Give Yourself the Shivers with This Spooky Tale From the 9th Century.

Enjoy this short historical fiction horror story inspired by the Annals of Fulda this Halloween!

The Shadow

A short historical fiction horror story inspired by the Annals of Fulda.

Preface

The following short story is inspired by an actual account in the Annals of Fulda. The account describes strange events perpetrated by a maleficent entity who allegedly tormented the village of Bingen (in modern-day Germany) for three years in the latter portion of the 9th Century. It is considered one of the earliest mentions of an attempted exorcism.

I originally wrote and published this short story back in 2015. In the transition between publishers and websites and all those fun life events, I thought it had been lost, and I found it again just this week—in time for Halloween! I hope you enjoy this short piece of historical/horror fiction. Read to the end for my translation of the actual account from the Annals of Fulda.

Was there a maleficent being causing trouble in a remote German village in the late 9th century? The answer is for the reader to decide.

The Shadow

I was eleven when it arrived in our village. No one knows where it came from nor why it came. It had been three generations of men since the great Charlemagne had brought Christ to our people. The priests told us the light of Christ would protect us from pagan evils. Christ abandoned us when it arrived. He did nothing to defend us when it burned our houses and our fields.

My father was a farmer. He had plotted his field between the edge of the village and the dark Bingen forest. Most houses were made of wattle and daub, wood, and straw, except the priest, who had begun constructing a stone church with money from the bishop in Ingelheim. Our town sat on the border with Lotharingie, a land that had changed hands so many times between bickering lords that those lands had descended into anarchy. Bands of marauders often emerged from the forests to attack the rich villages along the Rhine, including Ingelheim. We were fortunate. As a poor farming village, the bands who passed through did not bother to stir trouble. However, we did live with persistent fear, for we did not know if one of these bands of marauders might someday attack our village. Fortunately, the lord of our fief protected us by building a wooden watch tower on the edge of the Rhine and a stone wall around his manner where he invited us to take refuge if an attack were ever to happen.

My father held a prominent position on the village council overseeing farming laws. His peers respected him, and our family was prosperous as far as poor farmers were concerned. We seldom went hungry. At the age of ten, I brought pride to my family by enrolling in the local priest’s school to learn how to read and write. Not all children earned such a privilege, as pupils were hand-picked based on a brief aptitude test. This was good for my father because if I joined the church, I would not become a farmer, leaving my older brother Adalbert as the sole inheritor of our land. Not until it arrived did our lives turn dark, and we were dragged unwillingly into the meddling of the next world.

Strange things began to happen on the eve of our first harvest of that year. Father remained awake much later than usual to sharpen his tools by the fire in our one-room house. I remember feeling safe and snug in my straw bed beside my brother along the far wall while the fire dwindled. As my eyes closed and my mind wandered into the realm of dreams, we heard a loud knock at the door. It woke everyone. Father stood with a scythe. Villagers seldom ventured outdoors after sundown. There were too many dangers, not least the wolves. Living so close to the forest meant many things roamed our fields at night. Our minds wandered, and our hearts raced.

“Who goes there?” father asked.

Silence answered him. Careful not to make too much noise, he pulled the latch on the door to slide it open to a narrow gap and wedged his foot against the bottom. I knew he saw nothing in the darkness when he relaxed his shoulders. He closed the door and latched it. Relieved, he sat by the fire to continue sharpening his tools. He looked at me in the corner and saw the flames of the fire reflect off of my eyes.

“It was nothing. A bird must have struck the wall. Go to sleep,” he said.

I tried. I closed my eyes and prayed, but the sound had set my heart aflutter. Beside me, my brother began to snore. I hated him for how easily he fell asleep. His snoring had kept me awake many a night.

The fire continued to dwindle while my father remained awake at its side. As the last embers flitted out and the glow of the hot coals painted the walls red, we heard another knock. Across the room, against the opposite wall, my mother sat up in her bed, struggling to raise herself to prop up her enlarged belly. She was with a child and ready to give birth at any moment.

