Hinterkaifeck murders
On the evening of 31 March 1922, six people on a remote Bavarian farm were killed with a mattock by an unknown attacker who seemingly stayed on for days.
1922 CE · 48.59, 11.32 · status: unexplained
The account
The killer apparently ate the food, fed the animals and used the fireplace for three days. Before the crime, family members and a former maid had reported strange noises in the attic, and the maid is said to have quit because she thought the house haunted.
The sceptical view
It is a real, unsolved crime; the 'haunting' details are best read as signs that someone may have been hiding on the farm.
The researched reading
A real and terrible unsolved crime. The eerie details point to an intruder hiding on the farm, not to anything supernatural.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Undetermined | 55% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 15% | The “haunting” signs (footprints in snow leading to the farm, noises in the attic, a lost key, a newspaper nobody bought) fit an intruder hiding on the farm before and after the murders; the killer was never caught. |
| Something in the surroundings | 10% | Footsteps and sounds can come from someone in the attic or from an old building’s creaks. |
| A cultural story | 10% | The case has become a horror legend, with retellings exaggerating the uncanny. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 6% | The previous maid left believing the farm was haunted; fear colours later memories. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | Not relevant. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | A real crime with a human killer. |
Official position: Police never solved the murders; a 2007 cold-case review by police students identified a likely suspect but did not publish the name.