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Episode 82: Spooky Destinations pt.4
491 Plays2 years ago
Welcome back Witches! This week's episode is going to cover a set of not so spooky, spooky destinations in Germany. We'll be discussing the Black Forest and the Harz Mountains and Highlands. So get in losers, and listen as we try to find spookyness of a couple of German towns..
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio- The Witch
References:
- Gray, Chris. Harz Mountains: Lore, Landscape Inspires Halloween Chills. (2006). Stars & Stripes. https://www.stripes.com/travel/harz-mountains-lore-landscape-inspire-halloween-chills-1.58288
- Uncommon Travel Germany. https://www.uncommon-travel-germany.com/Visiting the Harz Mountains
Quedlinburg
Thale
Goslar - Youtube:Second Chance Hiker
- The Quacks of Quedlinburg board game: https://www.hauntedgamecafe.com/products/the-quacks-of-quedlinburg
- The Little House of Horrors (2023). The Black Forest. https://thelittlehouseofhorrors.com/the-black-forest/
- https://slendermanconnection.fandom.com/wiki/Der_Gro%C3%9Fmann
- Hakala, Kate (2020). The Legend of the Headless Horseman. Grunge. https://www.grunge.com/215250/the-legend-of-the-headless-horseman-explained/
- Lutz, Ashley (2012). Tour Germany’s Enchanged Black Forest Where Fairy Tales are Set. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/germanys-black-forest-2012-5
- The Haunted Black Forest of Fairy Tales. (https://moonmausoleum.com/the-haunted-black-forest-of-fairy-tales/023)
- Rastatt Residentual Palace. (n.d.). https://www.schloss-rastatt.de/en/interesting-amusing/anecdotes/palace-ghosts
- https://www.facebook.com/858916237471446/posts/the-legends-of-germanys-black-forestforests-can-be-spooky-and-mysterious-places-/918791508150585/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Witchcraft and Occult in Germany
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you feel drawn to learn more about witchcraft and the occult, but feel lost on where to start? Then welcome to Get In, Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft, a podcast all about what it means to be a witch and where to get started on your journey. Join us as we navigate through various witchy topics and share what we've learned about the craft. So get in, witches, as we travel to Germany for another spooky destination episode.
00:00:36
Speaker
so
00:00:48
Speaker
So just to start us off, as always, you might hear some background noise because A, my husband is gone like he always is. He's out of town. So my dogs are running amok downstairs right now and they bark at every leaf that blows outside the house because you know they're trying to protect me.
00:01:07
Speaker
And then we also have a little sweet baby foster pup. And she's a little husky mix. And occasionally you might hear a little woo. She's been quiet. I think she's sleeping. Yeah, sweet little baby. She's so cute with her beautiful blue eyes. No, she's so precious. That poor little girl has been through so much today. So hopefully she is sleeping and relaxing right now.
00:01:31
Speaker
I hope she is too. And then when I'm done, I'll go and give her all the loves that she deserves. All the little snuggles. Oh, so sweet. I don't understand how people can be so mean to sweet little souls like that. Yeah, it takes my heart. Yeah, special place in hell for people who treat animals like shit.
Animal Rescue and Pet Ownership Discussion
00:01:52
Speaker
For sure. And if anyone's curious, I already told Sam this, but the sweet little pup and well,
00:01:58
Speaker
Luckily, someone saw this rubbermaid tote on the side of the road, like the highway, not even just like a road. But there was a rubbermaid tote duct taped shut with four sweet little puppies. And a little farther down was a dog kennel, a single dog kennel stuffed with four adult full grown huskies. And we're in St. Louis, it's raining and storming today. Someone just dumped him off on the side of the highway. So
00:02:27
Speaker
terrible fucking people, they can rot in hell. Or wherever the bad place is. Right. Who knows? It could be Earth. I don't know. It probably is Earth. I think we're in hell. It's the hell. Yes, I think so. But yeah, they're something, I mean, I just, I don't like wishing bad on people, but like, that's just fucking bullshit. Like, I can't believe that they would do that. Me either. And they weren't the only,
00:02:56
Speaker
little pups dropped off today. Well, not dropped off, but abandoned somewhere today. But she's here. Yeah, just as I guess a disclaimer too for all of our listeners who are pet owners, if you decide the pet in your home for whatever reason, it's not going to work out.
