Lammendam | Carach Angren | Concept Explained
Here is my interpretation of the story behind Carach Angren’s 2008 album, Lammendam.
** What follows is my personal interpretation of the story based on the lyrics.
The concept for this story was inspired by a real Dutch myth about the woman in white who haunts a ruined castle and the surrounding forest in the village of Schinveld located in the Dutch providence of Limburg.
Track 1) “Het spook van de Leiffartshof”
Translates to “The ghost of Leiffartshof.” This is an instrumental track to set the scene and mood.
Track 2) “A Strange Presence Near the Woods”
This track opens the story with a man running through the woods of Schinveld. As he flees from the ghost following him, he gets lost and stumbles upon the remains of a burned-out castle. He seeks refuge in the castle as the sun sets, and the full moon rises. Before he knows who has happened, he is dead—his body floating in what remains of the cattle moat, his soul trapped there forever.
Track 3) “Haunting Echoes from the Seventeenth Century”
Here we go back to the 17th century to see why the land is haunted. We learn of a white ghost who appears in the town on Schinveld on nights when the moon is full. The ghost is a woman who once lived in the castle there. She had two lovers—one from Högenbusch named Ian Mansfred, another from Heeringhof whose name we don’t know. The woman carried on her affairs until the day she was caught. Though it’s not mentioned in this album, we come to know through the second installment of the story that the woman’s name is Kariba and she is rumored to be a witch.
Track 4) “Phobic Shadows and Moonlit Meadows”
The next scene we find the woman’s castle burning and her tortured screams are heard from the village. We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we come to understand her two lovers were thrown into a rage when then found out about each other and burned her alive.
Track 5) “Hexed Melting Flesh”
On the night the woman perished, the full moon cast a yellowish light and wind and rain fell with the sound of weeping and crying. And here we get a glimpse of her powers as a witch.
Track 6) “The Carriage Wheel Murder”
The next morning one of her lovers was found dead. His body cut up and broken in a horrendous way. The Second lover—Ian—knows it was the ghost of his mistress that murdered him. He is now in fear of her wrath. He rides his carriage through the woods when her ghost appears. She shoved his head between the spokes of the carriage wheels and cracked his head open, yet he survived and was able to escape with his life.
Track 7) “Corpse in a Nebulous Creek”
We jump to one year later. Ian is sicked with fear as the anniversary of his mistress approaches. We learn her body was never recovered from the castle and she therefor had no proper burial. Ian has fallen into depression and then into psychosis. He Keeps seeing her everywhere, her corpse dressed in white just like on the night of her death. He is considering suicide. One night he goes out riding, and she finds him. She pushes him off his horse and he falls and breaks his neck. Now he’s dead!
Track 8) “Invisible Psychic Entity”
Instrumental track about ghostly power.
Track 9) “Heretic Poltergeist Phenomena”
This song is an ode to all the ghosts out there and how they refuse—for one reason or another—to pass on to the other side.
Track 10) “La Malédiction de la Dame Blanche”
(The Curse of the White Lady) Dives into the folklore that inspired this concept. The narrator urges people to be in bed before the moon lights the night as that is when the forest comes alive. French farmers who fled to the Netherlands during the Frech Revolution named the ghost “La Madame Blanche” after peasants began disappearing if they stayed out working the fields too late. The Dutch church then transformed the French name of the ghost to “De Lammendam” and the cursed town became known for its haunted woods and the ghost of the lady in white.
And that’s where we leave off with this album. The story picks up in their upcoming EP Cult of Kariba. I’ll be covering that story here in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
Now on to the bonus tracks.
Track 11) “There Was No Light” (Bonus track)
The lyrics are “And when she finally reached heaven, there was no light” followed by screams and what sounds like a body being pulverized. If we’re talking about Kariba, or any ghost for that matter this can be interpreted a number of ways. One: that heaven rejected her for her sins. Two: she never reached heaven, only thought she did but her despair dragged her soul back to earth. Three: she actually arrived at Hell and/or purgatory. Or four: there is no heaven or afterlife to go to.
This is where the story of the white lady ends, and we pick up with another ghost. Though is you ask me, this track could be seen as the white lady going into the void and emerging as another ghost or becoming one with all the lost spirits trapped within the veil. The crunch at the end of the song makes it sound like she is dying again, maybe trapped in a cycle of death. It also reminds me of a fall from heaven having been rejected.
Track 12) “After Death Premises” (Bonus Track)
This track takes us to the year 1835. This song tells the true story of Colonel Loftus who reported sighting of the “Brown Lady” around Christmas time in 1835. Colonel Loftus was staying in “Townshend’s hall” which is known as Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. After dark the Colonel began seeing glimpses of apparitions, hearing voices, and seeing things moving in the house. He then comes face to face with the ghost of a woman whose eyes are only empty sockets.
In the real story of the “Brown Lady” the ghost is supposedly Dorothy Walpole who lived in the estate until her death. When her husband found out she had an affair with another man, he reportedly locked her in her rooms and didn’t let her leave even to see her children.
And I think that’s the connection between the two ghosts: women who have committed adultery and where then punished by their husband/lovers. This Brown Lady can be seen as an alternate version of the white lady.
Track 13) “Yonder Realm Photography”
Continuing with the Brown Lady ghost story we now go to modern times. This is based on true accounts of ghost sightings of the Brown Lady at Raynham Hall where photographers from Country Life magazine captured an image of the ghost residing in the hall. The song follows the two photographers as they arrive at “the accursed hall” and feel a malevolent presence. They snap a picture of the stairs and there we have one of the most famous ghost photos.
