The Haunted Tower of Celas

Photo by Jose Luis Cernadas Iglesias

“I’m sure you’ve heard about those urban legends where kids go to a summer camp in the woods and are never seen again. Well, they’re based on stories like mine,” my father said.

My father grew up in Galicia, Spain during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. During that time, thousands of innocent people were killed because they either stood in opposition to Franco’s regime or because they were associated with the wrong crowd.

“I grew up here in A Coruña. It’s nestled in a large and winding bay along the northern coast of Galicia. It’s just south of Ferrol, which is where Franco was born, and about 30 minutes north of Santiago de Compostela, the destination of the Camino de Santiago, by train. I’ve always thought that Galicia looks a lot like those Lord of the Rings movies: lush green hills that roll along the countryside toward sharp, jagged cliffs at the edge of the sea.

“It’s famous in part because of the Tower of Hercules, which is one of two remaining Roman lighthouses in all of Europe that are still standing today. It’s also famous for “Matadero” beach, a small beach head nestled in a corner of the bay (Matadero means slaughterhouse), where, by day, the largest fresh market in the city would open; and where, by night, the Fascists would shoot political dissidents one by one as the light from the Tower shone into their eyes. But as a kid, we thought these were just rumors. So one night in June after a student rebellion at the University, I snuck out with my friend Nacho (Nacho is a nickname for people named Ignacio) to see if they were true. We crept along the promenade until the beach was in sight. I looked down and a cold sweat came over me even though it was a warm summer evening. A group of thirty or more people were backed up against the promenade, some cowering, most crying or yelling, their voices amplified by the walls and the water. ‘To hell with Franco!’, ‘Spain is not unified, strong and free; it is broken, weak and oppressed by you Fascists!’, (’Una, fuerte y libre’ — one, strong and free — was a motto imposed by Franco.) ‘Please, for the love of God don’t do this! Please!’ I followed their sight and saw ten soldiers pointing their rifles toward them.

Now, you can see the light when it reflects on the far side of the bay. When you do, you know there’s about two seconds before it reaches you. At that point most of the voices devolved into screams except for one, who cried out for democracy. The screams I heard in those two seconds and the machine gun volley of bullets firing from the rifles rose above the seagulls, above the surf, above my own ragged breathing. And then it was quiet, save for the tide caressing their blood and bodies into the black void stretching to the horizon. Blood stained the sands like an oil spill for two days. It was the most — no, second most — haunting sound I have ever heard. What’s more, I realized I was hearing this sound almost every night, but I thought it was the ocean crashing against the rocks.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, then paused. “Did the soldiers see you?”

One of the things I admire about my dad is that he carries a strong sense of optimism, but as he recounted that night on the beach, I saw his eyes hollow and distant.

“Thankfully no, but the next morning my parents knew that I must have seen what happened because it left me in a state of shock. Because of that and other things, my parents wanted to get me out of the city as much as possible,. So when I was 10 they sent me to a summer camp in Celas on the outskirts of the city. Celas is up on a mountain in the middle of the forest, and it hasn’t changed in a hundred years. There’s a stone parish that is hundreds of years old, a graveyard to its right, and a park around the Tower of Celas.” He shrugged. “That’s about it. But since it was in a quieter place where I could run and play with other kids, and since there was a historical church, it tended to be a safe haven for youngsters. Thankfully they had a field where we could play football. Some kids arrived by bus, others were brought by their parents. It was technically an overnight camp, but some kids left between the siesta and dinner time each night and came back in the morning.

Just a quick note for those of you who aren’t familiar with Spain’s culture: the country takes a “siesta,” or nap, between 2 and 4 every day, and we eat dinner late at night, typically around 9 or 10.

“Mateo and Enrique came from my school, so I didn’t have to worry as much about making new friends. But when you’re 10, you’re still in that stage where almost anyone can become a friend five minutes after meeting them. That’s how I met Guillermo Barrios.

“Guillermo was an outgoing and adventurous kid from a nearby village called Cambre. You could tell that his parents were poor by how he dressed, so I’m surprised that he was able to attend the camp in the first place. We spent the afternoon running around the forest playing spies and soldiers, hiding behind the tall thin trees and stout thorny bushes that covered the summit. But you had to be careful up there because sinkholes litter the top of the mountain. It was as the sun was setting that we first saw the tower up close. It stretched high above the treeline in a clearing on the top of the mountain. The brick and mortar were an unnatural deep brown hue, darker than the rest of the buildings of the town. A heavy iron padlock kept us from exploring inside, but we could look up and see metal window frames encasing dusty tan window panes toward the top, and a thick parapet where the color of the brick was the darkest.