00:03:20
Speaker
or say you developed an allergy or a kid develops an allergy or something and just the pets not gonna work out, be a responsible fucking pet owner. Like getting a pet is not like easy work. Obviously it's going to take work. It's like having a kid essentially. Like you cannot just abandon a dog and think that they're gonna be fine or a cat or whatever. Like please, if you don't want your animal anymore for whatever reason,
00:03:52
Speaker
do the right thing and make sure they go to a loving home where they're taken care
Exploring Spooky Places in Germany: Focus on the Black Forest
00:03:56
Speaker
of. It just makes me so mad hearing stories like that. You know, all of my animals are except for Nike.
00:04:04
Speaker
all of my animals were rescued because of irresponsible people. So Nike's the only one that I currently have that was purchased. A little sausage demon. A little sausage demon, but she's so cute. She is so cute. I love her. Adopt, don't shop. Yes, please. Yes, end of the day. But anyways, what are we talking about?
00:04:30
Speaker
We're talking about some spooky German places. Yes. I love this episode. Well, I don't know about yours. I didn't look at your notes. But mine are great. And there's not a whole lot of spooky to mine, but there's a whole lot of craziness to it that I just absolutely love. And now I can't wait till we get over to Germany so that I can go to this place because it just sounds amazing. Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
I can't wait. I didn't read yours because I wanted to be surprised. Yeah. I did ruin part of the surprise because I had to send you those pictures. I was like, I had to see these. Sam has to see these. Yes. The pictures are amazing and they will be on our socials the best, but believe because they are amazing.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess getting started, I researched the Black Forest, also known as probably going to butcher this, but I looked up the pronunciation and we'll see if I can get it out. I can't even say it. Schwarzwald? Schwarzwald. Okay, there we go. Schwarzwald.
00:05:46
Speaker
That was very, very difficult even with the phonetic pronunciation just so you know. But what I will say before I get into this is I thought the Black Forest was going to have just a plethora of research, information, lore, all sorts of stuff. There was fucking nothing. Yeah. There was nothing. I want to say like a lot of fairy tales maybe that were tied to it.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, there are fairy tales. I think that's all I know. Here's the thing. When you research, if you just put in the Black Forest or Schwarzwald or whatever the fuck, then to Google and you start researching it, it comes up on every list as one of the top haunted places in Germany. But whenever you try and find fucking why, guess what? There is nothing.
00:06:39
Speaker
So that was the same with, because I will be talking about the Harz Mountains and the little towns surrounding it. And it came up on multiple lists as spookiest, scariest German place. And then when I did the research, I'm like, it's not really spooky or scary, but there is a lot of witchy shit tied to it. So I just kept it.
00:07:03
Speaker
I figured we could talk about it anyway. It's like crazy stuff. There's some things, but it wasn't as much as I thought it was going to be. I thought this was going to be a super spooky location episode and I think it could be more cool information, tie in a little witchy and spooky, and then
00:07:29
Speaker
it's just going to be funny. So we're sorry. If you were expecting something very scary to listen in the dark and be like, this is not going to be it, unfortunately. Go back to season one October episodes. Right. Re-listen to those. I don't know.
00:07:49
Speaker
So just a little bit of history and information about the Black Forest. So the Black Forest is a large, dense forested mountain range in the southwest of Germany in the state of Baden-Württemberg. The Rhine River runs along the west and south of the forest. It's near, just southwest area, kind of near France. That's where this is at.
00:08:10
Speaker
It was given to Germany by the Romans during this time it was called Silva Marchiana in Italian or Roman or whatever the fuck, which translates to Black Forest. But it was called the Black Forest because the forest is so thick that the sun wasn't able to penetrate the forest floor.
Legends and Myths of the Black Forest
00:08:30
Speaker
And pines and furs are the main trees that have been historically found in this forest.
00:08:35
Speaker
Some of the footpaths also inside the Black Forest are said to be some of the first established footpaths in the entire world, which I thought was really fucking cool. That is really cool. Yeah. I loved that. I was just like, man, I really want to go there and walk some of these ancient footpaths. I think it would be just magical and beautiful and wonderful. So when I come to visit you in Germany, we're doing it. There's like a cuckoo clock museum there that we went to. It is. That was pretty cool. It's really cool.
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, I want to go there. I didn't put that in there just because like, I was like, Oh, I could, but I didn't.
00:09:16
Speaker
Just for listeners, because I'm sure you already know this, Tiffany, this area of Germany is where the cuckoo clocks were first produced and founded and everything. So when you think about the Black Forest, a lot of people associate it with cuckoo clocks and things like that. And that is why. And they are the coolest little clocks.
00:09:35
Speaker
and I love them so much. And it really goes back to my childhood, because we always had one in our house that my dad got from Germany. And when he passed away, he was supposed to give it, well, I mean, obviously before he passed away, he was supposed to give it to me, and then he passed, and then I didn't end up with the cuckoo clock, which makes me really sad. But the little chimes that we had in our cuckoo clock, just really, I can still hear them.
