About The Island

Louise’s Island is a small island in the middle of Ødammen, a lake-like pond located behind Hillerød’s iconic Badstue “Castle”. With its picturesque, wooden cabin it can appear quite idyllic on a sunlit day. However, it can also evoke a sense of eerie dread on a moonlit night when walking past it alone. The mystique surrounding Louise’s Island is magnified by its immediate inaccessibility. Not only is it hard to reach, it is off limits to visitors during most of the year, and police will probably fine you if you try to trespass. All this has helped to cement Louise’s Island as something of a legend in Hillerød, even though most locals don’t even know its name or its history, which in short is as follows:

In 1848 King Frederik The 7th and his wife of a morganatic marriage, Louise Danner, moved to Frederiksborg Castle due to the mounting pressures of daily life in Copenhagen. The castle and its surroundings quickly became Frederik’s preferred sanctuary and over the next many years he spent as much time as possible in the area, indulging in his favorite pastimes. Two of these were fishing and partying, and to accommodate for them, out of view of potentially curious locals, he established Louise’s Island and had a Norwegian style cabin built as headquarters, along with a supply house and a boat house.

If you manage to one day get access to the island, the cabin is well worth checking out from the inside. It is filled with old ruses and other fishing equipment that might well have been lying around ever since the days of Frederik The 7th. Primitive graffiti is scrawled all over the walls, some dating back over 150 years. The island is also home to a more hidden object, unknown to most and out of view from the mainland: A stone seat engraved with the king’s monogram.
While no really mysterious happenings are known from the time of Frederik The 7th, there is an extremely eerie modern ghost story related to the island, which has been researched quite thoroughly. A full expose of it can be read here, but a shorter version is recounted below.

The Ghost Of Louise’s Island

Said incident took place back one summer night during the late 1990’s and involved four young men in their late teens to early twenties. They were all part of a “gang” of local skate-punks, and were known to not be afraid of very many things. But what they experienced on the island more than 20 years ago would mystify and haunt them even to this day.

That night, like many others, the group had been out boozing and causing mischief around downtown Hillerød. The bars were beginning to close, and wondering what to do next, one of the guys suggested they steal a boat and sail out to Louise’s Island. This was no small feat, but finally they managed to pull it off by navigating along narrow canals as well as on land, finally arriving at Ødammen. Upon reaching the shore of the island, they docked and secured the boat thoroughly before going exploring, not wanting to risk having to swim back. Their main goal was to enter the cabin and see what was inside, which they succeeded in doing.  However, there was a lot of debris and construction material blocking the main part of the building, preventing them from any detailed inspection. They then left and walked a bit around the island instead.  At this point, several of the guys had started to notice a distinct, sweet odour, which they found unusual.

After walking around for a few minutes, they became bored and headed towards the boat. They had a very rude awakening, when realizing that it had somehow come loose and was slowly drifting towards land. The group panicked and tried everything to catch the rope and pull the boat back. A thick fog had also begun building up and it was around this time that some of them got the feeling that they weren’t alone.

Anxious to get back to land, they then began boarding. But as the third man was on the way into the boat he made a panicked jitter and  grabbed the shoulder of his friend in front of him, yelling out “what the hell is that!”. He then pointed towards a bulky, grayish white and partially transparent figure, standing about 3 or 4 meters away. This led to complete panic and an intense sense of dread among the group, who now scattered to get back to land as quickly as possible.

At this time the fog had almost completely engulfed the island and most of the pond, reaching the edge of the boat. However, no matter how thick it got, they could still see the haunting figure standing there observing them, as if it was making sure they would never return again. As soon as they reached land, they threw the boat aside and scattered in different directions without even saying goodbye to each other.

Commentary

With a few exceptions, the accounts of the involved are very similar. To this day, most of them are quite sure of what they saw, even though memories of the details differ. And in retrospect, even though certain elements might not be so mysterious when viewed in isolation, it all seems to have come together perfectly to create a terrifying experience. Could it perhaps have been the residue of some long gone, former visitor of the island? Probably we will never know what really happened on Louise’s Island that summer night.  But if you are “lucky” you might have your own encounter if you should choose to take a closer look at Louise’s Island.

Kilde

• Thomas Brisson Jørgensen – The Ghost of Louise’s Island (Part 1 & Part 2)

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