‘We should try to sneak in,’ Mateo said. ‘I want to see what’s inside. My older brother says it’s haunted.’

‘Idiot,’ Guillermo shot back. ‘The door’s locked and the windows are two stories up. You gonna climb up there?’

‘Well…I’m sure I could. One night I climbed the Tower of Hercules during a storm,’ he said, flexing his arms. A gust of wind blew his black hair behind him.

‘You’re full of it, Mateo,’ Enrique jumped in. ‘Nobody believes that.’

‘At least I have money to eat, you thieving gypsy.’ Mateo said.

‘Come on, Mateo, don’t be such an ass,’ I replied. ‘If you think you can climb up there, do it and let us in when you get down to the bottom. Just don’t let the ghosts steal your body.’

‘Ha! They can’t do that,’ he said shakily.

‘They did in Gerasenes,’ Guillermo countered, then wooed like a ghost as he chased after Mateo.

“The first night around the campfire, we asked about the Tower. Tomas, our camp counselor told us this story. ‘Several hundred years ago, the nobility of the region were cruel, heavily taxing the locals for food and money. After many years, the women were tired, the men weak, and the children brittle. They rebelled.’ Since we were in the middle of a political crisis, the story didn’t sit well with us, especially given the reason we were there. The red and orange of the fire gleamed in his eyes, morphing his otherwise comforting face into a sinister mask. Between that, the darkness and the crackling of the fire sounding like gunshots, we were terrified. Especially Guillermo. But his was a morbid excitement.”

The political history of Spain is fascinating. The country is more like a conglomeration of multiple autonomous communities. Their sense of independence is still strong to this day. Perhaps you’ve heard about the Basque country fighting for independence during the dictatorship, and Catalunya’s, the community where Barcelona is located, current division over the matter.

“‘The town mustered their strength and the Tower was built to serve as the community’s stronghold; it was the largest structure here in Celas, and you could see all around the mountain into the valleys below. Spikes were buried in a trench beneath it, so that in order to access it, you had to either lower a bridge to the entrance or find a way to walk over the spikes. They hoped that it would protect them, but they were wrong. It was a short and bloody conflict, and the regional nobility killed the original builders as punishment. But they didn’t just hang them — that would be too easy. The nobility wanted to stop future rebellions before they ever started.’ He paused for effect.

“We were all spooked out of our minds and too afraid to take the bait. But then Guillermo dared to ask, ‘So what happened?’

“‘For the five men who led the rebellion, they were forced to hang their wives from the parapet of the Tower. You could see the bodies hanging from the other side of the valley. And for the men themselves, they had their dominant arms cut off at the elbow, then walked to the edge and forced to hang on. They were told that if they could pull themselves up after a hanging for as long as it took to say a Hail Mary for each of the five wives that were hanged, they could live. None of them survived, and the blood from their wounds ran down the face of the Tower, staining it the color that it is today. The groans of the wind are the voices of the dead fighting to not let go.’

“We revolted in disgust.

“‘But that’s not all. During the Civil War, the town fought against the Fascists, too. Franco’s army buried the town’s children alive in the cellars as punishment. Legend has it that the thing is haunted. That legend is true. They say that on a quiet night when clouds shroud the sky, the children beneath the tower wail and beg to be freed. Or at least be fed.’ Just then, a gust of wind moaned through the tower. All of us jumped with fright, and after a few moments, we heard a damp trickling sound as a sour smell grew in strength. Mateo had pissed himself. The serious tone of the group devolved into laughter. Thankfully, Mateo was a good sport about it. We called him ‘Meo’ (which is slang for ‘piss’) for the rest of the camp.’

“The next day as we were getting dressed for camp, Guillermo was determined to find his way into the tower. He put on his Spanish national team football jersey since we were going to play football that morning. ‘That old lock is so rusty it’ll probably fall off.’ His enthusiasm was convincing, and although the thought of finding real ghosts was scary, the rush of adrenaline was addictive and exciting. We had free time between our morning snack and siesta, and Guillermo had to go home that afternoon, so we estimated that we had about three hours to get into the Tower. We scrambled to the top of the mountain, picking up any large object we could carry to break the lock. Later, after trying for a solid hour, we were still locked out.

