Dark History: Where The Darkness See’s The Light
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Dark History: Where The Darkness See’s The Light
S2 E21: The Halloween Special: The Tamers Of The Black Cat
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Tomoarrow I die, and today I want to tell the world what happened and thus perhaps free my soul from the horrible weight which lies upon it.
But listen! Listen, and you shall hear how I have been destroyed.
When I was a child I had a
natural goodness of soul which
led me to love animals — all
kinds of animals, but especially
those animals we call pets, ani-
mals which have learned to live
with men and share their homes
with them. There is something in the love of these animals which speaks directly to the heart of the man who has learned from experience how uncertain and changeable is the love of other men.
I was quite young when I married. You will understand the joy I felt to find that my wife shared with me my love for animals. Quickly she got for us several pets of the most likeable kind. We had birds, some goldfish, a fine dog, and a cat.
The cat was a beautiful animal, of unusually large size, and entirely black. I named the cat Pluto, and it was the pet I liked best.
I alone fed it, and it followed me all around the house. It was even with difficulty that I stopped it from following me through the streets. Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which, however, my own character became greatly changed. I began to drink too much wine and other strong drinks. As the days passed I became less loving in my manner; I became quick to anger; I forgot how to smile and laugh. My wife — yes, and my pets, too, all except
the cat — were made to feel the change in my character.
One night I came home quite late from the inn, where I now spent more and more time drinking. Walking with uncertain step, I made my way with effort into the house. As I entered I saw — or thought I saw — that Pluto, the cat, was trying to stay out of my way, to avoid me. This action, by an animal which I had thought still loved me, made me angry beyond reason. My soul seemed to fly from my body. I took a small knife out of my coat and opened it. Then I took the poor animal by the neck and with one quick movement I cut out
one of its fear-filled eyes!
Slowly the cat got well. The hole where its eye had been was not
a pretty thing to look at, it is true; but the cat no longer appeared to suffer any pain. As might be expected, however, it ran from me in fear whenever I came near. Why should it not run? Yet this did not fail to anger me. I felt growing inside myself a new feeling. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself doing wrong, doing some evil thing for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Are not we humans at all times pushed, ever driven in some unknown way to break the law just because we understand it to be the law?
One day, in cold blood, I tied a strong rope around the cat’s neck, and taking it down into the cellar under the house I hung it from one of the wood beams above my head. I hung it there until it was dead. I hung it there with tears in my eyes, I hung it because I knew it had loved me, because I felt it had given me no reason to hurt it, because I knew that my doing so was a wrong so great, a sin so deadly that it would place my soul forever outside the reach of the love of God!
That same night, as I lay sleeping, I heard through my open window the cries of our neighbors. I jumped from my bed and found that the entire house was filled with fire. It was only with great difficulty that my wife and I escaped. And when we were out of the house, all we could do was stand and watch it burn to the ground. I thought of the cat as I watched it burn, the cat whose dead body I had left hanging in the cellar. It seemed almost that the cat had in some mysterious way caused the house to burn so that it could make me pay for my evil act, so that it could take revenge upon me.
Months went by, and I could not drive the thought of the cat out of my mind. One night I sat in the inn, drinking, as usual. In the cor- ner I saw a dark object that I had not seen before. I went over to see what it could be. It was a cat, a cat almost exactly like Pluto. I touched it with my hand and petted it, passing my hand softly along its back. The cat rose and pushed its back against my hand.
Suddenly I realized that I wanted the cat. I offered to buy it from the innkeeper, but he claimed he had never seen the animal before. As I left the inn, it followed me, and I allowed it to do so. It soon became a pet of both my wife and myself.
The morning after I brought it home, however, I discovered that this cat, like Pluto, had only one eye. How was it possible that I had not noticed this the night before? This fact only made my wife love the cat more. But I, myself, found a feeling of dislike growing in me. My growing dislike of the animal only seemed to increase its love for me. It followed me, followed me everywhere, always. When I sat, it lay down under my chair. When I stood up it got between my feet and nearly made me fall. Wherever I went, it was always there. At night I dreamed of it. And I began to hate that cat!
One day my wife called to me from the cellar of the old building where we were now forced to live. As I went down the stairs, the cat, following me as always, ran under my feet and nearly threw me down.