“What is it?” she asked my father.

He said nothing. He approached the door, unlatched it, and looked outside. There was no moon that night. He kneeled on the ground and reached his hand outside. When he pulled in his hand, he held a smooth river rock, which was out of place in our village. The Rhine River was an hour’s walk away along the main road, and the rock could not have landed at our door on its own. Terrified, my father slammed the door shut and latched it again. He sat beside the fire, gripped his scythe and knife, and focused on the door. An eerie silence enveloped us. Even the crickets had ceased chirping.

Another knock rang out. We all jumped. Father stood up, sweat rolling down his forehead. I curled up in bed, and my brother and I held each other. Mother shuffled her way to the fire and pulled from it a hot iron. Both my parents stood before the door, ready to confront whoever it was who was throwing rocks at our house. A moment later, my father’s patience waned. He dashed to a corner of the house to dig through a pile of tools, from which he drew a long wooden shaft with a tightly wrapped cloth at the end. It was the torch he had bought from the priest a few weeks past, which he was saving for this kind of situation.

“All of you stay here,” he said.

He lit the torch and slipped out the door into the village. We listened. At first, there was nothing. Out of the silence, shouting erupted. I recognized the voice. It was our neighbor Gunther. A second voice joined the cacophony. And then another. Soon, it seemed the whole village had left their houses in the middle of the night.

“Which of you is throwing rocks at my house?” yelled one man.

“My house, too,” said Father.

“And mine!” another growled.

As they bickered, their voices passed through our walls muffled. They blamed one another for the outrageous disturbance on the eve of harvest. Some suggested far-fetched ideas about their neighbors trying to sabotage their labor, while others blamed miscreant children for tormenting upstanding members of the community. Even the priest joined the fray. He tried to broker peace. Hearing him, I bounded from my bed and darted for the door as if possessed. I had to know what he thought. I joined my father at the center of the crowd.

“I found these river rocks at my door!” Father said, holding out the rocks for all to see.

“And I, too!” another man said.

“It was your children, Theudman,” Gunther said, accusing my father. “A thirteen-year-old and a ten-year-old, they are the only boys in the village capable of this kind of mischief!”

“My sons were at home with me,” Father said. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “They are not to blame.”

“Then who?” Gunther asked.

“There is nothing to fear,” said the priest. “These disturbances must be related. Perhaps it was birds carrying stones for their nests.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” a villager said, scoffing at the suggestion.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, near the church, I saw the shadow of a man darting from the village into the fields.

“Look there!” I said.

My father followed my finger. His eyes opened wide. Gunter and the priest saw it, too.

“Get him!” my father roared.

They sprinted toward the church, Father at the front of the pack with his torch. I followed behind them. The shadow glided in a smooth, straight line toward the forest. They chased it to the treeline, where it vanished.

“Who was it?” Gunther asked, out of breath.

“I did not see him clearly enough,” said a villager.

“I did not know men could run so fast,” said another.

“A bandit?” the priest asked.

“I doubt it,” Father said. “I think I know. It must have been a young man from Ingelheim. He was to get a rise out of us.”

“Little bastard!” Gunther said.

“I will travel to Ingleheim tomorrow and report this incident. I will get to the bottom of this,” the priest said. “For now, I suggest we return to our houses. The harvest begins tomorrow; you all need your strength.”

~

A few days after the first incident, while our priest was in Ingelheim on business, I fell asleep early, exhausted after a hard day toiling in the fields. In the middle of the night, I jolted awake from the feeling that someone or something was lifting me out of my bed. I grasped at my straw mattress, my heart pounding, and sat against the wall behind me. Coals still burned in our fire from a log my father had left, leaving the room in that familiar dim red glow. A figure stood over our fire. At first glance, I thought it was my father. Except this figure stood too tall and wore a long black cloak with a deep, dark hood. As I stared, the figure turned to face me. A chill ran down my spine. My heart skipped a few beats. I did not see a face. Our bed shook as it stared at me, causing me to freeze. Soon, it turned again and flew through the front door, stirring embers from our fire that swirled toward our thatched roof. Some embers lodged into the thatch, and a draft breathed life into them. Flames erupted.

