Secrets of Celle Neues Rathaus

During the Cold War, soldiers stationed on an army base in the German city of Seller began to report strange, unexplainable experiences.

As time wore on, many of the men came to believe they were being terrorized by a sinister paranormal presence.

These encounters proved so horrifying that some took their own lives rather than face another night on patrol.

Whilst the incidents were largely dismissed by skeptics, Fringe theorists have uncovered long-hidden secrets that indicate these men might have been telling the truth.

Indeed, few places in the world have a darker, more sinister history than the Cellar Neues Rathaus.

By April 1945, the Wehrmacht under the command of Adolf Hitler was in full retreat across Germany as the Western Allied forces advanced steadily into the heart of the Reich.

German troops were surrendering in vast numbers, marking a deeply humiliating collapse for an army that had once dominated the battlefields of Europe with superior firepower and tactical efficiency.

On the 10th of April, the United States 84th Infantry Division crossed the Weser River.

and secured control of Hanover, a city that had suffered near total destruction due to the sustained Allied aerial bombardment bombardment which had reduced 90% of its central district to ruins.

Consequently, American ground forces encountered minimal resistance upon arrival.

The war had become protracted, its conclusion long anticipated, and the overstretched, poorly supplied German soldiers were demoralised and depleted.

Their spirit had deteriorated alongside the devastated urban landscape.

Surrounding municipalities quickly capitulated, hoisting white flags as soon as Allied armour appeared, preferring surrender to continued engagement in a hopeless and ruinous conflict.

One of these towns sitting 20 miles northeast of Hanover was Seller, a comparatively small, unassuming community of around 40,000 people.

However, there was one thing that made Celler extraordinary.

It was home to one of the largest freestanding brick-built structures in Europe, the Haider Kazerna.

At 600 feet long and boasting five floors above ground and five levels below comprising more than 300 rooms, it was originally built in 1869 as a barracks for the 2nd Hanoverian Infantry Regiment.

The building still stands today and is known simply as the Seller Neuesrataus.

which translates rather plainly to Celler New Town Hall.

The transition from a barracks to an administrative building occurred in 1999, with city leaders claiming they wanted to move away from Seller's military past.

But unfortunately, there are some things you simply can't move away from.

Visitors and town officials alike claim that the massive brick edifice seems to pulse with dark energy.

Some say it is so potent that it instantly washes over virtually everyone who so much as steps onto its grounds.

Though many are quick to dismiss the structure as just another old military fort, its history suggests that it may have been much more.

In fact, it might have been home to some of the most bizarre experiments ever conducted.

In the lead up to World War II, the Haider Keserna was still being used by the German army.

However, the regime had changed.

The Weimar government ended in 1933, which meant that all military outposts in Germany were now Nazi outposts.

Whilst the fascist nationalistic party was outwardly militaristic, few people know that it was inwardly obsessed with the occult.

Adolf Hitler, alongside his Reichsleiter Heinrich Himmler, were both said to have a deep interest in mysticism, mythology and demonology.

It is thought that the Third Reich was looking to harness untold powers in order to tip the fortunes of war in their favour.

For instance, there are tales of German troops making expeditions to Antarctica to locate hidden entrances to the so-called hollow earth, which would supposedly lead them to a dormant race of giants.

Whilst this sounds fantastic on the face of it, it was later confirmed that the Nazis did indeed visit the continent, which they called New Swabia, and potentially even established a secret bunker there.

Some have gone so far as to claim that the desire for such an isolated outpost was due to the Wehrmacht's meddling in powers that they could not comprehend or control.

Other 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 to locate British submarines and merchant vessels.

Hitler himself was no stranger to paranormal experiences.

as he had recorded such instances in his private journals many times.

Even Nazi imagery like the Sig runes, svostikas and black sun motifs carry significant symbolism dating back to pagan times.

In short, there is no lack of verified evidence to back up the supposed connection between the Nazis' plan for global domination and their interest in mystical forces.

Himmler as head of the SS was said to be the primary force behind the Nazi occult experiments.

remodeling castles across the Reich to make them more spiritually potent and frequently holding bizarre rituals and ceremonies.