In sudden anger, I took an axe and struck wildly at the cat. Quickly my wife put out her hand and stopped my arm. This only increased my anger and, without thinking, I turned and put the axe into her brain! She fell to the floor and died without a sound.
I spent a few moments looking for the cat, but it was gone. And I had other things to do, for I knew I must do something with the body, and quickly. Suddenly I noted a place in the wall of the cellar where stones had been added to the wall to cover an old fireplace which was no longer wanted. The walls were not very strongly built, and I found I could easily take down those stones. Behind them there was, as I knew there must be, a hole just big enough to hold the body. With much effort I put the body in and carefully put the stones back in their place. I was pleased to see that it was quite impossible for anyone to know that a single stone had been moved.
Days passed. Still there was no cat. A few people came and asked about my wife; but I answered them easily. Then one day several officers of the police came. Certain that they could find nothing, I asked them in and went with them as they searched.
Finally they searched the cellar from end to end. I watched them quietly, and, as I expected, they noticed nothing. But as they started up the stairs again, I felt myself driven by some unknown inner force to let them know, to make them know, that I had won the battle.
“The walls of this building,” I said, “are very strongly built; it is a fine old house.” And as I spoke I struck with my stick that very place in the wall behind which was the body of my wife. Immediately I felt a cold feeling up and down my back as we heard coming out of the wall itself a horrible cry.
For one short moment the officers stood looking at each other. Then quickly they began to pick at the stones, and in a short time they saw before them the body of my wife, black with dried blood and smelling of decay. On the body’s head, its one eye filled with fire, its wide open mouth the color of blood, sat the cat, crying out its revenge!
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. I hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to the new episode and the eagerly awaited Halloween special well I hope the eagerly awaited Halloween special anyway. Strap yourselves in because this is going to be a monster episode pun most defiantly intended.
I hope you all enjoyed the modernised rendition of Edgar Allen Poe’s the black cat, I know it is sac religious to change the works of a gothic genius such as Edgar Allan Poe but if anyone has read the original black cat story or The Raven, for example, you will see that the language and style of writing is incredibly different to ours nowadays so please forgive me for trying to make it a little easier for a illiterate dumb brute such as myself.
After that Hugh Caviat lets get down to the episode. Last year our Halloween special was about the story of the pendal witches and their trials and tribulations. I chose this as this is relatively close to where I live. In keeping with this tradition of witches on Halloween and to take into account the demographic of my listeners, I thought would bring you the most infamous witch trials of all the Salem witch trials, but then I though no! this topic has been well-trodden. So I pondered and pondered and tried to delve into obscurity and what did I come out with? More witch trials…. Yep…. more witch trials, but these witch trials are slightly more obscure and showcase the shear brutality that humans can inflict.
Obligatorily I must warn you this halloween speacial is not for the faint hearted we are about to decend into a rabbit hole of some of the most darkest tales imaginable, nothing and nobody was off limits in these stories no matter the age.
So with that warning out the way please turn off those lights sit back and relax under the blanker for the final part of our spooky season specials and more dark history.
So we start our episode in the fairy tale invoicing landscape of Alpine Austria. Perched among the rugged landscape of lungau region of Salzburg is moosham castle. The White Stone medieval castle transcends out of the many snow tipped pine forests that blanket the area like a magnificent relic to a time gone by. Please my dear listeners don't let this idyllic picture of a magical Castle adorned with snowy pine Forrests cascading down might granite mountains fool you, this seemingly beautiful picturesque image in your mind should be tarnished and awash with blood and gore. You see This mighty 12th-century castles is the setting to the darkest and most inhumane witch trials Europe has ever seen.
Moosham Castle was first documented a deed in 1191, possible built on the foundations of a Roman fortress Moosham Castle has seen many tragedy.
Through out the sands of time moosham has bore witness to local wars, the crusades, several Austrian-Hungarian wars and the Flemish Revolt against Maximilian of Austria between the years of 1428 and 1482. The castle has seen its share of sieges with the besieging by peasants during the German Peasants’ War between the years of 1524 and 1525 being the most notable. So it isn't far-fetched to say the ground is saturated with blood, But Among the many stories of wars and sieges, there is one period in history that’s even more gruesome than all these together.
