The Mysteries Of The Round House Part II – Occult Geography

The Mysteries Of The Round House Part II – Occult Geography

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• May 21, 2013
  
• Theo Paijmans
  

Did a German secret society resort to human sacrifice
to stem the tide of the First World War in Germany’s favour? Was the
builder of a house that became known as The Round House a member of this
order? Were human remains found, and were the outlines of a giant
Wodan, the supreme god of Nordic mythology, carefully hidden in the
landscape around this enigmatic edifice? Was the area surrounding the
house witness to bizarre rituals? A shadowy group of investigators
claims so.

Read Part 1.



Around the 1900’s, the exact date or year is shrouded in uncertainty,
wealthy estate owner Frank Van Vloten suddenly starts with a series of
extensive landscape and garden projects on his estate. The labourers who
work for him do not understand why, as almost everything they are
ordered to do to makes no sense from an agricultural point of view. On
the surface, there seems to be no logical plan behind the work. ‘But
there was work, and therefore food on the table’, is the consensus among
the labourers.

The working group investigating the mysteries that swirl around the
house is set on the trail of looking at the landscape surrounding the
Round House instead of delving through what archives remain, by a chance
discovery. They find what they see as a clue in the files of a former
SS affiliated archaeologist. Before World War II, the archaeologist had
done some excavation work at the Mythstee. This is a spot in the
vicinity of the Round House, since long rumoured to have been an ancient
Germanic place of worship.



The former SS affiliated archaeologist, Frans Christiaan Bursch
(1903-1981), seen above in the comfort of his study in the 1930′s, has a
chequered past, to say the least. During the Second World War, from
1940 to 1945, Bursch became a member of the N.S.B., a Dutch pro-Nazi
organisation. 1943 finds him at the Ukraine, involved in excavations
with the use of slave labour. Notwithstanding his N.S.B. membership and
his affiliation to Heinrich Himmler’s occult research institute
Ahnenerbe, he escapes any consequences after the end of the war in 1945.
Until his death in 1981, he is a teacher in classical languages.
Bursch, as might be expected from someone who had the dark overlord as
his master, saw ancient German ruins and remains everywhere. In how far
Bursch was working on a theory involving a giant pictogram and a
geoglyph in the vicinity of the Mythstee, is hard to say. His remaining
archive offers no further clue, and his post-war book makes no mention
of it.



The Mythstee, another source points out, is a place of evil. He
recounts vague rumours that ghosts and other strange creatures were
frequently seen there. “Dark and bloody rituals said to have been
conducted at the Mythstee and for a long time there were those that
claimed that the famous Varus Battle took place there, and not somewhere
in Germany. Wild German hordes whipped into frenzy by their druids
sacrificed the vanquished Romans on the earthen walls of the Mythstee.
This was the cause that the Pan-Germanic movement had a more than usual
interest in that particular spot, as it was also placed on a ‘Heilige
Lijn’, the German equivalent of a ley-line. This line allegedly was
restored in 1891 by the Alldeutscher Verein. That was the motive for the
construction of the Round House and its inhabitant, Frank van Vloten,
was placed there under orders of the Pangermanic movement.” Modern
archaeology though has established that the Mythstee is a curious, but
natural formation.

What the working group finds in the files of the deceased
archaeologist on the Mythstee is a depiction of the Giant of Cerne
Abbas. Wondering about the presence of this seemingly unrelated image in
that file, the question arises: would it be possible that the landscape
surrounding The Round House might have hidden a similar figure?



In the light of this theory, the extensive work done on the estate
begins to make sense. The landscaping, the planting or removing or
relocation of bushes, the digging of certain ditches and paths and the
creation of artificial hills all serve to create, in deepest secret, a
giant figure of Wodan, only to be seen from the sky, with the Round
House in its centre. For that is Wodan’s remaining eye.

Schalkwijk , the spokesman for the anonymous group investigating this
mysterious house, claims that he and his group investigated the
surrounding area with the use of soil investigations, measuring
equipment and ‘other sources’. They arrive at the conclusion that The
Round House and the estate were constructed according to ‘German rites’.
Seen from above, the giant image of the Nordic god Wodan would be
visible. The Round House is his one remaining eye. Schalkwijk even
manages to reconstruct a helmet and a spear in the landscape. In a bush
he recognizes a beard and moustache. They further claim to have found at
the south a ditch in the form of a phallus, with a vulva nearby, at
walking distance. “We got the most insane orders, replacing hills, dig
away soil and construct rice fields. We never saw rice”, the labourers
tell. These statements strengthen Schalkwijk and his group in their
conviction.

Copyright Werkgroep Het Ronde Huis & Uitgeverij Nunspeet.

