Obscure Occurrences : Tales of The Celle Neues Rathaus

 On the 10th of April 1945, the US 84th Infantry division crossed the Weser River and captured Hanover. The city had been bombed by allied air raids, resulting in 90 per cent of the city centre being reduced to rubble, thus offering little to no resistance when ground forces arrived. The under-resourced German soldiers had had enough, and their morale had collapsed along with the buildings around them. The surrounding townships soon followed suit, raising the white flag as soon as allied armour rolled into view. 

 One of these towns was Celle, a small, ordinary settlement of around forty thousand people, sitting 20 miles northeast of Hanover. It was well known for housing one of the largest free-standing brick-built structures in Europe at that time, its “New Town Hall”, aka Neues Rathaus. While its name is rather unassuming, there is something unusual about the concrete behemoth.

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

A US Navy Diver's Account

 The town of Celle surrendered on the 12th of April, 1945. Similar to the case of Hanover, there was no resistance from German forces or the civilians residing in the bombed-out buildings. The town hall had miraculously escaped the bombing campaign relatively intact. Being the humongous concrete structure that it was, it seemed to be the perfect place to house occupying troops and host temporary administration. After all, it had already served as barracks for German troops and had even housed a SS battalion.

 While the building comprised five floors above ground and five floors below, the allied forces lacked access to the lower levels as they had been completely flooded with water and sealed with concrete. This immediately kindled the curiosity of the commanding officer as the SS had been hiding stolen, precious artefacts and evidence of war crimes under artificial water bodies. In the next few days, he would make a determined effort to ascertain exactly what the Germans had attempted to cover up.

 On the 15th of April, at the special request of Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, three US navy divers arrived in Celle with the intention of exploring the submerged depths of the building. Due to the obvious dangers, each diver was tethered by a line to the surface and sent down at different entry points. What took place over the next thirty minutes is not fully understood, but what is known is that two of the divers never made it back to the surface. Their tethers were retrieved but not their bodies.

 The third diver, who resurfaced, raved like a lunatic. When he finally came to his senses after a couple of hours, he reported his findings. The floors and walls of the lower levels were allegedly painted in back, with strange, runic symbols and pentagrams etched upon them. With operation theatres and patient beds, the rooms held a resemblance to hospital facilities.

 On the third level down, the diver had seen mutilated corpses strapped into chairs. Some had their abdomens ripped wide open or all of their limbs removed, while others had goat’s heads attached to their bodies in place of their own. While his descriptions were terrifying enough, he spoke in whispered tones about how he had seen them moving, as if they were still alive. This sight caused him to panic and swim back to the surface before a dark cloudy mass chased him through the water. As expected, the diver was never the same again and was soon discharged from the navy.

 The commanding officer was reluctant to investigate further as he did not wish to put more lives at risk, but as Celle was in the British zone of Occupation, time was running out. With the help of his crew, he tried pumping out the water, but the SS had flooded the building by breaking one of the walls, evidently allowing groundwater to seep through. Eventually, the building was formally handed over to the British army and the commanding officer was relieved of his posting at the site. The basements were sealed over with concrete shortly thereafter.

Tales of the Paranormal

 During the Cold War, Celle became a significant military town, staging a notable contingent of NATO forces. The town hall was converted into a permanent barrack and housed regiments from the British and German militaries. The stories regarding the flooded lower levels and the fate of the US navy divers arrived during this period. While many believed them to be nothing more than urban legends, no one could get away from the fact that access to the basement floors was indeed restricted. Most stairwells leading down into the lower levels had been hastily filled with concrete and the tops of handrails could be seen protruding from the floor.

 A young recruit by the name of Martin Fox woke one night to find the ceiling of his bedroom inches away from his face. Initially, he assumed it to be a prank played by his roommates, but when he realized his bed was floating several feet above the floor, he screamed his lungs out before he and the bed came crashing down. A soldier named Stephen Daily reported that on his first night in the building as a new recruit, he saw silhouettes of people walking back and forth outside his window. Assuming them to be the soldiers on patrol, he did not pay much attention to it, but the next morning, he realized that his window was actually seven feet above the ground on the outside of the building. Stephen was stationed for four years in Celle and he reported experiencing all kinds of strange occurrences.

