Hinterkaifeck, Germany’s Most Unusual Murder Mystery

No country is unaffected by mystery, and no country is without its share of legends and even its famous unsolved mysteries.  But even among the mysteries that haunt any country, the murders at Hinterkaifeck are perhaps among some of the most profoundly disturbing to be linked to the paranormal.  And even the psychic detectives Germany used in an attempt to finally close the case on this strange occurrence found themselves with few answers and a great deal of questions.

Hinterkaifeck is not the official name of the farm located just a few hours travel from Munich where some of the most important events of the 20th century took place.  And yet in 1922 the inhabitants of this small family farm went mysteriously missing.  Though the group was assumed to be alright at first, investigations by the mail man into the area proved that something was terribly wrong.  As he looked at the mail box where the family had been receiving mail, he realized that no one had picked anything up since the preceding Saturday.  Soon they  would discover all six members of the family in the barn, dead.  The bodies had been arranged and killed by what appeared to be a pickaxe.  As they began investigating more closely, a grisly narrative soon emerged.

Asking the neighbors if anything unusual had been seen or said around the homestead, investigators were shocked to hear a strange tale.  They recalled talking with the head of the household, Andreas Gruber.  Andreas told them that he had discovered a set of footprints from the nearby woods coming toward their house.  It was strange because the footprints emerged from the woods and didn’t have another set returning alongside them.  The footprints eventually became confused and merged with the footprints elsewhere in front of the house.  The strangest thing was that the footprints were not any that seemed to belong to any family members.  But they came directly to the house and then disappeared as though someone had entered the house and somehow hadn’t been seen.

Stranger still was the fact that the keys to the house had gone suddenly missing.  Gruber recounted how the keys had suddenly disappeared despite the fact that they normally resided on a hook or in his own possession.

But perhaps the most disturbing thing was the fact that someone seemed sure something had taken up residence in the attic and the fact that multiple investigations showed the room undisturbed and full of cobwebs.  It is generally speculated that this would have been the only place a person or something else could have hidden – and there was some talk shortly before the murders of strange sounds coming from the attic.

The family somehow found itself going to the barn one by one where they ultimately met their end, except for young Josef who was then killed in the house by the same means as the others.  Investigators sent the skulls to clairvoyants to see if any new facts could be unearthed.  The psychic investigators found themselves up against a brick wall with the investigation, unable to draw any new information out from it.