Anne-Marie with Hans Bender whilst the lights swing above
The so-called Rosenheim Poltergeist is one of the most characteristic and best-documented poltergeist cases on record.
The events are said to have taken place in Rosenheim, a small town in Upper Bavaria, Germany (35,000 inhabitants at the time), in November 1967.
Attorney Sigmund Adam filed complaints with the relevant companies about certain strange incidents occurring in his office.
Electrical fuses would blow, lights would turn on and off by themselves, and fluorescent lamps would either burn out or unscrew themselves. Most notably, the telephone systems were being targeted: hundreds of calls were registered by the exchange even though, apparently, no one was using the phone.
At first, power surges were suspected, a theory that seemed confirmed when engineers from the Rosenheim power company recorded abnormal fluctuations in current (including overload peaks) with voltages reaching up to 250 V.
However, the disturbances continued even after the entire electrical system was replaced and an independent generator was installed. Telephone technicians were also unable to explain the phantom calls or why one of the devices kept requesting the local time 40 or 50 times a day without being touched.
In early December, the University Institute of Freiburg was consulted, and a well-known parapsychologist, Dr. Hans Bender, became involved in the case. Along with physicists F. Karger, from the Max Planck Institute, and G. Zicha, he witnessed the “dance” of chandeliers and the full 360-degree rotation of pictures hanging on walls, which then fell to the ground.
A video recorder was installed, and the swaying of the lamps was captured in photographs. For the first time in history, a poltergeist phenomenon was successfully filmed.
Drawers opened by themselves, ornaments flew across the room, and a large bookcase weighing 400 pounds (over 181 kg) moved about 10 centimeters away from the wall. Attorney Adam filed a complaint “against persons unknown.”
Police opened an investigation to determine possible sabotage but found nothing. Eventually, Dr. Bender and his team noticed that the paranormal activity only occurred during office hours, particularly when a 19-year-old employee, Annemarie Schaberl, was present.
The Physics Institute of the University of Munich and the Federal Post Office were called in for inspections and technical evaluations, but the experts could find nothing abnormal. Every plausible hypothesis had to be ruled out.
Many other phenomena were observed, but everything suddenly ceased when, some time later, Annemarie changed jobs and left the law office.
A psychological evaluation of the young woman revealed “...psychic lability, high excitability, low tolerance to frustration.”
It was found that the incidents occurred when Annemarie was emotionally disturbed. She was unhappy with her job, and in the late afternoon—when most of the numerous phone calls occurred—she was desperately anxious to go home.
Many years later, physicist Friedbert Karger stated: “What we saw in Rosenheim simply cannot be explained by any known physics.”
