“There’s a ghost in my bedroom, and she wants a bit of paper.”
A true poltergeist tale from Christmas 1843
Gottliebin Dittus was 24-years-old when she moved to a cramped house in the Southern German town of Möttlingen in 1840. She didn’t know that what would happen at Christmas time three years later was going to change the world.
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The youngest of five children whose parents had both died young, Gottliebin was devoutly religious.
She was not, though, blessed with good health. Born with one leg shorter than another and seemingly epileptic, she went on to contract several serious illnesses through her life.
None of that, though, compared to the events which would come to a dramatic conclusion over Christmas 1843.
The Dittus orphans were not wealthy, each took what work they could. The house they had rented was on the edge the town, and not in a good state of repair. On a weather-beaten wooden window shutter were the portentous words:
“Man, think on eternity,
And do not mock the time of grace,
For judgment is not far off.”
Honestly. I’m not making it up. But they moved in anyway.
The house is now a museum, you can see pictures of it here.
Two years before the fateful move, in 1838, the 800 or so residents of Möttlingen had welcomed a new Lutheran pastor. Well, some of them had.
Johann Christoph Blumhardt had arrived in town to minister there and in the nearby Haugstett, with some small fanfare.
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He succeeded the eminent theologian Christian Gottlob Barth – a passionate campaigner against the prevailing forces of rationalism and the liberal theology that accompanied it. Modernity was encroaching even in the hills and forests of southern Germany, and he didn’t like it.
You might think it was relatively easy to campaign against rationalism in a rural parish in the late 19th century, after all, superstitious beliefs and magic rituals were still part of life there.
However, as with the rest of Europe, rationalism was winning the war, and Blumhardt found that despite the warm welcome, his church wasn’t exactly thriving.
Barth had already warned Blumhardt that the parish seemed ‘preached to death’ and that those who still bothered to attend to church were often ‘asleep in their seats’. Something would have to change if the church were to gain any kind of spiritual life.
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When the Dittus family settled in to their new home, Gottliebin started attending Blumhardt’s church in Haugstett, she didn’t make a good impression on Blumhardt.
In fact she didn’t really make a good impression on anyone. Perhaps for good reason: she later admitted that when she first saw the new pastor she wanted to ‘scratch his eyes out’.
It was shortly after arriving in Möttlingen that Gottliebin told her siblings that she was seeing and hearing strange things during the night.
Soon the whole family could hear the weird knocking and loud bangs that seemed to come from within the walls of the old house.
Although belief in the supernatural and the power of folk magic continued in the area, the Dittus family felt ashamed and kept their troubles to themselves, at the start anyway.
Rumours started to spread, though, particularly when neighbours said they could hear the bangs too. But although pastor Blumhardt soon heard the rumours, he didn’t pay any attention. He was busy doing his best to revive his flagging church.
Eventually, in 1841, Gottliebin was desperate enough to visit the minister and ask for help. He maintained a wary distance, as though worried that she was an extreme attention seeker. When she fell badly ill shortly afterwards he visited, but stayed reserved.
By April 1842 the strange happenings in the Dittus’ house reached a point where something had to be done. Two years living with a poltergeist is enough to wear down the most patient of sufferers.
Not only had the noises reached an extraordinary volume, but Gottliebin was also, routinely, being visited by an apparition.
A woman appeared at the end of Gottliebin’s bed, in her arms she held a dead baby. “Give me a piece of paper,” she insisted, promising that this would make her go away.
It’s hard to give paper to a ghost. She didn’t go away.
Approached for advice Blumhardt advised that the apparition should be ignored, and that instead Gottliebin and her family should turn to earnest prayer. As if they hadn’t thought of that.
He also did the most practical thing possible: he found a different house for the young woman to live in – perhaps someone should have thought of this earlier.
By this point it seems like Blumhardt’s attitude toward Gottliebin had changed, he later wrote:
“Our heartfelt compassion went out not only to the poor woman whose misery we saw before us, but also to the millions who have turned away from God and become entangled in the secret snares of darkness.”
The haunting of the Dittus’ house became a local and regional sensation, ghost hunters and exorcists turned up, keen to stay the night in Gottliebin’s cramped room.
Blumhardt wasn’t having any of it, though, and the local policeman stood guard outside to try and quell the sensationalism. Hard to do when loud bangs were coming from inside the haunted house.
Even though she had moved, it didn’t take long for the ghost to find Gottliebin. The hauntings resumed.
