Knocking on the Wall: The Strange Poltergeist Case of Karin Nauckhoff.
I’ve spent numerous years in and around the world of the paranormal, which began in childhood as an interest in the weird, both fictitious or real. A hobby turned into a career and many years later I began working as a segment producer for the Swedish television show Det Okända. A total of 318 episodes were produced between 2004 and 2019, and I worked on around 50 of them. In each episode, at least after the first two initial years, the production focused almost exclusively on homes — where the owners of apartments, houses, and sometimes mansions and castles across Sweden were plagued by ghosts. Sometimes the ghosts were benign, but occasionally they were more sinister.
We brought a psychic medium to the location, who did their thing: communicating with the spirits, cleansing the house of negative energies, and so on. A month later, we would return to present the research we had done and check to ensure the owners were happy and comfortable with their (we hoped) ghost-free dwelling.
The most intriguing cases were, as often happens, the ones where the witnesses had seen something move, or, in general, experienced more physical apparitions causing shenanigans (A lot more fun than the most common scenario: a witness watching television in their recliner, seeing a shadow in the hallway out of the corner of their eye!). As always, we hoped to capture some of this on camera — or at least get the participants to try capturing evidence themselves with their own cameras, which very rarely happened. However, one case I remember is Jonas and Madeleine in Borås, from season 24, episode 4, which originally aired on January 29, 2018 (it’s available to watch in Sweden on TV4 Play). I was initially a bit skeptical; it just sounded too good to be true. What we got was a video, filmed by Jonas, and it was far superior to everything we’ve received before.
Here’s the thing that raised my suspicions more than usual: it’s never the husband who sees or feels things, and he never captures anything paranormal on camera. Well, Jonas did, and the video was intriguing — but also a bit too much. The video, shot in vertical mode with a cellphone, shows three things: a lamp in the ceiling slowly swaying back and forth, a cabinet door very slowly opening, and — as the grand finale — the door of a kitchen cabinet swinging open forcefully, all accompanied by Jonas’s visibly scared voice commenting on what’s happening. You can check it out here:
I was fully expecting to kind of sense how this was a fake when arriving at the young family and sitting down to interview them. But no, Jonas and Madeleine were very serious, and I didn’t feel that anyone was goofing around. So, the next step in my paranoid brain was to conclude that Jonas, or perhaps both of them, would come out publicly when the episode aired, telling everyone that they had faked it just to make fools of us in the production. No such thing happened. Maybe it was then that I started to become less skeptical, but still — of course — with a critical eye on the whole thing. The paranormal activities in the homes of all the ordinary, normal, and low-key Swedish families I had visited over the years? One thing is true, though: my curiosity peaked. Was this something common in Sweden? I had read about many international cases, especially in the UK, but this was something new to me.
It seemed like the poltergeist phenomenon was quite a thing in the past, at least the more spectacular cases. We have the jumping table that once stood in a house at Vallby Open-Air Museum in Västerås (I remember peeking in through the windows, looking at it as a child, disappointed that the house was locked and no visitors were allowed at the time). There are also reports from another open-air museum in Stockholm, Skansen, and at least from one of their houses, Kyrkhultsstugan, where objects are said to have been thrown into the air without any visible means, the sound of furniture being dragged around, and so on.
But the most intriguing case is that of Karin Nauckhoff and the events that happened around the turn of the century at Hornsgården, outside of Mönsterås. Located out in the countryside, a nine-minute car ride from Blomstermåla, the house and the events that occurred there were, for many years, the most famous case of alleged poltergeist phenomena in Sweden. Let’s take it from the beginning.
In the year 1760, factor owner P.F. von Hegardt received permission to build a blast furnace in the area, and eight years later, the industrial structure was ready for use in smelting iron by heating it to high temperatures, separating the molten metal from impurities. The area, Hornsö, was probably named after his wife, Anna Regina Horn af Åminne. Von Hegardt’s blast furnace business expanded over the years into a foundry where pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils were produced on a smaller scale until the factory was torn down in 1893. Somewhere along the way, a house was built, named Hornsögården. It was later turned into the official home for the local forestry master. That’s how the young couple Fredrik and Karin Nauckhoff arrived at the scene, which turned into something neither of them would ever forget — and with them, the whole of Sweden.
