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KontaktGhost night in Bautzen
The stony plate above the entrance says:
“V:C:B:F:C:1789”
These are the first letters of the sentence:
“Venerabile Capituluin Budissinense fieri curavit".
Translated into English this latin sentence means: “The honorable consistory built this house.”
The Referent arranged the construction of the building around 1788/89 on a former scene of fire as a kind of small castle. The particular history of this house was built around the turn of the 17th century in the hallway of the leading advocate (Oberamtsadvokaten) Christian Keilpflug.
The ghost story started just before Christmas in 1683 and scared the whole population of Bautzen (in former times called “Budissin”).
On December 20, 1683 Catharina Keilpflug, women of Christian Keilpflug, appeared in a vault a ghostly figure clothed on Sorbian garb. The ghostly woman told her, she had been killed and buried in the cellar of the house.
Over 300 years ago this house was the location of horrifying events.
At the time of the happenings mentioned, Christian Keilpflug lived in the second floor with his wife Eva Catharina, daughter of Simon Hoffmann, who he had married the 23. February 1683.
On December 20, 1683, as the young woman passed her time in a room beside the cellar, a ghostly figure suddenly appeared. It was a woman, wearing traditional Sorbian clothes to express sadness which contained a white scarf. The women told Mrs. Keilpflug that her name was Sabine Ruprechtin and that she had been killed in 1631 by a cohabitant of the house, Martin Kattmann. She accused him furthermore of burying her dead body in the cellar and said she could only find peace if her mortal remains would be buried on a lutheran cemetery. Eva Catharina Keilpflug being very frightened couldn’t say anything at all and went upstairs. With every week that passed by, the spook got worse. From time to time, the ghost appeared on the stairs, rattled with chains, threw rocks at the maid, menaced the inhabitants and verged to burn down the house.
Because they feared a sudden blast, the main part of Bautzen’s population put everything they had into their cellars and the city council established a guard to keep the streets safe by day and night.
Priests of both confessions took care of Mrs. Keilpflug and even the Spiritual Ministry of Dresden was engaged in this matter. Fact is that the spook only ended on the 6. October 1684 and that this was celebrated relieved in Petri- cathedral.
It’s not explained whether everything was just a bad joke or a morbid creation of Eva Catharina Keilpflug. The secretary of the Keilpflug’s was one of the suspects, too because he didn’t earn much but played and drank daily and had always an enormous amount of money.
The ghost never showed up again and the cruel games never happened again. Furthermore, the `bloody city Budissin` never experienced such bad things like the big fire in 1634 again.
Translated by Lisa Nitsche