Ramersdorf Church and the Bell toll for the Damned

The bells of Ramersdorf Church have been said to have called back ghosts, dancing in the witching hour.

Leaving Munich to the south, the A8 motorway passes the unassuming Ramersdorf Church. Saint Mary Ramersdorf (Sankt Maria Ramersdorf) in the district Ramersdorf-Perlach of Munich is a parish 58 m high church tower of pilgrimage.

Read More: Check out all ghostly legends from Germany

It used to be surrounded by a vast heath where not much grew and the ghosts roamed as the bells tolled from the church.

The bells of Ramersdorf Church have been said to have called back ghosts, dancing in the witching hour. — Source

The Ghosts of Ramersdorf Church

The gothic building was mentioned for the first time in a document in 1315, but a chapel must have been there since the 1000s when it was named Rumoltesdorf. Making it one of the oldest pilgrim sites in Bavaria.

The pilgrimage began with a relic, a crucifix which had been handed over to Emperor Louis IV by Antipope Nicholas V and which was later donated to the church by one of the emperor’s sons, likely Duke Otto V. The building was redesigned and extended shortly before 1400 in late gothic style. The Onion dome was constructed in 1791 after a lightning puncture.

The pilgrimage experienced a decisive upswing in 1683 when seven Munich cloth merchants promised to initiate a 30-day Marian devotion from the Assumption of Mary (August 15) to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14) if Vienna were liberated from the Turkish siege.

This gave rise to the so-called “Women’s Thirty Days” pilgrimage , during which many pilgrims still travel to churches dedicated to Mary. Subsequently, renowned artists such as Erasmus Grasser and Jan Pollack worked on the decoration of the church in Maria Ramersdorf.

But on the darkest nights, this place is said to be anything but peaceful. For in earlier times, the bells would toll at midnight, the witching hour. Then, ghostly figures would emerge from the surrounding cemeteries and gather on the heath around the church to judge the damned. The condemned were beheaded before the bell tolled again. Today, the heath has vanished, but the ominous tolling of the church tower still echoes every night at twelve. Have the judging spirits truly departed?

For an hour, the dead would gather on the heath, hold court, and behead the condemned, until the church bell struck one. The heath is now built over, and the executioners and ghosts have presumably vanished, but the ringing of the bell at the witching hour from the Ramersdorf church tower can still be heard every night.

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