Runólfur Runólfsson: The Ghost Who Returned for His Missing Leg

In the autumn of 1937, an unknown presence began interrupting séances held in Reykjavík by the Icelandic trance medium Hafsteinn Björnsson. The communicator did not arrive with a message of consolation, nor did he attempt to prove his identity by describing family memories. He forced his way into the sittings with a single disturbing demand.

“I am looking for my leg. I want to have my leg.”

When the sitters asked where the missing limb could be found, he answered that it was in the sea.

For more than a year, the entity returned without revealing who he was. He sometimes called himself Jón Jónsson or Maður Mannsson, names that carried little more meaning than “John Smith” or “Everyman”. When challenged about his refusal to identify himself, he responded with crude indifference.

“What the hell does it matter to you what my name is?”

The stranger was impatient and aggressive. He appeared to push other communicators aside so that he could speak through the medium. He demanded snuff and caused Björnsson to imitate the motions of taking it, even though the medium did not normally use tobacco in that form. He wanted alcohol poured for him during the sittings. He also expected coffee to be waiting after the séance.

Nothing about the communicator suggested an enlightened spirit who had peacefully entered another world. He behaved like a coarse, stubborn man who remained attached to his old appetites. More disturbingly, he seemed obsessed with the idea that part of his body was still missing.

The case would eventually become one of Iceland’s most famous examples of a so-called drop-in communicator. This term is used in psychical research for an apparently deceased personality who enters a séance without being invited and without being known to the sitters. Unlike many séance communicators, the stranger claimed no family relationship with anyone present.

He had come for his bone.

The Arrival of Lúðvík Guðmundsson

The mystery changed at the beginning of 1939, when a fish merchant named Lúðvík Guðmundsson attended one of Björnsson’s séances.

Lúðvík lived in Reykjavík, but he also owned property in the coastal village of Sandgerði. The unknown communicator reacted immediately to his presence. He declared that Lúðvík knew something about the missing leg and claimed that it was hidden inside his house.

Lúðvík was completely perplexed. He knew of no human bone concealed within the building and could offer no explanation for the accusation.

The sitters refused to continue helping the communicator unless he revealed his identity. The entity reacted angrily and disappeared for several weeks. When he returned, he was finally prepared to tell them his name.

He called himself Runólfur Runólfsson.

He was also known as Runki.

The Death of Runki

According to the personality speaking through Björnsson, Runólfur had lived near Sandgerði during the nineteenth century. He claimed that he had died in October 1879 while returning home from Keflavík.

Runki said he had been drinking during a violent storm. After leaving the home of an acquaintance, he attempted to continue his journey alone. He reached the shore near Flankastaðir, where he sat beneath a rock and drank again from the bottle he carried.

He fell asleep before the tide came in.

The sea swept him away.

His body did not return immediately. Runki claimed that his remains washed ashore several months later, after animals and birds had torn at the corpse. What remained of him was buried in consecrated ground at Útskálar, but one of his thigh bones was missing.

The communicator insisted that the bone had not disappeared forever. It had eventually reached Sandgerði and had somehow been placed inside the house now owned by Lúðvík.

Runki wanted it recovered.

The Records at Útskálar

A search of historical records revealed that a man named Runólfur Runólfsson had indeed lived at Klappakot near Sandgerði.

The parish register recorded his disappearance during a severe storm on 16 October 1879. He had been travelling home from Keflavík when he was apparently swept towards the shore and lost to the sea.

His remains were recovered later and buried at Útskálar on 8 January 1880.

Another historical account stated that Runólfur had been intoxicated and was carrying alcohol when he disappeared. It also described the recovered corpse as badly dismembered.

The documents did not verify every detail communicated during the séance. They did not state that Runki had fallen asleep beneath a rock. They did not confirm that birds or land animals had damaged his body. Most importantly, they did not record that a femur had been missing at the time of burial.

Even so, the discovery of a genuine Runólfur Runólfsson whose death closely resembled the communicator’s story transformed the case. The obscene stranger interrupting Björnsson’s séances now appeared to possess the identity of a real man who had died almost sixty years earlier.

The question was no longer merely whether Runki had existed.

The question was whether his missing bone could actually be found.

Human Remains Inside the House

Lúðvík began asking older residents of Sandgerði whether they remembered a human leg bone.

Some villagers recalled that an unidentified femur had circulated through the area during the early twentieth century. The bone was believed to have come from the shore, although no one had connected it with Runólfur Runólfsson.

A carpenter who had worked on Lúðvík’s house was said to have placed the bone between two walls. He may have believed that concealing it inside the building was more respectful than throwing it away. Because no one knew whose bone it was, arranging a formal burial had apparently seemed impossible.

The first search of the walls revealed nothing. Further enquiries eventually identified another room in which the carpenter may have been working. When part of the wall was opened in 1940, a human thigh bone was discovered inside.

Runki’s impossible demand had apparently led the sitters to a real human femur.

The bone was extraordinarily long. This detail seemed to support the communicator’s description of himself as a tall man. Members of Runólfur’s family later recalled that he had indeed been unusually tall.

No scientific examination proved that the femur belonged to him. The bone could not be compared with the rest of Runólfur’s skeleton because the precise position of his grave had been lost within the crowded churchyard at Útskálar.

The identity of the bone therefore remained uncertain.

Yet the sequence of events was difficult to ignore. The communicator had demanded a leg before Lúðvík joined the circle. He had then connected Lúðvík with the missing remains and claimed that the bone was inside his house.

A femur was eventually found between the walls.

The Coffin for a Single Bone

Lúðvík took possession of the recovered femur and treated it with unusual care. He commissioned a small coffin and kept the bone inside it for approximately one year.