“We tried to break the lock for another thirty minutes before giving up, then sat down on some nearby rocks to rest. Guillermo confessed that he was afraid of the stories and afraid to go home. His parents were against the Fascists. Though mine were, too, I didn’t go about telling people because of things like what happened at Matadero. Tomas’ story from the previous night was just another reason to add to the list — it had only happened thirty years ago.

“Before long, I was tired and wanted to return to camp. The wind was blowing hard and the sky was turning grey from the clouds coming in across the Atlantic. That’s Galicia for you. Anyway, Guillermo had to leave soon, so I figured he would come with me, but he wanted to try to get into the tower one last time. He told me he would see me tomorrow since he was going to go straight home. We said goodbye and I made my way back to the camp.

“I wish Guillermo had been there that night, because the wind was really howling, and it sounded just the way Tomas had described it. For some reason, I wasn’t as scared as I thought I would be. I guessed that what I saw at the beach still had me a little numb to the idea of anything scarier than that. But it sounded just like wailing. It would cut through the wind and then die down as it shook the shutters on our cabin windows. Then it began to rain. Hard. So much, in fact, that the floor flooded. The storm lasted for the rest of the week, as did the howling with the wind. The clouds were so thick it looked like it was night time for days. We never got to go back up to the Tower because the storm was so dangerous.”

“What about Guillermo?” I asked.

My father hunched over and seemed distressed. “Well, he never came back to camp. At first I thought it was because the rain kept him away. I asked Tomas if he saw them arrive to get him, but he said no one ever came to ask for him, and that he never saw Guillermo leave. His grandparents came in a panic the third day and asked about him, but no one had seen him. We later learned that his parents had been killed. I told Tomas that Guillermo and I had been at the Tower playing, and we ended up taking a group there to look. But it was raining jugfulls and the wind never stopped howling. At least the door on the lock hadn’t been broken.

“We notified the police, who searched the town and mountainside despite the storm, but Guillermo was gone. You never think that a casual moment with your friends may be your last. I certainly didn’t until then. I still don’t know what happened to him to this day. I’m not sure that I want to.”

I sat on my father’s story for about a month, mulling it over in my mind. I retraced the story, from Matadero and the Tower of Hercules and the large bay here in the city, to making my way to Celas to see the Tower and its bloodied bricks. Nowadays people sunbathe and swim at Matadero, and children go to an English summer camp in Celas. The Tower of Hercules is a tourist attraction where you can go to see ancient Roman ruins.

But one thing about my father’s story nagged at me. I leave in a week, and I couldn’t go before satisfying my curiosity, so I made my way out to Celas yesterday for one last time. As luck would have it, another Galician storm rolled through just as I arrived, making the climb significantly more difficult. I also finally got to hear the wind as it howled through the Tower. It genuinely does sound like someone is screaming.

My older brother taught me how to pick locks a few years back on a boring summer afternoon, and ever since, I’ve carried a set of picks in my traveling bag. I brought them with me to pick the lock to the Tower. The rusted lock proved to be troublesome at first, but I finally managed to open it. The inside was musty and damp, and after exploring for a little while, I found a door that I determined must lead to the cellar. It, too, had a lock. This one I was hesitant to open because I was afraid I would find the bodies of an entire generation of the town’s children on the other side. I inserted the picks, found the pins, set them, and turned the chamber. It was then that I realized how heavy I was breathing. It clicked and opened. I eased the door ajar and used my flashlight to illuminate the stairway leading down to the cellar. The steps were smooth and steep, so I descended slowly out of fear of slipping. A dripping cadence met with a puddle on the floor, and a gentle breeze brought musty air to my nose.

I didn’t find any bodies in the main cellar, much to my relief. Nor did I find them anywhere else. I guess the church or government had given them a proper burial. I found one last passage that moved deep through the earth, far away from the Tower. Now normally I would never go this alone. I’m always worried I’m going to get bitten by a spider. But the suspense had mesmerized me and I found my feet shuffling forward.

After what seemed like five minutes of creeping through the tunnel, my progress came to an abrupt end. There were several large boulders blocking the path, and far up above, I could see a dim light shining through a hole. Powerlifting happens to be a hobby of mine, so I’m quite strong and was able to move them, starting with the smallest ones at the top.

As I moved the last boulder out of the way of the path, I saw the body of a young child, his leg contorted in an unnatural angle, the crest of the Spanish royalty evident on his shirt.