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The Haunted Legends of Stenberg Gård, Hoff Church and Toten Legends

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Deep in the farmland of Norway, Toten has a lot of ghost stories lingering on the old farms and buildings. Who were the priests said to haunt the Hoff Church and rectory, and who are the ghosts said to linger at the old Stenberg Manor?

The district of Toten is rich in farmland landlocked east in Norway with old churches, and quiet waterways, and a few ghost stories lurking beneath its peaceful surface that have unsettled locals for generations. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Norway

Among these tales are three locations bound together by whispers of the supernatural: Stenberg gård, the brook at Bøverbru, and Hoff Church. Each is said to be touched by a presence that refuses to fade.

Haunted Toten: Toten was part of a small kingdom in the early Viking Age and Halvdan Kvitbein was the most famous king who ruled there. The origin of the name is linked to the Old Norse Þótn , which supposedly means “something one likes”.Toten has traditionally been one of Norway’s largest agricultural areas, and the industrial park at Raufoss is one of the largest industrial centers in the inland.

The Ghost of Stenberg Gård

Stenberg (or Steinberg) is a large open-air museum that shows the cultural landscape, building practices and social conditions in Toten in the 19th century. The museum is built around the county manor Stenberg.

County magistrate Lauritz Weidemann (1775-1856) developed Steinberg into a county magistrate’s residence. He took over the farm in 1802 and laid out today’s yard and an almost 30-acre park in the English landscape style. Weidemann was also known as one of the men at Eidsvoll when Norway received its constitution in 1814.

Stenberg Manor, or Gård (farm) is widely believed to be home to Toten’s most famous ghost. The historic farm, known for its cultural significance and well preserved buildings, has long been surrounded by rumors of unexplained activity. people claim to this day that they have experienced a number of unpleasant incidents on the farm. It has been said that the Weidemann family is going again.

Visitors and staff alike have reported strange sounds after dark, shifting shadows in empty rooms, and the unsettling feeling of being observed. Though the identity of the spirit is never clearly agreed upon, local lore insists that something still walks the halls of the old estate, guarding its past or reliving a tragedy long forgotten.

Blind Ola of Bøverbru

Near the brook at Bøverbru, another chilling legend is often told. According to reports shared in Oppland Arbeiderblad, a blind man known as Blind Ola is said to have drowned in the water long ago. 

Since then, swimmers and passersby have described eerie experiences near the stream. Some claim to feel unseen hands pulling at them beneath the surface, while others speak of sudden cold currents and strange sounds rising from the water. The story has made the area a place of caution, especially after dusk.

Whispers Around Hoff Church

Hoff Church in Lena, east Toten is also the subject of debate among those who believe the past never truly rests. Parishioners and visitors have spoken of unexplained noises, shadowy figures, and an uneasy atmosphere within the church grounds. For believers, these phenomena are signs that the dead still linger close to the sacred site, bound by unfinished business or ancient traditions.

In 2009, the legends stirred when the church bells started ringing and the police were called. The priest stopped the bells, but they found no sign that anyone had been there. The bells are controlled by a remote, and when they checked it out, there was no sign of technical faults, although they could never completely rule out that someone had put on an elaborate prank. 

Haunted Church: Hoff church at Østre Toten by Lena, Oppland, Norway. Hoff kirke ved Lena på Østre Toten. //Source: Øyvind Holmstad

But who is haunting the church? Could it have something to do with the old ghost story? At a Christmas party at the widow Bolette Cathrine in Kristiania (Oslo) in the late 1870s in the presence of several witnesses. 

The event is said to have taken place at Hoff rectory “some time ago”. Author and the storyteller, Marie Wexel came to Hoff rectory one Christmas Eve with a lady from Kristiania. At the dinner table, the priest said a few words about a haunted room on the second floor, but the priest reproached her for mentioning it; it could only frighten the guests unnecessarily. The two ladies got up early to go to bed. 

Marie sat down in the armchair instead to read before going to bed as her companion had done. When she had finished, she put the book in her lap to think about what she had read. “As she looked up, she caught sight of a priest in old-fashioned vestments standing just in front of her with a pleading look and pointing in the direction of the cake oven. Then the vision immediately disappeared. She wiped her eyes and thought it was a figment of her imagination, perhaps brought on by what the priest had said. She went to bed, however; but as she extinguished the last candle she saw the same figure standing before the table and bending over it towards her, as he now pointed with the same pleading look towards the cake oven”.

