The haunted castle

The enchanted castle is one of those places that appear again and again in fairy tales.

Think for example in the tale of The Beauty and the Beast, or the story of Puss in Boots. They also appear on nearly every Gothic novel (who does not know the castle of Count Dracula?).

The reason for such proliferation of castles in this kind of stories may lie in the fact that castles, as monuments of stone with several centuries old, have outlived their era and have evoke a past unknown, mysterious and overwhelming.

We must also bear in mind that the common people had refused access to the interior of the castles and the forbidden is always desired.

The castles of fairy tales, unlike the royal castles that are usually in ruins, are always well preserved and are immune to the passage of time. They evoke strength, verticality and isolation abroad. They are constructions disconnected from the reality that prepare a propitious space, therefore, in its interior there run all sorts of adventures.

For the hero of the story, the castle is also the place where he consumed his personal maturity, its transformation into a more balanced being and with a promising future.

In general, castles of fairy tales, are haunted places, in other words, they are subjected with the power of some evil spirit, whether it's a witch, a giant, a dragon or another be endowed with magical powers, and the mission of the hero is, precisely, to rid the castle of evil that power, and, why not, get the reward he deserves.

Our hypertext does not describe the castle, simply it tells us that is an enchanted castle and thus, we already have more than enough for our imagination to make an idea of how it should be the place.

By contrast, the hypertext does tell us that the castle is not very far from the inn and the king's palace, which is necessary for the king so he can go in the mornings to see the health of the youth. It is also necessary for the youth so he can return to the inn to tell his impressions.

It also seems that the castle is deserted because the king only lets the boy take three objects, and he chooses fire, a turning lathe and a cutting-board with a knife.
The youth prepares himself in one of the rooms of the castle, he lights the fire and he gets prepared to live the most incredible adventures with the greatest naturalness.

In one of these adventures, it appears in a corner, one bed to where he immediately jumps and this bed takes him around the castle, going up and down the stairs like a cart pulled by six horses (which at the time of the brothers Grimm should be something like a Ferrari).

We also know that next to the fire there is a bench where he is sat during the second night, and for which he fights with a man cut in half, with who he ends up playing bowling with a group of ghouls (in English Ghoul means something like a kind of hell or fantastic beings that devour the dead).

The third night, there appear six men carrying a coffin with the body of a young man. The youth confuses this boy with his cousin who had just died. Then there is another event that gives us insight into the customs of the era: as the body is cold, he decides to lie down in the bed next to him to give heat his body. Finally, there is a terrible-looking old man that leads the youth on to the forge (the Smith’s forge).