Shortly we’ll have a “special report” on “spiritual portals”: hotspots of the supernatural kind. It’s more relevant than you might think. It’ll bear a few surprises.

Although that report isn’t specifically about them, into that mix (of spiritual “magnets”) one might toss a big summer destination: castles.

Around the world, they’re not just vacation hotspots but often the locus for preternatural activity.

One of the most famous, Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, inspired Walt Disney to create his signature Cinderella abode.

But Neuschwanstein, it is said, has a “dark history.”

Old men can supposedly be seen at night dressed in seventeenth-century uniforms.

No play actors these: supposedly, they have been seen floating through the air. (Legend has it they were Bavarian generals who displeased the king with deadly results.)

At any rate, before he even built Disneyland, Disney and wife Lillian had stopped at the magnificent edifice in the Bavarian Alps during a tour of Europe and were so impressed with the turrets and towers that rise above the hillocky forest that he used Neuschwanstein as the model for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Wizards. Magic wands. Elves. Fairies. Witches. Dragons. The castle is part of Disney’s very trademark (and the company’s frequent occult innuendoes).

Notes Stars Insider: [It] is one of the most majestic constructions not only in Germany, but in the whole of Europe—though it is far from a fairy tale. Many years ago, the so-called Mad King Ludwig II created the castle as an escape into eccentric fantasies, but he was later declared mentally insane before dying in mysterious circumstances, leaving many unanswered questions in his wake.”

A castle in Germany was also where Eugenie von der Leyen (1867-1929) kept a diary of souls from purgatory who allegedly appeared to her pleading for prayer.

A highly educated woman of high German nobility, Eugenie bore the title of “princess” at her ancestral castle in Waal, Bavaria.

In keeping with castle mystique, some of it was outright creepy.

Devout Eugenie was visited by certain souls bearing revolting, frightening countenances, in some cases threatening her (and raising the question if they were instead demons). By order of her confessor, Eugenie kept a diary of her contacts with the poor souls, a diary that was handed over to Bishop Eugenio Pacelli after her death. (Pacelli later became Pope Pius XII. See an account of her here.)

Germany is chock full of “haunted” castles. We had a “special report” on perhaps the most mysterious, Wewelsburg, which served as a headquarters for Hitler’s S.S. and in its basement had a “sacred” room for occult rituals. Heinrich Himmler wanted to turn it into the Nazi-occult-pagan version of the Vatican.

It is where Nazi leaders sought counsel from invisible entities, the “Secret Chiefs,” of whose wisdom they believed themselves to be guardians.

Some believe this mysterious castle played a role in establishment of modern satanism. And might be where the Final Solution was first pronounced. (It is also said to stand on a nexus of “ley lines” that supposedly demarcate “earth energies.”)

Then there’s Frankenstein Castle in Odenwald, the structure that inspired Mary Shelley to write the horror book Frankenstein. The name means “stone of the Franks,” who inhabited the area. (Ghostly voices are said to have been recorded inside, speaking Old German).

In London, on the banks of the Thames, many are the tourists who claim a terribly unsettling feeling, if not actual spiritual attack, at the Tower of London, a castle built a thousand years ago — and the site for several gruesome executions.

“Like other places with a past filled with skullduggery and fear, the Tower is said to be haunted,” says Authentic Vacations. “Most of the ghosts are unfortunate souls who met an untimely–and many times unjust–death (including death by grizzly bear).”

We’ll beg off a visit there.

“The second wife of Henry VIII, and the first wife he executed, Anne is the most famous and persistent of all Tower ghosts,” we’re told. “She is seen on the Tower Green where she was executed, in St. Peter ad Vincula where she was buried, and wandering corridors as a headless body.”

Pray for all such souls.

Worse still is Leap Castle in Ireland, where a room is now called “The Bloody Chapel” and a priest is said to haunt it (naturally, at night).

During castle renovations a century ago, workmen found a dungeon in the Bloody Chapel with so many human skeletons it took three cartloads to haul them all away. (Not a pretty picture, the dungeon was designed so that prisoners would fall through a trap door, have their lungs punctured by wooded spikes on the ground, and die a slow, horrific death within earshot of the sinister clan members above. Excuse the graphic though perhaps necessary detail.)

There is the “white lady” of Chillingham back down in England.

There’s Houska Castle in the Czech Republic (said to have a hole that is entry to hell). Demons are said to be trapped in the walls of the lower level.

There’s Himeji Castle, Japan.

There’s Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.

And how about the Castle of Good Hope way down in South Africa, or across the Atlantic, there is Casa Loma in Canada (again, a former female resident and her husband said to wander the cold corridors).

That’s in midtown Toronto and — getting back to Walt — was used for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and then later as Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

And America?

Stay tuned…

[resources: The Spirits Around Us and Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]