00:10:02
Speaker
like really take me back to my childhood and I love it. But yeah, throughout Germany's history, the forest was a major source of lumber for the area. And because of this, major deforestation happened over time. And this has meant that the forest has had to be replanted. And in the 1990s, the forest was also damaged by a series of storms that have left their mark even still to today. So there's parts of the forest that have been damaged by the storm that you can still see.
00:10:32
Speaker
And today, the forest stretches to 4,600 miles, which is massive, but this is only a fraction of what it used to be before the deforestation. So it's really cool to think about how a lot of that area, I mean, even though it's sad that deforestation happened, but a lot of the places around that area, obviously, if you were to trace back the roots of those towns and cities and places there, it would just seriously just go back to just being a massive forest because that's what it was for the longest time.
00:11:01
Speaker
So going into like the legends and the lore, this is kind of where I struggled finding information because when, like I said, when you're researching it and you put in anything about legends and mythology related to the Black Forest, things will come up.
00:11:16
Speaker
but it doesn't go into detail on anything, so that was really frustrating. Obviously, the biggest thing when it comes to the Black Forest, the biggest tie is for the Brothers Grimm. The Black Forest area is the area of Germany where the brothers were inspired to write Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty.
00:11:34
Speaker
There's also lore surrounding the headless horsemen in this area, and the Brothers Grimm recorded stories of a headless writer in the 1600s, and outside of that, I mean, there is some information, I might get into it, but it's kind of questionable as to whether or not this is an actual thing, or if this was a recent myth that's been tied back to the Brothers Grimm. There's some conflicting stories on that.
00:12:04
Speaker
a quote that i pulled from one of our resources it says that any man who commits a crime that deserved to be punished by beheading would be condemned to remain headless in the afterlife and this is kind of where this legend of the headless horseman in the black forest comes from and so this headless horseman is rumored to ride a white steed through the forest and in
00:12:24
Speaker
Different places this legend of the headless horseman comes with like different reasons like whether it's like a haunting situation or like avenging their death as you know basically the reason why they ride around and haunted area but in the black forest the headless horseman i guess the.
00:12:42
Speaker
reason for them is to essentially warn others not to steal. And so there's a tale that I have included. The author of this tale, I can not pronounce this name and I should have looked it up and I did not. So I'm just going to butcher it and try my best. It's a tale from Hans Yagintufel. Hans Yagintufel. We're just going to go with that.
00:13:06
Speaker
He wrote about a woman in Dresden was gathering acorns when she heard a hunting horn and a thud. The woman turns to see a rider standing over her. She doesn't think much of anything about it and then continues collecting her acorns. The next day, she sees the horseman again, but this time he is carrying his own head. And he asked her if she took the acorns without asking,
00:13:28
Speaker
And then he essentially tells her this story about how when he was younger and alive, he used to drink a lot and steal and that his life of sin condemned him in the afterlife. And he was basically cautioning her not to go down the same path. So the headless horseman in the Black Forest isn't really something scary. It's just kind of like a warning to other people. And another story related to the headless horseman is the Wild Huntsman or the Braunschweig.
00:13:56
Speaker
In this tale, a man named Hackleburg loved to hunt, and when he died, he begged God to keep him on earth to hunt. And he was granted his wish, being sent back to earth, condemned to hunt the woods for all eternity. And supposedly he hunts with a pack of wild dogs and things like that. And so that's also kind of a legend tied with the Headless Horseman, but I think this guy actually has his head. So I don't know why he's really connected.
00:14:24
Speaker
the Headless Horseman, but I don't know. It kept coming up whenever I was researching it, so I just thought I would do it under that section. There's also lore related to a forest king, and supposedly this was an evil king who kidnaps women and takes them to his magical underwater lair where he lives with nymphs. I couldn't find anything else about this, but it was mentioned on multiple sites, but just like that, you'll slip it, and I'm like, okay, but who was he? I need to know names, and
00:14:54
Speaker
There was nothing I think like with Germans like there's so many stories that are just meant to like scare their kids Yes, like they're like they'll tell this story to a child as a bedtime story as like a don't ever do like don't run off into the forest or you're gonna get kidnapped by the evil king of the forest and taken down under the water like all of their stories are like a lesson to children like don't do this and
00:15:20
Speaker
but there's no like no uh like where where it came from no roots no like it's just like they made it up or something sometimes absolutely and that factors right into the next lore that i'm going to talk about related to der grossman aka the tall man um so
00:15:39
Speaker
This could be like ancient lore legend, but most of the research of Der Grossman online is on Slenderman Wiki. Yeah. So I mean, I don't know. But supposedly Der Grossman is a disfigured man with bulging eyes and many arms similar to the Slenderman. However, with white spheres where his eyes should be. And it's said that he was created from woodcuts carved by an unknown artist in the 16th century.
