Two Queens, One Ghost: The Black Lady of Darmstadt

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The summer of 1854 was a busy one for this ghostly messenger.

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File Under: Just for Fun

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There’s a famous ghost known as the Black Lady of Darmstadt, said to appear to members of the ruling families of Hesse and Bavaria as a warning of impending death. Like most ghost stories, the details seem to fade and change with each retelling. But what’s the fun in fact-checking a ghost story? Some things are better left to the imagination, like the two haunted tales I’m about to share with you. They’re inspired by the same event and took place within weeks of each other. If they’re true, the Black Lady had her work cut out for her during that long-ago summer of 1854.

Queen Therese of Bavaria

In the summer of 1854, an epidemic of cholera tore through the city of Munich, home of Bavaria’s abdicated king, the former Ludwig I, and his wife, Queen Therese.

Cholera was a terrifying disease best known for the speed with which it killed. The bacteria responsible made the stomach wall more water-permeable, causing symptoms like diarrhea, stomach cramps, and vomiting. In many cases, severe dehydration led to systemic organ failure and death.

Before science pinpointed the cause as contaminated water, people believed it was a sort of airborne miasma brought on by filth. Outbreaks were particularly dangerous in cities, where people lived and breathed in close proximity to each other. Anyone with means and money usually fled to the countryside for cleaner, fresher air.

That summer, Ludwig and Therese had already left Munich for their palace in Aschaffenburg and remained well outside the city while the disease claimed its many victims.

Then, on the evening of October 6, Therese and her family were having tea. She and her ladies sat in one room, while two Bavarian princes sat together in the next room. The room occupied by the princes had two doors: one led to Therese and the other led to a chamber used by the palace staff. Suddenly, the staff door opened and a woman draped in a heavy black mourning veil entered the room. She made a deep curtsey to the two princes.

Surprised at the unexpected sight, one of the princes asked if she’d been invited to tea. When she didn’t answer, he pointed toward Therese’s door and said she could join the other ladies there. The woman in black said nothing. She merely turned, headed toward the indicated door, and appeared to vanish right through it.

One of the princes hurried into the staff room next door to ask if anyone had seen the mysterious woman. But he was met only by blank stares – no one had seen a thing. When he proceeded further into the hall to ask the guard on duty, the guard said, yes, he’d seen a woman in black in the passage outside the tea room.

The two princes decided not to tell Therese what had happened. But they told a few other people, most likely staff or their adjutants, and as they should have expected, the story spread like wildfire through the palace. Therese, of course, heard it, and began to cry.

The ghost story spread like wildfire through the palace. Therese, of course, heard it, and began to cry.

It was her last night in Aschaffenburg, with the court’s return to Munich scheduled for the next morning. She asked if it were possible to postpone the trip, but all the luggage had already been packed and most of the servants had already gone ahead to Munich. It just wasn’t feasible to delay their return another day. Poor Therese sobbed all night, frightened by the apparition and what it meant. She’d heard of the Black Lady and knew it didn’t mean anything good.

Therese’s family and attendants did their best to calm her down, but it’s unlikely she slept at all that night. While she tried to rest, the remaining palace staff questioned all the soldiers and servants on duty, hoping one of them could confirm they’d seen a flesh and blood woman enter the palace. Not a single one of them had.

The next day, the royal party set out for Munich as scheduled. Perhaps much to Therese’s surprise, the journey was uneventful, as was the next day and the next. Still, Therese couldn’t forget the ghost even as her life began to return to normal. The cholera outbreak had begun to lose its grip on the city, and she and her husband Ludwig even ventured out into a crowd, visiting Munich’s Exhibition of Industry.

But not long after the exhibition, Therese got sick. And just like it happened in other cases of cholera, the disease claimed Therese’s life quickly. Only two of her children, Luitpold and Adalbert, had time to make it to her bedside.

Her husband Ludwig wrote, “Within 12 hours, still in no danger of dying and then dead!”¹ He said her last moments were peaceful and that she passed away in her sleep. Therese died on October 26, 1854 at age 61 – twenty days after seeing the ghost.

“Within 12 hours, still in no danger of dying and then dead!”

King Ludwig I of Bavaria

Two more of her children, Max and Mathilde, arrived after her death. When she saw her mother’s body, Mathilde said her face had the expression of an angel.²

As for the former king Ludwig, he couldn’t bear to stay in Munich, where everything reminded him of his dead wife. He left for Darmstadt with Mathilde, who had married Grand Duke Ludwig III of Hesse and by Rhine.

The day after Therese died, a German newspaper printed a story about the Black Lady who had visited her in Aschaffenburg. The story would appear later in books and memoirs, garbled by the passage of time.

In some versions, Therese was having tea with Mathilde’s husband, Grand Duke Ludwig, when the ghost appeared behind her. In this version, Ludwig told her what he’d seen and Therese gasped, “It’s meant for me!” Although this version is more dramatic, I think I trust the version that appeared in the newspaper the day after her death.

Although this version is more dramatic, I think I trust the version that appeared in the newspaper the day after her death.

The Black Lady had appeared in order to warn Therese that her life was nearing its end. Could she have survived if she’d avoided the crowded streets of Munich for a little longer? Maybe. But maybe not. As the lore tells us, ghosts are messengers from the world of spirits, and may see or know things we can’t.