Just as the ghostly activity in the house continued without her there, so Gottliebin’s condition worsened, now she convulsed and fitted for hours on end.
Blumhardt had to fit regular visits to her bedside in to his already packed schedule of preaching and leading bible studies and prayer groups. He observed her in the grip of demonic possession, later writing:
“Her whole body shook; every muscle of her head and arms burned and trembled, or rattled, for they were individually rigid and stiff, and she foamed at the mouth.”
At times Gottliebin would speak in strange voices too. By this time Blumhardt, although perpelexed by her predicament, was all in.
“It was clear to me that something demonic was at work here, and I was pained that no remedy had been found for the horrible affair. As I pondered this, indignation seized me – I believe it was an inspiration from above. I walked purposefully over to Gottliebin and grasped her cramped hands. Then, trying to hold them together as best as possible (she was unconscious), I shouted into her ear, “Gottliebin, put your hands together and pray, ‘Lord Jesus, help me!’ We have seen enough of what the devil can do; now let us see what the Lord Jesus can do!””
Blumhardt’s engagement with the demon possessed woman didn’t end with prayer, he began to ask questions of the spirits who tormented her, and they answered.
The apparition Gottliebin had seen turned out to be a woman who had lived in the Dittus’ house, and had murdered two children – an unquiet soul.
The murderer wasn’t the only unwanted spiritual visitor. Other demons announced themselves too, and there followed a protracted period of prayer. Poor pastor Blumhardt, he hadn’t signed up for this.
The battle for Gottliebin continued, entering a period of great intensity over Christmas 1843. Then, eventually, on December 28th of that year, Gottliebin cried out ‘Jesus is Victor’ and… was totally healed.
Speaking afterwards, Blumhardt preferred to focus on the aftermath than the exorcism of Gottliebin, because what happened next was also extraordinary.
As news of the exorcism spread, people began to come to Blumhardt to confess their sins – confession is a Catholic, not a Lutheran practise, but nevertheless it went ahead anyway. And as it did things began to change for Blumhardt and his church.
A revival broke out, people were being healed, others were converted, the folk who had been ‘preached to death’ were dead no more.
Eventually the situation demanded change, it was too much to be handled in a traditional pastorate. In 1853 Blumhardt and his family bought a Spa in Bad Boll which they turned into a retreat and healing centre. Pastor Blumhardt lived and worked there until his death.
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Gottliebin, the former demoniac, became part of the Blumhardt household, tutoring Christoph, Blumhardt’s son, who would later become a significant theologian an leading figure in the development of Christian socialism.
In a way this strange little ghost story had an enormous, world changing, impact, because the Blumhardts influenced a generation of European theologians, among them the Germans Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jurgen Moltmann, and the Swiss theologians Eduard Thurneysen and Karl Barth.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of these men, particularly during, and in the aftermath of, the Second World War.
Famously Barth defies both liberal and conservative thought by insisting on the strange ‘otherness’ of the divine. ‘God is God’ is one of his lines - among many, many, others. His work, like that of many of those influenced by the Blumhardts has been profoundly influential in the development of contemporary, protestant, Christianity.
(This episode of In Or Time on Barth is, of course, excellent).
And if it hadn’t been for a young peasant woman, plagued by noises and apparitions in a run down house in the little town in the Bavarian forests, maybe things would have all been very different indeed.
Note: This has been a long email, but there’s something I want to say.
I’m something of a sceptic of all things magical, ghostly and demonic.
These things don’t fit well into my way of seeing the world, or indeed of reading the Bible.
I don’t think, for instance, that the Bible offers up a literal Devil, and I think we have the middle ages to thank for the sort of demonology we still encounter.
I am aware though, that as a progressive Christian, heavily influenced by the liberal tradition, I am inclined towards a rational, scientific, approach to things, inclined to look for reasonable answers to strange phenomena. Perhaps sometimes too inclined that way. I’m trapped in what Charles Taylor calls ‘the immanent frame’.
I think that Barth’s return to the transcendent, his reminder that ‘God is God’ – so profoundly influenced by the Blumhardts – is a helpful corrective to people like me who are all too ready to ignore or explain anything that smacks of what I tend to dismiss as ‘superstition’.
I can think of various explanations for the story above, for example. But perhaps that misses the point.
Perhaps not everything can be explained, or should be explained.
And maybe I should be alright with that.
I’m taking questions. If you have a question you want me to respond to (I’ll anonymise you) send me an email. I’ll do the first one in the new year. I’m on holiday between Christmas and January.
very interesting, thank you 💕🙏