Karin was born on December 8, 1877, in Öja, outside Växjö, into a family of modest wealth. She was the daughter of Baroness Charlotta “Lotten” Fredrika Sparre af Rossvik and forestry master Karl Gustaf Fritiof Segerdahl. Karin was later described as rather petite, finely built, with big, brown eyes, and as a very normal young girl, full of vitality and very charming. Some say she was a bit too nice and well-behaved, to the degree that she had a tendency to keep things to herself instead of talking about them. In 1890, Fredrik — who also worked as a forestry master — visited the family for the first time. Perhaps it was then that the 24-year-old Fredrik fell in love with the 13-year-old Karin. In 1893, Karin’s father passed away, and the remaining family moved to Växjö. In 1897, Fredrik and Karin got married and began moving all over the country until they officially settled at Hornsgården in 1910. However, there is evidence suggesting they spent some time there earlier, from 1904, possibly due to Fredrik’s work in the Kalmar area. Regardless, they clearly liked the place so much that they eventually made it their home, and Fredrik was able to continue his work in an idyllic area, surrounded by nature and fresh air.
Not everything was nice and pleasant, though. While there’s very little information about the relationship between Karin and Fredrik, it was obvious that something was wrong. In the autumn of 1898, she collapsed, crying and shaking, from what was referred to at the time as “hysteria,” a kind of nervous breakdown. The following weeks and months, she was mostly in bed with the same symptoms — often several times per day. These attacks subsided during the winter, but instead, she became physically very weak. When spring came, this transformed into deep anxiety, a depression that lasted for years. It slowly improved, with a more stable mood, until she and her husband moved to Hornsö and the now-famous house.
Looking at it now, it’s quite evident why Karin felt the way she did. She was young — way too young — when Fredrik approached her, and the sense of abandonment after her father’s death, with Fredrik probably lurking around the corner to ask for her hand as soon as her father was gone, must have been a terrible ordeal for a young, immature girl. Fredrik’s work, which required the young family to constantly move around the country, must have uprooted Karin, making her feel insecure, losing friends, and making it difficult to stay in touch with her family. It’s no surprise Karin didn’t feel well. An older husband, taking advantage of a young girl without a father, must have, in many ways, been traumatic for Karin. We don’t know how their relationship was, but one needs little imagination to see how this setup could have worked out, and the loneliness of Karin shines through.
While there’s no year mentioned in the sources, somehow Fredrik found an interest in psychography, which doesn’t refer to phrenology in Sweden, but in theory, to communicating with spirits using some kind of device — such as a glass on a piece of paper with written letters on it. It’s possible Fredrik used a more advanced version, a psychograph made up of four joined birch rods. On top, six wooden bowls for fingertips, and at the center of these rods, a point designed to indicate the letter the spirit wished to spell out. In many ways, it was an early version of a Ouija board.
It was quite common during the turn of the last century for the upper class, or upper middle class, to turn to spiritism as a hobby. It might seem like a strange thing today, but friends and family gathering to communicate with the dead was a pastime that gained some popularity, mostly in the bigger cities, or in families like the Nauckhoffs. Karin was initially very skeptical of Fredrik’s new hobby, but he convinced her to join him in the experiments, and even in séances outside of their home — something he would regret later. It’s just speculation, but one might think that the reason he got her into this very special line of interest was to give her something to do. She felt lonely and unfulfilled in her life, career, and relationship, and this could very well have been something she could put her energy into, keeping her mind busy while trying to cope with life.
While I have no evidence for it, I suspect that one reason the family finally officially settled down at Hornsögården may very well have been Karin’s psychological instability. Fresh air and nature were common remedies for nervous illnesses, and Hornsö was the perfect place for rehabilitation. It looks like the family spent a great deal of time at the house, and it was in 1904 that something unexplained started to happen. The first weeks at their new home started well. Karin seemed to like it there, and the calm environment was probably healthy for her — at least on the surface. But then the first signs that something was off began to emerge, to the annoyance of Fredrik, and to the liberation of Karin.
