Is the Palace of Linares Haunted?

Rumours concerning ghostly presences at the Palace of Linares in Cibeles Square, Madrid, Spain, began circulating during the 1980s. in 1987 psychologist Carmen Sanchez de Castro claimed to have recorded strange sounds in the building and to have been pushed by an unknown force while conducting research.

Even before the palace was build, the area was thought to be cursed. Formerly an olive grove harbouring bandits, it was chosen by the French during the 1808 Independence War as the site for a jail, in which they imprisoned, executed and buried their victims.

Constructed in 1873, the palace was the home of successive generations of the Murga family, until it was closed by the last heirs. Legend has it that Jose de Murga y Reolid, the Marquis of Linares, unknowingly married his illegitimate sister. When the couple discovered that their relationship was incestuous, they murdered their baby and walled up her body in one of the many palace rooms. The marquis committed suicide and was buried in the garden. Since then, the spirits of father and daughter are said to have haunted Linares.

While reliable historical sources do not support this story, many parapsychologists have taken an interest in the palace. In 1989 a team led by Jesuit Jose Maria Pilon detected powerful psychic forces in the chapel floor and in the marquis’s bedroom. The team also registered sudden temperature changes in certain rooms. When researcher Sol Blanco Soler took more than 450 photographs in the Palace, 11 negatives showed strange lights that had not been visible to the human eye. No trace of manipulation could be detected when the film was examined in a laboratory.

Since 1992 the Palace of Linares has been used to house a cultural centre, known as the ‘Casa de America’ (House of America). Its ghosts may have departed, but the tragic tale of the Murgas lingers on.