The Haunted Hoff Rectory on a sunny summers day

The next morning she took a lighted candle with her to get a better look at the attic and the stairs. But as she was about to go out the door, it went out. To get it burning again she took a match from a container on the wall and struck it against the firewall. At the same moment as the light was lit, the priest stood before her for the third time, but this time next to the tiled stove and pointing towards the firewall. Terrified, she rushed downstairs and told her host what she had seen. He told her to keep quiet about it. 

Marie Wexelsen: (born 20 September 1832 at Sukkestad in Østre Toten, was a hymn writer and author. Her full name was Inger Marie Lycke Wexelsen. She is best known for the Christmas hymn Jeg er så glad hver julekveld.

But after the service, he and Miss Wexelsen stayed back in the church, where there were painted portraits of a number of Toten priests. He told her to look at them carefully and point out the one who resembled the ghost. After looking at all the pictures carefully, she went back to one of them and said: “If I haven’t seen a fantasy fetus, then he’s there.”

This was the portrait of a priest (“the name should not be mentioned”) who, according to legend, was supposed to have killed a small child he had with his maid; the child’s body was never found. “Late in the Christmas period, the parish priest quietly made an agreement with a bricklayer and another person – probably the churchwarden – to punch a hole in the firewall in the room upstairs in the rectory. And here they found a child’s skeleton, which was buried in complete silence by the priest. And later there was never a “ghost” at the East Toten rectory. Source

The Ghost of The Yellow Hall

One of the rooms in Hoff vicarage was called “The Yellow Hall” and also have a story of the ghost of a former priest lingering. There is a legend connected to this room, which can be read about both in Totenmål and Anna Mål 12 and in The Great Book of Ghosts (Espeland). 

The legend goes that there was a priest who was once a resident of the manor. One evening, as the parish priest was busy with his Sunday sermon, he was said to have seen a figure in a bluish tinge, and he got the feeling that this was someone in deep spiritual distress. The figure led the priest to the yellow hall, where the ghost knelt by a fireplace and appeared to be praying. After the service the next day, the priest recognized the figure in one of the priest pictures in the church. He had the fireplace examined, and there they found the skeleton of a woman. After the skeleton was buried in consecrated ground, the ghost is said to have been seen no more.

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References:

https://www.filmweb.no/filmnytt/de-mest-hjemskte-stedene-i-norge

Stenberg

Stenberg, Stenberg gård | Reporterne flyttet inn på spøkelsesgården

Leter etter spøkelser på Toten

Mystisk klokkeklang – NRK Innlandet – Lokale nyheter, TV og radio

Hoff prestegard (Østre Toten gnr. 94/1) – lokalhistoriewiki.no

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The Haunting of Münchenstein’s Rectory Marini House

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Right outside Basel in Switzerland, the haunted former Rectory in Münchenstein is said to be haunted by one of its former priests. 

At the entrance to the tranquil town of Münchenstein, just outside of Basel, stands an otherwise unassuming structure at Hauptstrasse 19, also called the Marini House, were the renowned Berri family used to live, and now are said to haunt.. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

To the casual passerby, it’s merely a relic of centuries past, but beneath its weathered façade lies one of the Basel region’s most quietly unsettling ghost stories: the lingering unrest of a tragic soul and the eerie disturbances that continue to be whispered about to this day.

The former rectory in Münchenstein. // Source: Roland Zumbuehl/Wikimedia

A Birthplace of Brilliance and Darkness

This house was once the rectory of Münchenstein, serving as a residence for local clergy until the 1830s, but the building is much older than that. 

Old views from the 17th century clearly show that the house once stood behind the northern gate of the town-like settlement on the east side, facing the castle rock. According to a detailed drawing by G. Pr. Meyer from 1690, the house originally consisted of two buildings.

Münchenstein has had a pastor since 1334. Therefore, it can be assumed that a rectory already stood near the north gate before 1537. Its location arose from the fact that the parish church stands nearby, outside the fortification walls.

It also holds the distinction of being the birthplace of Melchior Berri (1801–1854), the renowned Swiss architect behind some of Basel’s most iconic 19th-century landmarks, including the Museum of Natural History and Ethnology. 

Melchior Berri: Portrait of Melchior Berri (1801–1854), Swiss architect. His father bearing the same name was a priest, and he grew up in the former rectory.

But it is not Berri’s legacy that has kept the house in local memory — it is the sorrowful fate of his father, Pastor Berri, and the restless phenomena that followed.

