The Long Man in the Murder Alley at Hof

(Widmann in the Chronicle of Hof)

Before this great dying (the plague in the town of Hof in 1519), people witnessed a tall, black, long man in the Mordgasse (“Murder Alley”). With his thighs spread wide apart, he stepped into the two sides of the alley, and his head reached high above the houses. My ancestress Walburg Wildmann, who had to walk through the above-mentioned alley one evening, witnessed herself how he had one foot at the yard entrance of the pub, and the other one on the other side at the large house.

Full of fear, she did not know if she should go back or go forward. But then she gathered the courage to press on in God’s name, made the sign of the cross in front of her, and thus went straight through the center of the alley and therefore between the apparition’s legs. For she had to complete her errand, whether that haunt followed her or not.

She had barely passed through when the haunt smacked his legs together behind her with such force that a loud, crackling sound arose as if the houses in the entire Mordgasse were collapsing.

Soon after, the great plague followed, and the dying started in the Mordgasse.

Source: Grimm, J. and W. Deutsche Sagen, Band 1. 1816, p. 243.

Notes & commentary: Antecedents of Elongated Men