00:16:06
Speaker
And this kind of goes back to what you were saying with most of these myths and legends surrounding some of these fantasy aspects of German lore is that it's essentially a cautionary tale to children, and this is absolutely that. So legend states that naughty children would be sent to the forest where der Grossmann would stalk them until they decided to basically admit their wrongdoings to their parents. So
00:16:35
Speaker
Basically, don't lie to your parents, essentially, and be good children. Now, related to ghosts, everything online, again, talks about how the Black Forest is one of the most haunted forests in the world and one of the most haunted places in Germany.
00:16:51
Speaker
basically nothing listed online about any ghost stories or encounters or anything like nothing not even a like TripAdvisor like I was trying to search like you should see my search history it's like like probably like it's it was just not
00:17:08
Speaker
It was frustrating trying to research it, but I did find one story. I found this on a Facebook page.
Ghost Stories and Hauntings in the Black Forest
00:17:14
Speaker
Obviously, link down below. Go and read it for yourself if you want a little bit more detail than this, but this is basically the gist of the story. There is a story about monks of the forest. Monks of St. Blasian were unusually cruel and would torment members of their abbey, and this abbey is
00:17:37
Speaker
or was in the Black Forest. So because they were so cruel, they stayed on as ghosts after they died, and they would torment people who would come to visit the abbey. Now, Capuchin Monk traveled to the abbey and exercised the ghosts of the abbey, capturing their spirits and sacks. He then threw the sacks off of the Feldberg Mountain, which is the highest mountain in Baden-Württemberg, into the Feldsee Lake. So essentially, too, supposedly that lake is also haunted.
00:18:05
Speaker
But again, there's no encounter. I would like a picture. I would like a personal encounter. Thank you very much. And then also.
00:18:14
Speaker
One of the things I did as well, because here's the thing with the Black Forest, there's many little towns and castles that have been deserted and things like that within the Black Forest, and one of those towns is called Altstadt. And they actually have a ghost tour that they do in the town, and they tell you all about this creepy history, all this haunted
00:18:35
Speaker
shit that happens. But there is not a fucking thing on their website about anything related to like any of these stories. I guess you have to go to the ghost tour to actually hear any of the legends. But supposedly in Altstadt there is lore surrounding vampires, missing people, and ghosts. So if you are interested and say you are going to be traveling to Germany in the next few years,
00:19:00
Speaker
and you're going to be near the Black Forest, check out their ghost tour and then let us know if you experience anything or what the legends state because I'm really interested in the vampire and I would love to know more about it. But if you search vampires and Alstatt or anything similar to that, nothing comes up. Nothing. Just FYI. I just love that both of us were like, oh, let's do these two places and Germany
00:19:27
Speaker
that are like on all these haunted lists and there's like no information on the actual haunted portion. It just says it's so haunted but there's like nothing. And they're like where?
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, we are. Yeah. So another legend states that the forest is also full of sorcerers, witches, and werewolves. But again, trying to find any lore or legends that included actual stories or myths was impossible. I tried finding even black forest sorcerers, black forest witches, black forest werewolves, and nothing would come up. And whenever I was searching haunted black forest or black forest ghosts and things like that, it would come up with
00:20:06
Speaker
a place in indiana also called the black forest that is not this black forest that we're talking about so frustrating but related to the black forest and magic there is actually ties to magic within the forest and i thought this was really interesting so
00:20:22
Speaker
In ancient times, a Celtic goddess, Abnoba Mons, was worshipped within the area, and the forest itself was called Abnoba in her honor, and she was a forest and river goddess. So that was really interesting, but again, like not a lot of information, just kind of happened upon this information in passing and
00:20:42
Speaker
I think would be really cool especially if, because you know right now throughout Europe they're finding all these hecatates, statues and things like that. It would be so cool if like in the Black Forest they ended up finding some sort of statues or something related or like carvings or anything related to this ancient goddess. I think it would be really cool. And then lastly I just wanted to throw this in here because I really wanted to talk about something spooky and there was like nothing.
