Do you believe in supernatural creatures? I came from a country with many superstitions and my religion does speak of other beings, so i believe them. Not necessarily bc I'm superstitious tho, but i do have a few experiences with seeing ghosts and every time i watch/read smth that involves them my back always gets hot as if smth is watching me too
I believe in ghosts (kinda I guess???) And tbh I think people who won’t at least entertain the ide, are extremelyyyy boring
That’s really interesting! What kinda beings does your country believe in?
I want to say I don’t believe in ghosts, but that would be a lie. For the longest time I didn’t believe in them, and would roll my eyes whenever someone mentioned them.
When I was 15 (the summer before I started high school), me and my family had a trip to a place called Geiranger in Norway. It’s a beautiful place and a popular tourist destination. If you ever plan on visiting Norway I highly recommend it.
The hotel we stayed at was old (1800-something) and extremely gorgeous. I remember I stopped to stare at it for a moment before we entered, and I got a weird feeling from looking at it. The interior hadn’t been renovated since late 70s/ early 80s and it looked a lot similar to Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Apparently a graveyard was underneath some parts of the hotel. In my parents room there was a large red stain on the carpet, and even though it was near impossible for it to be blood as it was red (and not brown as blood would be after being exposed to oxygen for so long), it still gave me an eerie feeling and I refused to be in their room for a long period of time.
The corridors of the hotel were long and felt completely deserted even though it was in the summer and the peak of tourist season and the hotel was completely booked. When we ate dinner the first day, one of the servers told us that a janitor was haunting the hotel (especially the basement), but we all laughed it off as he said it more lie a joke than anything else. Still, I couldn’t help but feel scared.
My aunt and my little sister were swimming in the indoor pool and I went to look for them. The hallways were completely empty, yet I could feel someone watching me. The spa area was new and you had to walk by some railings that looked down on the lower floor (if that makes sense?). I could hear someone walking behind me and when I turned, no one was there. It was impossible for the person to disappear, as I mentioned: the only “escape route” would be to jump down from the railing. The hairs on the back of my neck stood and my blood turned to ice. It was so terrifying. I told my aunt, but she didn’t believe me.
Later that day I wanted to explore more of the hotel, so I ventured down to the lower floor. It was there conferences were held and the basement with owner’s car collection was below it. I didn’t see anyone except an old janitor that was sweeping the floor. When he saw me, he looked surprised and when I turned around to face him again, he was gone without a trace. The whole floor was eerie quite so I left as fast as I could.
My sister told me that when see was going to my parents room, she could feel someone’s hand pressing hard on her shoulder, but no one was in the hallway with here. She claims her skin turned red from the force.
My aunt, my little sister and I all shared a suit. It was decorated in late 19th century style. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but something felt off… The bathroom was the place I feared the most, and I didn’t go in there alone unless I needed it use the toilet.
My aunt slept on a sofa-bed in the living room, while my sister and I shared the bed in the bedroom. I was terrified of falling asleep, but I feel asleep rather quickly. I woke up somewhere in the early morning (the sun was out, but it was before everyone else woke up). I could feel someone watching me, so I looked up to the doorway. There stood a woman with long dark brown hair and a light blue dress which was from the time period the hotel was built in. She was devastatingly beautiful, I have never seen a woman that beautiful, and her expression was twisted in sorrow. I was so horrified, I thought I was going to die. My heart almost jumped out of my chest and my blood ran cold (both from fear and from the fact that the room suddenly seemed to be way colder). I tried to wake my little sister, who slept closer to the door, but she is an incredibly heavy sleeper and didn’t wake up. She didn’t say anything, and she only stared at me. She didn’t seem evil or dangerous, quite on the contrary. She had a certain motherly aura around her, and I believe she was a mother. On her had was a weeding ring, and though it didn’t have a stone, it still seemed expensive. We stared at each other for a good while. I don’t know how long as time seemed to stretch out to eternity. I must have suddenly fallen asleep. I had a dreamless sleep afterwards.
I told my family about it (not my sister for obvious reasons), and my aunt got extremely pale. Luckily that was out last night at the hotel.
My sister told me a month ago or so, that she also saw a ghost in our hotel room, and she described the same woman to me without me ever describing her. She told me the ghost had walked closer to her, just without looking at her. She had supposedly stared at the wall or a painting for a while, before she disappeared.
This incident made me believe in ghosts.
I have also had weird things happen in my house, and I think it may be haunted. Though I am not sure. I can elaborate further if anyone wants me to. My elementary school was also most likely haunted and I have experienced a lot of unexplainable things there…
My aunt I had autumn break in a popular skiing destination, and we heard about a hotel that was famous for being haunted (we start in another hotel thankfully). We explored it by ourselves and we heard footsteps from empty corridors and doors that suddenly slammed closed. It’s safe to say we didn’t stay there for long.
