Case file · High strangeness
Kaspar Hauser
On 26 May 1828, a teenage boy appeared in Nuremberg, barely able to speak, saying he had been kept in a dark cell all his life. He died of a stab wound in Ansbach in 1833.
1828 CE · 49.45, 11.07 · status: disputed
The account
Rumour made him a stolen prince of Baden. DNA tests in 1996 and 2002 gave conflicting results; a 2024 study ruled out the Baden link.
The sceptical view
Many contemporaries thought he was a fraud and that the final wound was self-inflicted.