Three weeks into their new life at the house, on May 9, Fredrik was away on business, while Karin was accompanied in the house by a maid, a man renting a room for the night, and a couple of his guests having a meeting. Karin went to bed around 10 PM, and fell asleep while still hearing the men talking in another room. She woke up around midnight hearing noise from the hallway — it was the guests leaving — and almost fell asleep again when she heard footsteps outside the main door and three hard knocks. It was yet another guest who had lost his way and couldn’t find the way back to the house he was staying in, and she lent him a lamp and bid him good night. All was well, and she managed to calm down a bit and prepare to drift back to sleep.
But then, she suddenly became wide awake from yet another three hard knocks. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not, but drifted back to sleep again. No, it wouldn’t calm down, because now there were three more knocks — this time from within the house. This went on for hours, with a trilogy of knocks, sometimes sounding like they were coming from the wall, sometimes from a spot beneath her bed, or from somewhere else in the room or the house. The knocks became weaker in power, and she managed to fall asleep again — until three in the morning, when the knocks started again, this time extra hard and violent — so loud they woke her up. Then, it finally turned quiet.
Karin remembered the night vividly but decided not to worry. It was probably a prankster, kids playing around, and she forgot about the drama over the day, instead focusing on household work. At 10:30 PM, she went to bed, but soon the knocking and banging started again, always in sets of three, and this time she felt uncomfortable and asked the maid to move into the room beside hers. The weather was terrible that night, with heavy rain and wind, which made the whole situation even spookier. The sounds continued for a few hours until they faded away.
The next day, Fredrik finally returned home after his business trip. When he heard about the strange sounds from the nights before, he thought it might have been water dripping, creating some kind of odd, knocking-like sound. However, that night, it started again, and after searching the whole house — from the basement to the attic — and still hearing the knocks, he finally circled the house on the outside, armed with a gun, but gave up. There was no explanation for where the strange noise was coming from. This continued night after night, and at one point, Fredrik asked the proprietor of the building to rake the gravel around the house to see if they could find any signs of an intruder. But they couldn’t find any traces in the gravel; it was untouched ground.
It became very clear that Fredrik had become fascinated by the phenomenon, to a degree that perhaps even surpassed Karin’s own interest. Poul Bjerre, who visited their home later that year, in 1904, wrote in his book Fallet Karin the following year about Fredrik’s obsession:
“When the forester had ascertained that no outsider was responsible for the sounds, he sought to determine whether it might possibly be his wife herself who, through some unconscious movement of some kind, was their cause. While she lay in bed as usual, he firmly held her legs, while another in like manner restrained her arms. Yet the knockings persisted.
Wishing to see whether it was essential for her to remain lying down, he had her stand freely upon the floor, with a cushion placed beneath her feet — no change occurred. Since the knockings were not heard in any rooms other than the bedchamber, he sought to understand whether this was due to the room itself or to the fact that his wife happened to be there at the critical hour. It became evident that the knockings, while ongoing, followed Karin to any room within the villa, even down to the cellar.
From the outset, it had been apparent that light greatly subdued the phenomenon. He studied this relationship by alternately lighting and extinguishing the lamps while the knockings persisted. He also endeavored to provoke the sounds at times other than their usual hour. On occasion, the knocking began as soon as the lamp in the sitting room was extinguished.”
The knocking phenomenon continued throughout May, though with less intensity and diminishing force. The young family also heard heavy footsteps several times on the porch, leading up to the front door, then falling silent. Karin spent the end of May at a friend’s place, and during that time, the house was quiet. No matter what, the entire experience was an ordeal for Karin and her family. During the summer, from July 4 to September 12, they stayed in another place and didn’t experience any paranormal activity. However, a bookkeeper who was renting a room in the house insisted he experienced something while they were away. Poul Bjerre writes in his book Fallet Karin:
“At this time, the villa was inhabited solely by the bookkeeper, a reserved man who had on occasion experienced visual hallucinations. He stated that one morning he awoke to the sound of knocking, which seemed to originate from the attic. Hastily donning his clothes, he hurried upstairs and began to search the rooms, one after another. Upon opening the door to the chamber where the aforementioned bookkeeper’s mother had passed away, he beheld an old woman standing by the bed, gazing intently at him. The vision vanished after a few seconds.”