The so-called Zaubererjackl Trials lasted from 1675 until 1690, within this span of some 15 years the area was gripped by an insatiable appetite for righteousness which elevated into a bloodthirsty bout of mass hysteria. Those fear filled but delusional 15 years would see Moosham Castle take centre stage.
These dark and macabre events began with a simple arrest of a women named Barbara Kollerin for the crimes of theft and sorcery in 1675. She was put on trial along with her partner Paul Kalthenpacher. During torture, Barbara confessed that her son, Paul Jacob Koller, had made a pact with Satan. Paul Kalthenpacher confirmed her story. Barbara was executed in August of that year, and the hunt for Jacob began.
In 1677, the government received the news that Jacob was dead. But, when they arrested a young beggar named Dionysos Feldner, that news was contradicted. The 12-year-old handicapped Feldner, also known as “Dirty Animal”, told the authorities that he had been in contact with Jacob shortly before his arrest. According to him, Jacob, or Jackl, was the leader of a gang of beggar children and teenagers from the slum. Feldner also claimed Jackl had taught the children black magic. His confession led to the arrest of hundreds of homeless children and teenagers.
During the interrogations, the stories about Jackl grew larger and larger. In the end, the authorities even feared the man for his bloodthirst and cruelty. They actually preferred to avoid capturing the man. So, even though Jackl was the most famous wizard in the city’s history, he was never captured. Instead, the witch hunt for homeless children and teenagers continued.
As the years fell away a total of 139 people were killed, with moosham Castle being the epicentre of The administration, the court, the imprisonment, the torture and ultimately the execution. Of the 139 executed, 113 were male. They were executed because they were loyal followers of Jackl. Thirty-nine were just children. The youngest, Hannerl, was only 10-years-old. Fifty-three executed were aged between 15 and 21. Twenty-one executed were of unknown ages. The oldest to be executed was Margarethe Reinberg, who was 80-years-old when she was killed.
The execution of people for something as fanciful as witchcraft is barbaric enough but then compound it with the execution of children well then you have some truly dark history, but what is frankly heartbreaking and tips this story protagonists into the realm of fictitious supervillainy is the methods used on these children. The sadistic authorities would progress the torture very slowly using various methods, then once they had what they wanted a small mercy was offered in the 3 forms, hanging, decapitation or burning alive at the stake and these were the lucky ones. Some children had their hands cut off and markings burned into their chests. These children were then paraded round for locals as a warning before ultimately entering the torture chamber until they confessed and then they were given the same 3 mercies.
Strangely, as sadistic and murderous as this story was, Moosham Castle wasn't completely clear of fairytale monsters. As The witch hunts ended in 1690, life at Moosham Castle turned back to normal. This lasted until 1790, when the Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo dissolved the Moosham bailiwick. Without the churches’ finances, the castle fell into disrepair. Not long after this event, local deer and stock were found mutilated and killed in the area surrounding the castle. The superstitious locals soon started pointing at the remaining residents of the castle. Somewhat laughably, They believed these people turned into werewolves at night, feasting on the flesh of the unfortunate animals. The locals went up to the castle, pitchforks and torches in hand and captured the residents, brutally murdering them in their own courtyard. After this, the castle was abandoned.
Moving North from Austria to the land of Sweden. Famed for its marauding band of merciless Vikings, that terrorized Europe during the middle ages Sweden is seen as civilized and prosperous nation nowadays.
Between those polar opposites in time, the country of Sweden has had some bloody and equally dark periods throughout its history. Notably, Swedes suffered the wrath of King Christian II of Denmark in 1519, when in a bid to break free of the Kalmar Union, which was a personal Union between the countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the king invaded and arrested the rebellious nobility and massacred 80 of them at the end of a feast in honour of his coronation.
The Swedes would again suffer at the hands of a king in 1700 when King Charles the twelfth invaded russia. At first the great northern war went well as Sweden single handedly knock out the countries of Poland and Denmark. Even the Russians sued for peace in 1708 but the cocky King Charles managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by continuing to fight the Russians, being utterly routed at the Battle poltava in 1709 and loosing Sweden its status as a military power in Europe. As dark and bloody as some of these events were I am digressing from what the main topic of the episode is about.
