The specter of a young, beautiful woman in a black robe with long black hair, most often mentioned in Krakow ghost stories, still appears today, even though the former Wielopolski Palace has been converted into a municipal office for over a hundred years.
There is a story connected with the Black Lady recorded by Bishop Łętowski of Kraków, who supposedly heard it during confession from a hundred-year-old priest on his deathbed.
As a vicar in his first year after ordination, the priest witnessed a strange and terrifying incident. One stormy night, a man in a hooded cloak knocked on the vicar's window and asked him to accompany him to his dying son. The priest and the sexton boarded a carriage, the windows of which were tightly curtained. They rode for a long time, turning into various streets, and when the horses stopped, they were blindfolded. Upon arrival, the blindfolds were removed, and the priest saw that they were in a richly decorated hall. Behind a table covered with black cloth sat an elderly man wearing a mask, and next to him a young, tearful girl in a black dress. The man ordered the terrified girl to confess and prepare her for death. When the priest protested, the man threatened him with beheading and pointed to a hidden door in the wall, where an executioner in a red cloak and hood stood.
The terrified priest confessed the young lady and gave her Communion, only to have the executioner behead her. The priest and the priest were close to fainting, so they were given wine to console themselves. However, the priest's hands were shaking so much that he spilled the wine, while the sacristan drank his glass dry. They were blindfolded again and taken to the vicar's office. The sacristan died in agony that very night, and the priest fell gravely ill "because the wine was poisoned."
Years later, when he was summoned to the Wielopolski Palace to perform his final service, he recognized the room where the execution took place. This story is repeated, almost unchanged, in an anonymous print entitled "Panowie Wielopolscy" (Mr. Wielopolscy) in Kraków from the early nineteenth century, explaining that the unfortunate maiden met such a terrible fate because she had been infatuated with a valet.
From then on, a curse was said to have fallen upon the Wielopolski family, and a Black Lady appeared in the Palace. In the interwar years, when the walls of the former palace were being excavated, a niche was discovered in one of the rooms on the first floor, where the skeleton of a young woman, dressed in the remains of a black velvet dress, was found.
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