Skinwalkers in Germany

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With its picturesque, gently rolling hills, dark forests, and gothic castles, it's no surprise that Germany has served as the backdrop for some of literature's most iconic fairy tales.

Drawing on the incredibly rich folklore of their native land, authors like Jacob and Willem Grimm brought to life timeless stories of evil witches, noble heroes, beautiful princesses, and terrible monsters.

Such stories were born out of a time when man-eating wolves took on public personas as being the reincarnation of evil men, such as the wolf who terrified the people of Ansbach in 1865 until they captured him, dressed him in a man's clothes, and then hung him like a criminal.

It's no surprise then that in many children's tales, the malevolent force often comes in the form of a devious wolf.

To better aid in its deceptive ways, the wolf will often mask its evil intentions by adopting a physical disguise, or most interestingly, shapeshifting, to assume the form of a normal man.

We see this in many German folk tales like the werewolf of Andernach, the werewolf of Ponket, and the white wolf of the Hartz Mountains, stories about men being afflicted with lycanthropy because they have been cursed.

But fantastic stories of supernatural beings lurking in European forests are of course only believable when read to small children.

Certainly, such creatures have long been understood to be figments of human imagination.

Why, then, do the following stories from military-aged men serving in various regions of Germany over the last 40 years seem to cast doubt on that presumption?

To the contrary, these men insist they saw something that terrified them out of their wits.

For want of a better word, because the creatures they saw vary in appearance, we might call them shapeshifters.

But the Germans might call them by another name, Aufhocher.

In essence, at least according to the Kurpai people of neighboring Poland,

a skinwalker.

This is a smoke pit, and these are true stories of skinwalkers in Germany.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories

Claw Marks on the Generator

Sergeant

Sergeant.

Ah, Cadet Schaefer.

How did the repairs go?

Did you manage to get some fixed?

Negative, Sergeant.

Perhaps you would need to come and see this.

The generator has been damaged, Sergeant.

Damaged?

By what?

I'm not sure, Sergeant.

It looks like it was slashed.

Maybe an animal or something.

But the steel...

An animal?

Jawol, Sergeant.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, but so so it's damaged and you're unable to repair it.

Affirmative sergeant

what can we do?

Well

the most we can do is entail the base comment uh

and put someone to guard the door

have the generator replaced um a good thing reporting this cadet shaffer, but uh

back to training with you.

Uh I'll handle this.

Yes, Sergeant, of course.

The following account was shared with the paranormal scholar by a man named Adolf Schaefer, a soldier who, at the time of his writing, was serving in the German Bundeswehr, the armed forces.

Considering he uses the term East Germany, but provides no exact date, the first impression we got was that his story took place in possibly the 80s, before the German reunification, after the Berlin Wall fell.

However, considering he also stated that he was a Feldwebel or sergeant at the time of his writing, which had to have been submitted in the last 10 years,

it also gives the impression that the story has taken place much more recently.

So perhaps he simply meant he was training in the east of Germany, in the same way an American soldier might say that they are stationed in the eastern United States.

Whatever the case, he recounts to us an unnerving encounter he had during his time in basic training.

He writes,

I am not easily scared.

When my experience occurred, I was a cadet in boot camp in East Germany.

It was around five o'clock in the afternoon.

We were doing drill courses whilst the base was having technical problems with the electric grid, which was uncommon considering it had just been inspected days earlier.

And nothing I noticed that time was really that odd.

Except a few of us kept hearing these eerie, unexplainable noises coming from one of the head buildings nearby where the water is kept during five-minute breaks.

But skip ahead a few hours to around eight o'clock.

The power was going in and out again and the drill sergeant had told me and three others to go fix it.

So me and the others grabbed flashlights and tools and went to the basement where the generators are located.

We found the first backup generator and it was turned off, but operable as expected.

It was the same with the second generator.

The third generator was the largest main source of power on the base.

The first thing I noticed were the scratches.

This seemingly super hard to break hunk of metal had what I think were scratches and cuts, claw marks, piercing its outer metal shell like a buzz saw.

So deep, the scratches had cut the cords inside and had damaged the batteries as though they were paper.

