Crypto Corner: The boy from nowhere, or anywhere

I decided it was time again for something new on this blog, and this time it’s something I wanted to do from the beginning. I have a life-long interest in cryptozoology and other Forteana that has frequently featured in my own writing, but I’ve never gotten around to writing down many of my ideas on the subject. I decided to start with one of the most famous mysteries of all, the case of Kaspar Hauser.

This is a story that has been told often enough not to require much retelling. In 1828, a disheveled young man appeared in the town of Nuremberg. He appeared disoriented, ignorant of his surroundings, and barely able to speak. He also showed signs of abuse or imprisonment, including bleeding feet and abnormal development of the knees that many attributed to limited exercise. The only clue to his origins was a pair of clearly forged letters that claimed he was the son of a cavalry officer. As time went on, he showed a growing command of writing and speech, enough that he was able to tell an extraordinary story. Prior to his appearance, he had been confined in a cramped and squalid room without any direct human contact except for bread and water left at the door and rudimentary lessons in writing. His sudden appearance led to speculation that he was an illegitimate child of a nobleman. Those who were in close contact with him quickly became far more concerned with his mental health. He often behaved in bizarre ways, which many attributed to the trauma and isolation of his upbringing. He also showed a less benign tendency toward narcissism that was made worse by his fame. These problems culminated in a series of injuries that he claimed were inflicted by one or several attackers, the last of which ended in his death at the end of 1833.

This is a tale were the retellings were far more instructive than any of the events. In the 19^th century,  most of those interested in his case were fixated on a search for royal scandal, while in the 20^th century, anomalists sought to place it in the realm of the paranormal. In hindsight, both angles were wildly misguided and ultimately narrowminded. It’s especially easy to see that the notion that an unidentified waif might be heir to a throne was strictly a romantic conceit, one which received notably little encouragement from Kaspar himself. The definitive rebuttal to that diversion was offered by Colin Wilson, who observed, “Kaspar’s strange and inhumane treatment sounds more typical of ignorant peasants than guilt-stricken aristocrats… The theory that (he) was the stepchild of some wicked Grand Duke seems on the whole less likely than that he was the illegitimate child of some respectable farmer’s daughter terrified that her secret would become local gossip.”

Unfortunately, even researchers as normally critical as  Wilson missed (or declined to address) what now seems the “obvious” solution: Kaspar’s account of his imprisonment was itself an invention, and his motive was always to win sympathy and support from the public and especially the nobility. This is the theme that I quickly discovered in more recent scholarship, and unfortunately, it presents the most direct answer to any number of questions and doubts already raised. The letters he carried were quickly discredited by contemporary investigators, while many then and since openly held that his stories of being attacked were simply self-inflicted injuries. There were also many accounts of former benefactors denouncing him as unstable if not dishonest. Why not allow that the bizarre story of his origin was his own fabrication?

It is at this point that skepticism, long absent entirely, starts to overreach. There is a sensible outline for why his story could not be true: In the absence of proper diet, exercise, normal education or sunlight, he would easily have ended up far more debilitated than he was, if he survived at all. However, there was certainly independent evidence that he was neglected and abused, including the abnormality of his knees and more ominous scars from injuries. There were also plenty of anecdotal accounts of strange speech and behavior consistent with social isolation and sensory deprivation. Finally, the very precise descriptions of the room in which he was confined remain the most lucid and convincing element of his tale. Even granting that it is impossible that he could have spent his whole life in such a space, it is easier to allow that it existed and was sometimes used as he described than to believe that nothing untoward happened at all. Given his subsequent behavior, it must be further acknowledged that his caretakers could easily have found confinement necessary for his own and others’ safety.

With this in mind, the truly unbelievable element of Kaspar’s story is that he knew nothing about his family or where he had been imprisoned. However, we can now work in the realm of rational calculation. If Kaspar’s family and guardians treated him a tenth as badly as he would claim, he had every reason to fear being returned to his original home (unfortunately a common outcome for “real” victims of abuse). Another immediate possibility was that testimony about his real past would have resulted in him being locked up as a self-destructive lunatic, which in hindsight would have been the ideal outcome of his case. He may have further obscured his place of origin simply by walking further than strictly necessary, which could at least partly account for the extent of his apparent injuries. Once he reached relative safety, it would not have taken long to recognize that it was easier to get sympathy and attention as long as his past remained a mystery. Thus, what began as a semi-instinctive survival strategy could easily have evolved into more calculated exploitation, and from there to the deterioration that ended in his own self-destruction.

The real lesson of Kaspar Hauser’s case is just how dangerous the appeal of mystery can be. It’s easy to laugh at the 19^th-century rumor mongers who wanted to believe a wandering lunatic was a nobleman fallen from grace, but the 20^th-century efforts to find even a hint of the paranormal in his case were even more pitiful. The real horror is that if Hauser had not told his tale well enough to capture the imagination of his upper-class benefactors, he would most likely have either been locked away or allowed to wander off with no more notice than when he arrived, which beyond doubt has been the fate of any number of persons no less worthy of sympathy. And if this seems short (certainly shorter than others I have in mind), it’s because I don’t feel a need to add any more. More to follow, hopefully a happier tale.

For sources and links, Wilson's essay on Hauser can be found in The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, available in ebook form. Other articles I recommend as insightful are available from LiveScience and Factinate.