Smoke filled the room. My parents awoke, jumped from their bed, grasped us, and rushed the family out of the house. The fire consumed the whole roof in an instant, lighting up the village as if it were day. Our neighbors left their homes to watch the fire; some sprang to action to fetch water in buckets from the village well to protect their own houses. Gunther stood at my father’s side, and they watched it burn.

“I don’t understand,” Gunther said. “It rained today. The thatch should have been wet. How could it burn so?”

My father said nothing. He watched on in grief. My brother and I stood by our mother in tears. All our worldly possessions vanished in the flames. I kept what I saw to myself, fearful of what the grown-ups might say. It was a dream, I thought, and the fire was a coincidence.

The villagers around us—our neighbors, church congregation, and some family—whispered behind us. Their suspicions grew. Everything happened for a reason. God willed everything. This misfortune, they said, was our fault.

“Come,” said Gunther as the flames subsided. “Stay in my house tonight.”

~

The following day, we took to the fields. Our house may have burned to ash, but the harvest had to continue. We needed food for the winter and money from the surplus to rebuild. While our family toiled in our field, a column of smoke appeared over the rooflines of the houses nearest us. Soon after, a mob of villagers assembled on the edge of our plot. They shouted and screamed, and they shook their farm tools at us. We ignored them at first, and then they marched across the field. Gunther led the charge.

“Theudman!” he said. My father stood tall to face him. He was a great deal taller than our neighbor. “Theudman, you are cursed!”

“How so?” Father asked.

“Did you not see the smoke in the village? It was my house burning, and you did nothing to come help me!”

“You have my regrets. I am as much at a loss as you,” Father said, holding his bonnet over his chest.

“We have convened a council, Theudman. We voted to banish you and your family from the village,” Gunther said.

“On what grounds?” Father growled.

“God has sent a clear message. There is a sickness in this village. There is a sinner in hiding. He is punishing us for those sins,” Gunther said.

“I have no sin, no more than any other man here. And I am being pushed the same way you are,” Father said.

“We have made our decision. If you attempt to return, a neuse awaits you. It is God’s will.”

The mob left with the same brusqueness as they had arrived. We stood together as a family, watching them buzz away in fury. A feeling of helplessness overcame me, for we had committed no crime, yet we had been banished to our field with no roof over our heads. Worse, we would sleep on the forest's edge that night, exposed to the wind, rain, and wolves. Despite our misfortune, my mother, brother, and I worked the field the rest of the day while Father made us a camp. He used the tarps we would have used for the wheat to make a tent under a large oak tree and built a fire. We were lucky; the weather was fair and did not appear to want to worsen. But the cold would prove our worst obstacle. My mother, brother, and I huddled together for warmth while Father watched us at night.

We spent two more days following a simple routine of working the field and sleeping in our tent. Father grew restless, and his eyes lingered on the village.

“In the morning, I’ll talk to our priest. He should be back now. I will tell him of our innocence,” he proclaimed.

That night, I stayed up with Father and kept watch as he had done, but at some point, I fell asleep. As I hunched and fell toward the ground, the smell of smoke reached into my nostrils. The smell jolted me awake. I glanced at our batches of wheat and saw a shadowy figure standing in the flitting firelight. It beckoned embers from our fire toward it as it had done in our home. Flames erupted from the stalks, spurred by a sudden gust of wind. Father saw it happen, too, and leaped to his feet and stomped on the flames to extinguish them. To my relief, he managed to put the fire out. The noise he made woke the others. With wide eyes and a raised brow, he commanded us, “Follow me!”

“What is it?” Mother asked.

“I saw something,” he said. His hands had started to tremble. “I cannot explain it.”

Sleepy-eyed and dizzy from being awoken so suddenly, my brother asked, “Did you see the Shadow man?”

“I saw it,” I said.

