Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

Lurkers at the Threshold: 100 Ghost Tales from German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Lurkers at the Threshold is a compilation of ghost stories from German folklore, translated into English from German collections, many of which have never been translated before. It’s an interesting collection, covering a branch of European folk tales that will be both strange and hauntingly familiar to an American audience.

Full disclosure: The compiler and translator of these stories, Jürgen Hubert, is a long-time acquaintance, although he and I have no professional relationship and I have received no compensation for this review.

Dr. Hubert published his first collection of translated German folklore (Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles) in 2020. That effort was apparently so successful that he plans to release a series of similar books, each tied to a specific theme. Lurkers at the Threshold is the first of these, devoted to ghost stories. The book contains exactly 100 narratives, most of them rather short, each of them accompanied by translator’s notes and commentary. Just reading the stories themselves is likely the task of a single afternoon, but the supporting material is very rich and will reward closer study. Each entry is thoroughly footnoted, and the book also contains extensive contextual material on German geography and history.

Since this collection is centered on a theme, it calls some repeated tropes into sharp focus. German ghost stories are different than a modern American reader might expect. Ghosts are not translucent and immaterial; usually they are frighteningly tangible. Many ghosts are evil, others are simply unpleasant, a few are benevolent, but they’re all dangerous to encounter. They sometimes need the help of the living to escape their condition, but they’re often bad at making it clear what needs to be done to help them. You probably don’t want to attend church with a bunch of ghosts . . . and whatever you do, don’t shake a ghost’s hand!

I was surprised to find several headless ghosts, including a few Headless Horsemen. I suspect Washington Irving must have done his own reading in German folklore back in the day.

As with Dr. Hubert’s previous work, this collection has plenty of entertainment value, but it’s also valuable as a scholarly resource. Authors and game designers will find the series useful as inspiration for their own fantastic literature. Dr. Hubert continues to support such uses by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lurkers at the Threshold, and I’m looking forward to further volumes in the series. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore and ghost stories.

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