The Got­hers­ga­de Pol­ter­gei­st

About the event

It all appears to have star­ted — almost with a bang — on the night betwe­en sun­day the 9th and mon­day the 10th of May, 1779. The owner of the pro­per­ty at the time was a brewer named Peter Tit­ken. He had recent­ly ren­ted out the second and third sto­ri­es of the buil­ding to supre­me court coun­cil mem­ber Just Hen­rich Vol­te­len and his wife and son.
Vol­te­len was awo­ken by a scrat­ching and kno­ck­ing on the bedroom panels. The sounds qui­ck­ly stop­ped, but after 15 minu­tes, 2 loud bangs, soun­ding like gun­s­hots, came from his son’s room. Eve­ry­o­ne in the hou­se­hold awo­ke from it in fright, but the son was unhar­med and the­re was no smell of gun­pow­der.

After that fol­lowed a few days of qui­et, but then the nois­es retur­ned in full effect. Soon, all aro­und the clo­ck kno­ck­ing, scra­ping and loud slam­m­ing sounds could be heard. Fur­ni­tu­re and other inte­r­i­or was also thrown aro­und and bro­ken by some unse­en for­ce. The sca­ri­est part, howe­ver, was a disem­bo­di­ed scre­e­ching and wai­ling voi­ce that could be heard all over the hou­se. At some point a ser­vant enco­un­te­red the voi­ce on the back­stairs and beca­me so sho­ck­ed that he fell over in con­vulsions, which lasted five hours!

The fol­lowing Tues­day, the 13th of May, Vol­te­len had alre­a­dy had enough. He went to the chief of poli­ce and deman­ded a search of the hou­se. They sent two offi­cers with him to stay for a night at the hou­se, but did­n’t get any clo­ser to sol­ving the mis­chief. In the mean­ti­me, Vol­te­len had tem­pora­rily ren­ted some rooms in a buil­ding across the stre­et, so they at least could get a good nigh­t’s sle­ep for once.

The story qui­ck­ly spre­ad to the imme­di­a­te area, which at the time was home to a lar­ge per­cen­ta­ge of Copen­ha­gen’s pubs and taverns. Come Satur­day the 15th, huge crowds had star­ted gat­he­ring out­si­de the pro­per­ty of brewer Tit­ken, who final­ly got so angry that he yel­led out for all to hear, that if only Vol­te­len would find ano­t­her pla­ce to live, the haun­ting would pro­bably dis­ap­pear too. This of cour­se led to more of a con­fli­ct betwe­en Vol­te­len and Tit­ken. The for­mer soon filed a com­plaint to The Danish Chan­ce­ry — the hig­he­st cen­tral gover­ning and admi­ni­stra­ti­ve body in the coun­try at the time — in order to sol­ve the case, as well as to clear his name and reclaim his honour.

The com­plaint seems to have been taken serious­ly enough by the Chan­ce­ry, but whet­her as thor­ough an inve­sti­ga­tion as reque­sted by Vol­te­len was ever laun­ched, is not com­ple­te­ly clear. Nevert­he­less, the­re were some moves made towards resol­ving the issue. After two mont­hs, this attempt was shut down due to lack of evi­den­ce. Vol­te­len was of cour­se fru­stra­ted, but did not give up just yet. He set up a reward of a lar­ge amo­unt of money, to any­o­ne that could bring infor­ma­tion to help sol­ve the case. But even after mont­hs of Chan­ce­ry-back­ed anno­un­ce­ments in major news­pa­pers, with the pro­mi­se of immu­ni­ty from pro­secu­tion, and the reward amo­unt gra­du­al­ly increa­sing to a small fortu­ne, Vol­te­len was still no clo­ser to a reso­lu­tion.

Brewer Peter Tit­ken had his own pro­blems fol­lowing the epi­so­de. For a long time, he could­n’t rent out the rooms the Vol­te­len family had stay­ed in to any­o­ne, as they had beco­me so tain­ted by all the super­sti­tion and rumours. On the 11th of Janu­ary, 1780, more than half a year after the inci­dent, Tit­ken there­fo­re found it neces­sary to make a public sta­te­ment in the papers. Toget­her with one Colo­nel Von Ves­sel, who was cur­rent­ly resi­ding in ano­t­her part of the buil­ding, he for­mal­ly anno­un­ced that the­re had not been any ghost­ly acti­vi­ty on the pro­per­ty sin­ce August 1st the pre­vious year. By 1781 he had still not been able to rent out the rooms, and in des­pe­ra­tion he now con­ta­cted the Chan­ce­ry in the hope of re-laun­ching an inve­sti­ga­tion. This was met with a clear refus­al. It is not known whet­her Tit­ken ever mana­ged to find new lod­gers for the apart­ment again.

Com­men­tary

The Got­hers­ga­de case as such is not very detai­led, and com­pa­red with other pol­ter­gei­st inci­dents such as the Lak­se­ga­de and Ny Told­bod­ga­de cases, not real­ly all that specta­cu­lar eit­her. What makes it so com­pel­ling, howe­ver, is how much strong docu­men­ta­tion we have about what took pla­ce. Inde­ed, if the­re never had been the anno­un­ce­ments by Vol­te­len, and later from Tit­ken, we pro­bably would­n’t know about the inci­dent today. This shows us that somet­hing dis­rup­ti­ve and out of the ordi­nary real­ly did hap­pen and that it drove the main cha­ra­cters of the dra­ma to take dra­stic actions.

Howe­ver, in stark con­trast to the two other pol­ter­gei­st cases men­tio­ned above, we do not get a sen­se that the peop­le invol­ved found the goings-on to be of an evil or ghost­ly natu­re. Tit­ken him­self see­med to direct­ly pla­ce bla­me on Vol­te­len and his son, alt­hough it is not clear why he did­n’t sim­ply anno­un­ce that the pro­per­ty had never been home to any ghosts, inste­ad of leaving a spe­ci­fic date (August 1st), from which it had been ghost free. Also, from Vol­te­lens let­ter to the Chan­ce­ry it is qui­te clear that he did­n’t belie­ve that the­re was anyt­hing super­na­tu­ral behind the com­mo­tion eit­her. In fact, such rumors made him even more deter­mi­ned to get to the bot­tom of thin­gs. He genu­i­ne­ly hoped and expected to find one or seve­ral tan­gib­le cul­prits behind it, and must have been extre­me­ly fru­stra­ted when not even rai­sing the reward by five times the ori­gi­nal amo­unt hel­ped. Alas, in the end, the case was never sol­ved.

Select sour­ces

• Bo Bomuld Hamilt­on Wit­ten­dorf — Gui­de Til Det Okkul­te Dan­mark
• J. David­sen — Fan­den i Laxe­ga­de, Spø­ge­ri­et i Got­hers­ga­de (Kjø­ben­havn i Ældre og Nye­re Tid, 1889)
• Lars Tho­mas — Det Mysti­ske Dan­mark, 2. Sam­ling