 There were instances of people hearing German whispers in locked and empty rooms. A sergeant major was utterly stupefied in the early hours of one morning when he witnessed a column of German panzer tanks move near him in complete and utter silence.

 To add to the strangeness, soldiers reported having their rooms vandalized even though they had been locked and secured in the intervening times, and no one else had been in there. Dark, shadowy figures standing at the ends of their beds and in hallways had become a normal thing. Furthermore, there had been an unusually high rate of suicides amongst the men stationed at the town hall.

 There were certain rooms on the upper levels which were said to have had pentagrams etched into the floors and walls. Recruits who spent a night in these rooms ended up taking their own lives. After undergoing psychological evaluations, a considerable number of soldiers were also discharged on medical grounds. Many of them had become deeply depressed during their tenure in the station.

 It is no secret that the Nazi regime had a notable interest in the occult. It is believed that the Third Reich was looking to channel untold powers in order to tip the war in their favour. Rumours suggest that the spear of destiny was stolen from a museum in Vienna to aid in the summoning of dark forces and that German naval commanders employed the use of dowsing in an attempt to locate British submarines and merchant vessels. Adolf Hitler himself was no stranger to paranormal experiences, recording such instances in his private journals many times.

 The study of witchcraft was high up on the agenda for the German elite and the Celle Neues Rathaus was said to be one of many sites across the country where the SS carried out such research. There were tales about how the SS was summoning dark and sinister forces in the rooms situated on the lower levels of the building. Jewish prisoners were allegedly being horribly mutilated in order for their bodies to become more accepting of demonic possession. Reportedly, the building itself has cult symbolism running all the way through it. Many believe the townhouse served as a gateway which amplified the effects of such practices.

 An anonymous German, whose father had been stationed there during the cold war years, had a bizarre story to tell. He recalled how his father had told him that the SS had been attempting to bring soldiers back from the dead, allowing demonic entities to possess the deceased and use their bodies as vessels. His father went on to describe how attempts in doing this had been successful, but that these reanimated corpses apparently had no sense of honour or loyalty and that research in this area was abruptly halted.

Conclusion

 There is no doubt that the townhouse does have floors below ground, which are inaccessible and have been covered over with concrete. But if the tales of submergence are to be believed, how practical would it have been to fill the equivalent volume of a football stadium with water? After all, burning the building would have been a far quicker and easier method of destroying any evidence of whatever had been going on there. But if the SS were only trying to quarantine their creations and not trying to hide evidence, then their choice seems to be plausible. But, the likelihood of unfolding the exact reasoning is non-existent.

 The sheer amount of paranormal activity that soldiers experienced whilst on the base is far too much to dismiss. This likely supports the idea that something sinister was going on in the maze of dark halls and rooms of its lower levels at some point during its history. But whether it had connections to the occult or otherwise is up for debate.

 That being said, there seems to be a logical explanation for the events at the Celle Neues Rathaus. The two lost US Navy divers could have trapped in the confined and claustrophobic sections of the building’s lower levels, before succumbing to exhaustion. The third diver could have been a victim of Nitrogen narcosis, a condition which is commonly caused by inhaling compressed nitrogen gas. The condition is known to cause hallucinations in scuba divers.

 When the paranormal phenomena reported in the building are taken into consideration, it could be attributed to the township’s dark history. Celle had been a scene of unwavering tragedy, where thousands of innocent people lost their lives in a barbaric manner. Bergen, a suburban district of Celle, played host to the infamous Belsen concentration camp. Many Jewish prisoners were transported by rail into the town centre before being dispatched to Belson. Knowledge of these aspects could have had a negative effect on the servicemen's moods and behaviours, giving rise to the tales of the paranormal.

Current State

 Militant forces vacated the premises entirely in 2012 and the building was repurposed as originally intended. Sections of it were converted into a hotel, which has seen positive reviews from visitors on travel websites. Some of the guests suggest that the strange happenings in the building have not stopped, often reporting the sound of jackboots marching in the hallways.