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via Jürgen Hubert – @juergen_hubert@mementomori.social

Not far from the village of Retzin, which lies about one and a half miles away from Penkun, there is a long, tall hill and beneath it lies a lake commonly known as the Leichensee (“corpse lake”). On the hill, which is now overgrown with shrubs, there used to be a bandits' castle, whose remains can be spotted now and then amidst the shrubbery. The whole hill is therefore still called the Burgwall (“castle wall”)[1]. The bandits who lived in the castle threw the corpses of those they slew into the lake, from which the lake derives its name. The murdered and the murderers are said to haunt the lake and its environs in some nights, and nobody likes to visit the area after dark. Another tale gives us more details: The Leichensee is in the middle of two spots where two castles used to stand, and where now the villages of Lökenitz and Ramin can be found. These two castles belonged to a villainous robber knight named Hans von Ramin. The river Randow, which flows through the lake, was traversable by ships in those days[2] and thus it was common for ships to pass through the lake. The knight with his bandits only waited for those moments, and he had constructed an ingenious contraption which aided him in capturing those ships. He had put down two chains across the lake which were about 50 feet apart, and which were about two inches above the water when they were stretched taut. Whenever he saw a ship approaching in the distance he and his bandits hid in the reeds at the shore of the lake and left the first chain slacken so that it would be below the surface of the water. But when the ship had passed over it, he pulled it taut again. And thus the ship was stuck between the two chains and could go neither backwards nor forwards, and he and his bandits swarmed over it, slaughtered the crew, and took all of its goods. The corpses were thrown into the lake, on the side of the long hill[3]. It frequently occurred that the bandits discovered a larger crew on the ship than they had anticipated. In these cases they rang a large bell, which they had hung up at the shore for this very purpose. Then reinforcements would arrive from both castles. This bell fell into the lake after the death of the knight. It remains there, and at noon on St. John's Day it is still possible to hear its ringing. Source: Temme, J. D. H. Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen, 1840. P. 202-204.