00:21:11
Speaker
this palace is located about an hour away from the Black Forest. So if you find yourself in the Black Forest and you're like, okay, there's no ghost happenings around here. I don't see these, like, headless horsemen. I don't see the ghosts of these monks. Like, what the hell? You could travel about an hour away to the Rustat Palace and there is
00:21:34
Speaker
actual legends around ghosts at this palace. And so there is a woman in white that is like the biggest ghost, I guess, that people report, or I guess the most often reported is this woman in white. So there's a legend of a woman in a white gown and veil, and she is seen around the Restat Palace at night, usually lit with a faint aura of light
00:21:57
Speaker
and she has black eyes which is kind of creepy and she's usually seen in the gardens, the chapel, or walking in the hallways and her sightings usually correspond with the death of a member of the royal family. So like historically that's when they would see her and I'm just like that's kind
00:22:13
Speaker
kind of cool like so basically like their own or their own like the real family I thought that was pretty interesting to read about like the Rastat palace was even featured on ghost hunters they explored the palace in 2011 and they picked up weird issues with their lights
00:22:29
Speaker
and a voice that seemed to be screaming get out and a few members of the team also reported getting touched by a hand in one of the rooms of the palace and so i thought that was got chill resting i got chills thinking about that well isn't it crazy yes so when we do become reunited in germane
00:22:48
Speaker
the one day. Let's go to Rostock Palace as well. Let's do it. We're just going to do a spooky tour all over Germany. Yeah. We'll just hop on the train and take a little tour. Absolutely. It's perfect. Yeah. That's the
Mystic Lore of the Harz Mountains
00:23:00
Speaker
Black Forest. That's all I could find. It was great. I wish there was a little bit more. What can you do?
00:23:05
Speaker
So, I'm going to be talking about the Harz Mountains and the Highlands, or the Harz Highlands. So, to start off with a little background in history, the Harz Mountains are a low mountain range in the central uplands of Germany, ranging across three different German states, which are Lower Saxony, Saxony-Amhalt, and Thuringia.
00:23:27
Speaker
They are famous for their historic silver mines that brought the area wealth, and they're also renowned for their natural beauty. They can be seen full of rich plant and wildlife and their really unique geology, which I was trying to find really good pictures of this, and I just kept getting pictures about an area that I'm going to talk about later. So I don't really know what that geology entails, but it did come up multiple times talking about that it was really unique.
00:23:56
Speaker
I'm still not sure why. And they're also tied to a wealth of mystic sagas, lores, and fairy tales. So they're surrounded by a bunch of little towns. And in these little towns, a bunch of famous poets apparently grew up there. So there's all these sagas written about the area. I was not going to include all these poems in there, but there's a ton. If you like poetry, I would look up this area and there's a whole, I want to say,
00:24:24
Speaker
10 poets that came from this area that are all famous. So, the highest mountain in The Hars is The Broken, and it's the setting of a movie called Goth's Faust. And in the story, basically, the devil takes Faust up the broken on Walpurgisnacht
00:24:40
Speaker
to tempt him and Faust like observes a wild night of debauchery among witches and evil creatures and so a lot of the legend that surrounds this area comes from this story and there's like multiple movies that have been done about it like they've they did like an original and then it's been like remade a couple of times I've never watched it I don't know if it's any good but if you have let us know maybe I'll watch it like spooky season or something
00:25:08
Speaker
And for those that don't know, Walpargasnacht is the witch's night, and it falls on the same day as Beltane in terms of the will of the year. It's the closest holiday to an American Halloween, and it also falls opposite of Samhain in terms of the seasonal cycle of the will of the year. Walpargasnacht is said to be named after Saint Walberga.
00:25:28
Speaker
who lived in the area and who was believed to guard against evil spirits. The Harz is said to have some of the best well preserved 16th century towns within Germany, and I cannot wait to go and see these. The first one is Kwedlenburg, and this one is one that is constantly on the haunted list, but I couldn't really find anything spooky at all about this town.
00:25:51
Speaker
So Kwedlenburg survived the war, undamaged, and it maintained its medieval architecture and the layout, and it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. King Heinrich I, which is Henry the Fowler, was crowned King of Germany here in 919 AD, and this was the first time anyone had ruled Germany as a single entity.
00:26:14
Speaker
It became Germany's first capital. Its prosperity is owed to the silver, copper, and tin mines that are nearby, and it was a major market town that rivaled Cologne during the Middle Ages.
00:26:25
Speaker
This town was ruled by women for over 800 years, which I think is pretty cool. So King Heinrich's widow Matilda founded a convent for aristocratic women in 936 AD. And she did this with her granddaughter becoming the town's ruler. So they like basically, they had this convent and all of these aristocratic women were part of it. And they would be called an abess.