Which brings us back to Seller Neues Rathaus

Aside from functioning as a barracks, the Rathaus served as a military headquarters for the SS during much of the Nazi rule.

In this period, it was said to be the site of research and even experimentation on human subjects.

mainly Jewish prisoners from Belsen, a concentration camp roughly 8 miles to the north.

Some even say the camp itself, which was constructed in 1935, was specifically intended to provide a fresh supply of victims for experimentation.

There were rumours that the SS was summoning dark and sinister forces in the rooms situated on the lower levels, and that prisoners were being horribly mutilated in order for their bodies to become more accepting of demonic possession.

The building itself is said to have occult symbolism running all the way through it, from the way it is laid out to the very smallest of details, such as the shapes of concrete tie rods and decorative architecture.

Many believe the Rathouse served as an antenna or gateway which amplified the effects of such practices.

But whatever happened there, it didn't happen for long.

The town of Sela surrendered on the 12th of April 1945.

The town hall had miraculously escaped the bombing campaign relatively unscathed, and being the gargantuan structure that it was, seemed the perfect place to house occupying troops and form some sort of temporary administration.

However, the Allied forces soon realised that they could not access the lower levels, which had been completely flooded with water by the fleeing Germans.

This immediately piqued the interest of the commanding officer, Major General Alexander R.

Bolling, as he could see no reason for the SS to have gone to such an effort unless they were trying to hide something.

Over the next few days, he would make a determined effort to ascertain exactly what the Germans had attempted to cover up, and the events that followed would become known in military circles as the legend of Seller Neues Rathaus.

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On the 15th of April, three US Navy divers arrived in Cellar with orders to reconnoiter the submerged depths of the building.

It was a daunting prospect for any diver, even these men who were some of the best trained in the world.

Swimming down into a maze of confined rooms and corridors in pitch black darkness would be enough to unnerve even the hardiest of men.

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 half hour 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, however, did resurface, apparently raving like a lunatic.

When he finally came to his senses after a couple of hours, he reported seeing strange symbols and pentagrams etched into the walls and floors of some of the rooms on the first two levels.

On the third level down, he said that in the darkness, he had seen mutilated corpses strapped to chairs.

He reported that they were in a horrifying state.

Some had their abdomens split wide open or all of their limbs removed, and others had goats' heads attached to their bodies in place of their own.

Whilst this was terrifying enough, he spoke in whispered tones about how he had seen them moving, as if they were still alive.

This had caused him to panic and swim back to the surface.

On his return, He reported that a dark cloudy mass had chased him through the water.

By all accounts this man was never the same again and was discharged from the Navy shortly afterwards.

The commanding officer was reluctant to investigate further as he did not wish to put more lives at risk.

In any case time was running short as Seller was in the British zone of occupation and British forces would soon be arriving to relieve the Americans.

The building was handed over to the British Army on the 21st of April and the basements were sealed over with concrete shortly thereafter.

By this time, the atrocities of the Nazi regime were just coming to be known to the Allied forces, and those who managed to survive the war had good reason to believe they would soon be put on trial for war crimes, amongst other things.

The flooding of the Rathaus's lower levels fits with the SS's other attempts to cover up their atrocities, such as the demolition of buildings and crematoria at the death camps, the destruction of documentation, and the widespread murder of survivors.

Though the Allies would have been happy to seal the building and forget about it altogether, the end of the war did not bring the peace that many were hoping for, and so the dark energies present at the Rathaus continued to find new victims.

Not long after the diving incident, the building was inundated with refugees escaping the collapsing German state.

Many argued that their anguish and dread only enhanced whatever powers the SS had conjured up in the building, giving it the ability to manifest its horrors in new, terrifying ways.

In 1949, irreconcilable differences between the Allied powers led to Germany being partitioned, with the Soviets taking the eastern section and the United States, Great Britain and France controlling the west.

By 1950, the Cold War was in full swing.

and Germany became a literal demarcation line between East and West.

Throughout this period, Seller served as a critical garrison town, staging a sizable contingent of British and West German forces.

The stories regarding the flooded lower levels and the fate of the US Navy divers were rife during this period, and many believed them to be nothing more than urban legends.

But no one could get away from the fact that access to the basement floors was indeed restricted.

