Many people are familiar with the darker side of Christmas and legends such as those of
Krampus, the half-goat, half-demon creature from Central European folklore who punishes
misbehaving children or Grylla, the Icelandic giant who devours them.
But there’s also another, slightly lesser known legend from the French regions of Alsace-Lorraine,
that tells of a sadistic cannibal named Hans Trapp who disguises himself as a scarecrow
to lure unsuspecting children.
The most interesting aspect of this legend, however, is that Hans Trapp was based on a
real person who lived near the area in the 15th century.
So who was the real Hans Trapp and do the tales of cannibalism surrounding him have
any truth to them?
The
legend goes like this:
Hans Trapp was a wealthy man who was obsessed with Satanism and the occult.
Many believed he had attained his riches using magic rituals and pacts with demons.
Word about his evil acts eventually reached the Catholic church, and he was excommunicated
and had all of his belonging and property seized.
He was banished into the woods near Germany where he lived in solitude and became filled
with hatred towards the church and the villagers who had cast him out.
Driven insane by his isolation and developing a growing obsession with tasting human flesh,
he decided to take revenge on the town’s children.
One Christmas night a little boy was walking alone down a dark road that cut through a
forest.
Little did the boy know, that he was being stalked by a scarecrow.
Hans had disguised himself as one by stuffing straw into his clothing and hat.
Hans leapt from the darkness and plunged a wooden stake into the boy, killing him.
He then dragged the body away, cut it into pieces and began to roast the flesh in a fire.
Just as he was about to take the first bite, God intervened and struck the scarecrow with
a bolt of lighting that killed him instantly.
But Han’s spirit lingered on the earth, and children are warned to behave lest they
be taken in the night by the scarecrow.
Over time, the legend grew to the point that Hans became a companion of Santa Claus, punishing
naughty children.
So how much of this story is actually true?
Well, you might be surprised to learn that Hans Trapp was inspired by a real man named
Hans von Trotha who was born around 1450 and died in 1503.
Hans was a knight who was entrusted with two castles in an area that was then known as
the Electoral Palatinate, and that today encompasses areas of both France and Germany.
A problem arose when a monastery in the nearby town of Weissenburg claimed that one of the
castles actually belonged to them, and was given to Hans illegal.
This led to a bitter dispute between the monastery and Hans, which came to a head when Hans built
a dam on a river that was used as a water supply for the village, cutting off their
supply.
When the monastery complained and the dam was torn down, the built up water flooded
the entire village and devastated the town economically.
Eventually the pope himself got involved and Hans was excommunicated from the church.
As you can imagine, this left a very bad impression on the people of the area, and even after
his death, stories and legends of Hans were told and retold, until eventually he had gone
from a greedy knight to a flesh-eating, devil-worshipping child murderer.
Much like the story of the Jersey Devil, this is an example of how a mundane dispute can
be transformed into the stuff of legend through word of mouth.
So Hans the cannibal never really existed, but his legend lives on to scare children
every Christmas.
If you’re interested in learning more about the real history, check out some of the links
in the description.
And if you like this video, please subscribe to Crypticc for more.