My father’s eyes opened wider, the firelight reflecting off his irises. He knelt at my side and asked, “You have seen it?”

I froze. I do not know if I feared it or my father more in that moment, but I nodded. Father stood again and looked at my mother with a clenched jaw and scowl. His hands balled into fists. Before he could say anything more, my brother fell to the ground. He shook like a fish out of water and foamed at the mouth. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. Father dropped to his knees and held him.

My mother gasped and said, “Heavenly Father, no.”

At that moment, I thought Gunther was right; we were cursed as a family.

~

Father and I returned to the village at dawn despite our neighbors’ warnings. We walked through the scattering of farmhouses and made directly for the church. Luckily, the priest had returned as we had hoped. To the side of the unfinished stone structure stood a wattle and daub home with a thatched roof where the priest lived as he awaited the completion of his church. Father and I approached him as he left his house to begin his chores. The surprise caused him to stand back against his house.

“Ah, Theudman, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

“Have you heard?” Father asked.

“Heard what?” the priest replied.

“What Gunther and the others have done? Cast us out?”

The priest held his face, saying, “They did what? No, I have not heard of this. They can’t do that, can they? They certainly do not have my blessing.”

“That’s why we are here. We need your help,” Father said.

The priest scratched at his chin and said, “Of course. But how do you propose to demonstrate your innocence?”

“You are the priest, you tell me,” Father said.

“Wait here a moment,” he said.

He took off into the village, and we waited for him for so long that Father and I had to sit down on the ground. A persistent rooster gave me the distinct impression that he did not appreciate our presence, crowing at regular intervals with all his might, moving a bit closer to us each time. Father’s eyes glazed over. His exhaustion had caught up with him.

Sometime later, the priest returned to us. His demeanor had changed. He had a slope in his shoulders and heaviness in his brow.

“I don’t know how to handle this,” he said. “The whole village is convinced you are cursed. Worse, they say there is a shadow that follows you. Several claim to have seen it. Gunther himself says he saw you with it in the field last night.”

Father’s face turned red when he growled, “Gunther, that sniveling, spying, no-good miscreant.”

“I understand,” the priest said, a smile tugging at his lips. “Nevertheless, we must prove your innocence to restore your reputation with the village. God will see to it.”

“You believe I’m innocent?”

“I do. You have been an upstanding member of my flock. And your sons, too. None of this makes any sense. I am certain we can prove it to the others.”

“What can I do?” Father asked.

The priest considered his question. He fixed his robe and looked for spies to Father’s left and right. “Have you heard of the ordeal of hot iron?” he asked. Father nodded. “Seems a shame to burn your hands during the harvest, but should God intervene on your behalf, it would prove your innocence.”

“I’ll do it,” Father said. “God will protect my hands.”

By midday, the village had assembled before the blacksmith’s workshop to watch my father take the ordeal. Our family was allowed in the town for this occasion, but we prepared for a quick escape in case Father failed. My father presented himself to the village wearing nothing but a loin cloth. The priest had cleaned his skin with holy water and combed his hair. He walked with his shoulders pulled back and his chin held high through a booing crowd. The priest forbade them from throwing stones or rotten food. Gunther’s wife threw a stone and was promptly removed.

The blacksmith’s workshop was an open-air repurposed stable with a flat wooden roof and plenty of room for the crowd to gather all around it and look inside. Father held his hands forward as he had been told to do. The blacksmith waited for the priest.

“People of Bingen, before you stands the accused whose recent woes are evidence to you all of a conflict with God. He has accepted the ordeal of hot iron to prove his innocence. Allow me to explain how the ordeal works. The iron will burn his hands. I shall examine the wounds in three days, and if they have not rotted, then we will know God protects him and declares him innocent.” The priest turned to Father. “You must hold the iron until I say you may drop it.”

