Germany is perhaps the most mystical country in the world. There even fairy tales are permeated with mysticism. Suffice it to recall the fabulous thrillers by the Brothers Grimm, Ernst Hoffmann and Wilhelm Hauff. Those in power were also sensitive to mysticism. German kings welcomed alchemists and spiritualists, and the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler - psychics.
In Germany, on Mount Brocken, there is a kind of capital of European witches. Every year on Walpurgis Night on this mountain there is a gathering on the brooms of evil spirits, which Satan himself honors.
Poisoner in white
In addition to witches and demons, Germany is full of all kinds of evil spirits. Somewhere underground, dwarfs live, near a cliff on the banks of the Rhine, the mermaid Lorelei swims. And in the federal state of Hesse there is a castle in which the alchemist Johann Dippel once created the monster of Frankenstein.
Neighbors considered Dippel a sorcerer who made a pact with the devil. And not without reason. It is said that his spirit to this day rumbles with bones in the attic of the castle, demanding access to his laboratory.
The name of the unique mountain lake Mummelsee in translation means "Lake of ghosts". And on Mount Brokken, favored by witches for the Sabbath, the largest ghost in the world lives.
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Ghosts are an indispensable feature of all old German castles. And, as it happens all over the world, often the precondition for the appearance of a ghost is some kind of cruel crime.
Germany's most famous ghost is the Woman in White, the disembodied spirit of Countess Agnes of Orlamünde, who was immured alive in a wall for poisoning her own children. It is believed that ghosts are tied to one place. In this respect, the Woman in White is an exception.
The ghost of Countess Agnes wanders the ancient castles in Bohemia. Despite the fact that the sadistic poisoner was put to a cruel death, her spirit does not take revenge on the living, but politely bows to the people she meets. It is believed that by her appearance she notifies them of impending troubles or the sudden death of one of the family members.
According to legend, this belief played a cruel joke with the first king of Prussia. His third wife, Sophia Louise of Mecklenburg-Schwerinsky, was famous throughout Europe for her beauty, but she was mentally ill, while she preferred white muslin dresses to all outfits.
Allegedly, just in such a dress, she once ran away from the nurses and through the glass door, having cut herself badly, broke into the king's chambers. Frederick, seeing in front of him a woman in a white dress, covered with blood, sleepily decided that it was the ghost of Countess Agnes who had come to him, and her very appearance was a sign of his imminent death. Under the influence of this illusion, the king really fell ill and soon died.
Mount Brocken
Nightmares of Night Prussia
According to another version, the creators of this legend confused the King of Prussia Frederick I with the first Duke of Prussia Albrecht, Margrave von Brandenburg-Ansbach. Moreover, they both came from the Hohenzollern dynasty.
Albrecht's second wife, Anna Maria, was clearly not entirely on friendly terms with her head and, according to contemporaries, was prone to hysterical fits. She really could bear the glass door with her own body, and she gave birth to a feeble-minded heir to the duke.
And Albrecht himself, in his old age, surrounded himself with magicians and spellcasters. He even made one of the magicians and sorcerers, Paul Skalich, his chief adviser and granted him the Kreuzburg castle. They say that Skalikh, with his occult experiments, populated the area with many ghosts and other evil spirits.
There is also a legend about this, which says: “… Every new moon at midnight, a procession of four carts, drawn by four horses, passed along the road leading to the castle. In two were twelve nuns in an orderly dress, with crosses and rosary in their hands, but no heads. They had white lambs as coachmen.
Two carts with twelve headless knights followed. Instead of coachmen, there were black goats. The procession entered the city, circled the square three times and disappeared at the gates of the town hall. Then from there came bursts of laughter, loud music and shrill female singing. Then the nuns and knights went to the square again, but this time in the reverse order.
On the huge, armored shoulders of the knights rested female heads, and the nuns wore helmets with closed visors. Having circled the square three times, they left along the Zamkovaya road.
This happened from century to century, regularly, until the feast of Trinity in 1818, when both the town hall and almost all the houses in the city square were destroyed by fire. On the next new moon, the knights and nuns reappeared, but, circling around the city and not finding shelter, they left it. And they never came back …"
Remains of Kreuzburg Castle
Paul Skalich, either by witchcraft or by hypnosis, gained a huge influence over the duke and inspired him that he was surrounded by ghosts. During the ritual of summoning spirits, Albrecht suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and paralysis. And it may well be that this was a consequence of the ghost of the Woman in white that appeared to him.
Pray for me
The ghostly lady, dressed in a white dress, visited other German rulers, acting at the same time as a harbinger of death. It is said that on August 4, 1786, the Prussian king Frederick the Great and his servant watched as she paraded by the fireplace.
The king died the next day. In 1806, the Lady in White foreshadowed the death of the Prussian prince Ludwig in a battle with the French. In 1867, she was seen at Schönbrunn Castle, the residence of the Habsburgs, before the tragic death of Archduke Maximilian.
And in 1898 she appeared shortly before the assassination of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. In June 1914, the White Lady visited the Imperial Palace in Berlin. And then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand took place and world massacre began.
Another legendary Germanic ghost is the spirit of a Catholic priest from Vimenthal named Senton. Back in the 15th century, this minister of the church ended up in the prison of the city of Weinsberg for fraudulently with an inheritance, which he defrauded from his father's brothers.
There, in prison, Senton died, not having time to either receive forgiveness from his relatives, or to atone for his guilt with punishment. And apparently it tormented him very much. Therefore, the priest's spirit wandered restlessly through the prison labyrinths for many years.
In 1835, Senton's ghost thought that he had found a person who could understand him, and every night he began to appear in the cell of the 39-year-old widow Elizabeth Eslinger, accused of fraud. Exhausted by his visits, the woman complained to the prison doctor, saying that the ghost had already bothered her with requests to pray for the salvation of poor Senton's soul.
The matter reached the city magistrate, who created a commission of 8 people with instructions to investigate what was happening. The researcher of anomalous phenomena Justinus Kerner was appointed its head.
It took the commission 11 weeks to contact the ghost. Finally, Kerner succeeded when he voluntarily imprisoned himself in prison. But the ghost needed prayer, not research, it got angry and tried to intimidate the members of the commission.
His appearance began to be accompanied by a suffocating cadaverous smell. The spirit of Senton began to grab people, which caused painful reddening, as if from burns, at the places of touch. And the dead priest began to beat on the walls of the prison in despair. One of the members of the commission, Dr. Zicherer, hung in the minutes: "The shaking of the whole building was such that it seemed that the ceiling beams were about to collapse on us."
Finally, the raging ghost was quieted by Elizabeth Eslinger, who was released in 1836. For courage, she took several friends with her, went to the priest's grave in the city of Vimenthal and said a funeral prayer over her.
After that, the ghost of Senton appeared in the air, who thanked the widow and held out his palm to her for a handshake. Dazed with fear, Eslinger held out hers in response. And she immediately regretted it, because she had the feeling that she had taken up a red-hot poker.
For a long time later, Elizabeth had to treat the burn on her arm. But the ghost of the priest has not bothered anyone since.
Ivan SMISLOV