00:26:53
Speaker
And so their granddaughter basically became the ruler, the abbess of the whole town. And she like ran this whole town and it just kept passing on to women, like one woman after the next woman after the next woman. So they ruled this city up until 1802 and basically Napoleon invaded and disbanded the abbey at this point. But that whole time, like from 966 to 1802, it was ruled by women.
00:27:23
Speaker
I love that. Really cool. And then I'm probably going to butcher this name because it's a name so you don't really get what I think it is. But her name is Dora Thea Erksleben of Kwedlenburg. She was the first German woman to win the right to attend a university. And as a result, she was also the first woman to receive the academic title
00:27:49
Speaker
of medical doctor in Germany in 1754. So while that's obviously not a spooky fact, I felt that it deserved to be talked about. There's also a vast treasure in Kwedlenburg that went missing for a period of time because an American lieutenant made off with a large portion of it in 1945 during the war.
00:28:07
Speaker
And it had been moved to mine originally. They put it in a mine shaft so that it could be guarded for safekeeping. And this lieutenant was supposed to be guarding it, but instead he stole it. And in 1989, a jewel-encrusted manuscript showed up at an antique dealer in Switzerland with another one hitting the market in 1990. And the treasure was later found in Texas, where apparently this lieutenant had shipped all of the artifacts to his parents.
00:28:34
Speaker
And when he passed away in 1980, his siblings and his heirs ended up with the treasure and they started trying to sell off pieces where they were eventually caught by the German investigators. And it resulted in a $2.75 million settlement and the return of the treasure to Kwedlenburg in 1992. And the oldest house in Germany was built around 1300 and it also resides in Kwedlenburg.
00:29:02
Speaker
at word gasa three and it's now a museum so you can go see it. Oh, that's cool. But also fuck that lieutenant. What the hell? Right, right. He shipped it to Texas like he was like, here's the treasure puts it in the mail. Yeah, this is mine now. No. And so there was like for a while because they had no clue there was like spooky lore tied to it. But then when they found the treasure, they were like, Oh, nevermind.
00:29:25
Speaker
So Jesus, Jesus. The next one is Gosler. And this town is famous for its wood carvings on the exterior of the houses. And it's rumored that some of them are really scandalous. And of course, me being me, I had to look this up and they really are
00:29:41
Speaker
I was cracking up for like 20 minutes about these. So these carvings include things like angels, demons, animals, and mythological creatures alongside human figures. And the main square, which is known as the mark, is said to hold some really interesting examples of the carvings.
00:29:57
Speaker
The Kaiserswurth Hotel is a 500-year-old building in the square, and it was the official home of the Taylor's Guild. And this building actually displays a carving of a man pooping a gold coin, like his full ass is on display. There's a carved shit hanging on the side of the building underneath him. And then there's like a coin poking out his butthole, like just like...
00:30:23
Speaker
it out. There's a lot of butt carvings. And there was even one that was like a man sucking his own wiener. Like he's like bent over, but in his head is like in between his legs with his like penis in his mouth. These carvings are wild.
00:30:44
Speaker
Gosler's Owl Skirts are also home to the Rommelsburg Silver Mine that operated for over a thousand years, and it's now one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
00:30:55
Speaker
I found it very weird that there was multiple mines in this area and there wasn't like spooky lore and legends because mines always come with like spooky and there was literally nothing on any of that so I hit a dead end there too. But if you travel here, you can actually don a pair of miners' coveralls and go down into the tunnels as well as ride the miniature train that was used by the miners to travel underground.
00:31:22
Speaker
I don't know if I want to do that. At least put my head in there. Yeah. The themes of the mining times of this town are used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Like this particular town, the houses in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, like the cartoon, are actually like based off of houses out of this town, which I thought was cool.
00:31:50
Speaker
And so is the little trains that they use in the movie in the tunnels and stuff like the dwarves use. It's all based on this town, which I thought that was really cute. I used to love that movie as I could. The town is host to 1800 of Germany's
00:32:05
Speaker
oldest houses, and it used to be the residence of the Holy Roman Emperor for 300 years, starting in 1039. The town also has a glockenspiel, which is a clock tower that has a car, like a bunch of little carved figures that reenact the history of Gosler at 12, 3, 6,
Pagan Rituals and Celebrations in Thale
00:32:26
Speaker
and 9 p.m. every day. Oh, that sounds like a dream. I'd want to see that. Right. We should go there and like we can just sit in the square and watch the little carvings do their thing.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah. And then the last town and history portion that I'm going to talk about is in Thale. And this is a very small town that basically lies at the entrance of a river gorge. And it was once known as the Center for Pagan Germanic Worship.