After a moment of thinking, I knew this couldn't have been a person doing this, seeing as nothing any cadet had could cut through that tough metal so easily.

I immediately rushed up the stairs to tell my drill sergeant, hoping he would know what to do.

He told me the most we can do is tell base command and put someone to guard the door and have the generator replaced.

Good thing reporting this, Cadet Schaefer.

Schaefer, after receiving a pat on the back and commendation for his report, was then told to resume his daily training activities, which went without further incident.

Still, the nonchalance displayed by his sergeant at being told that someone, or some kind of animal, had ripped through one of the base's power generators, did little to quell the young cadets' concerns.

At best, there was an apparent saboteur running amok on their base.

At worst, well,

he didn't like to think about it.

As the sun sets and the cadets retired to their bunks, Schaefer must have drifted off into what was an uneasy sleep.

And it didn't last long.

He continues,

Some hours later, sometime in the night, I can't be exactly sure when, I heard scratching noises, but not from the basement.

They were too close and too loud, as if they were in the sleeping quarters.

After that moment of realization, I opened my eyes and I look around,

and I saw what I thought was someone in the corner going through a bag.

But when I looked around the rest of the room,

sheer terror came into me

because all the other bunks were full.

Everyone.

So I thought to myself, wait,

the hell?

But then, as if it had heard what I was thinking, this

thing, what I thought was a person, in the corner, turned to face me.

It was pale gray

with no nose

and had claws like razors.

This thing was skinny and

at least two feet taller than my six-foot self.

After that I just froze in a blank stare of horror and in my mind

seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, hours turned into what felt like days.

Ultimately, I think I passed out in terror because all I remember after that is waking up to my buddies and sergeant looking at me while talking to me, telling me I looked sick.

And I felt sick too, like all energy from me was drained for days on end.

I swear, during my entire military career, I have never been so afraid since that night.

Even in my own mundane military experience being in the Marines, boot camp can get weird at night.

Sleeping in a large open squad bay with a concrete floor, we would always hear the occasional recruit crying in his sleep or waking up suddenly and screaming, aye aye, sir.

But after a long day of marching, studying, and generally being run into the ground every day by our drill instructors, sleep was a precious thing to have.

The only things that ever woke me up were severe leg cramps, needing to use the head, or having a red light shined in my eyes and being told, hey, you got fire watch.

There was a time when the drill instructors started screaming at a kid who they caught writing letters to his girlfriend while sitting on the toilet.

There was a guy in the bunk next to mine.

He had caught pink eye, like most of us, and they'd given him some saline eye drops to kind of help alleviate it.

Well, he woke up with his eyes all crusty, I guess, in the middle of the night.

and went to reach for his eye drop bottle.

He grabbed a small bottle of rifle cleaning fluid and he put that in his eye.

I thought somebody was stabbing him, right?

He's screaming like crazy.

And we also had one strange guy, which I think every platoon must have.

Once the lights were off,

it was probably the first week we were in boot camp.

I heard this shh,

shh,

shh, like this weird sound.

And I turn over...

the side of my bunk to see what the sound is because it's getting closer and I see this guy pop out basically upside down from my perspective from underneath the bunk next to me.

I was the last bunk on the row.

So he's made it all the way to the end and he's like spider-manning himself underneath the bunks, like dragging his back across the floor.

I was like,

why?

Like, what are you doing?

Like, go to bed.

And he just smiles at me and he goes, hey.

and proceeds to pull himself back under the bed and then disappear.

I don't even remember in my mind who it was.

Like, you'd think that I was probably very tired, but you'd think you'd remember, like, which guy was that?

Like, the next day.

I don't remember, but yeah, just some weird guy in our platoon that would do that on a nightly basis.

Harmless, but still creepy.

With respect to Sergeant Schaefer, he also said that he was awoken by something making noise in his birthing

that night.

And like the stories I shared, regardless of how bizarre it was, he assures us that he's certain of what he saw.

But like many unexplained encounters, I don't doubt that this will be written off by many as a dream.

We've all had nightmares that felt as if we were truly living them, and what a relief, right, it was to finally wake up.

It doesn't explain what he saw previously in the day, along with two other cadets, and reported to his drill sergeant about the generator being slashed open.

