Ghosts of the New Moon: The White Death and the Restless Shadows of Basel

Roaming around Basel a ghost called Weisse Tod, or The White Death was said to terrorize the neighborhood around the Baroque Markgräflerhof building. Who was this terrifying ghost peering into people’s windows with its empty and dark eye sockets?

In the winding medieval streets of old Basel, where the shadows gather thickly beneath the crooked eaves of centuries-old houses, there was once a peculiar belief. It was said that the new moon, with its empty black sky, was a time when the veil between the worlds thinned, and the city’s most restless dead rose to walk among the living.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

The citizens of Basel learned to draw their shutters tight on those nights, for the new moon brought not peace, but a procession of specters. Foremost among these was the terrifying figure known simply as the Weisse Tod, or “The White Death.”

Roaming around Basel a ghost called Weisse Tod, or The White Death was said to terrorize the neighborhood around the Baroque Markgräflerhof building. Who was this terrifying ghost peering into people's windows with its empty and dark eye sockets? — *Markgräflerhof Palace: An engraving of the Markgräflerhof Palace from 1845.*

The White Death of the Markgräflerhof

At the Markgräflerhof, a grand residence facing the Rhine, locals swore that with every new moon, this ghastly apparition called Weisse Tod would rise from a hole in the ground near the water’s edge — a ragged, deathly pale form with empty, dark eye sockets that seemed to drink in the night itself.

The Markgräflerhof was built between 1698 and 1705 by the Margrave Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach and is the oldest Baroque palace in the country. The Markgräflerhof, purchased by the city in 1808, with its associated gardens and outbuildings, together with the adjacent area of the former Preachers’ Monastery and the University’s Botanical Garden, formed the basis for the new building of the Basel Citizens’ Hospital. Today it is used as an office building by the university.

The White Death was relentless in its habits. It would appear at the windows of the surrounding houses on Hebelstrasse, gazing in silently, its hollow eyes fixed on the inhabitants within. Those who met its gaze were believed to fall gravely ill soon after — as though death itself had marked them.

Who Was the Ghost Behind the White Death?

But what was the lore behind the legend? Although the story of The White Death was widely told, there was little details and information as to who actually was haunting the place. Was the legend from after it turned into a hospital perhaps? Some sorry patient or doctor who perished? There are also some connecting the haunting to its time as an insane asylum.

Was it from the time before the Markgräflerhof was even built? As it turns out, this isn’t the only neighborhood ghost said to have been haunting Basel. In Kleinbasel, the working class district, they also had The Gray One lingering in the streets of the neighborhood.

Now, what about the name, the White Death? Around Europe, this name has often been given to Tuberculosis and its victims were often said to have been taken by The White Death. As if for years there was also an epidemic, could the fear of the disease have created the fear of a ghost personification of the illness close to the hospital?

The Shadowed Man at the St. Urban Fountain

The ghost of The White Death is however not the only ghostly thing haunting the area. Right around the corner, along Blumenrain at the Rheintürlein, another ghost made his mournful appearance around the new moons.

At the old St. Urban fountain, near the city gate, townsfolk claimed a man in dark, ancient garb would appear without warning. He would linger by the water’s edge, staring silently into the depths of the basin, as though seeking some long-lost reflection.

His face was said to be obscured, either by shadow or some unnameable disfigurement, and his presence would chill the very air around him. Many whispered that he was a soul lost to the river — a suicide perhaps, or a murdered man whose body had been hidden in the water.

The city church bells would toll an extra hour before midnight on those nights, a final effort to ward off the restless souls. And though the Marktgräflerhof and the old fountain have long since been changed or lost to modernity, some say the air along the Rhine still feels heavy on moonless nights, and dark shapes move where no one ought to be.

In Basel, it seems, the new moon still belongs to the dead.

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