00:32:52
Speaker
They all has a gondola that will take you basically all the way up to the mountaintop. This was in the article, a day of pagan rituals and history of witchcraft. So like I'm interested to go and see like what they're doing. Like what is it? Or is it like actual like being led by like pagan people or I'm interested to see that.
00:33:13
Speaker
The town has a park that has a statue of Odin. It's like a statue fountain, and it depicts the Allfather with his ravens just sitting in the middle of the park, and his little ravens are kind of in front of the fountain on a boulder. There's two mountains that stand over Thale, and they're known as the Hexentonsplots.
00:33:33
Speaker
or the witches' dancing plays, and in pre-Christian times this was said to be an important site for secret pagan ceremonies for the Celts and then later the German pagan tribes. Legend states that witches would gather here before their flights to the Broken on Wolfhärgesnacht,
00:33:49
Speaker
and a celebration is actually still held here to this day on Wall Park is not and it hosts more than 30,000 people and it includes celebrations, bonfires, people like running wild dressed as witches and demons and all forms of nightmarish ghouls apparently.
00:34:06
Speaker
I think it would be so fun to go to this. This area is lined with statues of witches and demons from regional folklore that line the main square where all the vendors set up to sell their wares and an assortment of things like sausages and even schnapps.
00:34:25
Speaker
So you can just hang out in this like pagan decorated square, shop like people's wares, drink schnapps and eat like sausages. This sounds like a dream. It really does. I need to get there.
00:34:40
Speaker
Hey, they also has a hex and tons plots and gondola that will take you to the top of the mountain where there's like an open air theater and they do like a bunch of events up there and sometimes they'll like reenact stories from the area.
00:34:56
Speaker
And you can also visit the Wolpergis Hall that has an exhibit that covers the legends of Wolpergisnacht in the area. And it also has a stone that's said to have been used for human sacrifices and ceremonies, but who actually knows if that actually happened? Or if they're just like, it's like Puritan BS bullshit that like,
00:35:16
Speaker
they said about pagans at that time, you know, like the whole Christian era comes in and then they're like, oh, they're sacrificing humans. So no one really knows. But it is said that the rock is shaped like Gene Simmons tongue, which, okay. Multiple websites were like, you could go look at it and it shaped like Gene Simmons tongue. And I was like, this is just a weird thing to be compared to.
00:35:41
Speaker
Like I wonder who the first person was. It was like, you know what? That rock really reminds me. Gene Simmons in his tongue. And his tongue. So like I should call him. Yeah. But that's all the history I have. And this is where things I feel like are going to get like all over the place because the legends, lores, and like fairy tales of this area were all over the place. So I'm sorry if it doesn't seem organized. It wasn't.
00:36:11
Speaker
My research, I was like, I don't even know how I'm going to talk about this. So as I already stated in the history and the background, Laura states that historically every year on April 30th, which is Bullpurgisnacht, which is would gather at the top of the broken for celebrations. And this is believed to have been throughout the entire history of this place, all the way back.
00:36:32
Speaker
So like every year for hundreds of thousands of years basically like there's just a celebration. Disney's Fantasia actually includes a version of this gathering in the form of like what they called forces of evil in the scene of Night on the Bald Mountain.
00:36:49
Speaker
And The Broken also has a treeless summit that apparently has a long association with witchcraft and devilry, but there was no other information on that. It's just like, yep, this area, witchcraft, devilry. Definitely not.
00:37:04
Speaker
I was like, okay, got it. The town of Thale has fully embraced the spooky of the area and it's home to several statues of devils, gnomes, and witches that are scattered all throughout the town. In Thales Park, you can take a chairlift up to the Rostrop Mountains where legend has it that, okay, this is actually kind of funny,
00:37:27
Speaker
Legend has it that this princess, Brunhilda, attempted to escape a forced marriage to a amorous giant named Bodo by horse. So she hops on her horse and she's like, fuck you, I'm not marrying you. Bye. Takes off. And so he hops on his horse, his big giant body gets on a horse, a normal horse.
00:37:48
Speaker
not like a giant horse. I think this is why it was so funny because it's just this like giant ogre of a man and this teeny tiny little horse like running through the forest chasing her. And so her horse like jumps the cliff
00:38:01
Speaker
And he makes the leap across the gorge to the Rofstrom Mountains and lands. And if you go up there, it's said that there's a hoofprint in the stone that you can see where he landed on the other side. Well, Bodo and his horse
00:38:19
Speaker
they didn't make it. They just plunged into the valley below to the gorge. And his ghost was said to return in the form of a dog that was condemned to spend eternity guarding Brunhilde's crown that fell into the river during the chase. So I don't know why he turned into a dog? Like a ghost dog? Like I don't know why this giant man turned into a ghost dog, but now he guards her crown.
