In the year 858, the Annals of Fulda — one of the most important historical sources for the East Frankish kingdom — record an incident that sits utterly out of place between Viking raids and comet sightings. On an estate near Bingen on the Rhine, an "evil spirit" spent three years throwing stones, hammering on walls, exposing thefts, revealing an affair involving the village priest, driving an innocent man and his family out into open fields, and finally burning almost the entire settlement to the ground. The exorcism sent from Mainz failed. In this episode we walk through the source step by step, look at who wrote it and why, unpack the legal procedure of the ordeal by hot iron, and lay four readings side by side — from simple human agency through serial arson to the question of how much of this was created at a writing desk in Fulda. Nothing gets resolved. But everything we genuinely know ends up on the table. SOURCES & READING LIST Primary source Annales Fuldenses (Annals of Fulda), entry for the year 858Latin edition: Friedrich Kurze (ed.), Annales Fuldenses sive Annales regni Francorum orientalis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hanover 1891English translation with commentary: Timothy Reuter, The Annals of Fulda (Ninth-Century Histories, vol. 2), Manchester University PressOn the author and the monastery of Fulda Rudolf of Fulda: Vita Leobae (836) and Miracula sanctorum in Fuldenses ecclesias translatorum (c. 843–847), ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS 15/1, 1887Gangolf Schrimpf (ed.), Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen (Fuldaer Studien 7), Frankfurt am Main 1996Region and society Matthew Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley 400–1000, Cambridge University Press 2000Trial by ordeal Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval Judicial Ordeal, Oxford 1986Medieval belief in ghosts and demons Claude Lecouteux, Geschichte der Gespenster und Wiedergänger im Mittelalter, Böhlau, Cologne 1987Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society (French original 1994)Word history Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, entry "Poltergeist"Erasmus Alberus, Novum dictionarii genus, 1540Rationalist assessment and modern cases Herbert Schäfer, Poltergeister und Professoren. Über den Zustand der Parapsychologie, Bremen 1994F. Karger / G. Zicha, "Physikalische Untersuchung des Spukfalls in Rosenheim 1967," in: Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie 11 (1968), pp. 113–131On the ergotism debate Alessandra Foscati, Saint Anthony's Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, Amsterdam University Press 2020Annales Xantenses (Annals of Xanten), entry for the year 857
