The Vanished Village and the Munich Connection to Dracula

Before meeting a vampire in Transylvania, a short story places Jonathan Harket facing the undead outside of Munich. Could it have a connection to the village that according to legend, vanished suddenly in the middle ages.

A village only found in writings from the 14th and 15th centuries have, according to Munich lore, vanished without a trace between Berg am Laim and Riem, Some say that the missing villagers can still be heard on quiet days, trying to find their way back.

Read More: Check out all ghostly legends from Germany

The Berg am Laim district was first documented on April 23, 812, as “ad Perke,” with the addition “am Laim” (meaning “on the Laimb or clay”) appearing for the first time in 1430. Today, Berg am Laim is one of Munich’s smallest districts in terms of population in the east of Munich between Haidhausen to the west, Trudering to the east, and Ramersdorf to the south.

Before meeting a vampire in Transylvania, a short story places Jonathan Harket facing the undead outside of Munich. Could it have a connection to the village that according to legend, vanished suddenly in the middle ages. — **Berg am Laim:** Kupferstich von Michael Wening, date 1701

The Vanished Village

The mysterious village in Berg am Laim appears in the documents either as Pachem or Bachheim. It’s not known exactly what happened to it, but the place has become one of Munich’s more mysterious places with a lot of legends and questions lingering in its stead.

Most legends claim that the village vanished. One day, it was simply gone, as if it had never existed. No one knows what happened, but legend whispers of a curse that swallowed the village – dragging it down into the depths of the earth.

Later, those who walked across the fields on windless days were said to have heard church bells, wagon trains, and whip cracks coming from underground.

Some claim that on dark nights, one can hear the whimpering of its former inhabitants, desperately searching for a way back to the light

The Truth Behind the Missing Village

But what really happened to Pachem? In the Berg am Laim area, you will find the streetname Pachemstraße, first mentioned in documents from 1920, the last landmark of what once was.

The place was first mentioned in 1315 as “Pachem”. The name is considered a variant of Bachheim and is derived from “Bach” (brook), probably referring to the Hachinger Bach stream.

Pachem (Bachheim), an old spelling for a former part of Baumkirchen, a church and parish village. The Pachem chapel is mentioned in 1315 as a branch of St. Stephan Baumkirchen right by.

The place is mentioned again in 1384 and then disappeared. Since then, Pachem has been considered one of the so-called vanished villages in the Munich area. The plague around 1348 is blamed for the loss of almost a third of the population, and numerous settlements were subsequently abandoned and many point to this as the cause of its disappearance. The War of the Bavarian Succession of 1504 is also a possible factor in the settlement’s final disappearance.

A campaign by Georg Wisbeck, chamberlain and captain of the Duke of Landshut, in the region was the last major battle of the fratricidal war. Wisbeck and his band plundered the territory of Bavaria-Munich under Duke Albrecht IV, even though the conflict as a whole was already lost for them. The Baumchurch burned down in 1504 during the Wittelsbach Brother War by the robber band of Georg Wiesbeck.

A more peaceful explanation would be the development of the Hachinger Bach stream that most likely flowed through the village. Its flow rate still fluctuates enormously with the amount of precipitation and the groundwater level. During periods of drought, it disappears underground immediately after the Ostpark and flows only underground. A prolonged period of this kind, perhaps in connection with the Little Ice Age drying the river out, is discussed as a possible cause for settlement.

The Dracula Connection

“When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer.”

This is the way the supposed first chapter of the Dracula novel could have started, but ended up as a stand alone story named “Dracula’s Guest”. Scholars are divided as to whether the story is the excised first chapter of the novel Dracula, an early draft of a chapter of that novel, or was always intended as a separate story. In the original first chapter of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula,” the London lawyer Jonathan Harker, who was traveling and staying overnight in Munich, gets lost at night in a cemetery in the east of the city – roughly where Berg am Laim is today.

Read the whole story: Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker

It is Walpurgis Night, and in spite of the hotelier’s warning to not return late, the young man later leaves his carriage and wanders toward the direction of an abandoned “unholy” village. Some particularly meticulous Dracula fans theorize that the abandoned village could be the small medieval settlement of Pachem or Bachheim.

But was it really a nod to the vanished village? The coachman in the story simply drives out of the city; the direction is unknown. A valley is mentioned, a hill, yew and cypress trees, an abandoned or sunken village. There are no cypress trees around Munich, nor is there a valley accessible on foot. And the mystery of the village that vanished persists.

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