As the bloodbath in Austria was was beginning another was too in its infancy. In the year 1674 the Village of Torsåker, sweden, was a typical rural Swedish village. The earthy red wooden house, with their steep thatched rooves, were miticuloisly placed around the church which lay in the centre of the village. the surrounding landscape was a mishmash o browns, yellows and greens. The people would be toiling in this agricultural tapasty ever changing with the seasons. Even today today Torsåker boast a population of no more than 889. So You'd be forgiven for think of nothing more of Torsaker than a small unassuming rural Swedish village, but in 1674 Torsåker became the very heart of Sweden biggest witch trials.
The witch trial reached Torsåker as a result and a consequence of the great wave of witch hysteria known as stora oväsendet, which had begun to flourish over Sweden after the trial caused by Gertrud Svensdotter against Märet Jonsdotter in Dalarna in 1668. Sweden did not have separation of church and state, causing state-employed Lutheran priests to abide by government instructions.
The Lutheran clergy were ordered to use their sermons to inform their congregations of the crimes committed. Thus, the rumour of the witches spread over the country, where witch-hunts had earlier been a rarity.
The trials began when Johannes Wattrangius of Torsåker parish told Laurentius Christophori Hornæusof Ytterlännäs parish to investigate witchcraft in his parish.
On 15 October 1674, the witch trial of Torsåker opened. About one hundred people, of both sexes were accused. The young Hornaeus started the job with a great determination to succeed. Both Wattrangius and Hornaeus saw themselves as chosen to fight the evil. They were convinced that there was a giant struggle between the good and the evil and that the witches were the tools of the devil. To save the souls of the witches and to spare them the eternal fire of hell, it was necessary to get the witches to confess. Both Wattrangius and Hornaeus believed that torture was necessary to accomplish that goal.
Witnesses were also tortured to get a "suitable" story. It was common to use children as witnesses, and they were often children of the accused women. The children were telling dreadful stories of how they had been brought to "Blåkulla", the place of the Devil in Nordic tales, not quite hell, but a place where the Devil held banquets, on the witches' ride, what they had experienced there, what they had seen, who they had seen, etc. The children tried to outshine each other with their fantasy stories.
If accused The women would be subjected to the water test. The accused woman was tied up and thrown into a lake, river, or some other body of water. If she sank and drowned, then she was innocent. However, if she floated on the water, she was condemned as a witch and was to be executed. The women were beheaded first, and their bodies were then burned on a bonfire.
This method would be used After the last sermon in the church of Torsåker, the prisoners, 71 people (65 women and 6 men) were led to the place of execution which was on a mountain half a mile from all the three churches, called The Mountain of the Stake. Many fainted on the way out of weakness and fear and those were carried by their families up until the place of execution.
On the mountain, a grim site awaited, stakes had been preemptively driven into the ground and kindling places around ready for the inevitable burnings.
The prisoners were decapitated away from the stakes,tso as not to drown the wood in blood and make it hard to light, and when they were dead, their families took off their clothes and lifted their bodies on the stakes, which were lit and burned until they went out by themselves.
The Torsåker executions had, even at the time they occurred, dubious legitimacy. Neither the commission or any local courts had the rights to conduct any executions, it was the job of the high court to determine the sentencing the local courts were there to merely report back. In the case of Torsåker, the local court commission did not report the sentences to the high court, but executed the prisoners directly without confirmation of the sentences from their superiors, and the execution was therefore not lawful. The commission was also called from Torsåker to the capital to answer for their actions. They were defended by the local authorities in Torsåker, but there were to be no more executions.
The witch-hunt in the country continued; after the Torsåker witch trial, it reached the capital, where it lasted until 1676 and ended with the execution of Malin Matsdotter during the Katarina witch trials in Stockholm, Malin would be the only women burned at the stake alive in Sweden. After the execution of Malin matsdotter the authorities proved that the child witnesses were lying and it had been a mistake. In 1677, all the priests in the country were ordered to tell their congregations in the churches that the witches had now been expelled from the country forever to avoid further witch trials. In Torsåker, two boys who had pointed women out as witches were found with their throats cut.
