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What this episode is about
In the year 858, between Viking raids and comets, the Annals of Fulda record an unusual entry: on an estate near Bingen on the Rhine, an “evil spirit” throws stones for three years, exposes thefts, reveals an affair and in the end burns down almost the entire settlement. In this episode I go through the source step by step. I can’t solve the case. But by the end, everything we really know is on the table.
The source
The Annales Fuldenses are a chronicle of the realm, not a collection of legends. The entry was very likely written by Rudolf of Fulda, a student of Hrabanus Maurus. Rudolf was above all a hagiographer who wrote saints’ lives and miracle accounts. That doesn’t make him a liar, but it does make him someone who knew exactly how to tell a story about the supernatural.
What happened in 858
First come stones and blows against the walls. Then a voice starts to speak and names thieves. Finally it turns everyone’s hatred against a single man: the village is suffering because of his sins. Every house he enters catches fire. No one will take him in anymore, not even his relatives. He lives in the fields with his wife and children, his harvest burns, and the village wants to kill him. He undergoes the ordeal of the hot iron and passes. The chronicle says nothing about whether that did him any good.
The failed exorcism
Priests come from Mainz with relics, crosses and holy water. The spirit pelts them with stones. Afterward it claims to have hidden under one priest’s cope and reveals that he had slept with the estate manager’s daughter. In doing so, the spirit quotes the Second Epistle of Peter almost word for word. Whoever was speaking knew the Scriptures.
Four readings
I put four explanations side by side: someone in the village with an agenda; serial arson with a ready-made scapegoat; the village community itself, working out its conflicts through a voice with no sender; and the possibility that part of the story was only created at a writing desk in Fulda. I think the ergot theory and the claim that this is Europe’s oldest poltergeist are too poorly supported.
The pattern
Stones, knocking, fire, an accusing voice and one person everyone ends up staring at: this pattern turns up again in Tedworth in 1662, in the Cock Lane ghost in London in 1762 and in Rosenheim in 1967.
Frequently asked questions
What was the Bingen poltergeist?
A haunting recorded in the Annals of Fulda for the year 858: a spirit on an estate near Bingen threw stones, revealed secrets and set fires over the course of three years.
Is Bingen the oldest poltergeist case?
That’s often claimed, but it goes too far. There are earlier reports of noisy spirits. What makes Bingen special is that the case appears in a contemporary chronicle of the realm.
More in the lexicon: Poltergeist.
About this episode
In the year 858, the Annals of Fulda — one of the most important historical sources for the East Frankish kingdom — record an incident that sits utterly out of place between Viking raids and comet sightings. On an estate near Bingen on the Rhine, an “evil spirit” spent three years throwing stones, hammering on walls, exposing thefts, revealing an affair involving the village priest, driving an innocent man and his family out into open fields, and finally burning almost the entire settlement to the ground. The exorcism sent from Mainz failed.
In this episode we walk through the source step by step, look at who wrote it and why, unpack the legal procedure of the ordeal by hot iron, and lay four readings side by side — from simple human agency through serial arson to the question of how much of this was created at a writing desk in Fulda. Nothing gets resolved. But everything we genuinely know ends up on the table.
SOURCES & READING LIST
Primary source
- Annales Fuldenses (Annals of Fulda), entry for the year 858
- Latin edition: Friedrich Kurze (ed.), Annales Fuldenses sive Annales regni Francorum orientalis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hanover 1891
- English translation with commentary: Timothy Reuter, The Annals of Fulda (Ninth-Century Histories, vol. 2), Manchester University Press
On the author and the monastery of Fulda
- Rudolf of Fulda: Vita Leobae (836) and Miracula sanctorum in Fuldenses ecclesias translatorum (c. 843–847), ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 15/1, 1887
- Gangolf Schrimpf (ed.), Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen (Fuldaer Studien 7), Frankfurt am Main 1996
Region and society
- Matthew Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley 400–1000, Cambridge University Press 2000
Trial by ordeal
- Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal, Oxford 1986
Medieval belief in ghosts and demons
- Claude Lecouteux, Geschichte der Gespenster und Wiedergänger im Mittelalter, Böhlau, Cologne 1987
- Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (French original 1994)
Word history
- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, entry “Poltergeist”
- Erasmus Alberus, Novum dictionarii genus, 1540
Rationalist assessment and modern cases
- Herbert Schäfer, Poltergeister und Professoren. Über den Zustand der Parapsychologie, Bremen 1994
- F. Karger / G. Zicha, “Physikalische Untersuchung des Spukfalls in Rosenheim 1967,” in: Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie 11 (1968), pp. 113–131
On the ergotism debate
- Alessandra Foscati, Saint Anthony’s Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam University Press 2020
- Annales Xantenses (Annals of Xanten), entry for the year 857