Ghosts Rising from the Glacier

Centuries ago locals in Switzerland told stories of devils, demons, and souls wandering the cold night in search of rest. The Aletsch Glacier always generated these stories. Occasionally a brave soul would venture out to the glacier. If they didn’t return, everyone knew why. Their soul had joined the others who wandered the glacier at night — lost and hopeless.

The local legends persisted over the years. And the glacier continued to swallow up the many of the souls who dared explore it.

In 1926, three brothers set out to explore the Eggishorn and the Aletsch. Johann, Cletus, and Fidelis Ebener stopped at a hut located near the glacier for a night. The next morning they left to explore the area, but found themselves caught up in a terrible storm. It forced them to return to the hut for safety. The next day they set out once more. This time, no one heard from the brothers again. They vanished like so many before.

That is, until 2012. That’s when the glacier revealed three of its ghosts. Frozen for nearly 90 years, the glacier receded enough to free the brothers.

Johann, Cletus, and Fidelis Ebener, who disappeared in 1926.

The Ebener’s story is familiar to locals. However, today’s stories aren’t shrouded in the mysteries and myths of yesterday. There are no demons and wandering souls. Today’s stories are told in the context of a glacier that is receding. Rapidly in the past 150 years. Slowly, it reveals the bodies of long lost hikers, explorers, and locals.

The Great Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps and is visible from space. It’s also a retreating glacier. To add some perspective, the Konkordia Hut is a mountain hut built for shelter near the glacier. The hut was constructed in 1877 and was positioned 164 feet above the glacier. Today, it sits 492 feet above the glacier.

The retreating is now revealing the ghosts of the Aletsch Glacier’s past.

A few years after the Ebener brothers disappeared, the glacier enticed another traveler. The beauty of its surrounding mountain landscape and the glacier itself did what it has for centuries. It inspired, it awed, and it left them struggling to find the words to describe its majesty. They spent the afternoon watching the fog and imagining the day to day lives of locals far below.

At some point, they took a pencil and postcard and began to write. To try to explain the sight was impossible. But, they tried.

Do not make the mistake of thinking this is a lake picture. It is, but an ocean of fog very similar to the one I have looked on with rapture all afternoon. Far below the surface of this fog the inhabitants of Switzerland are buying and selling, prodding their oxen before them; passing each other with their “grüß gott”* and wishing that the abominable fog above them would rise. Every valley about us was today almost full of the rolling billows, whose surface rose higher and higher towards evening until some valleys filled to the brim and the buoyant liquid began rolling lazily into the valley adjacent. Far out over the low lands of Switzerland the fog lay, only here and there a white capped peak rose above the surface, looking like white islands in a boundless ocean, gorsh, it was handsome.

The back of the postcard. The writer filled the entire card in an attempt to describe the scenes found in the Swiss Alps.

Overcome with emotion, they tried every adjective possible to explain the scene. If you’ve ever seen the Swiss Alps before, you know this exercise is an impossible exercise.

German novelist Thomas Mann made an attempt in The Magic Mountain. “But if there was something roguish and fantastic about the immediate vicinity through which you laboriously made your way, the towering statues of snow-clad Alps, gazing down from the distance, awakened in you feelings of the sublime and holy.”

As they sat down with their pencil, so many descriptive words were floating around in their head. None of them seemed adequate I am sure. Feelings sublime. Feelings holy. Feelings that expressed a sense of being overwhelmed. We will never know for sure. Their identity is a mystery to us today.

It’s as if they adventured to the mountains and glacier that day in wonder. But, disappeared into its thick, frozen fog — leaving us only these words on the back of a postcard.

• grüß gott is “Good day” in German.

The Dance of Death

Nestled on the outflow of the river Reuss, where it spills into the Lake of Lucerne, lies the city of Lucerne, Switzerland. The majestic, snow covered Swiss Alps act as an impressive backdrop for the city. The city’s history dates to 750 A.D. Much of its medieval architecture still stands. To cross the river, one can walk across the covered Spreuer Bridge. Built in the 13th century, it was one of three pedestrian bridges built in Lucern across the river Reuss.

In 1616, city council members commissioned painter Kaspar Meglinger to begin work on a project to add some art to the interior of the bridge. It was a project that would feature 67 separate paintings in the rafters of the Spreuer Bridge.

Featured postcard, most likely from the early 20th century. The scene is of the Spreuer Bridge in Lucern. There is nothing on the back of the postcard, besides “Spreuerbrücke” — Spreuer Bridge in German. It was purchased at a vintage store in Joplin, Missouri in 2005.

The project was completed in 1637. Members of high society, donors, and members of the city council viewed the artwork. Leisurely they walked the bridge observing Kaspar’s work. Brilliant, bright colors of red, orange, and yellow depicted carefully thought out scenes. Scenes that reminded them of death. Scenes that forced them to contemplate their own mortality. Scenes that reminded them that death was everywhere and always present.

If commissioned today, the scenes featured would undoubtedly be romantic and beautiful. Death wouldn’t have such a stranglehold on the scenes in the rafters.

When Kaspar Meglinger went to work on his vision for the bridge, he created a series of artworks in the allegoric style of Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death.

Each work depicted a scene of everyday human life, but there, always lurking nearby was death. A skeletal guide or reaper was never far from view — and that was the whole point of the genre Danse Macabre. Each work intentionally reminding the viewer of the fragility of life. Each work created to invoke thoughts of mortality. One couldn’t walk far on the bridge without understanding we’re all taking that last dance to the grave one day. No one, no matter their lot in life, or where they may be in the world, is safe from the ever present dance of death.

Today 45 of Kasper Meglinger’s original 67 works still exist within the bridge. Demonstrating that sometimes with the passing of time, even art faces a dance with death.

One day in the early 20th century an unknown tourist visited Lucerne on vacation. They approached the Spreuer Bridge. Pausing only for a moment, the unknown tourist stepped onto its wooden planks. Immediately they gazed into the rafters and started walking. One after the other scenes of everyday life and death peered back. Centuries had passed since the members of high society, donors, and city council members first walked the bridge. Long ago death had snatched each by the hand and danced with them to their graves. The unknown tourist took it all in. The skeletons, the reapers, all guiding kings, beggars, and clergy to their graves. The scenes of macabre, the dances of death still conveyed with clarity. Meglinger’s vision still influencing souls centuries later.

The unknown tourist left the bridge aware of their mortality.

Later, they stopped at a shop and purchased a postcard featuring the bridge. Its unique artwork of death on full display. The postcard was never sent to a friend or loved one. The unknown tourist saved it as a souvenir instead. As a reminder of that day they once walked across an old bridge in Lucerne. Still yet, as a reminder that the dance of death is always lurking nearby.

What it looks like today. Photo of the Dance of Death scene featured in the forefront of the postcard.