The Schaffhausen Poltergeist

The Schaffhausen poltergeist of 1916 occurred in a mechanical workshop in the canton of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland during the second year of the First World War. The case is notable in the continental European poltergeist literature for the breadth of its documentation despite the wartime conditions, the involvement of multiple investigative observers including local police, and the unusual concentration of the phenomena around a specific apprentice in the workshop.

The disturbances followed the focus-person pattern that had been characterised by parapsychological researchers in Switzerland and Germany since the late nineteenth century. Tools moved across the workshop without identifiable cause. Small mechanical parts levitated and fell from the ceiling. Larger pieces of equipment shifted on benches. The activity occurred predominantly during the working day when the apprentice was present and ceased when he was sent home or when the workshop was closed for the night. The owner of the workshop kept records of the disturbances and these records, along with witness statements from journeyman workers and visiting customers, were collected by a local investigator.

The Schaffhausen case was reported in the regional press during late 1916 and the case file was preserved in the cantonal archives. It does not appear to have produced a confession from the apprentice in the manner of the later Bremen case (1965), and the case files do not record a definitive conventional explanation. The disturbances ceased after the apprentice’s apprenticeship was transferred to another workshop in early 1917, which is consistent with the focus-person hypothesis without confirming it.

The Schaffhausen case has been discussed in Swiss parapsychological literature including the work of Theodor Flournoy’s successors at the University of Geneva. It is occasionally cited alongside the better-known Joller family poltergeist at Stans (1860) and the cases investigated by Hans Bender at Freiburg in the postwar period as part of the German-Swiss case canon. The case is less widely known in English-language literature than the Joller, Rosenheim, and Bremen cases but is preserved in the original Swiss-German records.

The cantonal archives at Schaffhausen hold the original case file including the workshop owner’s records, the witness statements, and the press cuttings of the period. The file was reviewed by a Swiss Society for Psychical Research delegation in the 1970s and the records were photographed for the Society’s working archive at Bern.

Documentation

• Cantonal archives, Schaffhausen
• Workshop owner’s contemporaneous records
• Local press coverage, late 1916
• Police incident reports
• Swiss Society for Psychical Research archive (Bern)
• Witnesses: 8 named
• Location: Mechanical workshop, canton of Schaffhausen