But Therese wasn’t the only royal woman visited by the Black Lady during the cholera epidemic of 1854. There’s another royal Bavarian woman who saw her firsthand…if we believe the legend.

Queen Maria Anna of Saxony

That summer of 1854, cholera crossed borders and boundaries at will, traveling up rivers and across oceans. It raged in Saxony as well as Bavaria. King Friedrich August II and his wife, Maria Anna, were cooped up in their capital city of Dresden but longed for the safer air of the country.

Friedrich decided to send Maria Anna and the court ahead to Pillnitz, just outside the city, while he stayed behind to do a little more work. He told her he’d catch up with her as soon as he could.

Maria Anna was born a princess of Bavaria, daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph and his second wife, Caroline of Baden. She was the identical twin of Princess Sophie, mother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria.

Dowager Queen Therese – whom we met in the previous story – was her sister-in-law, married to Maria Anna’s half-brother King Ludwig I of Bavaria.

At age 27, Maria Anna had married Crown Prince Friedrich August of Saxony. Upon the death of her husband’s uncle, she and Friedrich became king and queen of Saxony. The couple had no children, and at age 54, it was past the time when Maria Anna would have been able to give her kingdom an heir.

On August 9, Maria Anna did as her husband asked, leading the court 28 miles to Pillnitz, located on the banks of the Elbe River. One night, she and three of her ladies sat in the salon after dinner, reading out loud to each other. Suddenly, the lady reading stopped. She stared across the room, her eyes wide with horror.

“What’s wrong?” Maria Anna asked. “Are you ill?” Like everyone else, she was afraid the disease had followed them to Pillnitz.

The stricken lady-in-waiting swallowed her fear and tried to explain. She said that as she’d been reading, she had looked up into the room and saw an extra person there, walking behind Queen Maria Anna. The figure was a tall woman wearing mourning clothes – all black, with long black gloves and a heavy black veil. In her hand, she carried a black fan.

Maria Anna didn’t need to hear any more. She understood who the lady was and what she signified. “It’s the Black Lady,” Maria Anna said. “She’s come here for me.”

“It’s the Black Lady,” Maria Anna said. “She’s come here for me.”

Her ladies-in-waiting tried to calm her down, but nothing worked. Much like Queen Therese, Maria Anna went to bed convinced she might not wake up again.

But, just like Therese, she did.

And not only did she wake up, she got out of bed, got dressed, greeted her ladies-in-waiting, and survived long enough for a messenger to bring her an urgent dispatch.

That dispatch contained shocking news: the king, her husband, was dead. The Black Lady – usually a harbinger of death in Maria Anna’s Bavarian family – had come to warn them of her husband’s death instead.

That’s how the story goes, but in reality, that’s not quite what happened. Based on contemporary newspaper reports, it appears that Friedrich and Maria Anna weren’t in Saxony at all. They had actually been in Bavaria visiting her family at Possenhofen.

Friedrich had left Maria Anna with her family and gone up into the Austrian Tyrol to indulge in his hobby of botany. His favorite pastime was collecting plant samples.

On August 9, at about 9:45 a.m., he was driving in an open carriage when there was some sort of accident. It’s speculated that an axle broke, pitching him forward out of the carriage and under the hooves of the horses. In the chaos, one of the horses kicked him in the back of the head. His aide-de-camp tried to help him, but he was unconscious and couldn’t be revived. A few local men pitched in to help carry him back to his hotel in nearby Imst. Two doctors hurried to the scene, but there was nothing they could do. The king never regained consciousness and died at about 11 a.m.

On the spot of the accident, Maria Anna arranged for a small chapel to be built, which was consecrated one year later. In the hotel where he died, you can still a plaque commemorating his death there.

What do you think about these two ghostly tales? Did the Black Lady really appear to Therese and Maria Anna to warn them of what was about to happen? We’ll never know for sure. But that’s the beauty of ghost stories. The message and the mood are more important than the details. So just this once, let’s skip any additional fact-checking and let our imaginations roam across the haunted castles of Germany, in search of other sightings of the Black Lady of Darmstadt.

The End

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Notes for the Black Lady of Darmstadt

1. Phillipps, “Illness and death” ↩︎
2. Ibid ↩︎

Sources for the Black Lady of Darmstadt

Fraser, Mrs. Hugh. A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands. Vol. 1. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1911. (URL)

“Karrösten.” Tyrol.tl. Accessed October 1, 2025.

“The Late Queen of Bavaria: The Black Lady.” Leicester Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1854, p 4. British Newspaper Archive.

Lee, Friedrich George. Sights and Shadows: Being Examples of the Supernatural. London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1894. (URL)

Phillipps, Carolin. Therese von Bayern: eine Königin zwischen Liebe, Pflicht und Widerstand. Eisfeld: Salier Verlag, 2024. (eBook)

Rosenberg, Charles E. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849 and 1866. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

“Saxony.” Patriot, 17 Aug. 1854, p 2. British Newspaper Archive.

Additional Credits

• All images public domain via Wikimedia Commons unless otherwise noted in the caption.
• Background music in audio post licensed via Artlist.io.

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