But for the sake of argument, even if it was merely a dream or perhaps a vision of some kind, such a surreal experience is arguably no less terrifying.

But we will come to find out that Schaefer's experience is not at all that unique.

Delving into the vast realm of German legends and folklore, we come upon a creature known locally as the Aufhocher.

Said to be found skulking in the night around bridges, cemeteries, and forest paths, the Aufhocher, or Huckup, is a malevolent demonic entity that is known to take many physical forms.

In regional tales, the Alfhocher is said to be a huge black vampiric dog, which walks on its hind legs and singles out those people who travel alone at night.

Depending on its chosen prey, however, the Aufhawker will morph its size and shape accordingly in order to overpower their helpless victim.

Beyond its wolfish façade, this entity has also been known to assume other physical forms, including that of a beautifully seductive woman, sounds like the kitsune in the Japanese lore, or something like that.

and the gray, ghoulish appearance of an undead corpse.

Its name, translated from German as leap upon, is indicative of the demon's preferred method of attack.

Once their target is chosen, often a criminal, thief, or some sort of wrongdoer, the Aufhalker will jump onto their backs, latching on with an unbreakable death grip.

Their prey, caught off guard and panicked, will soon be drained of all energy in their attempts to resist.

Just ties in with what Schaefer said about losing all of his energy, at least in some respect.

Considering the creatures are said to have some perception of a person's criminal history, this would seem to merely be a work of fiction meant to instill superstitious fears in children at a young age of the dangers of walking alone at night and certainly to stop them from stealing.

In other renditions, however, the creatures are far more animalistic in their bloodlust.

After latching onto their victim's back, instead of gradually wearing them down, the Alfhalker will use its claws and fangs to maul the defenseless human's throat, ripping it to shreds as their target then drowns in their own blood.

While looking into this malevolent entity commonly spoken of in Germanic folklore, it does make Adolf Schaefer's story all the more intriguing.

With the creature's ghoulish appearance, combined with its notable set of claws as recalled in the sergeant's story, we must ask what interest would such a creature have in prowling German military bases and slashing their generators.

But if the next story is worth its salt, it would appear that such creatures are by no means strangers to encounters with people who spend all hours of the day and night working in remote areas.

And by that, of course, I mean military personnel.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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The Night Stag.

Sometimes I think I should have been a pilot.

Hey, flying cabs must be nice.

You'd think so, but I don't have the brains for it.

And as I say, it's not a matter of if you crash, it's when.

True words.

Sage advice.

You've seen the new flick yet?

Raiders of the Last Ark?

I haven't.

I've been beating to take the wife once for a frotation.

Why?

You've seen it.

How was it?

It's not bad.

It's got that pun solo bloke in it.

And Connery.

And Nazis.

I'll have to just wait till you find out.

I shouldn't spoil it for you, but

you are not going to but

hang on here.

What is it?

Something about the

No.

What?

What's wrong?

Do you...

Do you see that?

Over there.

By the tree line, about 80 meters out.

Who the hell is that?

More like, what the hell is that?

It's gotta be a person.

He's standing upright.

Costume or something.

It's way too early for Halloween, mate.

That's

that's an animal of some kind.

In the early 1980s, the Cold War, now simmering for the better part of 40 years, had the forces of NATO and the Soviet Union teetering on the edge of an all-out war.

While looming, hypothetical World War III was largely thought to be determined by the thousands of nuclear warheads leveled at one another across the Iron Curtain.

The armies of the free world at this time deployed millions of troops to Western Europe.

Working alongside regional and international allies, these troops prepared and trained for this coming war, intending to be the rock that would break the coming red tide.

For a young British soldier named Francis, all of this only meant countless hours of overnight drills in preparation for a mighty struggle that would ultimately never come.

On one such night in 1981, Francis, then stationed in West Germany, tells us that he found himself in an open field some 60 miles south of the city of Detmold.

With the help of another soldier, these two men were tasked with establishing an HLZ, a helicopter landing zone, in order for their unit's squadron to practice some routine night touch-and-goes, landings, and takeoffs.

That afternoon, they arrived at this field, which was commonly used for military exercises, and went about the procedures as they had done dozens of times before without incident.

