Buzz
During the Middle Ages, a time before scientific understanding, the world was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Without access to proper knowledge, people relied on their imaginations to interpret the natural phenomena surrounding them. This led to a worldview filled with magic, where angels, demons, fairies, goblins, elves, gnomes, and witches were believed to inhabit every corner. This list delves into the medieval mindset, exploring the fears and superstitions that shaped their understanding of the world.
10. The Ocean Above Us
This tale comes from the English chronicler Gervase of Tilbury and his work Otia Imperiala. Around 1212, while writing for his patron, Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, he claimed that “the sea is elevated above the land,” existing “above our dwellings... either within or upon the air.” This idea was rooted in Genesis 1, which mentions “waters above the firmament.”
As evidence, Gervase recounts an incident in an English village. On a cloudy Sunday, as villagers exited the church, they spotted an anchor caught on a tombstone. A rope connected to it extended upward into the overcast sky. To their amazement, the rope began to shift as if someone was trying to free the anchor. When it resisted, sounds resembling sailors’ shouts echoed from above, and a man descended the rope. The villagers grabbed him, but he perished, “overcome by the dampness of our dense atmosphere, akin to drowning in the sea.” After an hour, the rope was severed from above, and the unseen sailors sailed away.
Another story involves a merchant who lost his knife at sea. At the same moment, the identical knife fell through an open window of his Bristol home, landing on the table before his astonished wife. Unsurprisingly, UFO enthusiasts interpret such tales as evidence of encounters with alien civilizations and advanced technologies.
9. Omens Foretelling Charlemagne’s Death
Charlemagne, the Frankish king crowned Holy Roman Emperor in A.D. 800, faced a series of ominous signs in his final years, as recorded by his biographer Einhard. Einhard describes frequent solar and lunar eclipses, a dark spot on the Sun lasting seven days, and repeated tremors at the Aix-la-Chapelle palace. On Ascension Day, the gallery linking the palace to the basilica—constructed by Charlemagne—suddenly crumbled. Additionally, a decade-long project, a wooden bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, was accidentally ignited and burned to ashes in just three hours.
During his final campaign against the Danes, Charlemagne witnessed a fiery ball streaking across the sky at sunrise as he departed camp. His horse abruptly stumbled, hurling the Emperor to the ground. Wherever he sought refuge, eerie crackling noises emanated from the rooftops. At the Aix-la-Chapelle basilica, a gilded orb atop the pinnacle was struck by lightning, crashing onto the adjacent bishop’s residence. Despite these unsettling events, Charlemagne remained composed and skeptical. However, months before his death, observers noted that the word “Princeps” on the basilica’s cornice inscription—identifying “Karolus Princeps” as its builder—had faded away. Charlemagne passed away on January 28, 814, and was laid to rest in his basilica.
8. Magonia
UFO enthusiasts often interpret the fiery orb seen by Charlemagne as an alien spacecraft. Reports of strange aerial phenomena are not unique to modern times. Around A.D. 820, Archbishop Agobard of Lyon, France, wrote about beings who “descended from the sky” in his book De Grandine et Tonitruis (About Hail and Thunder), which aimed to dispel weather-related superstitions. He described a mythical land called Magonia, “from which ships sail through the clouds” to plunder crops.
These beings were said to collaborate with “storm-makers,” harvesting grain and crops that fell during storms and transporting them back to Magonia. Agobard dismissed such beliefs as “nonsense” and labeled their adherents as “delusional.” However, a local mob claimed to have captured four individuals—three men and a woman—who allegedly fell from one of these ships. They held the captives in chains for several days, intent on lynching them. When brought before Agobard, he, guided by reason, declared them innocent and released them. Today, Magonia is a term embraced by UFO enthusiasts, and a compilation of UFO sightings is aptly named The Magonia Database.
7. Changelings
In medieval Britain, people believed that fairies could abduct a child and replace it with a changeling. One tale involves a blacksmith whose son, once lively and robust, suddenly became listless and began to waste away, leading everyone to fear for his life. After the boy remained in this state for some time, an elderly man suggested to the blacksmith that his son might be a changeling.