From other quarters too, it is murmured that the place has a
reputation for weirdness. Some visitors will later claim that they felt
haunted by a strange, oppressive atmosphere when visiting the by now
wooded area. Other tales recount how many times, in the past but also in
the present, little people were seen who allegedly had an abode in the
vicinity of the Mythstee. But that is not everything. A wealthy family
buys an estate adjacent to The Round House and the Mythstee in the
1930’s. Some of its members behave very curiously and subsequently more
rumours start that a ‘Germanic-Celtic cult’ practice its rituals at the
Round House. When National Socialism emerges, eugenic experiments were
conducted there as well. Mention is made of unholy orgies with certain
very high placed German-friendly Dutchmen. There’s even mention of the
ghostly appearances of four or five girls. They can be seen wandering
over the nearby path sometimes at night, their arms tightly clutched.

Copyright Werkgroep Het Ronde Huis & Uitgeverij Nunspeet

The problem though is that the existence of a huge geoglyph in the
form of Wodan remains unproven too. On the aerial photos that have been
studied by enthousiasts and researchers of the myth, nothing is seen.
Also, but a few traces remain of the original landscape projects of
Frank Van Vloten, seen above in a family picture in the upper right
corner. Are Schalkwijk and his group of fellow researchers deluded and
do they simply want to see things that are not there at all? What
certainly doesn’t give one confidence is that almost anything in the
book on the case is unsourced. We don’t know who spoke to whom, when or
how.

But the strange stories remain.

In regards to these weird tales about little men and unholy rites by a
‘German-Celtic cult’, these stem from an odd source as well. They
appear in some curious leaves with intricate drawings, done by an
elderly and deceased man by thename of Eldermans. Not much is known
about him, what remained of his archive when Eldermans destroyed most of
it towards the end of his life, is for the most part found in a museum
for witchcraft. Eldermans himself is described by his late son-in-law
with simply one word: ‘witch’.

Perhaps a closer examination of the purported shadowy group
responsible for the occult activity during World War One might shed some
much-needed light on the matter. It is perhaps here, in the various
allegations of occult orders working on behalf of Imperial Germany, that
we may be able to shed some light on the matter.

Soon to follow: Part III – The Secret Brotherhood


TAGS: anthroposophy, nazi, Occult, odin, round house, theosophy, war, wodan


Thanks to: http://mysteriousuniverse.org

The mysteries Of The Round House Part I – Dark Rituals

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• April 22, 2013
  
• Theo Paijmans
  

Did a German secret society resort to human sacrifice
to stem the tide of the First World War in Germany’s favour? Was the
builder of a house that became known as The Round House a member of this
order? Were human remains found, and was there a geoglyph in the shape
of the supreme god of Nordic mythology carefully hidden in the landscape
around this enigmatic edifice? Does the landscape itself offer more
clues pointing to a carefully constructed occult geography? Was all of
this known in certain select circles and was that the reason that the
house was destroyed in 1967?

These questions and many others haunt a rural village in the
Netherlands. The mystery has been known for some time by a select group
of journalists and writers who were in possession of the same,
fragmentary source. Last year, the situation changed with the
publication of a book that has left me with more questions than answers.
Titled De Geschiedenis van Het Ronde Huis, Mysteries Ontrafeld… (The History of The Round House, Mysteries unravelled…),
the book is the result of a study by an anonymous ‘working group’,
consisting of seven persons. Sixty-five year old former bank employee
Hans Schalkwijk is one of them. He is listed as the unofficial ‘author’
of the book and acts as spokesperson for this group. He became
interested in the mystery over forty years ago.



In the book the group claims it has spent a considerable amount of
time, decades in fact, investigating the mystery of the Round House. It
has built up a comprehensive archive on the case, it further claims, yet
the book is unreferenced and much of the testimony in the book is by
anonymous sources. I have not seen the archive. I only know it from
Schalkwijk’s description, so I don’t know what it contains. Since the
claims are so wild and there is no documentary evidence, the book has
only led to more controversy, with fierce proponents and opponents.
After a short flurry of minor interest, the national media have dropped
the case.

But let us first examine the strange story of the mystery of the Round House itself.

A local hermit by the name of Johan Montenberg begins to tell a
strange story to Schalkwijk, who he meets in 1972. Montenberg is a
distrustful man. He doesn’t tell the story in one breath, but rather, by
bits and pieces, by hints here and there, and by rambling letters to
various persons, over a longer period of time.

What he hints at is hair-raising and unbelievable. A tale unfolds of
secret rituals, a German occult order, and the abduction of young girls
for human sacrifice. Mention is made of subterranean passages and a lime
pit where the bodies of the hapless victims are disposed of. As recent
as 2011, a local weekly states that human remains were found in 1916 and
the corpse of a young girl in 1917. A police investigation at around
1924 is said to have been halted on ‘orders of superiors’. All of this
is said to have occurred before, during and after the First World War.
In that war the Netherlands had a neutral status.