As it got dark and the crickets came out, the stillness of the night was only occasionally interrupted by the comings and goings of the helicopters.

With little else to do but to stand by the field and observe these helicopter exercises until they were concluded, Francis and his friend did what all true Brits do when they had a bit of downtime.

They made tea and casual conversation, something to to keep them warm against the chilly night air.

As yet one more helicopter touched down and lifted back off into the sky, the sound of its rotor blades rippling off into the distance, the two Tommies were once again left alone on the desolate landing zone, or so they thought.

Around 1.30 a.m., as the two men eagerly awaited for the arrival of the final helicopter so they could pack up and leave, one of the men spotted something on the far side of the landing zone.

Francis recounts what he saw.

I looked to where he was pointing, and standing on the edge of the woods, about 80 meters across the clearing, was a figure.

It was a full moon, so it was quite bright and stood out easy to see.

It stood on two legs, about seven or eight feet tall.

It had yellow eyeshine, and the body kind of shimmered.

in the moonlight.

It made no sound and it

just really put the shits up us.

It just stood there watching us.

We then heard the last cab getting closer to us coming in for a landing and at that point this thing then dropped onto all fours and backed back into the woods.

As soon as that cab left we packed up and were out of there.

We had a track to drive down to get back to the main road and we must have done that at 60 miles an hour to get out of there.

We never said anything to anyone as it's not the thing to do.

A brave soldier fighting the Russian hordes but being frightened of the woods is not the image you want to give.

But after that night I avoided doing night landing sites and never felt comfortable in the woods on exercises doing night stags.

We both know what we saw and didn't imagine it.

I know Germany has a lot of werewolf encrypted stories, but that night, I got well and truly shit shit-scared and can remember it like it was last night.

Lying in wait

For many paranormal enthusiasts or those fascinated by cryptozoology, the creatures supposedly encountered in these two stories will almost certainly ring familiar with another infamous, malevolent, supernatural being commonly spoken of in Native American lore.

It would seem that the Elfhulker, despite being half a world away from the American mainland, shares more than a few similarities with the feared skinwalker and possibly even another creature known as a rake or pale crawler.

Skinwalkers are described as evil beings or corrupt witches that have the ability to turn into, possess, or disguise themselves as animals.

While there are certainly some differences between the skinwalkers and their German counterparts, in a world rife with strange, dark, and mysterious encounters, they certainly seem to be cut from the same demonic cloth.

This is all the more interesting when considering the vast geographic and cultural differences of these entities, which has no less garnered the attention of paranormal enthusiasts and investigators.

One such person, a British author by the name of Lee Brickley, was keen to discover the shared connections various shapeshifting entities had in seemingly unconnected cultures all over the world.

He recounted his many findings in his book entitled Skinwalkers.

Traveling to Germany to follow up on leads of a few supposed shapeshifter encounters, Brickley found himself in the company of a man named Stefan Richter, who, alongside his family in late 2020, claimed to have also encountered one of these nefarious beings while walking in the woods.

Stefan, along with his wife and two young children, were getting ready to go for one of their morning walks along the trails in the Rehand Forest near their home in Brandenburg, which is just a few miles from the center of Berlin.

Oddly enough, Stefan's children, usually enthusiastic about adventuring in the outdoors, apparently woke up that morning with a strange aversion to the forest.

He recalls, The children usually love our walks in the forest.

It is their happy place, but something was different that morning.

It was almost as if they were scared of something.

Both were quiet and reserved, and Neither wanted to venture far away from us.

It was very out of character for them to act that way.

Despite concern that his children may be coming down with some sort of illness, the family continued with their morning ritual.

After all, what better remedy is there for a common cold than a couple of hours breathing in some fresh air?

And so the Richter family made their way to the Rehan Forest, setting off on their trek along a narrow, winding path.

As they walked further into the woods, the canopy overhead grew denser, shrouding the family below in darkness.

And although Stephen couldn't quite define it, something in the woods, unseen or unheard, now had him on edge.

It was his wife that saw it first, freezing in her tracks, her eyes fixed at a nearby point in the surrounding trees.