As for mythical creatures, I was terrified of trolls, Huldra and Nøkken as a child (fun fact: I have a Nøkken OC and a Huldra OC). Trolls are extremely important in the Norwegian culture, and many people who live either in the mountains or on the countryside believe in them. I thought I saw Huldra behind a rock in the woods when I was little and I was absolutely terrified. I also thought she was going to take my sister away as the myth say that if you don’t have a weeding ring in your baby’s crib, she will steal the bay. I had to sleep in my parent’s bed in order to guard my sister. Whenever I was by the river or a lake as a kid, I was scared that Nøkken was going to drown me. I also found nisser (a kind of Norwegian elves) scary. That being said I don’t believe in them anymore.
I don’t know what those ghosts I saw were, and if they even were ghost or if they were my imagination. Either way, they were scary.
Jeez I yapped a lot. I’m curious if y’all believe in ghosts or perhaps other beings. And if so, what kind of creatures and why?
Lake Nisser panorama by Memento mori travelling man
https://ift.tt/r567hKa
Another panorama, from the great lake Nisser - Telemark Norway
https://flic.kr/p/2r2aGnX
Uploaded May 02, 2025 at 12:41AM
In Denmark we got this type of Christmas decorations called "kravlenisser" (climbing elves/gnomes) which are pretty simple, it's nisser drawn and printed on cardboard, and then cut out with little flaps that make them possible to put under books on a shelf. My dad has basically a whole library in the living room, we've always had lots of space for these, so we have a million of them. Some of them are older than me.
now I won't claim to understand every name, but some of them are like adjective-farmer, and "rud" is a suffix used for farms that were abandoned after the Black death. (source: me, hi I'm Norwegian this is taught in like fourth grade)
variations include (via wikipedia)
fjøsnisse - fjøs: house for "fe" which means like, cows and similar, sheep, pigs etc. (google translate just lied to me so please tell me the English word)
skipsnisse - ships (boats)
kirkenisse - church
hagenisse - garden. (see also: cobolds, garden gnomes, dwarfs)
in Norwegian jul tv you'll find most fjøsnisser, such as in "jul i Blåfjell" (jul in Blue Mountain) - a jul calendar tv program. I think also most cozy jul books too, but please prove me wrong.
translations & equivalents include:
tomte - sweden
goblin, gnome - England
Wichtel, Heinzelmännchen, Kobold - Germany
jólasveinar - Iceland
Contexts of "Nisser" in Norway
national-romance, because the period was about making a national identity it's not surprising they pulled up with nisser. Ibsen wrote plays with them. (via wikipedia)
the era of enlightenment. Wergeland portrayed nisser as bigoted and ignorant, as opposed to elves. (via wikipedia)
(pagan/heathen¹) yule times (jul), from as early as year 900 in icelandic & Norwegian culture it was for example tradition to set out porridge with butter for nisser, if you didn't they'd be pissed. (via NRK)
1. I think it's pagan/heathen, though 900 was during the Christening of Norway (year 850-1100) (sources: store norske leksikon, norgeshistorie)
(and cause apparently it's not common knowledge, "christmas" (originally "jul" or "yule" (which it still is called in Norway today)) does originate in Norse mythology and Nordic tradition, with supernatural spirits and animal sacrifice (source: store norske leksikon), and beer (ref that NRK article)) (and no I don't care if you ""disagree"" with history unless you are an actual historian). (and I don't care about christian aspects of the holiday today, bother someone else).
So I just binged Netflix' 'Elves' ('Nisser'), and adored it more than I thought I would.
Though this may have something to do with being a young parent myself:
The basic premise is that a family of clueless city folks decide to celebrate Christmas on an isolated subarctic rainforest island where the locals live in uneasy coexistence with highly intelligent and aggressive carnivorous animals they call "forest elves".
The core engine of the plot is the little daughter of the family being an agent of pure chaos, in the way of a child who is the most clever but also the most ignorant person around.
There is an obvious theme of "do not f*ck with nature, or nature f*cks with you", as you would expect.
But arguably more important, it is a cautionary tale about how you treat children.
The moral climax of the story is when the matriarch of the island people and the girl's mother argue whether or not the girl is responsible for all the death and destruction created by the elf attack she unwittingly unleashed.
The mother tells the girl that she is a child and can do no wrong, the island leader points out that she is a big girl responsible for the harm that she causes through her actions.
They are both wrong, of course, but that's kinda the point of the show.
The matriarch respects the girl enough to treat her as a person that acts and makes mistakes, but in the process sees her as a sinner who must accept sacrifice to restore balance; the mother loves her, but does not respect her.
The fact of the matter is that you need to treat and nurture children as people.
The girl's parents systematically baby her and place restrictions on her without meaningful discussion or explanation other than "you are too young".
What the girl rakes away from this is that restrictions have no rational motive or justification, ever, and so when she sees a big scary electric fence in a strange forest, she can only conclude that there is absolutely no point to it other than to piss her off.
If she is this ignorant and stubborn, it is because her parents essentially treated her as cuddly luggage, leaving her sharp mind to run in a vaccum.
When you do that to a child, they may see the world as a place of wonders being hidden from them by adults in dire need of a demonstration that the kid is big enough to go out and conquer those wonders after all.
Rather than, very often, a savage, unexplored flesh-eating wilderness where it is in our own rational self-interest to thread with caution and communicate with- and trust one another if we are to survive.
