Chonrad Stoecklin
A drunken night’s philosophical discussion marked the beginning of Chonrad Stoecklin’s journey to the stake. Stoecklin was born in Oberstdorf, Germany in 1549, taking over as the town’s horse wrangler or chief herder on his father’s death. He married, and although all but two of his seven children died in infancy, Stoecklin and his family had their own house and cow. It was a prosperous if unremarkable life.
One night in 1578, Stoecklin was out drinking with a friend, Jacob Walch, an oxherd. The pair became drunk and began discussing death and the afterlife. The evening ended with the couple making a pact that whoever died first would return to the other and show him the next world. Eight days later, Jacob died. As promised, he returned to visit Stoecklin. However, it was not to reveal any significant secrets. Instead, the shade of Jacob Walch told his friend to repent his sins.
Stoecklin obeyed, and after a year of penance, he received another visitation- this time from a being that professed to be his guardian angel. Stoecklin and the angel began to take nocturnal journeys together to a “strange and distant place.” These trips occurred several times a year, in the company of other nebulous beings known as die Nachtschar or the night phantoms.
As a result of his widening of spiritual horizons, Stoecklin developed powerful healing abilities. Because his healing was so remarkable, his fellow villagers began to believe that he could also identify those who caused illness by magic. And so the horse wrangler became an inadvertent witchfinder.
In spring 1586, a neighbor consulted Stoecklin about a string of injuries supposedly inflicted by witchcraft. Stoecklin identified the perpetrator as 60-year-old Anna Enzensbergerin. He asked her to reverse the spell, but Enzensbergerin instead fled town. She later returned and was arrested based on Sroecklin’s accusations. However, the would-be witch finder’s admission that he had learned of Enzensbergerin’s witchcraft from the night phantoms alarmed the authorities. In July 1586, Stoecklin found himself under arrest.
Stoecklin was taken to Fluhenstein castle where he appeared in court, charged with consorting with demons. His guardian angel sounded suspiciously like a devil and the rides out with night phantoms more like a witches’ Sabbath. Enzensbergerin and the stepsister of Stoecklin’s mother, Barbara Luzin only made things worse for the hapless herder by agreeing they were witches and everything they knew the deceased Frau Stoecklin had taught them. Stoecklin was put to the torture and confessed. In January 1587, he was executed as a witch.