To confirm this, the old man suggested a test: fill empty eggshells with water and place them around the fire where the boy could see them. The blacksmith did as instructed, and upon seeing this, the boy sat up from his sickbed and declared, “I am 800 years old, and I have never seen anything like this!” This confirmed he was a changeling. The old man explained that the blacksmith’s real son had been taken by fairies to a nearby hill and advised him to rid himself of the changeling by throwing it into a fire.
The blacksmith followed the advice, and as the fire was lit, the changeling screamed, leaped through the roof, and vanished. Armed with a Bible, the blacksmith then ventured into the fairies’ domain to rescue his son. He found his son among the fairies and demanded his release. Protected by the Bible, the fairies could not harm him, and they expelled both the blacksmith and his son from the hill.
Across Britain, people often used various tests to identify if a suspect baby was a changeling. One method involved placing a shoe in a bowl of soup in front of the baby. If the baby laughed, it indicated an understanding of the absurdity, suggesting it was a fairy. Similarly, if a baby found humor in the idea of baking bread inside an eggshell, it was deemed non-human. The changeling myth provided medieval societies with a way to rationalize early childhood deaths, as well as childhood illnesses, physical and mental abnormalities, and disabilities.
6. The Royal Touch
For over five centuries, it was widely believed that monarchs, due to their divine right to rule, possessed the ability to cure diseases through their touch. Scrofula, a tubercular infection of the neck’s lymph nodes, was thought to be cured by the touch of a sovereign. This act of healing was seen as divine confirmation of the monarch’s legitimacy. Edward the Confessor, who ruled England from 1042 to 1066, is often credited as the first to practice this healing touch.
In French tradition, King Philip I is said to have introduced this practice in the 11th century. During the Middle Ages, elaborate ceremonies were held where rulers touched hundreds of individuals suffering from scrofula, also known as the “King’s Evil.” These individuals were then given special gold coins called “touchpieces,” which they cherished as protective charms. By the 1400s, another custom emerged, where healing was believed to occur through touching a coin known as an angel, which had previously been touched by the monarch.
5. The Wild Man of Orford
Ralph of Coggeshall, an abbot from Essex, recounts the tale of Suffolk fishermen who, in 1161, captured a naked wild man in their nets near Orford village. Described as a “merman,” the creature had a long, shaggy beard, a hairy chest, and a nearly bald head. He was taken to Orford Castle, governed by Bartholomew de Glanville, and imprisoned in the dungeon. Despite being tortured to extract information, the wild man remained silent. The villagers were baffled, unsure if he was a fish or a man, as he seemed equally at ease in the sea. Some speculated he was an evil spirit inhabiting the body of a drowned sailor.
The “merman” showed no belief in God or familiarity with Christian practices. He ate whatever food was provided, though he preferred to squeeze the juice from raw fish before consuming it. Eventually, his captors allowed him to swim in the sea for exercise, surrounding him with nets for safety. However, the merman tore through the nets and escaped, astonishing onlookers with his swiftness in the water. He returned to captivity briefly but escaped again after two months, disappearing forever.
4. The Spectral Wild Hunt
In medieval Britain and parts of Europe, people lived in fear of spectral hounds that roamed the forests during midwinter—a time when the boundaries between the living and the dead blurred. These ghostly hounds were accompanied by phantom hunters and warriors, led by a figure often identified as Odin, the god of the dead, in Germanic regions. The sight of this eerie procession was seen as an omen of death and catastrophe, causing people to throw themselves to the ground to avoid witnessing it. Those unlucky enough to see the Hunt risked being swept away and abandoned miles from where they were taken.
Sometimes, the Hunt would invade homes, stealing food and drink. While ordinary people were terrified, some practitioners of magic would have their souls join the Hunt while their bodies remained asleep. Merely hearing the hounds’ cries and the clamor of their passage through the winter winds was enough to drive someone to madness. The arrival of the Hunt was often heralded by the eerie sounds of rattling chains and clanging bells.
A vivid account of the Hunt is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1127): ”...it was witnessed and heard by many: numerous black hunters riding on black horses and goats, accompanied by black, wide-eyed hounds. This terrifying sight occurred in Peterborough’s deer park and the surrounding woods, stretching to Stamford. Monks reported hearing the blaring of horns throughout the night, with night watchmen estimating around twenty to thirty horn blowers. The phenomenon persisted throughout Lent until Easter.” In Germany, it was believed the Hunt included the souls of unbaptized children, while in France, it was said to be led by King Herod chasing the Holy Innocents.