The priest gave the blacksmith a nod. The blacksmith pulled a glowing iron from the coals with his clamps and hovered it over Father’s hands. He scrunched his eyebrows, puckered his lips, and gave Father a nod as he lowered it. When the metal touched Father’s bare skin, it sizzled, followed by a putrid smoke. To my surprise, he did not scream. He held the iron up, his eyes on it, and his jaw clenched. His chest expanded and collapsed as he breathed through the pain. My brother buried his head in our mother’s bosom. It felt like an eternity. Finally, the priest allowed Father to release the iron. He dropped it and held his hands in the air with curled fingers. The priest wrapped the burns and returned with Father to his house behind the church. The crowd moaned and jeered, for they had thought they would have the chance to stone him. How awful it was that these people who we knew, our neighbors, church friends, and family, could be so ready to murder my father for something he did not do.

I followed them back to the priest’s house; Father rested his hands in a wooden bowl full of cool water. The priest sat at his side, concerned over his fate. He fixed his robes, sat in his creaky chair, and leaned his elbow on the table.

“If your hands fester or do not heal, I cannot help you,” he said.

“They will heal. I have faith,” Father said.

“You are confident. That is good,” the priest said.

“I have seen what plagues us,” Father said. The priest paused. “I’ve seen him, a shadowy figure. My sons also saw him.”

The priest rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes wandered. “Describe him for me,” he said.

“A black cloak, a sturdy build. No face,” Father said.

“And your sons? They saw a face?”

“Did you?” Father asked, looking at me. I shook my head. “No, no face.”

“I must meditate over this,” the priest said. “For now, please rest. Until the ordeal ends, I invite you and your family to stay with me.”

“Thank you,” Father said.

Three days passed without incident, during which time our family lived at the priest’s house. On the morning of the third day, the priest examined Father’s wounds. They had not rotted and had even begun to heal. Amazed, the priest declared that God had exercised a divine intervention, clearing my father of guilt. His announcement brought relief to our family. The priest sent me door to door to call for an assembly of the villagers at once. Most were not home but toiling in the fields. I ran and ran to spread the word, often finding the villagers surprised to hear that my father had healed. Nearly all the villagers had assembled before the priest’s house by the time I returned to hear his judgment.

“People of Bingen,” the priest said gleefully. “I declare this man innocent of sin. God has shown his mercy!”

“Why, then, all the ills in our village?” Gunther asked. “Why do we suffer if not for this man’s sin?”

A gloom came over the priest when he said, “I believe there are darker forces at work here.” His statement caused a panicked murmur among the villagers. He continued, “I will travel to Mainz to solicit the help of our bishop. I believe he may have the tools to combat this evil.”

~

The harvest had ended, and our house was nearly rebuilt by the time the priest returned to us with a procession of clerics at his back. One among them rode an ass into the village. He wore a preposterously tall hat and a white gown that had muddied at the feet. With his congregation of robed priests, they toured the town, splashing holy water on houses and swaying a smoking thurible. Most of the villagers remained in their homes, including us. Still, I could not help satisfy my curiosity. I snuck out of the priest’s house and followed the holy men where they went.

“Who is that?” I asked the priest when I found him.

“That’s the bishop of Ingelheim,” he said.

Once the holy men had toured the village, they walked down to the fields and to the edge of the forest and examined the surrounding land. A mob of villagers soon followed them with me, craning their necks and tripping over each other.

When the holy men returned to the village, they called for a meeting. Everyone attended this meeting, not least because it was not every day we had the opportunity to see a bishop. They began interrogating witnesses. First was my father. As he described what he had seen in the fields, I felt a rush of terror at the realization that I would be next. I had seen it, too. My father called me forward before the entire village. I panicked.

“It’s all right, boy, you are safe among us,” the bishop said. I remained silent. “Your father tells us you have seen this ‘Shadow.’ Would you tell us where and describe what you saw?”

I took in a deep breath and said, “I saw it.” “Continue,” the bishop urged.

“A black cloak. It had no face. It looked at me, and there was darkness,” I said. I began to cry. “It set fire to our house and ran out the door!”

“Did it walk or glide?” a priest asked.

“It glided, I think. Like an owl in the night sky.”

