Noisy Castle, also known as Miranda Castle (French: Château Miranda), is a neo-Gothic manor house in the municipality of Houyet, Belgium. The building has been in a state of abandonment since 1991, but is now a tourist destination and filming location.
The castle was built in 1866 for Count de Liedekerke Beaufort. Château de Noisy remained the property of the descendants of the Liedekerke-Beaufort family until World War II when it was occupied by German troops for the duration of the conflict. In 1958 it became the shelter for the children and wives of the employees of the SNCB (National Company of Belgian Railways) and later transformed into an orphanage until 1980.
Since 1991 the castle has been uninhabited and left to decay, amplified by a fire in 1995 (suspected to be of an arsonist nature) that destroyed much of the wooden interior, and a storm in 2006 that caused the roof to collapse, collapsing and continuous damage from flooding. This place, however, despite its ancient beauty, is remembered for some sinister episodes that occurred inside during the years in which it was used as an orphanage.
The peculiarity of this and many other orphanages of the past was the total disregard of the authorities and the population for the fate of children, who often suffered punishments at the limit of human.
The adverse conditions to which the children who lived there were subjected and the atrocities of which the staff were suspected led to many mysterious deaths of young orphans. By many it is meant that while other orphanages in the region on average announced the death of 1 or 2 children a year, here 10 to 15 orphans died. There were many mysterious deaths that no one investigated thoroughly and labeled as "natural".
It is said that the many souls of the deceased children still inhabit Château Miranda and that their wails accompany the chilly nights of the castle.Following the disastrous fire that almost completely destroyed it on August 3, 2017, there were numerous protests from the local population, demands and hypotheses for its reuse. However, the owner, who had already obtained permission to demolish it from the municipality of Houyet, brought in a specialist company on the following 15 November, which began the demolition and disposal of the rubble that lasted about a week[.