A proper religious burial was eventually arranged at Útskálar, where the remains of Runólfur Runólfsson had been interred decades earlier. A clergyman conducted the service and delivered a funeral address. The bone was placed in consecrated earth, allowing the unidentified fragment of a human body to receive the dignity it had previously been denied.

A reception followed the burial.

Hafsteinn Björnsson had not attended the service or the gathering afterwards. At a later séance, however, Runki allegedly declared that he had been present. He expressed gratitude for what had been done and described events surrounding the burial. He even spoke about the cakes served during the reception.

The angry dead man had finally received his leg.

Why Did the Ghost Need His Bone?

The Runki case raises a disturbing question about the relationship between the dead and their physical remains.

Many religious traditions teach that the soul leaves the body at death. Yet ghost lore repeatedly suggests that the dead can remain attached to bones, graves and places of burial. A corpse that has been divided may produce a spirit that cannot rest until its scattered remains have been reunited.

Runki did not initially seem concerned with spiritual salvation. He wanted something physical. He appeared obsessed with the missing fragment of his corpse, even though almost sixty years had passed since his death.

His persistence suggests that the bone represented more than abandoned matter. It may have remained part of his identity. Until it was buried with respect, something within him could not release its connection to the mortal world.

The case resembles older traditions in which a restless ghost reveals the location of concealed remains. The living must discover the body, acknowledge the dead and complete the burial before the haunting can end.

Runki’s story is stranger because the missing object was not an entire corpse. Almost all of his remains had already received a Christian burial. Only one bone had been excluded.

For the spirit, that single omission was apparently enough.

From Intruder to Spirit Control

Runki did not vanish after the femur was buried.

Instead, his behaviour gradually changed.

The communicator who had once forced other spirits aside began helping them reach the medium. His rough personality remained recognisable, but he became less hostile. He eventually developed into one of Hafsteinn Björnsson’s principal spirit controls.

Within Spiritualism, a control is a recurring discarnate personality believed to supervise the mediumistic process. The control may regulate who is permitted to communicate and may help confused spirits express themselves through the medium.

Runki’s transformation is among the most remarkable elements of the case. He entered the séances as a drunken and belligerent ghost who demanded the return of a bone. After that bone received burial, he assumed the role of guardian and intermediary.

Perhaps the burial freed him from an obsession that had trapped him near the physical world. Perhaps the respect shown to his remains changed his relationship with the living. It is also possible that the rough communicator simply discovered a new purpose through the séance circle.

He remained associated with Björnsson’s mediumship for decades.

The Later Investigation

The case was investigated in detail by Icelandic psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson and psychiatrist Ian Stevenson. Their findings were published in 1975 in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

They examined parish documents and other historical material connected with Runólfur’s death. They also interviewed surviving séance participants and residents of Sandgerði who remembered the discovery of the femur.

Their investigation confirmed that Runólfur Runólfsson had existed and had died under circumstances resembling those described by the communicator. It also supported the claim that a human femur had been found inside Lúðvík’s house.

The investigators nevertheless identified serious limitations.

No verbatim records of the original séances survived. Accounts of the communications depended partly upon notes that were later lost and partly upon memories recorded many years after the events. Björnsson also had access to archives after Runki revealed his identity, although this occurred after the essential claims had already been made.

The bone itself was never scientifically identified. There was no surviving evidence that could prove it had formed part of Runólfur’s body.

Haraldsson and Stevenson therefore could not present the case as conclusive proof of survival after death. They considered whether Björnsson might have acquired the information through ordinary means. They also examined the possibility that he had gathered it through some form of extrasensory perception without communicating with a deceased personality.

Neither explanation resolved every aspect of the case.

No single document contained the entire story communicated during the séances. The people who remembered the bone had not connected it with Runki. The historical records established his death but did not mention a missing femur.

The information appeared to be scattered among forgotten documents, local memories and a bone concealed inside a wall.

Something had drawn those fragments together.

A Ghost with a Purpose

Many alleged spirits speak vaguely about love, peace or the continuation of consciousness. Runki did not.

He arrived with a demand that could be tested.

He wanted his leg.

The communicator named the person connected with its location. He identified the house in which it was hidden. A search eventually revealed a human femur inside that building.

This physical element gives the Runólfur Runólfsson case its enduring power. It does not depend entirely upon unverifiable messages from another world. The séances initiated a search that ended with the discovery of human remains.

Sceptics may argue that the medium had somehow learned the local story and transformed it into a dramatic spirit personality. Believers may conclude that Runki returned because he could not rest while part of his corpse remained unburied.

A third possibility is even more unsettling. Hafsteinn Björnsson may have reached information through an unknown psychic process that drew together facts no living person consciously possessed.

Whatever the explanation, the presence calling itself Runki behaved as though death had not ended his attachment to his body.

He remembered the storm.

He remembered the sea.

He remembered that something had been left behind.

For decades, his femur remained sealed inside the wall of a house while the rest of his body lay beneath consecrated ground. Then an aggressive stranger entered a Reykjavík séance and began demanding that the living make him whole.

The bone was found.

The burial was completed.

The ghost remained.

Stop Reading About the Dead and Learn to Confront Them

Most people will read the story of Runki, feel a moment of unease and then return to the comforting pretence that death ends every mystery. They will ignore the bone in the wall because accepting its implications would force them to question everything they have been taught.

Do not remain one of those frightened spectators. Enter the Occult World Mystery School and study spirit communication, mediumship and the mysteries of survival after death without the timid censorship of conventional belief. There are thousands of spirits, gods, demons, magical systems, grimoires and forgotten traditions waiting beyond it. Stop collecting shallow ghost stories from the edge of the darkness. Cross the threshold, seize the forbidden knowledge and join the Occult World Mystery School now.