On these points though Schalkwijk is adamant. “There was no corpse
found in 1924, no human remains were dug up. There is no system of
underground passageways. I found absolutely no evidence”. Schalkwijk’s
words were printed in a Dutch newspaper five months ago. Yet he remains
convinced that around the time of the First World War a pagan-Germanic
order existed that practiced occult warfare.



In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Europe was literally riddled
with secret societies and occult orders, and Germany was no exception.
Ariosophy, theosophy, anthroposophy and countless of other, lesser known
sects, cults and orders flocked the streets. There was for instance the
O.T.O. that came into existence between 1895 and 1904. Others were the
Germanenorden, founded in 1912 in Berlin and having a swastika as its
symbol. From it ultimately sprang forth the Thule Gesellschaft, formally
founded in 1918. There were many more virulent antisemitic and
Volkische orders. Political murders, especially after the defeat of
Germany in the First World War were the order of the day. But no
evidence has ever come to light of instances of human sacrifice in these
German-Austrian occult circles, which makes the claims surrounding the
Round House especially hard to believe.



At the centre of the dark mystery stands a wealthy Dutchman, Frank
van Vloten (1858 – 1930), who has a reputation for eccentricity. Some
stories claim he always dressed in black, rode a black horse and was
known as ‘the black devil’. In 1906 Van Vloten begins the construction
of a curious building. It is a circular shaped stone house of three
stories and a flat roof on his large estate near Nunspeet, a little
Dutch town in a wooded area called the Veluwe. A private pony tram on a
Decauville track delivers guests from the local train station to the
building that quickly acquires the name The Round House.

Strange rumours begin to swirl around it although it is hard to say
when this exactly started. It is said that a woman, dressed entirely in
black, now and then visits the house. On certain occasions, it is
claimed, she brings a number of young girls, veiled and also dressed in
black with the private horse carriage. The children arrive, but are
never seen leaving. It is said that some of the labourers who work for
Van Vloten know what happens with these girls, but keep their mouths
tightly shut out of fear of reprisals. When these rumours begin to
emerge in the local Nunspeet newspaper in 1976, they are rebuffed and
delegated to the realms of fantasy by others who visited the Round House
in their childhoods. It is later claimed that the reporter who wrote
the 1976 story immigrated to Canada because of serious threats made to
his life.



The book also cites an anonymous, handwritten account in a notebook.
It is said to have been written by a man who hunted regularly during the
First World War in the woods around the Round House. Read aloud to one
of the researchers in 2006, it states in detail what happened:

“Had a conversation with H. in regards to the rumours
about the Round House… He finally confirmed that German rituals took
place on the grounds of the Round House. First in the house and then
outside. Always at full moon. The girls, usually a number of about six,
were given a drug to drink and were thus put in a state of hypnosis… At
one of the small ponds, a sacrificial stone was placed on a pedestal.
Next to it in an inclination in the ground a fire burned… The priest
with a hood with two holes for the eyes killed the girl with a sword. It
is not known who this man is. The group went back to the Round House
and the priest stayed behind and disposed of the body…”

Other accounts surface over the years, such as this one by a by now deceased, local artist-painter:

“We were so poor, that I used to hunt a rabbit in the
woods… One night I was at it again. At the pond I heard voices and saw a
light gleaming. I hid behind a tree to have a look. At the bank of the
pond there were a number of girls with oil lamps. They were standing in a
half circle, facing the pond. Twelve to fifteen girls, probably twenty
years old. In front of them was a woman facing them. A sturdy woman of
about 40 years old. The girls wore white blouses and dark skirts,
possibly red in colour. On their heads they wore some kind of hood. In
fact more a band round the head with on their foreheads something
glistening. Around their waits something that looked like a little apron
or bag. The older woman wore a long, dark dress, possibly red in colour
too. Something glistening was hanging on her chest. I think a chain or
something. All the girls and the woman put up their right hand with two
fingers in the air. It seemed like an oath taking. The older woman said
something, after which the girls repeated it. Afterwards the woman threw
something over her shoulder in the pond, perhaps a stone or a coin.
Then the girls began to sing softly. During the singing a number of men
approached the girls. They must have been standing farther away in the
dark. I became frightened and left immediately.”

How much of these weird tales without any possibility of checking
should we believe? That is the main gripe of the opponents and I can’t
blame them. I have talked to Schalkwijk and asked him if he or the group
he represents had any documentary, verifiable evidence for the
existence of that German occult order. His reply was that he had three
oral sources but no documentary evidence.

We will take a critical look at the problem of references in a
further instalment. But first we need to hear what else Schalkwijk and
his group have to say, as the story gets even stranger. They claim that
there is, or rather was, evidence as to the occult nature of Van Vloten
and his order. It is not found in archives, but in the landscape around
the Round House.

Read the next part! Part II – Occult geography


TAGS: anthroposophy, Conspiracy, Occult, theosophy, war


Thanks to: http://mysteriousuniverse.org


Please note that Part 1 is the second entry....