Strange things happen in the shop of the Augsburg tea merchant Angelika Holaschke.
Objects move as if by magic.
Holaschke and a historical researcher friend cannot explain the cause.
However, there were tragic events in the house.
Mysterious things happen in Augsburg tea shops
Owner has no natural explanation for the phenomena
A tragic fate befell several people in the house
It is actually a very common doormat that is supposed to ensure in Angelika Holaschke's tea shop at the Augsburg fruit market that the customers do not carry any dirt from the street inside.
But again and again when the clerk unlocks her shop, the doormat is different from what she left it the night before.
"It's been very strange since I've been here, the doormat wanders around, sometimes ten centimeters, sometimes 30 centimeters, sometimes even crawling up the counter," reports the 55-year-old.
This has been going on for 14 years.
The doormat actually has a rubber back and is quite heavy.
“We can rule out vibrations from a tram as the cause, there is none,” explains Holaschke's friend Susanne Wosnitzka.
She works in the music shop one floor up.
A construction site with vibrations is also excluded.
"We also hopped around on it, even then the doormat didn't move," says Holaschke.
But the wandering doormat is not the only thing that is remarkable in the store: the lids of the large tea caddies are always opened in the morning without anything missing.
There are also no tea crumbs lying around.
"I always close the lids tightly, otherwise the tea will lose its aroma," asserts Holaschke.
What could it be that is up to mischief between Earl Gray and Ceylon Assam?
“There are only five people who have a key to the shop, we can lock them all out,” says the shop owner.
It's good that her friend Susanne Wosnitzka is a city historian.
She found out that the Eisenhut Inn was previously where the post-war commercial building with the tea shop stands.
And Wosnitzka discovered while studying the writings of the Augsburg reading societies of the 19th century: Two people were killed in the Eisenhut inn in 1842: "A guest died in bed," reports Wosnitzka.
Apparently he was already sick when he arrived.
The second death: "A maid fell into the pit under the cellar and suffocated miserably." In addition, Wosnitzka reports of a monastery that stood at the fruit market in the Middle Ages and that had its own cemetery that reached as far as the property of today's house.
“Skeletons repeatedly come to light during construction work, including that of a woman who was pregnant when she died.” Was it a nun who had to die of an unwanted pregnancy?
Are they restless souls who haunt the tea shop?
“Who knows, we have no other explanations for what happened,” says Holaschke.
But what happens if one day a spirit should reveal itself to her?
Holaschke: "I'm not worried about that, I have excellent calming tea in stock."