I have been researching the occult practices of Germany's Nazi leadership and some of the rituals associated with it. While doing so, I ran across the following information in reference to Celle Neues Rathaus.
The Celle Neues Rathaus is a surviving example of Gothic architecture. Although today it’s only a town hall, the building perhaps holds a dark secret. Located in the Lower Saxony region of Germany’s heartland, Celle is a small and auspicious city. Celle Neues Rathaus (translating to “New Town Hall of Celle”).
The edifice was occupied by the Wehrmacht in the 1930s, contained 300 rooms and could accommodate up to 1200 soldiers, with further accommodations for two hundred officers. Five additional underground levels enhanced the capacity of the ten-story building.
During Hitler’s rise to power and militarization of Germany, the Rathaus evolved into a military headquarter for the SS. It wasn’t until the site housed allied soldiers that the initial reports of paranormal encounters began after the war.
When the English and American forces made their push through Germany, they discovered that the Nazis had flooded and sealed the lower floors of Celle Neues Rathaus with concrete. This was of notable interest to specialized allied units. They were aware that the Nazi regime had hidden valuable stolen artworks and artifacts in the last days of the war. Therefore, they thought treasures might still exist in the building’s lower levels. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, ordered a dive expedition to investigate the lower levels of the structure.
On April 15, 1945, the expedition provided vivid accounts of what Celle Neues Rathaus may have been used for. Three divers went down at separate points, each of them tethered by a line. After thirty minutes under, only one man resurfaced. As told by the sole survivor of the original US Navy dive team, the harrowing experience deeply affected him.
Upon entering the subterranean complex, the diver claimed that he saw many sigils etched into the walls of the first and second floors. These included pentagrams and other pagan occult symbols. If this wasn’t foreboding enough, reports indicate that when he swam into the third floor, the diver came across mutilated bodies strapped to chairs.
The state of these corpses was like nothing he had ever seen. He saw vivisected abdomens, missing limbs, and animal appendages attached to several of the corpses. More specifically, some featured the heads of goats sewn onto the human bodies. He also described the mutilated bodies were moving in the flooded rooms, writhing in their chairs and trying to get out. The diver also mentioned that dark form chased him through the water during his ascent back to the surface.
After this incident, the diver was never the same, refusing to ever dive again. He took a medical discharge not long after this event. The other two other divers’ bodies were never recovered, although the tether lines attached to them were.
On April 21, Celle’s Rathaus was handed over to the British army. Soon after, the subterranean levels were completely sealed with concrete.
Soon after Celle’s city was liberated, the structure served as rotating barracks for allied units moving through Germany and for those stationed in the Celle region. English and American forces remained stationed in Germany for years due to the Cold War.
During the Cold War, the building became a permanent barracks for NATO troops. Soldiers’ reports of paranormal phenomena around the site increased. An English infantryman named Stephan Dailey said that on his first night in the barracks, he awoke to the sounds and silhouettes of a formation of men marching past his window. However, it was not until the next day that he remembered his room was on the second floor with the window more than ten feet off the ground.
There were other reports of strange activity. These included the sounds of jackboots in empty hallways or on the parade ground when most of the force was on leave. Additionally, sounds of hushed German voices in vacated or locked rooms were also not uncommon.
In a far more dramatic account, a private by the name of Martin Fox awoke abruptly one night to find his bed levitating eight feet of the ground. After he realized it was not a prank, he panicked. This caused the bed to come crashing down to the floor. Subsequently, a sergeant major was out on the grounds one evening and watched the ghostly form of a German Panzer column move along a road next to him in complete silence.
It was not uncommon for enlisted men to return to find their previously clean and secured rooms vandalized throughout this time. There were also often sightings of shadowy figures in hallways and corners. Some men even claim to have awoken to these entities standing over their beds at night. On the higher levels of the Rathaus, some rooms had pentagrams and odd symbols etched into the floors or walls, similar to the motifs that the frightened diver described.
Official documents noted that the barracks had an unexplainable spike in medical discharges during the 1980s. Many of these resulted from psychological evaluations that determined the men were depressed, schizophrenic, or suffering from extreme acute anxiety conditions. The suicide rate was the highest among stationed troops in West Germany, As the medical examiner recorded, there seemed to be a dark, oppressive atmosphere over the site.
Celle was near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In the process of transporting prisoners to this camp, they would have had to change lines at Celle. On April 8, 1945, about 3500 concentration camp inmates died in Celle on their way to Bergen-Belsen. This was the result of an Allied air raid that hit the ammunition train that had stopped next to them and exploded. A number of these prisoners were killed, while the surviving inmates fled into the town or woods. The SS opened fire on them. The rest were hunted like animals and killed.
Had the real horrific events of earlier days at Celle Neues Rathaus been ingrained so deeply into the area and the building? One would think that the sealed underground levels should be examined, but this action has never been undertaken.
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