The account
The haunting gathers around a name that visitors are supposedly not meant to say. Maria Tuma Reiter’s stone stands in the former institutional cemetery at Bohnice, where many other markers have disappeared or become unreadable. A local account describes the contrast: her inscription remains conspicuous among neglected graves, encouraging stories of an unusual presence and attempts to contact her spirit. The name taboo makes an ordinary act of remembrance feel dangerous. Looking at a headstone becomes, in the story, an invitation one might accidentally accept.
Following the trail
A recorded story, with its history attached
The cemetery’s website gives Maria’s death as April 1912, at twenty-nine, and reports that the burial register records pneumonia. It disputes claims that she died of a degenerative brain condition and questions whether she was a patient at all. The same account discusses grave maintenance as a practical possibility. It offers no evidence that saying her name has supernatural consequences.
Why it stays with us
This is a haunting worth keeping attached to its person. The inscription identifies a mother, not a stock villain. A readable grave can preserve someone while the stories around it make that person harder to recognise.
Follow the sources 1
- English: Bohnice institutional cemetery ↗Bohnický hřbitov