The priests erupted in nervous chatter behind the bishop. Their faces told me that what I had said troubled them. They avoided eye contact with me where they could, keeping to themselves behind their master. The bishop rubbed his cleanly shaven chin. He said nothing at first, but fear among the villagers began to spiral out of control.

“There is an evil presence here,” he said. “But none which we are not equipped to handle. Remain in your houses tonight. No matter what you hear, I beg you to remain in your houses. By morning, this village will be cleansed, and you can go about your lives as if nothing ever happened.”

The village dispersed to return to their homes. Father gathered our family and returned us to the priest’s house, where Mother poured water into a pot hanging over our fire to make pottage. To flavor it, she threw in vegetables, some grain, and a few pinches of herbs and salt. We ate pottage most nights, except when Father returned from trade in Ingelheim, where he bought cuts of meat to bring home for us. Peasants such as we rarely ate meat. It was too risky to hunt in the forest, not least because it was illegal. Gunther had once owned a cow; when it died, he sold some of the meat, but it was tough and lean. Father said the poor beast had died of hunger.

By nightfall, no villagers roamed outside their houses. Unlike our house, the priest’s house had a loft with a window. From there, I could see the center of the village. The window was a small aperture meant to allow light in at sunrise. I stood on my tiptoes atop a wooden stool to reach it. My mother objected, but my father, who shared my curiosity, joined me. We watched as the priests gathered in the dark with candles and torches, all wearing red robes rather than the brown habits they had worn earlier in the day. Two of them carried a chest from which they drew various religious tokens, including a wooden cross, a silver scepter, and a large, leather-bound book.

The bishop held the book before him and read from it. I did not know Latin then, so I could not recite what I heard. The words were repetitive at first. The bishop read the same sentence several times before moving on to the next one. Several other priests walked along the houses swinging smoking thuribles. Everything appeared to follow a well-rehearsed sequence that unfolded without fault. That is, of course, until it felt threatened.

As the bishop struggled through a tricky passage aloud, a rock flew at him from the darkness and struck him on the shoulder. He paused. The other monks looked to him to see why he had ceased to read. With a more nervous, quickened cadence, the bishop started reading again. Not two sentences later, a rock struck him in the chin. Blood dripped onto the pages of his book. With mouth agape, he turned around and dashed for the chest. One priest took the book from him and continued reading aloud while another held up a wooden cross beside him. The bishop made the sign of the cross with a trembling left hand and turned toward the darkness from which the rocks had flown. To our surprise, it appeared as though he had turned toward us.

Father pulled me from my perch and sat me on the stool. Mother sat terrified in her bed with her wool blanket pulled over her raised knees and gripped between her fingers. We listened as the bishop walked paces away from the house, followed by his recitation in Latin. Another sound stirred up on the other side of the house. The sound sent a chill down my spine. Like no animal we had ever heard, whatever it was produced a low, grumbling growl. It grew louder as the clerics gathered and drew closer. Louder and louder, the growl soon filled our ears and hearts with terror. My mother wept.

The bishop started to shout in Latin to ward it off. He had made matters worse. Deep scratches against the wall resonated inside the house. We were under attack. Growling and scratching, it was determined to put up a fight. The bishop raised his voice more, and a bloodcurdling scream then followed the muffled thud of a struggle.

My brother panicked. With blinding speed, he dashed for the door to escape and snuck through before Father could stop him. He ran for the courtyard among the priests. As he joined them, his sickness seized him, causing him to fall to the ground, shake, and foam at the mouth. The priests took notice.

“Stop!” yelled the bishop, who ran back to them from the other side of the house. “The beast has taken this child!”

Father ran out. “No!” he said. “My son is sick but not possessed!”

Before he could reach my brother, the bishop lifted his wooden cross and drove its bottom end like a stake into my brother’s heart. Father howled in horror. I stood at our door, too petrified to move. It had tricked the priests. They had played into its hand. My brother’s shaking stopped, and the foam on his lips faded. What happened next was burned into my memory, for it had been given the chance to take control.

