Speaker 1:

Paranormal Tales from the tower, the pest chapel, Bavaria, Germany. It can be very difficult to imagine what life was like in the past. As much as we can strip back or perceptions of today to a less technological moment in history, it's very difficult to strip back our minds and the things we currently accept as truth and fact simpler times might not in fact have been simpler at all. In other words, we could imagine ourselves in a time with no penicillin, but it's almost impossible to place ourselves in a situation where we don't know that penicillin exists where germs or science. It's hard to place ourselves in a position of true ignorance and to honestly assess a situation the way someone who lived at that time would have done. We know what we know and we cannot unknow it completely. The word plague carried with it more than just information. It was a death sentence plague when it came to your town or your village would be in the end of life as you knew it. Even if you survived for no one survived unscathed. If your skin was not marked by the ravages of disease, surely your heart and spirit would be for someone you held in those places would be torn from you and carry it away on the galloping hooves of death. Plague is a bacterial infection that affects humans in particular and is often spread by insects and rodents, often referred to as the black death. One of the effects of the disease is that it causes victims to term black before dying. It's believed that the plague was responsible for killing up to 25% of the world's population in the 14th century. Fearsome indeed when it reared its head, people died en masse when diseases struck and they struck fairly often. It seemed like a judgment from on high plague traveled across the globe on foot and ship and on the wind and often the people that cut down had no idea where it had come from. It likely did not matter to them or to the people left behind. All that mattered was its ferocious appetite and its immunity to their cries for help or forgiveness. It took babe from breast bride from groom, statesmen and Pauper, like for some running in front of the plague was a possible reprieve, but usually only for weeks or months. And rarely was it fully successful. Death marched, death swam, it flew, and when it finally abated, those left behind stung and senseless from its onslaught knew just who to credit. It's absence. In a world where the greatest promise was an afterlife. Free of this pestilence, this malignants only one had that power, only God and to God. Thanks we do throughout the world there are monuments to the gratitude that felt for the end of plague, plague towers and France and Prague, plague memorials in Rome and patrons. Scenes created from the plague sent to men and ended by God counts and Dukes and popes and kings and all manner of people between showed both their power and their gratitude by building these monuments. Thank you to God for deliverance and a reminder to the people of what the had survived and also a reminder of what had been lost, but mostly a reminder that it was over. Not every plague memorial was in the center of town, just like not every plague struck at the court center and the wild countryside, the quiet back roads where small farmers lived, small and quiet lives where generations carried and wore the same name like an old cloak until one Michael became another Michael and then all Michael's became that Michael of the story. Souls were whisked away with the same speed, if not the same ceremony. They're lost to their people. Their Marys and theirJosephs was just as painful, if not as remembered. And these little out of the way places, these wide spots in the road, if you will, it was not always possible to erect a gilded monument. Instead, the survivors might build something of use and dedicated to the memory of the victims and to their gratitude, to their God, not for allowing them to survive, for they did not assign god the responsibility of the plate itself, but for ending it. These communities ebb and flow with the century's changing slowly. If at all the homes of the last Millennia remain under each layer of modern amenity like skeletons beneath the skin wars rarely reached them and while youth always leaves, the people stay. These little towns, these forgotten places stay nestled in the forests found only by accident or by desperate seekers of the Arcane and the unusual or by teenagers looking for a Friday night thrill and just such a small community in the Bavarian countryside is a pest chapel, a plague church originally built in the 11th century. It stands still in the midst of a dense forest. There's no road that leads to it as it sits lonely at top, a little hillock. There's not even the remnant of a path, although someone tends to it. Having heard the stories of its existence and its haunted history, I set out to get a glimpse of it driving through the German countryside. It's, it's invigorating, it's beautiful and charming and so unexpectedly pristine. The Internet had equipped us with enough information to know where to start our search, but with surprisingly little else Germans, it seems are less likely to believe or at least professed their belief in the supernatural. Yet this story had been written about on German sites as well as travel sites and so it was interesting as we drove him what seems circles for half an hour, we decided to venture up a muddy path, hardly road until we someone we saw a house. After about five or six minutes, we saw a gentleman stepping down from a tractor and approaching a barn. What he saw our car, he stopped instead upon the slight hill looking down at us hands on hips, our guide, Florian rolled down his window and shouted, agreeing. It was not met with warmth, but instead with a frustrated hough, I could make out the word Pest Cup as which seem to irritate the man. He pointed generally forward and waved us off. Shouting s east kind of pest kappa rather loudly, and this translates succinctly into it is not a plague chapel. It seems he was less concerned with our being in the forest that he was with our reason for being in the forest. We drove past it several times as there was nothing to note it's presence. Had it not been December, the trees were after their leaves. We would likely have driven past a few more times