It is a picturesque, almost idyllic view when looking in the opposite direction of the small ship lock weir, but for quiet some time now the rather loud noise of the weir behind me reminds me of something else, something rather mysterious, that is going on here in this ship lock.

Although I tried, I couldn't take any usable pictures of the actual incident, because everything happened too fast to even grasp, but the following photos at least give an impression of the ship lock and its surroundings and your imagination will have to do the rest.

It started in the deep cold winter and here we see the ship lock bridge. The branch of the river that branches off to the right leads to the small weir that was still being busy making it‘s noise even in winter.

As I walked along the bank, enjoying the wintry landscape and listening to the birds that hadn't flown south, the first thing I noticed was that the signal lights and traffic lights of the ship lock were still in operation, despite the fact that the ship lock was more or less completely frozen over and that no ship would pass here for days and probably even weeks.

I thought nothing of it and walked on and then it happened. When I almost lost sight of the ship lock on my way, there was a flash that I just caught in the corner of my eye and when I turned my head, there was a big old sailboat in the ship lock and when I reached for my camera and looked away for a short moment and then looked again, it had disappeared again as suddenly as it had appeared. It was there just for a fraction of a second, but it was there, i‘m sure that i saw it!

I looked around to see if there was anyone nearby who might have seen it but there was no one around and it was unusually quiet all of a sudden, but I didn't give it any importance as I tried not to take my eyes off the ship lock with my camera at the ready in case it appeared again.

After a few minutes of waiting, I realized what was suddenly missing, the noise of the weir was gone. I then went back to the ship lock bridge to see if the weir gates had been closed automatically, but nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed except that the sound of the water was simply no longer audible and at that moment I also noticed that there were no more birds or other noises to be heard. Something was happening here, I thought, and I was sure that the ship was not imaginary.

After I went down from the bridge and stood on the bank again, I still couldn't explain in any way why I couldn't hear anything, but then I realized that no one had passed by the whole time, no cyclists, no joggers, no one and as I looked around me I couldn't see a soul, let alone any movement at all.

It wasn't starting to get scary, it was in the middle of being scary and I could feel the panic starting to set in. „Think!“, I said out loud to myself, „Think!“. Just as I decided to turn away from the edge of the riverbank to simply try shouting a loud hello, a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind and I flinched in shock, screamed out loud and turned around, ready for anything and ready to defend myself. There was just a friendly, smiling older lady in a yellow raincoat standing there asking me if everything was okay. She had overheard me standing on the edge of the riverbank, mumbling unintelligible things to myself. I looked at her with widened eyes and started to breathe a sigh of relief and before I could say anything I realized that with her voice the whole soundscape was suddenly back. With a quick glance around me, I saw other people in the area again also. I smiled with relief, explained that I had only been thinking out loud and thanked her politely for her attention. She reached out her hand to me and said with a smile: "You're welcome. I thought you had just seen a ghost ship. Have a nice day" and walked away. What did she just say? I turned briefly towards the shiplock and when I looked in her direction again, she had simply disappeared, just like the ship before ...