Aufhocker

A woman from Esch on the Sauer is walking home late with a basket strapped to her back. At the crossroads in the Millebösch wood she sees a hunter coming toward her, slow and deliberate, with two white dogs at his heel and a long coat that hangs off him like poured lead. She tries to get across the crossroads before he reaches it. She is too slow. Something rolls onto her basket. It gets heavier. Behind her the dogs bark and keep barking, and the load bends her nearly to the ground, and the only thing keeping her upright is fear. She does not look back. When she reaches the first houses of Esch the weight rolls off her basket, and when she finally dares to turn round there is nothing on the road at all.

That story was printed in 1883 by Nicolas Gredt in his Sagenschatz des Luxemburger Landes, one of dozens he gathered of the same kind. In German folk belief the thing that did it has a name built out of the act itself. To aufhocken is to squat up onto someone, to jump on their back the way a child jumps on a parent’s, and an Aufhocker is whatever does that to you on a dark road. In the north it was the Huckup. In Alsace they called it the Schnürbübel, the little strangler, because the weight on the shoulders was also a grip at the throat.

The Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, the great German dictionary of folk belief, gave the subject its own entry in its first volume in 1927. Its author, the folklorist Friedrich Ranke, had already written a study of the Huckup, and he did not mince words: of all the malicious tricks that ghosts, spirits and demons were supposed to play on people, this was perhaps the most widespread. He also laid out the shape the encounter nearly always took. A walker, usually alone, is startled by something half seen in the dusk. He feels a heavy load settle onto his back from behind, so heavy he can barely breathe. He feels as if he has been lamed. He cannot turn his head. Every scrap of his attention is fixed on the thing riding his shoulders.

What exactly is riding there depends on who is telling it. Ranke’s list of beings that took the part is long: village animal ghosts and other spectral beasts, the walking dead, the restless souls who pace boundary lines, will-o’-the-wisps, white women and black men, witches, werewolves such as the Böxenwolf, kobolds, dwarfs, the water-man, the goat-shaped Habergeiß, the Kasermanndl of the Alpine dairy huts, and even the demon of plague. Only rarely was it confused with the Alp, the nightmare that sits on a sleeper’s chest, although the two are close kin. The Aufhocker is less a single creature than a role that any number of creatures could step into, and a road at night was the stage.

In 1879 Karl Bartsch printed a Mecklenburg version that shows how the dead could take the role. A cruel official in the town of Feldberg kept haunting the place after his death. He jumped onto people’s backs and made them carry him, and he rattled about in the houses, especially in the official residence, where he would knock things to the floor in daylight and blow out the lamps at night. An exorcist, the executioner from Neubrandenburg, finally bound him under a birch on a little island in the Feldberg lake. Then someone cut the birch down, the ghost came straight back, and the executioner had to catch him a second time, this time in an iron cage that was hung up in the loft of the same building. It was said to be hanging there still.

The place of an attack mattered, and so did the place of release. The tellings set the Aufhocker waiting by brooks and bridges, at crossroads and in sunken lanes, in churchyards and on the old gallows ground. It might cling until the victim reached the edge of the village, or a crossing of paths, or a bridge, because, as the belief put it, the thing was not allowed to go over water. The Luxembourg woman was freed at the first houses of her village. Sometimes the reason it rode was nothing more than spite. Sometimes it was a prisoner of a particular patch of ground and wanted to be carried beyond it. Sometimes it wanted to be released altogether.

Gredt collected another Luxembourg tale that turns the whole arrangement inside out. A man who had bought land from the poor without paying, stripped the rich of their property through lawsuits and moved boundary stones could find no peace in his grave, and every night he walked the banks of the Moselle in a lead coat, crying out over the fields he had stolen. In the end a man with a clean conscience picked him up, put him on his back and carried him across the river to a hole below Grevenmacher. He still prowls round that hole at night, wailing, but he may go no further than fifty paces. Here the burden is a ghost who needs carrying, and only an honest back can bear it.

The belief was old by the time the folklorists arrived. Ranke traced German references back to 1465, with further accounts dated 1573, 1618 and 1643, and noted reports of the same experience in Iceland and Ireland. He pointed to a medieval writer who placed it in Spain around 1200, although he flagged that this early reading was itself open to question. The weight that grows heavier at every step was never explained. Only in Luxembourg did the stories give it a cause, by dressing the rider in a coat of lead.

Ranke offered an explanation of his own that the tellers would not have recognised. He thought the experience grew out of a very physical kind of fear, the tightness in the chest and throat that comes with sudden terror in the dark, thickened sometimes by choking fog or by illness in the person walking. The person who felt it, he argued, read the weight as a ghost, and the shock that ended it, a dog barking or a church bell, broke the spell from outside. Where the story ends in fever, paralysis or death, he wondered whether the victim had been ill to begin with.

The tellers had their own remedies and they were practical ones. The bark of a dog drove it off, as did the sound of bells, a light, a prayer or a good curse. A stab or slash behind with a knife worked too, on the principle that steel binds every kind of haunting. Otherwise the only plan was to keep walking, bent double, toward the nearest boundary, crossroads or running water, and hope that the thing on your back was the kind that had to let go there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Aufhocker?

An Aufhocker is a spirit from German folk belief that jumps onto a traveller’s back at night and grows heavier with every step. The name comes from the German verb aufhocken, to squat up onto someone. In Low German it is called the Huckup, and in Alsace the Schnürbübel, or little strangler.

How do you get rid of an Aufhocker?

German tradition says an Aufhocker can be driven off by a dog’s bark, church bells, a light, a prayer, a curse, or a blow behind with a steel knife. Otherwise it may let go by itself at a village boundary, a crossroads or a bridge, because it is said not to be allowed to cross water.

What does an Aufhocker look like?

The Aufhocker is mostly felt rather than seen, as a crushing weight that stops the victim from turning his head. When it does take a shape, the stories describe animal ghosts, walking dead people, werewolves, witches, kobolds and other spirits. In Luxembourg tales the Aufhocker wears a coat of lead.

Is the Aufhocker the same as the Alp?

No. The Alp is the German nightmare spirit that presses on a sleeper’s chest, while the Aufhocker attacks people who are awake and walking outdoors. The folklorist Friedrich Ranke described the two ideas as related but not identical, and noted that the Aufhocker was only rarely called a Mahr or nightmare.

How old is the belief in the Aufhocker?

German references to the Aufhocker go back at least to 1465, with further accounts from 1573, 1618 and 1643. Friedrich Ranke also noted reports of the same experience in Iceland and Ireland, and a disputed account placing it in Spain around 1200.

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Oschaert, Kludde, Alp, Drude, Nachzehrer, Kobold, Will-o’-the-Wisp, Werewolf, Wild Hunt, Mara, Night Hag, Revenant, Black Dog, Ghost