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.
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.
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