What happened
In September 1591 a prosperous shoemaker of Breslau took his own life. To avoid disgrace and secure him a Christian burial, his family concealed the cause of death and said he had died of a stroke. Soon the town began to say the dead man was coming back: at night he reportedly made noises in houses, appeared to residents, pressed down on sleepers and even left bruises on their bodies. When the truth about the suicide came out, the city council ordered an exhumation. According to the account, after seven months the body was intact and supple, the skin taut “like a drum.” The corpse was reburied beneath the gallows, but the hauntings did not stop. In the spring of 1592 the body was dug up again, dismembered and burned, and the ashes were thrown into the river. After that, it is said, peace returned.
Witnesses
The people and city council of Breslau; the story was recorded by contemporaries and retold in 1653 by the English philosopher Henry More in “An Antidote Against Atheism.”
Explanations and hypotheses
The Breslau shoemaker is one of the earliest detailed accounts of a “revenant” in Central Europe. It follows a typical pattern: a “bad” death (suicide), a hidden sin, collective fear, exhumation and “proof” in the form of an undecayed body – today explained by the natural course of decomposition in cold soil. The night-time “attacks” resemble descriptions of sleep paralysis. Details and dates vary between versions.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.