It was obvious that most stairwells leading down into the lower levels had hastily been filled with concrete, as the tops of banisters or handrails could be seen protruding from the floor.

Then there were the incidents, things that even the most battle-hardened veterans couldn't explain or deny.

Soldiers on patrol late at night would see things, full-bodied apparitions of German soldiers marching down the yard, or the sound of heavy footsteps running across the floors.

Others would hear screams of pain from empty corners, often in languages they didn't understand.

One One of the best examples of this paranormal phenomena comes from a British infantryman by the name of Stephen Daly.

On his very first night in the barracks as a new recruit, he awoke to an unmistakable sound.

Formations of men marching past his window.

As he lay there confused and half asleep, he could clearly see the silhouettes of people walking back and forth outside.

Strange as it was given the late hour, he managed to shrug it off as just another another patrol and go back to sleep.

He was unfamiliar with the base after all.

Perhaps marching at odd hours was standard practice.

But the next morning, Daly awoke and realised to his shock that his room was actually on the second floor, putting his window some 10 feet above the ground.

Even if there had been a patrol marching in formation the previous night, it would have been impossible for him to have seen their silhouettes cast against his window.

Amazingly, Daly served four years in cellar throughout the 1980s, during which time he experienced all kinds of strange goings-on, such as hearing jackboots marching on parade grounds and through hallways, even though half of the camp was on leave and no parades were taking place.

Those who had paranormal experiences spoke about them in hushed tones.

There were instances of people hearing voices conversing in German behind the doors of otherwise locked and empty rooms.

In one bizarre instance, a Sergeant Major was utterly stupefied in the early hours of one morning when he witnessed a column of German panzer tanks pass him by in complete and utter silence.

For most of the soldiers stationed at the Rathouse, the encounters never escalated beyond sights and sounds.

Strange as they were, This made it easy for the men to dismiss the events as their mind playing tricks on them due to exhaustion or stress.

However, there were a few instances where the supernatural powers at Cellar actually interacted physically with the men.

In one such account, a young private by the name of Martin Fox awoke one night to find that the ceiling of his bedroom was only inches away from his face.

At first he thought that his roommates were playing a prank, but when he realised his bed was floating several feet above the floor, he screamed out and both he and the bed came crashing down, waking his sleeping comrades.

Other soldiers reported having their rooms vandalized, even though they had been locked and secured at the time and no one else had been in there.

Some even saw dark shadowy figures standing at the ends of their beds and in hallways.

Most unsettling was the unusually high rate of suicides amongst the men stationed at the Rath House.

There were certain vacant rooms on the upper levels, which were said to have pentagrams etched into the floors and walls, and legend has it that many recruits ended up taking their own lives shortly after spending a night in them on a dare.

A large number of soldiers were also discharged on medical grounds after undergoing psychological evaluations.

Many of them had become deeply depressed during their tour of duty, and officials felt they might be a danger to themselves and others if they remained on active service.

The general feeling throughout the ranks inhabiting the base was that a dark, oppressive atmosphere hung over the town in general.

Though the Rathaus had been home to the SS and its rumoured occult experiments, the entire town had been awash in negative energy throughout the Nazi regime.

Much of this stemmed from the nearby Belsen concentration camp.

In fact, many Jewish prisoners from across Germany were transported by rail into the town centre before being dispatched to Belsen thereafter.

Although Seller was captured during the war without a single shot being fired, it was no less a scene of unwavering tragedy.

A place where thousands upon thousands of innocent people lost their lives in an untimely and barbaric manner.

Could the very knowledge of this have had a negative effect on the men's moods and behaviours?

And if so, why did this dark cloud seem to hang specifically over the Rath House?

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What can we make of the legend of the Seleneus Rathaus?

If the stories collected over the past eight decades are to be believed, it may be the most haunted building in Europe, potentially the world.

Still, given the nature of the accounts connected to the barracks, some find it difficult to believe any of them truly happened.

History indeed affirms that the building was used by the SS.

and that it's located within several miles of the Belsenbergen concentration camp where some 50,000 people were killed, including including Anne Frank and her mother.

However, there are no records of any experiments taking place at the barracks, or evidence that the SS used it for anything other than as a command post.