A Life of Restlessness and a Death of Despair

He had served as vicar at St. Peter’s from 1804. After his election as pastor, he moved with his family to Münchenstein, right outside of Basel, where his son spent his youth in rural surroundings at the foot of the castle rock. Berri’s religious streak can probably be traced back to his father, which was evident in the fact that even as a young man he conscientiously kept records of the church services he attended.

The elder Berri, though a man of the cloth, was by all accounts troubled and dissatisfied with both himself and the world around him. Known to lead a restless, melancholic existence, his growing despair culminated in a grim and tragic act: he took his own life, hanging himself from a sturdy beam in the rectory’s attic in 1831.

Almost immediately after his death, the house earned a sinister reputation. Locals began to report unsettling nocturnal disturbances like eerie phantom winds that howled through sealed rooms, the clanking of invisible chains from the attic, and ghostly lights flickering and vanishing without cause. The rectory had become a source of dread.

The tragic family tradition seemed to follow his son, who also took his life on May 12 in 1854 after losing one of his eight children to bronchitis. Because he had taken his life, he was quietly buried next to his son in St. Alban Church, and his grave was lost to memory for ages. 

The Shape in the Shadows

In the years that followed, sporadic reports of ghostly activity surfaced. Most notably, witnesses described seeing a black, shadowy figure with glowing eyes within the house. On one infamous night, as townsfolk summoned the courage to investigate, the sinister presence was found crouched within a fireplace — not as a man, but in the form of a black cat with burning eyes.

Haunted Home: Former rectory and family home from 1805 to 1831 of Melchior Berri (1805-1854) at Hauptstrasse 19 in Münchenstein. // Source: EinDao/Wikimedia

Whether this was a mere trick of the light or the physical manifestation of the pastor’s anguished spirit, the answer was never found. The cat vanished as quickly as it appeared, but the story became forever entangled with the house’s already chilling folklore.

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References:

Huhuuuh! – Sieben Spukhäuser in der Region | TagesWoche

Hauptstrasse 19 – Baselland

Architekt Melchior Berri

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The Poltergeist of The Grossmünster Rectory in Zurich

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The Zurich Poltergeist was a well known haunting happening to the Pastor of Grossmünster Church in his home at Zwingliplatz in the early 1700s. For years, the family experienced torment at the hands of what they believed had to be the devil. 

Some of the most intense ghost stories from Switzerland are definitely the poltergeist hauntings. One of the more famed ones turned out to be a hoax, but it left its marks on the city. Right by the most famous landmark of Zurich there was a haunted rectory that drove the Pastor and his family mad. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

In a time of witch hunts, religious change and the time of enlightenment, there was a supposed poltergeist knocking on the rectory walls. What really happened inside of the haunted house, and how did this poltergeist hoax help to stop any further witch trials in the city?

The Grossmünster Church: Construction began around 1100, with the church opening around 1220. It was originally a monastery church that competed with the Fraumünster throughout the Middle Ages. Legend states that Charlemagne founded it after his horse knelt over the graves of Zurich’s patron saints, Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius, helping to establish its seniority over the Fraumünster, founded by his grandson Louis the German. Archaeological findings show a Roman burial ground at this location.

The Haunting Begins at Zwingliplatz 4

One of them is the former rectory of the Grossmünster Church called the Antistitium, at Zwingliplatz 4. An invisible madness once drove a priest to ruin at the beginning of the 18th century. Anton Klinger was living there with his family, a theologian and a few maids, working as the chief pastor of Zurich and living by the church. 

It started small in July in 1701. Small bells hanging in his daughter’s bedroom started to ring without anyone touching them. The little girl was sickly and had them installed for her to communicate with them. That night, her father was out of town. 

They saw that the little girl hadn’t rung any bells, leaving the grown ups confused. Then the activity increased in strength. Footsteps from the upper floors sounded like they were approaching, but when they went to inspect the strange phenomenon, no one was there. 

The wife was beside herself. She became convinced that it had to be a ghost, and that the ghost was her dead son from her first marriage. He had been struck in the head by a horse’s hoof when he was in the cavalry. There was whispers about it behind because of how she inherited more than what she should have, or so they say. The maids and a relative agreed that had to be the truth. 

The maids could tell that they also had heard mysterious noises the night before, when the wife was away. This caused concern among the household, also for the pastor when he came home. From that day, all three women slept in the living room. 

The servants and the other women were being protected by Bernhard Wirz, the 25 year old theologian living with them and hoping for a position as a pastor. He was visiting at the time and decided to extend his visit when everything went down. 