3. The Malleus Maleficarum
Among history’s most notorious books, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) stands alongside Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Written in 1486 by German friars Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, it aimed to refute claims that witchcraft was nonexistent. The book served as a guide for identifying, prosecuting, and punishing witches, fueling a wave of witch hunts that drenched Europe in the blood of countless victims, predominantly women.
The Malleus demonstrates that some superstitions are far from benign. It declares witchcraft as heresy and asserts that disbelief in it is equally heretical. The book claims that witches are primarily women, driven by lust to form pacts with the Devil and engage with demons. Midwives are particularly targeted, accused of preventing conception, ending pregnancies, consuming infants, and offering children to the Devil. The true horror of the Malleus lies in its methods for identifying and eliminating witches.
The accused were stripped and examined for “devil’s marks,” then subjected to water tests or burning, as those under the Devil’s protection were believed to be immune to drowning or fire. Guided by the Malleus, torture was widely used to extract confessions or implicate others during the witch hunts. Brutal devices like the Bootikens, strappado, the Pear, and the Turcas were employed to crush bones, mutilate bodies, or tear out nails. Red-hot pincers were used to rip flesh. Convicted witches were typically burned at the stake. The Malleus Maleficarum remains a chilling testament to the dangers of superstition.
2. The Pest Maiden
The Black Death ranks among the deadliest plagues in human history. Known as the “Great Mortality,” it wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. The terror stemmed from the lack of understanding about its cause or how to prevent infection. Scholars at the University of Paris theorized that the plague resulted from earthquakes and an unlucky alignment of planets. This cosmic event supposedly released toxic fumes from the Earth, carried by storms to spread the disease.
However, ordinary people found such explanations too complex. Instead, they believed the plague was divine punishment and a sign of the apocalypse. Folklore attempted to explain the disease’s spread, with the Austrian legend of the Pest Jungfrau, or Pest Maiden, being the most famous. She was depicted as a figure cloaked in blue flame, flying across the land to spread the plague. In Scandinavia, she was said to emerge as a blue flame from the mouth of a dead victim, flying to infect the next home. In Lithuania, the Maiden would wave a red scarf through doors or windows to bring the plague. One tale recounts a hero who waited at his window with a sword, severing the Maiden’s hand as she reached in with her deadly scarf. Though he died, his village was saved, and the scarf became a relic in the local church.
Personifying the plague was a recurring theme in folklore. In post-medieval Sweden and Norway, the disease was depicted as a duo—an old man with a shovel and an old woman with a broom. The man would spare some lives, but when the woman swept through, “not even a mother’s child survived.”
1. A Place For Evil
Drangey Island, located in the North Atlantic and about an hour’s boat ride from northern Iceland, features a dramatic cliff face rising 168 meters (551 ft) above the sea. This imposing rock formation, home to thousands of seabirds, was believed in medieval times to be inhabited by evil creatures and trolls. Hunters scaling the cliffs to collect birds and their eggs often met their deaths when their ropes were mysteriously severed.
Fearful of the island, people stopped venturing to Drangey’s cliffs, creating a dilemma for Gudmundur, the saintly bishop of Holar. The northern Icelandic town relied on hunting at Drangey to feed its many beggars. Determined to resolve the issue, Gudmundur decided to exorcise the island. Accompanied by priests and a barrel of holy water, he began blessing the cliffs, using ropes to navigate the dangerous terrain. As he neared the end of his ritual, a massive, hairy hand emerged from the cliff and attempted to cut his rope. Fortunately, the blessed rope held firm. Realizing it couldn’t harm the bishop, the creature pleaded, “Stop your blessing, bishop Gvendur, even the evil needs a place to live.”
The bishop declared that part of the cliff would remain a sanctuary for evil, and hunting there was forbidden. This area is said to attract an abundance of birds, as it is the only spot on the island untouched by humans. Bishop Gudmundur continued to bless other cursed locations but always ensured he left “a place for evil to live.”
