THE WITCH TRIALS OF SALZBURG
Today we bring you a real Story from Hell… A very dark and terrible tale, and that is the legend of Moosham Castle and the Salzburg Witch Trials, also known as the Zauberjackl Trials, that lasted from 1675 to 1690.
This is the very place and story that inspired the band Mercyful Fates song "The Jackal of Salzburg."
The ruthless killings that took place in Moosham began in 1675, when a woman named Barbara Kollerin was arrested on suspicions of theft and sorcery. Her spouse, a man by the name of Paul Kalthenpacher, was also put on trial with her. During her torture, she confessed that her son, Paul Jacob Koller, practiced black magic and that he made a pact with The Devil, Satan himself. Paul Kalthenpacher confirmed Barbara’s story and described Jacob as a man of twenty, and the son of an executioner. Unfortunately, Barbara’s confessions did not save her. She was later executed by burning at the stake. Paul’s fate is unknown.
Now with a warrant for Jacob’s arrest granted, he will most likely suffer the same fate as his mother if he is caught.
It is not really known what actually happened to Jacob. Rumors say that he likely fled Austria when word came out that he was a wanted man… He was never found.
In the year 1677, a disabled twelve year old boy, who was named Dionysos Feldner, also called ‘Dirty Animal’, was arrested. The reason for his arrest was that he supposedly had contact with Jacob or ‘The Jackal’, as people now called him, about a month prior to his arrest.
Dionysos confessed that The Jackal led several gangs of beggars and thieves. All of whom were children and teenagers from the slum. The Jackal would also teach them about black magic and the occult.
Sadly, the boy’s confession led to the arrest of many children, teenagers and homeless. During the interrogations of the captive beggar children and teenagers, the confessions of the prisoners only made the stories of The Jackal bigger and even more terrifying. It was said that The Jackal was seen in the woods, and you could see that he had the head of a jackal but he was walking on two legs. It was also said that The Jackal ruin fields before harvest, make animals miscarry, he could turn wood into mice and also practiced diabolical baptism rituals.
In the end, authorities feared the man, or the creature, that was The Jackal. The stories that they have heard have painted a picture of a bloodthirsty and cruel monster that not even they wanted to pursue and capture. They eventually decided to stop searching for The Jackal. Even though the hunt for The Jackal ended, the hunt for the homeless teenagers and children continued. This was their version of justice.
All of the Salzburg Witch Trials took place on the grounds of Moosham castle. The castle was involved in the entire process, every bit. The administration, the court, the imprisonment, the torture, and finally, the execution. Judge, jury and executioner all in one dark, sickening and cruel place. 113 out of the 139 executed were male, the reason for their deaths was that they were followers of The Jackal. Therefore they must have made pacts with the devil, and had to have been witches themselves. 39 of the executed were just children, the youngest being a 10 year old named Hannerl. 53 were between the ages of 15 and 21. Twenty one of the executed victims were of unknown ages. The oldest of the executed was an 80 year old woman by the name of Margarethe Reinberg.
Before the followers of The Jackal were executed, they were cruelly punished and tortured. Some had their hands cut off and had a hot iron brand burned into their chests. Some were hanged at the gallows pole, some beheaded or decapitated, and some were burned alive at the stake.
The horrific witch trials ended in 1690, and for a while the castle was at peace… Well, not really. I’m sure there are a lot of poor, tortured souls that still linger there.
The horror started up again a century later in 1790, when several deer and livestock were found mutilated and killed in the forests and surrounding areas near the castle. The local village people started rumors and began pointing fingers at the residents of Moosham Castle. They began to believe that these people would turn into werewolves at night and go on bloody killing sprees, feasting on the flesh of the villages animals and livestock. Out of rage, the villagers went up to the castle and captured the castle’s residents and murdered them in their own courtyard. Afterwards, Moosham Castle was abandoned and left to the souls that haunt it.
There is a whole lot of dark and brutal history surrounding Moosham Castle. Hundreds of men, women and children tortured and killed because they were accused of being witches or supposedly making a pact with the devil or who-knows-what else. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be able to even be anywhere near the castle, let alone go inside of it.
With that being said, King Diamond himself got to go visit Moosham Castle in 2022 during Mercyful Fate’s European tour. King had discovered Moosham after having doing some research online on his ipad while at a hotel one night. King had already written ‘The Jackal of Salzburg’ for Mercyful Fate and they were playing it live, of course, but he hadn’t heard of Moosham Castle before and found out that it was only a two hour drive back the way they came, so he had to go back and see it.
“We had arrived at Salzburg and I was reading up on it again, and suddenly I saw something I never saw before, because I searched on some other things. Suddenly I’m like, ‘Moosham Castle, what’s this? I’ve never heard of this, what’s going on here? Salzburg Witch Trials, okay, hold on a second here.’ And then I find out that we had driven past it, you could say. Not straight past it so we could have seen it, but we drove past it two hours before, you know, we came to Salzburg. And I had to call next day, the tour manager and everybody else, ‘hey, we are going back two hours where we came from yesterday. We are not just continuing. I have to be there, drive super early, I have to see this to see this place. I cannot miss this I would hate myself until I die’, you know? And so we drove there an we came up to it and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re here outside this place where they killed so many innocent people.
You actually get to see the torture chamber, where they have people on the wheel where they’d get their spines pulled apart, you know? Just more and more and more. There was this spike that stands up almost two meters tall, they would put people on it and it goes up their ass and then they just put them down until it comes out their mouth. I mean, you see that, it’s just all the real stuff, that people died on there, it’s there. The real stuff is there. and you’re just ‘oh my god, I can’t believe this. I’m looking at this, these things happened here’. The little extra rooms where they would shove them into where there are no lights, with chains with all kinds of restrictions on there, you know. The things where they sit there with their hands and legs through and some of it would have set outside. Right next to it there was like the Chamber of Justice, you could call it, where there is this big desk and there’s a giant cross standing on the desk right in the middle. So you would stand there and talk around the cross, kind of, to the Witch Finder General. And there would have been gas there, there must have been gas there too too. But that’s where Justice was dealt. There was a sword lying there, and you could actually see both sides of it on photos of it, but the sword was there and on one side there was engraved a gallows and the other has a wheel on it. So it was not a matter of are you innocent or not. No, no, you were always guilty when you got to that room. It was just a matter of how are you gonna die. Either we put up and hang you, or we put you on the wheel over right here and then we stretch you apart. That’s the two ways you have. They would spin the sword and then pick whatever side was up, ‘okay, gallows’. It’s just the coldness of the whole thing.” - King Diamond
The text courtesy of 'Stories From Hell'.