Another man, an inspector at the nearby railway station, who was known to be slightly nervous, also had an experience while walking home one evening. He was passing the old house when he heard three loud knocks emanating from within. Scared, he hurried on and didn’t investigate the sounds any further. When Karin and Fredrik returned, the knocking also returned, though much weaker and with lower intensity. Somehow, the experiences in May seemed to awaken something in Karin, and during the following weeks in September, she experimented with psychography herself, trying to provoke the entity — or whatever it was — into making more sounds, and perhaps even showing itself. Once again, Poul Bjerre reflects on Karin’s growing interest in communicating with the dead, which might have been what she was doing after returning from the summer vacation.
“A few years ago, Karin began to take an interest in psychography, and she soon showed herself to possess a natural inclination in this direction. She pursued this strange pastime in the customary manner: the alphabet and numbers are inscribed upon a sheet of paper, her eyes are bound, and a glass is placed in her hand. Her arm then begins to tremble, and her hand is moved, vigorously and automatically, from one letter to another. In this way, words are indicated, and these words form responses to questions posed to the “invisible.”
She developed a notable ability and succeeded in establishing conversations, as it were, with departed friends and relatives, to speak in the spiritistic vernacular. However, the answers to her inquiries were evasive, often reduced to an insult, or else consisted of some meaningless jumble. Yet she repeated her experiments time and again, driven by the ever-elusive hope of obtaining truly clairvoyant revelations.”
Poul Bjerre was a Swedish doctor, psychotherapist, and artist who, throughout his life, was deeply interested in the paranormal. He conducted extensive research and experiments in the field. Together with his colleague, Hjalmar Wijk, Bjerre learned in the autumn of 1904 about the strange occurrences at the Nauckhoff home through the press. He contacted the family to ask if he could examine and investigate the phenomena in a scientific way. The Nauckhoffs agreed, and at the beginning of November that year, Bjerre and Wijk arrived at the house, were each given a room to stay in, and began conducting what might have been one of the first serious paranormal investigations in the world.
Bjerre was a rational man, considering his interest in the unknown, and was already convinced that there must be a natural, logical explanation for the knocking sounds. He saw Karin as a very open and honest person, but with a somewhat naïve view of the world. Some outsiders even described her as “dumb.” However, she didn’t seem nervous or inclined to deceive anyone. Bjerre, on the other hand, was convinced that her mental health played a significant role in causing the phenomena. Her general personality seemed dampened by the years of depression and anxiety, and she was slightly worried that the knocking wouldn’t appear when the skeptical gentlemen visited, and that she would be made a fool. She needn’t have worried, though.
Bjerre and Wijk had their first experience already after going to bed that first night. It was 11 PM, and three hard knocks — like a hammer banging on the wall — sounded loudly in the house. The investigators quickly put on their clothes and met up with Fredrik, who confirmed hearing the sound. Karin was still in bed, seeming lucid, and asked if they had heard it. The rest of the night, Bjerre, Wijk, and Fredrik sat awake, listening to the repeated three knocks for an hour or so, until they eventually stopped. Over the following eight days, the investigators conducted a series of interviews and experiments.
We need to go back a bit, to 1903. Karin was in full experimental mode, using the psychograph method, inspired by Fredrik. She had communicated with various spirits since 1901, including relatives and friends of the family. But on one spring day, something else established contact through Karin. It was a male spirit who called himself Piskator. He bragged about himself and his adventures in a very dominant way, pushing away all other alleged supernatural intelligences. From that moment on, Piskator was Karin’s only contact from the other side. He claimed to be a “kobotare,” a person who had the power to heal animals, and that he had died young and beautiful, alongside his love at the time, Elsa. However, he also claimed to love Karin more than anyone else. His signature move was the three knocks, and although Karin and Fredrik didn’t mention it much in the sources, they also believed that it was Piskator who was responsible for the phenomenon that began in May 1904.
There are several interpretations of what Piskator really was. Karin herself never truly saw him as a spirit, contrary to everyone else who participated in her séances. Instead, she considered him a second half of herself, or as she once described him, “a fleeting illusion.” Was he a figment of her imagination? This is interesting because it reminds me of the famous Philip experiment conducted by a Toronto parapsychological research society, where a spirit was constructed from the imagination of the participants, and the result was surprisingly successful. Bjerre partly agreed with Karin, even though he likely saw Piskator as more of a physical manifestation of Karin’s subconscious, something produced by her without her fully understanding it. One thing was clear, however: Piskator became an integral part of the phenomena occurring around Karin and in the house. During those days in November 1904, Bjerre decided to attempt to establish contact with Piskator.