When asked what was wrong, Stefan's wife, in a shaking voice, said that there was someone watching them from a point beyond the trees.

When asked what was wrong, Stefan's wife, in a shaking voice, told him.

He said, she stopped dead in her tracks and told me there was someone watching us from beyond the trees.

I couldn't see anyone, so I told her, no, not to worry.

The children seemed to be getting more upset though, and a few minutes later, My wife saw the figure in the distance for a second time and refused to continue walking.

Stefan told his family to stay put and then walked ahead to see if he could see anyone for himself.

And he did.

He said,

he was a huge man, crouching down with what looked like an entire wolf skin draped over his head, shoulders and back.

He looked like something out of a Viking movie.

I took a few steps closer, but I stood on a stick that snapped and made a loud noise.

The figure in front of me turned around around in an instant and I could see

that it wasn't entirely human.

The eyes were bright yellow.

It looked straight at me before transforming in front of my very eyes.

It was almost as if the wolf skin the creature wore grew over its entire body in seconds.

It changed from a man into a wolf and then began running towards myself and my family.

I carry a hunting knife, and all I could think to do was to throw it in the direction of the beast.

While he wasn't sure if he hit the thing or not, throwing the knife at it was apparently enough to send this unearthly creature running back deeper into the woods.

Leaving the knife behind, Stefan and his wife, scooping up their terrified children, tore out of the woods as fast as they could, lest this wolf, or whatever it was, chose to come back.

While the story itself was quite outlandish, Brickley, having spent the better part of the last few days with the family, had come to trust them.

If anything, Stefan's retelling seemed to take an emotional toll on the man, clearly calling up a memory that he would much rather leave buried.

With the Rahan Forest a mere five minutes down the road from the Richter household, Brickley inquired about possibly going to the site where they encountered the shapeshifter.

Stéphane reluctantly agreed and then led Brickley into the woods.

And much to their surprise, they found the very hunting knife that he had talked about.

And chillingly, its blade was covered in the unmistakable stain of dried blood.

Realizing that they may very well be in the possession of some sort of cryptid DNA, Brickley said that he insisted on finding a local blood lab and having the knife tested.

Not realizing at first that they might inadvertently be suspected of murder if the knife was found with human blood, the final results of the blood tests were otherwise just as baffling as they were terrifying.

The blood lab technician was confused.

According to the private company that had tested the blood samples, the DNA didn't match any animal native to German soil.

In fact, it didn't seem to come from any known animal in their extensive database.

The closest DNA match at 96%

was that of the steppe wolf.

However, this species was almost entirely confined to the region of Siberia, the other side of the continent of Asia.

She told them such an animal being sighted should be immediately reported to the authorities.

Still, she said there were notable discrepancies in its DNA profile that prohibited experts from definitively identifying it.

In the end, the two men and the DNA experts were at a complete loss.

During his travels, Brickley would encounter more than a handful of individuals in Germany who would share similar stories to Stefan's.

Embarking on an excursion to Poland with a local man, he met the man's sister Elsa, who lived shoulder to shoulder with the indigenous Kurpai people in the White Wilderness Forest.

In their culture, they believed that such shapeshifting creatures descended from the stars many thousands of years ago, establishing themselves all over the world.

The White Wilderness Forest, she explained, served as a sort of portal for these creatures to easily access the human world in greater numbers, much akin to what Skinwalker Ranch is in America.

According to her husband, a Korpai native, the American Skinwalker and the beings stalking the forest were

one in the same.

Elsa would warn Brickley that, much like the Navajo and Hopi tribes in America, The Korpai rarely share such tales with outsiders, fearing that the attention brought to such creatures will only increase their power and that it is best just to ignore them.

Considering more than a few people have reported encountering such entities,

what can we say?

With its many dark forests, long rumored to harbor every kind of evil thing, could the many centuries of children's fables attributed to Germany have some shred of truth to them?

While these encounters are of course, not exclusive to those serving in the military, it would seem at least a couple of soldiers would say that there is.

With regard to their accounts, fantastical and otherworldly as they seem, perhaps they are telling us the truth:

that the world is far stranger than we could have imagined.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acasio, and Witt Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Klogson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.