And the haunting seemed to only escalate. Furniture would mysteriously move and books would come flying from the shelves as the light would flicker. On the 28th of September the bedcovers to the wife was pulled from the bed in the middle of the night as shoes and books flew through the room. 

The 9th of October, a guest at their house was smoking his tobacco pipe that was knocked right off his mouth. As he said his blessing as protection, he heard a murmuring before the ghost, looking like a cloud, rose from the floor and flew down the chimney. 

In the middle of the night, doors would slam open or shut in the middle of the night, even though they checked that they had closed them properly before going to bed. 

Haunted by the Murder of the Witches of Wasterkingen

After the reformation, ghosts were not really seen as the souls of the deceased anymore, but the work of the devil, and we have more demonic and poltergeist stories after the reformation in places like Zurich. 

Exorcisms, amulets, or other protective mechanisms to combat ghosts were forbidden. The only permitted act was prayer to God. However, the population wanted to take active steps against the intruders because they feared them.

One of the hypothesis Klinger was working with, was that the haunting had to be the ghosts of some witches he had condemned to death that year that have been remembered as the witches of wasterkingen. Elisabeth Wysser-Rutschmann and her daughter Anna had been executed July 9 in 1701. Earlier that year in April they had been accused by neighbors of harming humans and animals with their magical powers. 

After days of torture, the 24 year old Anna pleaded guilty to witchcraft and told about how her mother and aunt Anna Vogel had thought her everything. They were both sent to death by burning. Anna and Margaretha Rutchmann were beheaded before the burning, but Elizabeth was burned alive. That year, three women and a man from Wasterkingen were convicted as witches and executed. 

This lingered in Anton Klinger’s head, thinking that he was haunted by the devil himself for his action towards the Witches of Wasterkingen. He wrote it all down in his diary know known as Diarium Tragediae Diabolicae.

The Living Poltergeist in the Rectory

The pastor and his wife became certain that they were in fact haunted. To catch the culprit, they sent out a watchman to put an end to it all, working on the tower of the Grossmünster. The watchmen themselves claimed to have seen something looking like a glowing will-o-the-wisp phenomenon around the house. They found nothing at first, and suddenly, the haunting abruptly just stopped after seven months. 

For three years, everything went back to normal, and they started to believe that they were rid of the spirit tormenting their household. Then one December night, a huge stone came crashing down the stairs, and they knew that the haunting had started again. The stone was said to be over 20 kg. The pastor and his wife became frightened, the watchman Hans Müller became suspicious. 

He had just arrived at the house, and were not easily scared or fooled. Just before the stone came tumbling down, a book had come flying from the shelves and hitting him in the back. Coincidentally, it had come from where Wirz had been standing. Also a maid was said to have thrown an apple at him in an obvious manner. 

Hans Müller chose to confront the servant, and eventually, she admitted to have been behind the haunting with Wirz, helping him. After this, other maids came forth and said that they too had assisted him. Among other things they had attached strings to certain objects and made them topple over. 

Why? Some say it was to conceal their nightly activities of hooking up and they were pretending that it was in fact a poltergeist wandering around the house, not them. Some say it was to drive the pastor out of the house so that he could take over. It was all dragged forth in a public court and people laughed at the details of his assistant fooling around with the maids and the priest thinking it was the devil. 

For this, the theologian was tortured before being condemned and lost his head. A hoax that went too far with a punishment that went to the extremes. It was however a shift in who was accused of witchcraft, and the ridiculous backstory of it all helped making so that there were no other witches burnt in Zurich. 

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References:

Gruselgeschichten und Legenden aus Zürich 

Als gewalttätige Poltergeister in Zürich alles durcheinanderwarfen | Tages-Anzeiger 

Spuk im Niederdorf – Zürich

The People of Zurich and their Money 9: Burning a woman – 7 pfund 10 shilling – CoinsWeekly %

Das Pfarrhaus des Schreckens | Tages-Anzeiger 

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The Evil Eye of Rebgasse: Curses, Shadows, and an Exorcism in Basel

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Kleinbasel neighborhood is perhaps one of the most haunted places in Basel, Switzerland. In an unassuming house at Rebgasse 38, the well known exorcist Johann Jakob von Brunn visited twice to banish the ghosts lingering in it.

In the winding alleys of Kleinbasel, where centuries-old buildings lean toward one another and twilight seems to gather early, there once stood a house that no one in their right mind dared approach. At the house that seemingly was also used as a rectory, a married couple who lived there from 1888 to 1907 reported about ghostly occurrences from previous tenants. It also seems that it was haunted long before they moved in.