At first, Bjerre and Wijk spent their days gathering information about the phenomena, including interviewing Karin and those around her, possibly looking for more details about the mysterious Piskator. They did hear faint knocking sounds, and turned to more radical experiments, such as psychography and table-turning. However, these experiments did not yield any significant results, and instead, Karin became more nervous and unstable. But after a few more days, there was finally a breakthrough.
On November 5, Bjerre, who like many of his contemporaries, was fascinated by the possibilities of hypnosis, decided to attempt to contact Piskator through this method. At first, it didn’t work, but Bjerre was still satisfied, as Karin quickly fell into a deep trance. This, to him, was a positive development, as it suggested that Karin had a calm inner life. Bjerre believed that the nervous disposition (often referred to as “hysteria”) she had exhibited earlier in her life was simply the result of external influences — other people and circumstances beyond her control.
During the first hypnosis session, Bjerre asked Karin questions about Piskator:
— Do you see “Piskator”?
— No, she answered hesitantly. He is far away.
— Where is he?
— I don’t know.
— Can’t you see the place where he is?
— No.
— Is there no one else here?
— Yes, a white figure.
— Is it a man or a woman?
— A woman.
— Is she young or old?
— Old.
On the second attempt, the session was more successful, but instead of seeing Piskator, the same “white figure” (possibly the old woman) once again blocked Karin’s vision. The communication with Piskator no longer occurred visually. Instead, Bjerre asked Karin questions, which she then relayed to her “second half.” A deal was made: at 11 PM that night, Piskator would make his presence known with three knocks exactly when the clock struck the hour.
A few hours later, after Karin had gone to bed, three loud knocking sounds were heard. The knocks seemed to come from Karin’s room. This frightened Karin, as she had felt as if someone had been walking around her bed just before the sounds occurred. When Bjerre and Wijk reached her, they found her partly conscious, experiencing spasms. She was calmed down with another session of hypnosis.
November 6: The hypnosis experiments continued, and this time Bjerre asked Karin if she could request Piskator to produce three knocks at 9:30 PM that evening. After much hesitation, Karin agreed.
— Do you remember anything from last night?
— Yes, she answered.
— Who was it that knocked?
— “Piskator.”
— Why were you so anxious when he came?
— He must not come anymore.
— But he isn’t dangerous, he doesn’t do anything harmful.
— Yes, but he must not come anymore.
— Can he not come just once more if we ask?
— No.
— But after that, he will disappear, and you will be completely free from him.
— No.
— We would like to hear from him one more time; will you not allow that?
— Yes, she replied, still hesitantly.
— May he come tonight, after supper?
— Yes.
— At half past nine — exactly half past nine?
— Exactly half past nine.
— Then he will knock three times, and three knocks each time.
— Three times and three knocks each time. After that, he must leave immediately and must not come back during the night.
— He will leave immediately.
It’s worth noting that Bjerre’s promise to Karin — that Piskator would disappear after this session — raises some ethical concerns. Bjerre used manipulation and persuasion to make Karin contact the entity, even though she clearly felt uncomfortable doing so. Karin, under hypnosis, may not have had full control over her actions, which could be seen as an unethical approach by Bjerre, who used her as a tool for his research with little regard for her well-being. In this context, it is also important to remember the dynamics of power at the time: even though women like Karin, who were believed to possess certain spiritual abilities, were sometimes revered, they were often still subordinate to the men around them.
Later that evening, after a break where they recited poetry and avoided discussing Piskator or the paranormal events, Bjerre prepared for the traditional seance. The room was darkened, with just one lamp lit. Bjerre seated himself in a position where he could see the clock while also observing Karin. At 9:30 PM, the knocking sounds returned, even though Karin was seated in a soft chair with her feet on a cushion.
Later, after supper, they gathered in the large hall around a table, with only one lamp providing light. Fredrik, Bjerre, and Wijk refrained from talking about the hauntings or Piskator, instead engaging Karin in casual conversation and reciting poetry to help her relax. As the time approached 9:30 PM, Karin began to show signs of anxiety. She walked around the room, went to the kitchen, and returned, wrapping herself in a blanket as she was feeling cold. A few minutes before 9:30 PM, she sat down in her chair, and exactly at the requested time, faint knocking sounds could be heard.
Karin whispered, “It’s knocking,” but the others, engrossed in their conversation, did not respond immediately. They decided to turn off the light, place a pillow under Karin’s feet, and listened again. This time, the knocks were more powerful, and they were repeated twice. More knocks followed, though they were faint and difficult to count.
Karin felt that the noise would stop soon, and the séance was concluded. However, later that evening, Fredrik came to Bjerre’s room, informing him that he and Karin had heard heavy footsteps on the porch, just like in May. There was no need to check for footprints in the gravel outside, however, as fresh snow had fallen, leaving no trace of any intruder or explanation for the sounds.
November 7: The third evening arrives, and yet another hypnosis session begins, this time in darkness — because, according to Bjerre, it’s easier to establish a connection with the subconscious under such circumstances. He tries to understand what happened the previous evening and continues to persuade the — even under hypnosis — reluctant Karin to get in contact with Piskator.
— Why were you so anxious last night when we sat around the lamp?
— “Piskator” came.
— But you don’t need to be anxious about him; he disappears whenever we want him to.
— He is cruel, he torments me.
— Why did he knock more than we commanded yesterday?
— He didn’t want to leave immediately.
— What were the footsteps you heard on the veranda afterward?
— It was “Piskator.”
— Did he leave then?
— No, he came, he wanted to come inside.
— When did he leave?
— At eleven o’clock.
— May he come here one more time?
— Why should he come? He torments me.
— To show that he obeys us in everything.
Karin (and Piskator, we must assume) agrees to yet another encounter, this time at 5 PM. They break for dinner, where — as usual — the conversation doesn’t touch on the oddities in the house to make Karin feel more comfortable. At 5 PM, they are all seated around the open fire. Once again, Bjerre sits so he can study Karin, implying he will keep an eye on her to ensure she won’t get a chance to make the sounds herself. She seems worried, stressed, and even skeptical that anything will happen. “If nothing happens tonight, then it will never happen,” she mutters unenthusiastically but is encouraged by Bjerre and his colleague.
Piskator is a bit late. It’s not until 5:15 PM that the knocking is heard again. “Everyone notices them at the same time. We count two sets of four knocks, but otherwise, the sounds are so faint that they cannot be distinctly perceived. We leave Karin alone, and faint knocking can still be heard from the salon into the hall; four-beat rhythms dominate,” Bjerre writes in his notes. This continues for an hour, and then Karin states that she thinks nothing more will happen tonight. She’s calm and at peace. Everyone goes on with their own business, and Karin is doing some household chores in the kitchen.
Not long after, when Bjerre passes the dining room, he hears knocking and enters the room, where he finds Karin standing straight up under a lamp in the ceiling. Four muffled knocks can be heard, and Bjerre asks her to get up on the kitchen table and stand on a pillow. The knocking continues but grows fainter and then disappears. The rest of the evening and night are calm, without any paranormal interference.
On November 11, Bjerre and Wijk left the house, feeling they couldn’t do any more. Bjerre was convinced that what was happening was a result of Karin’s subconscious, and neither paranormal nor a hoax. It was the result of several years of fragile mental health, combined with moving to what was known as a “haunted house” (even before the family moved there, everyone knew it was haunted — strange lights inside, doors swinging open by themselves, and rumors that two people had died in there didn’t help its ghastly reputation). This environment might have affected Karin’s perception of the first sounds, and thus generated more phenomena within and through herself. However, to his surprise, Bjerre found no evidence of Karin making the sounds herself. He had more or less expected her to bow down and knock herself on the floor while under trance, but no such thing happened.
One incident that might have convinced him that something inside her was symbolically — and sometimes physically — manifesting results occurred during one of the hypnosis sessions, when Piskator claimed they would find buried human bones in the basement. They looked, dug a bit, and found parts of a skeleton beneath the soil — but it turned out to be parts of a dog skeleton. Bjerre suspected that Karin knew about the buried dog and, in her subconscious, connected these bones to human remains. While the official investigation had ended, Bjerre still considered Karin his patient. Later on, he was called in the middle of the night to a social gathering in Stockholm, where Karin had fallen into a deep trance. In 1905, Bjerre published his book Fallet Karin: en experimentell studie af de s. k. spiritistiska knackningarna, which he later republished in an expanded edition in 1947 under the title Spökerier. It is said that the Nauckhoffs moved out later that month, to get a rest from it all, but continued to stay on and off in the house until 1927.
The sources I’ve worked from, including the two editions of Bjerre’s book and Maud von Steyern’s pamphlet Fallet Karin: Personliga Minnen (published by Sällskapet för Parapsykologisk Forskning, 1973), paint a multilayered picture of a complex young woman who got married after being courted at the tender age of 13 by a 24-year-old man, lost her father at 16, married at 19, and shortly thereafter suffered her first episodes of mental health issues. Karin felt lonely, following her husband Fredrik around Sweden. It was a difficult time for her to live a normal life, especially when it came to keeping in touch with friends and family. When Fredrik introduced her to the wonderful, bizarre world of spiritualism, something clearly shifted. Maybe she found some kind of purpose and the attention she so craved. She became a well-known figure, able to bring home guests and establish friendships all over Sweden. Karin finally felt like “someone,” a woman to look up to and admire for her unusual gift.
The anxiety she suffered, which could manifest through serious attacks of fainting, spasms, and other symptoms, often disappeared when the knockings occurred or during séances. It was as if she felt at home only when she was the center of attention, and even though it could be scary at times, she took pride in her gift and liked to talk about it — something her immediate family disliked. However, she tended to ignore their advice to keep a low profile.
Piskator is an interesting character, no matter what he — or it — was. Personally, I believe Piskator represented someone Karin wanted to be: someone with power, a manifestation of her higher self — both a scary boogeyman in the dark and an enlightened, yet trickster-like being who refused to conform to the normal upbringing of an upper-class girl at the time. He refused to behave, and maybe that was the wish Karin had too — and partly succeeded with his help? She did, after all, call him “her second half,” a part of herself. It might be important to mention that Piskator (or Piscator) is a rare, but real name in Sweden and Europe. It’s Latin and means fisherman. But I’ll leave the symbolism for you to speculate. What do you think about it?
In a more cynical view, one could argue that she was a hoaxer and con-woman, and Piskator was a romantic delusion — a manifestation of someone she wanted to be instead of a lonely married woman. In short, he may have been a version of herself, where there were fewer rules and more anarchy.
It’s also clear how Fredrik transformed from the first experiments with the psychograph to later in his life. He became increasingly irritated, scared, and annoyed by his wife’s communication with the other side, sometimes even furious. At the age of 60, he was so sick and fragile that he had to retire, and the couple moved to Bromma, Stockholm in 1927. Fredrik died on September 5, 1953, at the age of 87. Could it be that Karin, through her real or imagined paranormal experiments, took control over her life and gained energy from him — as he once took energy from her? I’m just speculating, of course, but I can see a kind of non-violent revenge happening here, a liberating force for Karin and sickness and death for Fredrik. I could be wrong, as they seemed to stay together until Fredrik’s death, living in Stockholm at the time.
If it wasn’t for Maud von Steyern, a friend married to Henrik von Steyern, a second cousin of Karin, we would know very little about her later life. But as it seems, the phenomena around her continued, often with quite spectacular results. During the years after, stones were thrown into the house, seemingly without a visible perpetrator, and sometimes the stones came from the inside. On one occasion, on June 9, 1907, the family witnessed how the coffee pot, at the breakfast table, suddenly flew away from an invisible force and violently hit a wall. This was considered an example of spontaneous telekinesis, and so were the flying stones. These were later examined by Fredrik’s father, a geologist, who claimed they had a high level of metal in them, which was only common in the north of Sweden.
In 1910, Elin Segerdahl, the wife of Karin’s brother Erik, saw a candlestick fly across the room and crash into a thousand pieces when hitting a wall. Erik himself saw a silver sugar container fly through the room and land in front of him during a musical evening with the family. There are many other examples, most of them as told to Maud von Steyern.
- Karin’s grandmother’s bag disappears during breakfast but is later found dry on the street despite the rain.
- A woman’s hat, boa, and bag disappear during a visit to Karin’s brother in Lund. They are later found in the bedroom, with the one-year-old sleeping on the boa.
- During a walk in the forest with Elin Segerdahl, large stones fly overhead but do not hit them.
- Erik sees an old woman sitting in a chair, but she disappears when he enters the room.
- Keys disappear during a movie visit at Karin’s mother-in-law’s in Kalmar, but later appear with a clatter when the lights go out in the cinema.
- Elin’s new hat disappears but is later found in her mother-in-law’s linen cupboard.
- Firewood disappears from the basement of Captain Erik Asp’s home in Lund, but is later found at the basement stairs.
- A potted plant jumps from Elin’s lap, over Captain Asp and his wife in a car, and lands on the front seat between them, despite them driving fast into the wind.
- During a dinner at a couple’s country home, the man’s pistol ends up in front of Karin and him on the sandy path. The key to the box where the pistol was kept remains in his pocket.
In all fairness, most of these could probably be the result of misunderstandings and similar occurrences, even witnesses misremembering details or where they’ve put things (for example, the firewood, the pistol, clothes, etc.). As they were written many years after the fact by Maud von Steyern, she might have unknowingly added or retracted things to make the events more mysterious. I find it interesting, though, how several of these alleged incidents involved Karin’s brother Erik and his wife Elin, which makes me wonder if they might have staged some of these things themselves, in fear of being forgotten in the presence of their more famous sister and sister-in-law. It wouldn’t be the first or last time something like this happened in the peculiar world of the weird.
However, one incident is quite odd, and I’m going to quote it directly from von Steyern’s pamphlet:
“The Segerdahls were invited to a neighbor’s house (Karin was very fond of socializing with the neighbors). Upon arriving at the invitation, one of the other guests, who had just arrived before the Segerdahls, was standing on the porch. Karin was delighted to meet her and spontaneously embraced her. But then, the two women couldn’t separate from each other. When someone tried to help them break free, Elin intervened and advised against it. She had heard or read that if they were separated, ‘the other couldn’t be awakened.’ The company amused themselves by asking the embracing women to dance for them, which they did. After the two dancing women grew tired, Elin spoke to Karin’s partner, who then managed to separate them. Everything went well.”
If I’m reading this correctly, it was as if Karin went into a trance while embracing her friend (nothing more is known about this woman), and was in such a deep trance that it was impossible to separate them. I find this curious, especially when thinking of the channeling experiences she had with Piskator in her youth, where her “second half” let everyone know that he was in love with a woman, Elsa. I sense a deep frustration in Karin here, a frustration of not being able to live life to the fullest. Maybe it wasn’t even a trance, but instead a moment where two women could embrace tightly, dance among friends, hidden by Karin’s alleged trance-like state, and finally show their love for each other? Once again, this is just speculation — my own reading colored by an interest in alternative LGBTQ history. No matter what, Karin was a complex woman, a colorful character in a world of stiff upper lips and conservative mindsets. For her, it seems that her psychic abilities and gift of communication with the other side were a liberating force, because they made her whole in some way; they gave her purpose and identity.
Karin Elisabeth Charlotta Fredrika Nauckhoff passed away on May 5, 1968, at the age of 90, and with her, the secrets she kept.
Fred Andersson is a Swedish researcher and writer with over twenty years of experience in commercial television and the author of Northern Lights: High Strangeness in Sweden, out now from Beyond the Fray Publishing. Join him on Bluesky and Instagram.
References (selected)
Books and pamphlets:
* Fallet Karin: En experimentell studie af de s. k. spiritistiska knackningarna: 1905, Poul Bjerre
* Spökerier: 1947, Poul Bjerre
* Fallet Karin: Personliga Minnen: 1973, Maud von Steyern
* En Andlig Terra Incognita: Spiritismen i det sena 1800- talets Stockholm: 2024, Julia Falk
* Det ockulta sekelskiftet: Esoteriska strömningar i Hilma af Klints tid: 2020, Per Faxneld
Digital Sources:
* “Swedish Biographical Handbook”, Project Runeberg. http://runeberg.org/sbh/
* Mönsteråsloggen: Jonny, December 6, 2011. http://monsterasbloggen.blogspot.com/2011/12/egendomligheter-pa-hornsogarden.html?m=1
* Anbytarforum: Nauckhoff
https://forum.rotter.se/index.php?topic=65867.0
