'Chopper' — the ghost voice in the dentist's surgery, 1981–1982

OVERVIEW

Chopper was the name of a ghost that supposedly haunted the dental practice of Kurt Bachseitz in Neutraubling, near Regensburg, from May 1981. The 'ghost' was said to be in love with the practice's 16-year-old dental assistant, and pestered her with proposals, promises, stupid jokes and obscenities that patients in the chair could clearly hear.

HISTORY

The dentist filed a complaint against persons unknown. For weeks police, Federal Post Office eavesdropping specialists and parapsychologists — Hans Bender among them — tried to trace a voice that came even out of washbasins and sanitary fittings; elaborate technical traps were set and the building's whole telephone system was replaced. The tabloids, radio and television followed the investigation continuously.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

On 4 March 1982 a special commission of the Regensburg and Munich criminal police exposed it as a hoax: the assistant herself had staged it together with the 62-year-old dentist and his wife. An officer had noticed her lips moving in a mirror in sync with a Chopper outburst. The three were fined a five-figure sum in marks for faking a crime, and the Post Office billed the couple 35,000 DM in damages. Filed UNVETTED. The case still has a literature in anomalistics, including a 2019 essay questioning the official account (Gerhard Mayer, 'The Authority Strikes Back').

VISITING

A private building; the pin marks the town of Neutraubling. Nothing to visit.