Haunted Großerlach

A series of events that occurred in 1916 on a farm in Großerlach ( Kingdom of Württemberg ) is referred to as the Spook of Großerlach . Despite the First World War, the case attracted much more attention in the German Reich . In several magazine and newspaper publications, arguments were made for and against the authenticity of the phenomena. The farm was abandoned by the residents shortly after the events. It was later demolished in order to widen the passage. Today there is a drugstore in its place. The reporting made the case significant for parapsychology and the occupation with occultism in the Wilhelminian and Weimar periods. It is discussed in several works on parapsychology as a haunted and poltergeist phenomenon.

course

The Spuk von Großerlach describes several events on the farm of the widow Kleinknecht and her family in Grosserlach in April and May 1916, the initially unexplained but attested events in the cattle shed and later in the family's apartment (dancing logs, unexplained excitement of the animals, reports apparitions, breaking furniture, etc.). Several neighbors and local officials testified to the inexplicable events. Reports in newspapers and magazines led to several investigations and collections of testimony, whereby a controversy arose as to whether it was a possible fraud by the widow, a prank on her nephew, or parapsychic phenomena or mass hysteria caused by this. The attempts to find psychological and parapsychological interpretations for the processes are characteristic. In July 1916, three members of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Tübingen , Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich , Gustaf Deuchler and Theodor Haering, carried out an inspection of the scene and a witness questioning . At this point the family had left the house. The scientists saw no clear evidence of supernatural processes. Nevertheless, there was no clear alternative explanation for the processes, so that it was included in collective and overview presentations on parapsychic phenomena.

Web links

• Description of the events on the Grosserlach homepage
• Stuttgart news
• all mystery
• Description by J. Illig, printed in psychological studies in two parts with comments on the subsequent reporting part 1 , part 2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Description of the events on the Grosserlach homepage
2. ^ Reprint of the report from Der Hohenstaufen by Johannes Illig
3. ↑ Stuttgarter Nachrichten , [1] .

literature

• Johannes Illig : Der Spuk in Grosserlach , Göppingen 1916 (first in "Der Hohenstaufen", then self-published, finally reprinted in Psychological Studies )
• Albert von Schrenck-Notzing : Basics of Parapsychology , Hamburg 2013
• Concise dictionary of German superstition Volume 8, entry "Spuk". Berlin: de Gruyter 1936
• Alois Glatterer Scientific occultism and its relationship to philosophy , Innsbruck 1927
• Bruno Grabinski : Spooky Apparitions , 1922
• C. Lecouteux: The Secret History of Poltergeists and Haunted Houses: From Pagan Folklore , 2012

Coordinates: 49 ° 3 ′ 10.7 ″  N , 9 ° 30 ′ 52.3 ″  E