Whilst it's impossible to deny that the entire area has a dark history, we must also accept that most of the paranormal elements surrounding the building itself all stem from one place.

the original tale of the American divers.

Reading this story back, one must admit that it has all the hallmarks of an urban legend, all the clichés of fabrication, perhaps concocted to frighten new recruits.

There is no doubt that the Rathaus and cellar does have floors below ground, which are inaccessible and have been covered over with concrete.

Whether they are or were flooded is another matter.

After all, how practical would it be to fill the equivalent volume of a football stadium with water?

Surely gutting the building with fire would have been a far quicker and easier method of destroying any evidence of whatever had been going on there, unless the SS were not trying to hide evidence but instead to quarantine whatever abominations they had created.

This brings the focus back to Heinrich Himmler and his well-documented obsession with the occult.

A German soldier who had been stationed there during the Cold War years had an interesting and somewhat bizarre story to tell.

Posting anonymously on an internet forum back in 2009, 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 to do 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.

Fantastic as it may be, this seems to support the tale of the diver and the symbols, mutilated bodies and goat-headed beings he saw moving in the water.

But even if the story of the divers is fabricated, how are we to explain the experiences of Daly, Fox and countless other soldiers who had paranormal experiences at the site?

There are far too many accounts, even from senior ranks, to dismiss altogether.

If you are lucky enough to speak to any British or German soldier stationed here during the Cold War, you'll more than likely find that they believe there was definitely something evil and twisted about the Rathouse.

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.

Whether it had connections to the occult or otherwise is up for debate.

Putting aside the theories of the occult, medical experiments and demons, some experts theorise that what's actually happening at the Seleneus Rath House has to do with what's called spiritual imprinting.

This theory states that places themselves can absorb energy, especially when exposed to trauma, violence and intense emotion.

It's a concept found across many cultures and belief systems and it's often used to explain hauntings, lingering sensations of unease or repeated tragedies occurring in the same location.

Even without the magical elements, the Rathouse has certainly witnessed more than its fair share of anguish.

In fact, just days before the end of the war, it was the site of one of the most horrific events of the conflict's final months.

On April the 8th, 1945, A train carrying around 3,500 concentration camp inmates was struck during an Allied air raid.

The explosion tore through the cars, killing many instantly.

Those who survived tried to flee, but were hunted down by SS soldiers and local authorities.

Known today as the Seller Massacre, it left a stain of unimaginable horror on the town.

Could this mass killing have left a lasting imprint on the Rath House and its surroundings?

If so, it would go a long way towards explaining the visions of soldiers marching, the sounds of people screaming, and the general feeling of dread that seems to affect so many people who enter the building.

Some believe that this kind of energy saturation can attract or even generate something darker.

Not a ghost in the traditional sense, but a sort of negative force born of repeated suffering.

In this view, these energies aren't necessarily intelligent, but they behave like mold or rot, spreading, influencing and even harming the living who come into contact with them.

Records from the decades that followed the war show a marked increase in suicides amongst the men stationed at the building.

Even when the horrors of the battlefield had ended, many of those living in the Rathouse seemed unable to escape some internal darkness.

It's worth noting that by the mid-1980s, many of the soldiers who served in Seller had not lived through the war at all.

Still, the tragic incidents continued.

In any case, British and German forces vacated the premises entirely in 2012 and the building was repurposed as the seat of local government.

Parts of it have also been converted into a hotel, which has seen glowing reviews from visitors on various travel websites.

That said, Guests still report even to this day strange goings-on and the ever-present sound of jackboots echoing through the halls.

It seems the secrets of Seller Neuer Schathaus endure.

It remains one of the most enigmatic structures in post-war Europe.

From its roots as a barracks to an SS command post and its later conversion into a Cold War garrison, the building has been repeatedly linked to stories of terror, trauma and deeply unsettling occurrences.

Whilst rational minds may point to psychological stress, mass suggestion or the influence of local folklore.

The sheer number of first-hand accounts suggests there is more at work here than mere rumor.

Whether the tales of occult experiments are true or not, something clearly affected the men who stayed within those walls.

Perhaps it was a lingering energy left behind by human cruelty, or perhaps something far older and far darker was simply waiting to be awakened.

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