Rosenheim poltergeist
Parapsychologist Hans Bender claimed that electrical faults and moving objects in a Rosenheim law office in 1967 were caused by the psychokinesis of a 19-year-old secretary.
1967 CE · 47.85, 12.13 · status: disputed
The account
The office of lawyer Sigmund Adam saw power surges, swinging lights and phone faults; Bender said physicists Karger and Zicha found 'some unknown form of energy'. The secretary, Annemarie Schaberl, was cast as the poltergeist's focus.
The sceptical view
Bender's investigation has been criticized for leaving out key details. A 1970 book reported nylon threads attached to office fixtures that made them move when pulled.
The researched reading
A well-witnessed office disturbance with real electrical faults, but the claims of psychokinesis rest on an investigation never fully published, and fraud evidence was left out. Trickery plus faulty wiring is the most likely story.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Undetermined | 30% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Something in the surroundings | 20% | Real voltage surges, fuse blowouts and swinging lamps were logged by the power company; faulty wiring, a bad transformer or nearby equipment can cause such effects, though technicians replaced equipment without fixing it. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 15% | A 1970 book reported nylon threads attached to office fixtures; Piet Hein Hoebens noted that Bender omitted a police report of Annemarie Schaberl being caught cheating; John Taylor concluded the chart-recorder traces were likely made by hand. The phenomena stopped when she left. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 15% | Once the office was declared haunted, expectation turned ordinary faults and noises into events, and Bender’s public framing focused attention on one young woman. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 10% | Two physicists reported effects they could not explain and some phone billing anomalies are unexplained; but no full report was ever published, so the exclusion of trickery cannot be checked. |
| A cultural story | 5% | The case fits the parapsychological model of the adolescent "poltergeist focus" and was retold through that lens. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 5% | Building vibration and electrical storms can explain some movements and surges. |
Official position: No official finding; Bender and the physicists Karger and Zicha claimed an unknown energy, while critics documented trickery and missing details.
Connections in the atlas
- The Bell Witch
- Poltergeist
- Enfield Poltergeist