and left frustrated. But as it was, we made a decided last pass and I spied it's white walls through the barren trees against the darkening sky. It was well past 4:00 PM when I saw it and that left us very little time to see the church and surrounding area in only natural light. Our died. Florian was as excited as we were despite having very little interest in the paranormal. This was something surreal. That's something unique about being in the middle of the forest as a son fell on a cold December day. Knowing that for upwards of 900 years, people tracked to this desolate spot for deliverance from the many difficulties and challenges of their daily lives, but that the isolation of the place had provided more than just a pristine location for a church. But also the perfect spot for murder and mayhem in stories. This plague chapel is not merely abandoned, but according to legend, it is in fact damned. The bodies of plague victims are very throughout the churchyard and surrounding forest. The misery and sadness of the pestilence is steeped in the land itself. There exists documentation that the chapel was built in 1162 and belonged to the Poland monastery and was consecrated for St George. Legends of Saint George and the dragon were popularized in the 12th century. And so it's not surprising that a stall order of the faith would be a patron to the community of the dark forest during the 17th century. Plague move through Europe. Bavaria was no different from every place else, and eventually death came to call. It's not hard at all to imagine that the chapel isolated on a low hill in the midst of a dark forest is haunted. It's even less difficult to believe that regardless of its haunted status, it's attractive to local young people as a place to gather. Perhaps as a group, we're more likely as couples. It's isolated, dark, atmospheric, and probably off limits. No doubt they were told to stay away and that made it even more attractive to them. The stories about the place or dark indeed, the forest that surrounds the chapel are said to be haunted by hundreds of lost souls. Those who lost their lives to the plagues that ravaged the area and those who were sacrificed to the forest itself. A dark shepherd is said to wonder the fog hilltops ever in search of souls to fill his flock. Those who seek the Cham will have been sent to get lost and it turned around and the deep dense trees only to disappear in to join the corest of screens that can be heard on any given night. Emanating from the wild. Children last centuries ago still sing they're sad songs and cry out for mothers long since returned to Earth. There have been murders and rituals and all manner of dark events reported here, but it's the wells that garner the most attention. There are four viewable abandoned wells, deep and dangerous. Five wells and all are reported on the church property now crossed with iron bars to prevent accidents. The wells, it is said or placed in such a way as to form an evil symbol, a Pentagram to the power of darkness to the outside observer. This is not immediately obvious because only four wells are visible. The fifth known as the Devil's Fountain is beneath the church itself. Reinforcing the notion that it is the place itself and not the chapel that breeds the darkness and the haunting. The church had been severely burned in the 17th century and ultimately rebuilt. It was after this and following another bout of pestilence that the stories of the chapel haunts took root and really prospered. One of the main towels it's origin nation lost to time and therefore completely anecdotal now is have a priest who took an unholy likened to a young girl from one of the surrounding towns in a fit of rage and frustration and madness and cruelty. No doubt he killed her and threw her body until one of the wells. The wells had already been considered places of danger and fear as they had been using the past to dispose of the hundreds of bodies that pushed out of the overflowing graveyard. Of the church. At least that's what folklore says, the dead outpaced the living during the years of playing and when it became too much to bury them or they rose again due to the shallowness of the graves. The answer was to lower them into the wells and pray. This if may have made the burying easier, but it led to many sleepless nights of guilt and fear as the people of the surrounding area thought they heard the screams and wells of the disrespected dead echoing against those stone walls. When the young woman's body was discovered, the town's people were outraged and frightened. She was one of them who could have done such a thing. The priest performed a special mass for the piece of her soul. He asked for her to be taken into heaven and brought it to rest and that whomever was responsible would be justly dealt with during that mass. That has said that her faithful dog, again howling outside the church, he would not let up until all of the parishioners came outside, including the priest. Once outside the dog went up to the priest and sat defiantly in front of him, Groundling in bearing his teeth. The dog would not quit the spot until the priest finally acknowledged his guilt. What happened to the priest is up for debate, but most legends hold that he was justly dealt with. The dog still Rome's it has said because the girl has not found rest. Her spirit is said to still reside within the well angry, frightened, perhaps mad at this point. Those who approached the well on moonlit nights are said to see the dog prowling just along the edge of the trees. Those who challenged the legend are said to be rewarded with a site or the sound of the girl herself. And then several days later with madness or death or both, the church is still in use to a certain degree. Photographs taken by explorers and legends seekers through the closed windows show a strange shadow figure. When we arrived it was empty, but empty is perhaps too simple a term surrounding us. The area, the land, the air felt still and anticipatory and yet it felt utterly deserted. The grass surrounding it, however, was not overgrown. No weeds encroached upon the paths. Yet it felt as if we had stumbled upon a forgotten relic of an ancient age. And of course, that is exactly what we had done. Thank you for listening to paranormal tales from the tower.