The British Isle in 1603 was a very different place to today. Scotsman, Englishmen and Welshman, in 1603, would all meet in a field with their armour and chain male and have a good old dust up to the death as they had done for centuries. Now a days it's just a passive aggressive hatred of each other that only really boils over when the football or rugby is on or when the talk of Independence rears its head from a politicians mouth.
So why does the year of 1603 have any significance? Well 1603 was the year King James VI of Scotland also became James I of England and United the two kingdoms. What does King James the first have to do with witches? Well James certainly had a strange fascination with all things associated with the occult: shortly after assuming the throne, he released his best-selling book, ‘Daemonologie’which explored the areas of witchcraft and demonic magic. He was so obsessed with the ‘black arts’ that he even convinced Parliament to pass the Witchcraft Statute of 1604, which ruled witchcraft as a crime punishable by death.
Such a background led to a heightened public anxiety about witches that would slowly fester in the decades that followed, inspired in no small part by similar concerns across The Channel in mainland Europe. Within the political and religious chaos that reigned throughout the period of the English Civil Wars, one previously unheard of name was on every ones lips Matthew Hopkins.
Records of Hopkins’ early career in the art of witch hunting are a tad vague, however it appears to stem from when he moved to Manningtree, Essex in 1644. An impoverished lawyer with a strong puritanical background, Hopkins appears to have seen it as his mission to destroy anything to do with the “works of the devil”.
Hopkins believed that there were several witches regularly practicing their dark arts close to his home and apparently began his career as a witch-finder after he overheard various women discussing their meetings with the Devil in March 1644. Of the twenty-three women accused of witchcraft, four were said to have died in prison with nineteen later convicted and hanged.
Hopkins appears to have assumed the title of Witch-Finder General in 1645, claiming to be officially commissioned by Parliament with the brief to uncover and prosecute witches. Together with his entourage that included a merry band of ‘lady prickers’, they travelled the villages and towns of eastern England, trying and examining women for witchcraft.
Of course, all of this came at a very ‘reasonable’ price, said to be “twenty shillings a town”, although the records reveal that the small market town of Stowmarket paid £23 for his services. A true entrepreneur, Hopkins appears to have quickly turned his mission into a well-paid career, so much so that local taxes were even being levied in order to fund his obsession.
Many of the methods that Hopkins adopted to investigate these cases of witchcraft were taken directly from King James’ best seller ‘Daemonologie’. And although considerably less violent than those methods adopted in mainland Europe, they did include keeping the suspect awake for days on end, resulting in the suspect, now suffering from sleep deprivation, being coerced into confessing to almost anything.
And on to the work of those lady pickers; well, their job involved cutting the arm of the accused with a knife, needle or pin, and if she did not bleed, she was said to be a witch. However, with a very good living to be earned from unmasking witches, retractable or blunt blades were often adopted.
As was used in Sweden, Hopkins’ favourite confessional method of torture however was the infamous swimming test or water test. This unbelievably simple but effective test involved binding the arms and legs of the accused to a chair before throwing them into the village pond. If they sank and drowned, they would be innocent and received into heaven; if they floated, they would be tried as a witch.
Between the years 1644 and 1646, Hopkins and his associates are believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 300 women. And in the days when an average farm worker’s wage was just 6 pence a day, it is estimated that Hopkins may have collected fees of around £1000 for his gruesome services. His own end however, is far from clear; some accounts say he drowned undergoing his own “swimming trial” after being accused of witchcraft himself or Matthew Hopkins died at his home in Manningtree, Essex, on 12 August 1647, probably of pleural tuberculosis. He was buried a few hours after his death in the graveyard of the Church of St Mary at Mistley Heath.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this long and dark episode. I won’t waffle on to much at the end but This episode has been a real labour of love and taken around 6 weeks to research, write and record. This like every episode is done by myself, the research, the writing, the recording and editing so after tonight episode I'm going to take a little break, I'll be back with the more factually historic episodes on a bi-weekly basis in two weeks ready for the run to Christmas. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and the spooky season as a hole. t still baffles me that in by gone times people were executed for witchcraft. So with all that out the way Thank you again for listening. I hope everyone enjoys their Halloween and doesn’t get sick on to many sweets. As always Join us next time, for our next episode, as we delve into another event and more dark history
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