Case file · Haunting
The ghost of Ceaușescu
After Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were executed on 25 December 1989 and buried hastily in Ghencea cemetery, rumours spread that the dictator's restless spirit haunted the grave and his former residence.
1989 CE · 44.41, 26.04 · status: legend
The account
Without proper Orthodox rites, the dead risk becoming strigoi in Romanian belief. One of the revolution's leaders, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, was said to have hung garlic in his apartment. The bodies were exhumed for DNA identification in 2010 and reburied.
The sceptical view
These are rumours and jokes from a traumatic transition; they illustrate the persistence of belief, not a haunting.