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There are a lot of ghost stories around the Kleinbasel district in Basel. At Rebgasse 38, there were supposedly two ghosts haunting this particular building. First the dead wife of a man who remarried after her death, and a woman named Grethi Beck was said to possess the Evil Eye.

Haus Zur Alten Trotte: The haunted house on Rebgasse 38 in Basel, was said to have had an exorcism twice. // Source: Laloom/Wikimedia

A House the Shadows Would Not Leave

The house at Rebgasse 38, also known as the Haus zur alten Trotte (House of the Old Wine Press) had long been shrouded in ominous whispers. Locals spoke of unseen presences, shadows that moved on their own, and the chilling sound of phantom footsteps when no one else was near.

Some claimed it was the work of the “Grey Man”, a spectral figure of indeterminate origin known to haunt certain homes in Basel and this particular working class district.. 

Read More: The Gray Ghost of Claraplatz: Kleinbasel’s Neighborhood Spirit

Margrethe (Grethi) Beck was said to have been the maid when Pastor Johann Jakob Übelin (1793-1873) lived there. He was a Swiss Protestant theologian , deacon , chronicler , draftsman , botanist and author. He then worked in Basel for 27 years as a deacon for St. Theodor’s Church and, from 1845 to 1867, as a construction clerk. In 1818, Übelin married Margaretha, née Brenner (1798–1840), with whom he had eight children.

It is said that she stole money from the pastor, and when she died, she appeared to him and the later tenants as a ghost. People were convinced that she caused bad things to happen to the people of Kleinbasel. And the way people talk about the case, it looks like it was also when she was alive. There is not much info about how she died, but also in death, she scared her neighbors. She was said to be sitting on the steps on the stairwell, and even though Johann Jakob Übelin got another clergyman to exorcise her, her haunting seemed to persist. 

An Exorcism Against the Darkness

The government and the clergy made every effort to counter the superstition and the stories related to it. On Sundays the priests would issue warnings from the pulpit against fortune-telling and devil worship and would advise people not to believe in them. It is unknown whether the haunting happened when Johann Jakob Übelin still lived in the house, or it was after.

At last, the city turned to its most renowned spiritual defender: Pastor Johann Jakob von Brunn, a cleric famed for his boldness in confronting the supernatural and was supposedly a well known ghost hunter in Basel. He had allegedly faced so-called witches, expelled demons from livestock barns, and purified cursed wells — and now he was summoned to confront the menace at Rebgasse 38.

It’s said that von Brunn entered the home armed with holy water, relics, and an arsenal of ancient prayers, undeterred by the suffocating dread that clung to the walls. It is said he banished the ghost of the former housekeeper to a corner of a room on the first floor of the house. 

And for a time, peace returned to Rebgasse, although the family dog would howl towards the very same corner of the room as if it sensed a presence there. And later tenants would still see her, sitting on the steps of the stairs. 

The Scandal of Johann Jakob Übelin Waking a Ghost

Family Grave: Grave in the Wolfgottesacker Cemetery, Basel. Descendants of Johann Jakob Übelin.

As mentioned, it wasn’t the only ghost said to haunt the house, and the other one, was the dead wife of Johann Jakob Übelin. Margaretha died in childbirth around 1839 and would later come back as a ghost. In November 1845, Johann Jakob Übelin caused a scandal when it came to light that he had an affair with his cook, Henriette Rosine Trautwein. 

Because of this he had to resign his position and married Henriette in 1846 as she was now pregnant. Together, they had a son and he lived out his working life until 1867 as a construction clerk. He died in 1873.

After the whole scandal it was said that the ghost of Margaretha came back to haunt them because of her husband’s infidelity, although she was dead. Who knows when it really started. It was said she haunted the rectory until she too was banished by the ghost hunter Johann Jakob von Brunn. 

A Shadow That Never Quite Faded

Though the hauntings ceased, the house was never truly free of its reputation after the ghost of Grethi Beck and the dead wife of Johann Jakob Übelin. Some claim that, on certain nights, you can still sense a cold, baleful gaze from the upper window, though no one lives there. 

Today, the spot where Rebgasse 38 once stood bears little trace of its haunted history.  At the address that used to belong to the building that used to be haunted there is now a kindergarten listed. But the old stories persist in whispered retellings among local ghostwalk guides, a reminder that in places like Kleinbasel, some shadows leave their mark forever as long as someone remembers.

