Sharrukin's Palace

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.

Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles: Commentaries on German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert

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

Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles is a collection of tales from German folklore, many of them derived from German-language collections that have never before been translated. It’s an entertaining and potentially very useful reference for a branch of European folklore unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience.

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

Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles collects a little over 150 narratives, most of them fairly short. These tales have all been drawn from various 19^th Century collections of German folklore that have come into the public domain. Dr. Hubert has translated these stories into English, in most cases for the first time, and he also offers some commentary on each.

The breadth of this project can be gathered from the book’s subject headings. There are tales here about the Devil and the Wild Hunt, maidens and crones, saints and sinners. Charlemagne makes several appearances, as does Frederick Barbarossa. There is a bewildering array of monsters, including several kinds of dragon, werewolves, dwarves, giants, “pressure spirits,” and the title-mentioned evil black poodles. Every story carries its own magic and presents its own mysteries. Sometimes the tales go far beyond any simple “fairy tale” and venture into almost Fortean weirdness. Often, the translator seems just as bemused as we are at the results!

Americans, even those of us of German descent, tend to forget how much linguistic and cultural diversity there is in the Old Country. In the early modern era from which these tales derive, there was no such thing as Germany. There was only a stretch of Central Europe, home to different German dialects, diverse religious practices, several non-German ethnic minorities, and little or no political unity. The tales in this collection demonstrate all of this rich diversity. Dr. Hubert helps put all of this in context by providing the geographic framework for each story: where it was told, what villages or towns were nearby, and what features of the landscape are prominent. One of the appendices even indexes the tales by geographic location.

The collection has considerable entertainment value, and it provides plenty of insight into European folklore. Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles might also serve as a valuable source for authors, game designers, or other creatives who wish to investigate the distinctive folklore and fantasy of German culture. Dr. Hubert has specifically supported such application by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license. The book is also extensively footnoted, with appendices on relevant customs and the German language to help the reader interpret the material.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sunken Castes, Evil Poodles, and found a great deal of inspiration in it for my own work. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore, faerie tales, or stories of high weirdness.