The body that had once belonged to my brother arose, the wooden cross still hanging from his chest. He did not walk as a person would but instead danced in the air like a puppet under its master’s strings. The priests surrounded him. Father stood back. Remembering that I had followed him out, he turned back, ran to me, carried me back into our house, and slammed the door shut. He took an old cross, placed it at the door, and huddled in our bed with my mother and me. Outside our house, it sounded as though the priests fought an enraged bear. One continued to recite from the book as others screamed in pain. The forces of good and evil clashed. We did not leave our house again.

~

Father woke up before us and packed all our belongings into a few small bags in the morning. He darted in and out of the house, preparing for us to leave. By the time we awoke, he had almost finished.

“For your sake, I do not think you should look,” he told my mother. “Promise me you won’t.”

“What is it?” she asked with teary eyes. “What’s happened?”

“I…I cannot say,” Father said. “Please, put these on.”

He handed us cloth bags to put over our heads. I stared at mine, confused.

“Believe me, if I could unsee what I saw out there, I would,” he said. “Put those on. Trust me.”

Mother and I put on the bags, and Father led us outside. I tried to peek through the fibers but could see nothing. My curiosity once again won out, and while my father took us to the cart the holy men had brought with them, pulled by the bishop’s ass, I lifted the bottom lip of my bag. Something had killed all the holy men and splayed their bodies in a circle at the center of the village. Our priest’s body lay with them, a look of horror on his pale, lifeless face. My brother was nowhere to be found.

Our family walked from the village along the main road toward Ingelheim. We left the town, never to return. That year, we relocated to Ingleheim, where my father worked as a laborer for the local lord. Deprived of our land, we were destitute, but I was recruited into the church to be groomed as a priest, for which my parents were well compensated. I learned to read and write, allowing me to recount this tale. I have never returned to the village, but I heard from travelers that it continued to plague the town for three years after that. One day, travelers told me it had left, presumably to find a new village to torment.

I have always wondered whose village it might choose to torment next.

From the Annals of Fulda

The following is my (mediocre) translation from the Latin text found HERE.

In the year 858…

A particular village not far from the town of Ingelheim is called Bingen, named after the river Rhine’s edge, where the mountains begin to rise. It is commonly called Capmunt, and an evil spirit openly displays its wickedness there. First, it started by throwing stones and banging on the walls of houses as if with a hammer, harassing the people of that place. Then, it spoke clearly and secretly revealed stolen items to some and afterward sowed discord among the inhabitants of that place. Finally, it incited everyone’s anger against one man, as if his sins caused the suffering of the others. To further increase the hatred against him, the malicious spirit would immediately set it on fire whenever this man entered any house. Consequently, he was forced to live outside with his wife and children in the fields, as all his relatives were too afraid to shelter him under their roofs. But he was not even safe there, for after gathering and stacking his crops, the evil spirit came unexpectedly and burned them all.

To appease the neighbors who wished to kill him, he submitted to an ordeal by holding a hot iron and proved himself innocent of the crimes alleged against him. Priests and deacons were sent from Mainz with relics and crosses to expel the evil spirit from that place. However, as they performed litanies and sprinkled holy water in a specific house where the spirit raged the most, the ancient enemy wounded several people from the village who were present by throwing stones at them. Though it ceased its harassment for a short time, once the clerics departed, the spirit began speaking mournfully to many listeners. Specifically, it named a certain priest, claiming it had stood under his cloak when the holy water was sprinkled in the house.

As those nearby made the sign of the cross in fear, the spirit declared about the priest, ‘He is mine; he is my servant, for one who is overcome becomes the servant of his conqueror; for he recently, at my persuasion, lay with the daughter of the steward of this village.’ This fact was unknown to all mortals except those who had committed the crime. Thus, as the saying of truth states, it is clear that nothing hidden will remain unrevealed.

With these and similar evils, the apostate spirit tormented the place mentioned above for three years, ceasing only after it had nearly consumed all the buildings there by setting them on fire. — end

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