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References:

Spuk und Geister im alten Basel

Tour Description «Walk of legends» Place 1: Claraplatz and Rebgasse

Johann Jakob Übelin – Wikipedia

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The Ghostly Clergyman of Bubendorf: A Restless Spirit at the Rectory

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The spirit of a former priest was said to haunt his rectory in Bubendorf, outside of Basel in Switzerland. Question remaining, is his spirit still lingering inside of the centuries old walls?

In the Basel countryside, nestled between rolling hills and quiet woods, lies the village of Bubendorf, a picturesque place where time seems to slow. It is also said to be a haunted place. It has been in this village for over 500 years and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. 

Read more: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

But behind the tranquil façades of this historic community lurks one of the most notorious and best-documented ghost stories in the region — that of the haunted rectory at Hauptstrasse 62 and its unsettling resident: the spirit of Pastor Wilhelm Strübin.

Haunted Rectory: Evangelisch-reformiertes Pfarrhaus in Bubendorf.

The Pastor Who Loved His Fields More Than His Flock

Wilhelm Strübin, who passed away in 1795, served as the local clergyman in Bubendorf for many years. However, he was not remembered fondly by his congregation. By all accounts, Strübin had a greater passion for his fields and agricultural affairs than for the spiritual well-being of his parishioners. Complaints mounted over his growing neglect and indifference, eventually leading the church authorities to appoint an assistant to share his duties — a quiet but public humiliation for the wayward priest.

His worldly attachments, so tightly clung to in life, would apparently prevent him from finding rest in death. It’s said of one of the Strübins that he was so stingy during his lifetime that he paid more attention to his horse than to his flock. He even brought his horse to his deathbed. Legend has it that you can now hear him leading it up the stairs as a ghost.

A Rectory Besieged by Restless Spirits

After Strübin’s passing, the once quiet rectory gained a grim reputation. Strange disturbances plagued the house, and the ominous activity only seemed to intensify over time. The most unsettling and well-documented reports come from the Schölly family, who resided in the rectory from 1884 to 1926.

The wife of the parish priest, Clara Schölly-Werdenberg, kept a diary that would become a chilling record of nightly torments. She described with unsettling precision the strange phenomena that disrupted their home:

“Often at night, we would hear footsteps on the stairs, then the sound of an object rolling down the stairs. Then we were often awakened by knocking on our bedroom door, often several times in one night.”

It is said that she often laid in bed when she heard the ghosts rumbling around in their house. She prayed with them until they went away. Her daughter also supposedly saw the ghosts haunting their home. One day she was taking the laundry outside, her daughter said: “Look, someone is helping!” No one else was with them at the time.

On one particularly unnerving evening, Clara recounts lighting a nightlight to calm her nerves. But the spirit would not be deterred.

“The first night, I was awakened by a bump, and lo and behold, the nightlight was extinguished and a box of matches was ablaze next to my pillow.”

The implication was clear: something — or someone — did not appreciate the attempt to pierce the darkness.

The Tithe Books and the Waning of the Haunting

As the disturbances wore on, the family sought answers. Eventually, during renovations and a thorough cleaning of the aging building, a secret compartment was discovered within the rectory walls. Inside lay Pastor Strübin’s old tithe books — meticulously kept records of agricultural dues and parish contributions, a lasting testament to the man’s material obsessions.

These dusty ledgers, so long hidden away, were removed from the house. And with their removal, so too did the worst of the haunting reportedly begin to subside.

Whether it was the spirit of Strübin, unwilling to part with his earthly possessions, or a more symbolic unburdening of the house’s troubled past, locals to this day believe that the discovery of those tithe books marked a turning point in the rectory’s haunted history.

The Restless Past Still Echoes

Those who have lived in the alleged haunted house like Josef Handschin and Christoph Monsch had said that they never experienced something spooky. Although the people living before Monsch, claimed that it was. The Pastor Rolf Schlatter who has office in the old rectory also claim to have heard strange noises around midnight. 

Bubendorf. // Source: Roland Zumbuehl/Wikimedia

Though quieter now, the Bubendorf rectory remains a place of whispered unease. The haunted story is remembered particularly through Fanny Moser’s book: Ghosts: False Belief or True Belief from 1950 with a foreword by Jung. Visitors have claimed to hear faint footsteps on the old staircases, and locals swear that on certain mist-shrouded nights, a shadowy figure can be glimpsed standing by the house, gazing longingly out over the fields.

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References:

Von Geistern, die durch Fluchen verschwinden | Basler Zeitung

Huhuuuh! – Sieben Spukhäuser in der Region | TagesWoche