haunted cottage

After diinner, the maids left – quickly.

Very frustrated, Jung eventually spoke to one of the maids. He noticed that after serving dinner in the evening, they scurried out of the haunted cottage very quickly and went home. When he asked them about their behavior, they said the place was haunted and they didn’t want to be there after dark. Evidently, everyone in the neighborhood knew this. That’s why the rent was so cheap, they told him.

Armed with this information, Jung shared it with the friend who rented the house for him. The friend only laughed.

The haunted cottage up close and personal

In bed with a ghost

Poor Jung. All of the phenomena continued and one night he turned over in bed to find himself looking at the partial face of an old woman lying next to him. That did it. He leaped out of bed and spent the rest of the night in a chair. After that, he moved to another room where he wasn’t bothered at all.

When he told his friend about moving, the friend laughed at him again. That caused Jung to challenge this man to stay in his, Jung’s, room overnight when no one else would be in the hauntd cottage. His friend agreed but decided that if there were ghosts, they could be anywhere in the house. So instead of sleeping where Jung had, he stayed in the cottage’s main room. Interestingly enough, he brought a shotgun with him.

Protection from what, exactly?

The friend set himself up as if camping and just as he was falling asleep, he heard something. It sounded like footsteps in a nearby hallway. Taking a candle with him, he looked but saw nothing. That made him so uncomfortable that he closed the door leading to that hallway. But there was no key. Since he couldn’t lock the door, he shoved a chair up against it. That gives you a good look at the man’s state of mind. No doubt he kept his shotgun nearby. How he intended to use it on ghosts is unclear.

Just as he settled back down for the night, Jung’s friend once again heard footsteps in the hallway. This time they stopped just on the other side of the door. Seconds later, the chair he had put up against that door creaked as if someone were pushing it. Immediately, he jumped up, grabbed his camping equipment and spent the rest of the night in the garden where he slept undisturbed. Later when he spoke to Jung, he told him he would never stay another night in that eeirie haunted cottage.

Securing the door.

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The blog post above, and the others like it, became so popular that I created a book using them as the basis for particular explorations of the paranormal. Titled, Carl Jung, Hauntings, and Paranormal Coincidences, it combines the Jung material with supporting information from my own experiences and those of others.

If you are interested in reading that book, you can find it in most online bookstores. Listed below, however, are direct book links to some of the larger retail outlets in the English speaking world: