Screaming Castle: The terrifying house decorated with screaming heads
While there are picturesque views and amazing animals to see, one would still have to take care when going for a walk in the forests around Burk’s Falls, Ontario, Canada.
After all, you might just take one wrong step, and you’ll walk straight into an enormous stone circle that, if the moonlight shines just right, looks exactly like a screaming face. Creepy, but sometimes rocks do just look like that, that is, until you take a few steps and find another in exactly the same shape, then another, then another, until you find yourself surrounded by screaming faces carved out of rock. You could run, but then you’d risk running straight into another of these stone ghouls, and who knows what would happen then?
The truth is that what you’ve found is nothing more sinister than an artist’s house. While yes, I’m sure a few mediocre horror movies have been made out of the threats that come from an artist decorating their homes with horrifying visages, you actually don’t have anything of the sort to worry about here. Instead, all you’ve got to worry about is the art of Peter Camani, a Canadian sculptor who turned his home into a living piece of art, then called it Midlothian Castle. Edinburgh looks on enviously, I’m sure, annoyed that it didn’t get there first.
Camani called the property a castle, but the truth is that it’s little more than a barn house with ideas above its station. His humble beginnings are those of an art teacher who began this vision of a community-wide installation project in 1981. Since then, he’s been working on seeing it through to its fullest potential. Camani’s work goes far beyond just the sculptures, as well. When he bought the property back in the 1980s, the land was almost completely barren.
That’s right, even the trees and ponds decorating the land are Camani’s work too.
Why did Peter Camani make this screaming castle?
Although it started out as a barn house, since it took precedence over Camani’s entire life, the term castle is now literally true. He turned the original barn house into a real-life castle in 1999 and has even installed a two-headed dragon at the very top of it. Perched on a turret shaped like a screaming face, naturally. Facing the closest road to the castle is a line of other sculpted heads, all acting out the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” proverb, which makes for a hell of a landmark.
If you do happen across the castle in the wild, you might end up encountering a host of other people directly before the castle as well, since it’s the location of an annual music festival called Harvest Festival, showcasing dance music, DJs and other acts. Y’know, just in case the presence of all these screaming statues wasn’t Burning Man-core enough.
The question remains, however. Why all the screaming faces?
Well, Camani is nothing if not an artist. It’s a comment against the way that we humans treat the world, and the screaming agony that the world is in at the hands of humanity. A sentiment that carries a hell of a lot more weight when you remember that until Camani got his hands on this territory, it was as good as dead.
Now it’s lush, green and populated. Pretty idyllic if you can get past all of the screaming faces.