00:38:43
Speaker
I think because he was horny, like a horn dog. He gets the bonk. I think that's probably the only ghost story that I found. I can't remember if there was any more. There might be one or two, but that was the ghost story that popped up. Laura states that the original pagan dwellers of the Harz Mountains were the Celts.
00:39:05
Speaker
their Germanic pagan tribes pushed the Celts out of the mountains and they used the mountaintop as a place of sacrifice. The information on this particular like history is really murky. Some claim that this space was used for dark ritualistic magic and human sacrifice, while others stated there was like a less sinister version of these legends.
00:39:24
Speaker
noting that pagan rituals were held here for the energies within the mountain itself. In old maps of the area, cartographers were noted to have actually sketched witches hovering above the broken on their maps. So if you can track down old maps of this area, it'll actually have a little witch drawn above the mountains. So that would be really cute to see. I wonder if they have it in the museum out there.
00:39:48
Speaker
After the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, the city of Kwedlenburg actually burned 133 suspected witches in a single day in 1589, which I feel like we can never escape that when we're doing like these old historic like places and spooky stories. But so it did happen there. Many homes in Kwedlenburg also still boast red pentagrams carved above their entryways. And they're noted to have been used to ward off evil spirits historically in this town.
00:40:18
Speaker
So, like, you could actually get a house with a little pentagram carved above your door there. Outside of Kwedlandsberg is a spectacle known as Tufelsmar or the Devil's Wall. And this is a ring of craggy rock outcroppings that, according to legend, separated God's territory, which was the Har's Plains, from the Devil's territory, which was the Har's Mountains.
00:40:41
Speaker
And I know I'm talking about while Pargus knocked obsessively in this episode, but legend also states that this night was celebrated by witches because this was the day that they apparently, quote unquote, emerged from their sixth month hibernation in hell.
Hiking Trails and Cultural Inspirations in the Harz Mountains
00:40:58
Speaker
So they come out on this night and just run them up. As you do after six months in hell, right? I thought I do.
00:41:07
Speaker
And then just a little extras, for any of our listeners that are like super hikers, you can actually hike the Harz Witches Trail. It's 100 kilometers long. It takes approximately five days to complete. It runs from Austin Road through the Harz Mountains and over the Broken Peak.
00:41:26
Speaker
There's a channel on YouTube called Second Chance Hiker, and he actually did this with his daughter, I believe. I don't really know who she is actually. She might not be his daughter. He just refers to her as little b. So I don't know. And she looks young, but she's also not like a child. So I don't know. Okay. I could have just made that up. I don't know that she was his daughter, but
00:41:49
Speaker
him and little bee hike this thing and you can actually like he posts videos of his experience on the trail and he talks about all the spookiness of it like a lot of the areas he does talk about it feeling very eerie to him and the videos also show a bunch of the witch carvings and statues that are like all along the trail and in the woods that surround that area
00:42:09
Speaker
And if you're not up for a full five day hike, because look, I'm not camping in a tent on a trail. There's a group called the Natural Adventure Company, and they actually offer a 16 kilometer or a 10 mile guided hike that winds through the villages and then up the broken giving like the spooky lore and history along the way. So it's like a 10 mile tour, essentially.
00:42:40
Speaker
And then last, in my research, I came across a board game called the Quacks of Kwedlenburg, where essentially you play doctors that are considered quacks. And the whole goal is to win this game is to be able to brew a miracle potion
00:42:57
Speaker
that makes you the best doctor in the land. So you apparently draw cards and they all have ingredients on them and you put these ingredients in your cauldron and some can spoil the potion apparently. They do different things depending on what's happened at that time in the game. It seemed really hilarious, too funny to not at least mention. And if you're interested in the game, I definitely did add the link
00:43:20
Speaker
in our show notes because it looked hilarious and you get like little cauldrons and you're like creating potions but like it's not it's not supposed to be witches they're supposed to be doctors so yeah but it did seem really funny yeah that's all I had I had one ghost story in this like supposedly most haunted area but there is a lot of witchy stuff tied to it and a lot of pagan history tied to it which I thought was really cool it just wasn't a spooky location I thought it was gonna be so
00:43:50
Speaker
That's it!
00:44:03
Speaker
That's it for this episode of Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft. You can find our source material for this episode linked in the show notes. If you love this episode, we would be forever thankful if you leave us a five-star review on wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you really love the show and want more Get In Loser content, check out our Supercast link provided in the show notes or search the Supercast website for Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft. There you can purchase a membership to our podcast and obtain exclusives like
00:44:28
Speaker
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