Royal families rarely come with simple ghost stories. Their legends tend to be dressed in velvet, sharpened by betrayal, and carried through the halls for centuries.
The tale of the Hohenzollern “White Lady” is one of those stories: a tragic royal haunting said to have begun with a careless remark, a desperate misunderstanding, and a crime too terrible to be forgiven.
According to this 1913 newspaper account, the ghostly figure in white mourning garb was once a widow who believed love required a sacrifice, only to discover, too late, that she had misunderstood everything.
Story of Hohenzollern Ghost
It was a Prussian royal wedding of four centuries ago that gave to the tradition of the “white lady,” the famous Hohenzollern ghost.
The Burgrave Albert loved a young widow of the house of Orlamunde, but once thoughtlessly remarked that their wedding would be “impossible until four eyes are out of the way.”
He allured to his uncle and brother, but she thought he meant her two little children, whom she accordingly murdered with a knitting needle.
The horrified Albert forsook her and married Sophia of Henneberg, whereupon the erring widow went mad, died, and ever since has haunted the royal palaces in mourning garb with a white veil.
Source: The Gazette. Cleveland, Ohio. August 2, 1913.
