Camp Monsters - Mini Monster: Krampus

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

This Mini Monster episode takes us to the country of Austria, and the year 1709. It's the night before Christmas in a forgotten valley high in the mountains of Carinthia. It's a black, cold night. And we're about to learn about the creature that haunts the castle halls, bringing to the naughty boys and girls a fate much worse than coal in their stocking.

This is an REI Co-op Studios production. Camp Monsters is back. Well, with a mini-monster episode, anyway. But before we jump into this little story about one of the few holiday-themed monsters out there, we'd like to give a quick thank you to our Season 2 sponsor, Yeti. And while one of Yeti's full-sized coolers would make an awkward stocking stuffer, remember that Yeti also offers mugs, tumblers, bottle openers, apparel. Check it all out at Yeti.com As you know, if you've been

listening to Camp Monsters for a while in our regular season shows we focus solely on creatures from the United States So in these mini-monster episodes that we do in between seasons, we like to go a bit further afield and talk about some of the monsters that lurk in other countries. This particular tale, just in time for the holidays, takes us overseas and back in time as well.

To the year 1709, in a forgotten valley high in the mountains of Carinthia in southern Austria, on the night before Christmas, and a black, cold night it was, a biting wind rushed down the narrow valley, knocking the snow from the dark pines and making them moan and whisper. There was a castle in that valley. Its ruins are still there today. It was an old place. Old already, even in those long-ago days.

Battlements crumbling, chipped arrow slits squinting out at the cold and crowding forest that closed in around it. Peace had reigned in the area for so many years that the little town that once clustered around the castle for protection had melted away and flowed down the valley to greener pastures, leaving the castle alone. Of course, castles can't grow lonely, but people who live in lonely castles certainly can. And loneliness is corrosive. It leeches warmth and love from the heart. It etches strange patterns on the mind, patterns merely strange at first, and then frightening. So it went with the duke who lived in this old castle until his treatment of those few servants who'd lingered with him became

unforgivable, almost unspeakable. But this story isn't about the castle and it isn't about the duke. This story is about Klaus, a boy who was unlucky enough to grow up in and around the castle, the son of the Duke's much-harassed head butler. This story is about what happened to Klaus on the night before Christmas, 1709. Nowadays, we have the luxury of understanding that there is no such thing as a bad child. Children who act badly are merely products of their environment.

Well, we've already described the lonely old castle's bitter environment, and we can imagine the abuse and humiliations that Klaus's father absorbed from the Duke. Absorbed and wrung out upon poor Klaus. So it must come as no surprise that Klaus was a child who acted badly. Very badly. Every kind of petty cruelty that a young mind can imagine had been by Klaus. Had been imagined and then acted upon. All the animals and the smaller children in the place knew to give Klaus a wide berth.

Even the adults became wary of him as he grew into his early teenage years. A lumpish, awkward, unloved and unloving boy was Klaus. And the only joy he knew was making others feel his resentment. Luckily for those others, Klaus was forced to spend much of his time hard at work, hounded by his father into all the most disagreeable tasks that the decrepit old castle and its duke demanded. So it was on Christmas Eve, 1709, when his father stamped angrily into their little room and began violently rebuking Klaus for being there

when he was supposed to be tending the fires in the Duke's apartment that night of course this was the first that Klaus had heard of such a thing he was appalled stay up all night on Christmas Eve tending fires what about St.olas was the first shocked protest that tumbled unconsciously out of klaus's mouth klaus's father had been expecting a

retort looking forward to it in fact but he had not been expecting that saint St. Nicholas, he asked, and laughed long and hard, a very unpleasant sound that ended in a fit of coughing. What does a creature like you have to worry about St. Nicholas? He brings presents to all the good girls and boys, not to the likes of you. You'd better look out for the other fellow, you nasty little... But it isn't necessary to repeat the names that the two called each other that night. The result was that within the hour, Klaus was sitting in a large,

carved, uncomfortable wooden chair outside the Duke's bedchamber, staring dumbly into the low fire that blazed in the little fireplace that heated the hallway. This hall fire was one of five he had to tend that night,

and the only one with a chair near it. The hallway itself was small and dark, lined with ancient wooden paneling that swallowed the fire's meager light, and with large doors and doorways opening off of it at every angle. For a while, Klaus sat in the dark chair in the dark hall and fidgeted, filling his frustrated imagination with satisfying stories of treachery and vengeance. But as the hall grew warmer and the fire burned lower,

the tales that danced from the flames into Klaus's drooping eyes began to turn against him. Like all bullies, in his dreams, Klaus was helpless. In his dreams, he was the weakling, the butt of every joke, the fool. But this time, something was different. Something began to stir beneath the fear and resentment that Klaus always felt in dreams like this. A sadness crept in. A patient sadness that rose slowly, like the smooth, strong waters of a great flood. He sank low in the chair.

His breath came slow and even. And like a bad man dying, Klaus relived every evil thing he had ever done to others, but relived it from their side. And so Klaus suffered a lifetime's misdeeds at his own hands, and at every nasty trick and savage word and broken trust, the sadness rose within him a little more, until it was going to drown him, until it was going to drown him and he didn't care at all. A log crumbled quietly in the fire, and Klaus stirred, opened his eyes.

His breathing remained deep and slow as if he were still asleep, and his eyes stayed fixed on the last little flames of the fire as dreams and reality swirled all around him. Reality began to get the upper hand when the last flame died out and left nothing but the glowing coals. Klaus was about to stir himself up for a round of stoking the fires when he stopped, to wonder what those lights could be. There were two of them, two lights, dim but distinct, shining in the darkness of the open doorway across from Klaus, one of the doorways just beside the fire. The lights were thin, vaguely crescent-shaped, like the merest slivers of a waning moon.

And that's what they must be, Klaus thought, a double image of the moon reflecting dimly on some smoky orange glass in the depths of the dark room. But then the moons winked out for a moment and reappeared, like something had dashed quickly in front of them, and there was a faint tinkle from that direction, like something small and metal being brushed to the floor. Klaus sat up then, all alertness, heart leaping, and at that same moment the lights that he was staring at began to move,

and as soon as they moved Klaus knew what they were. Not a reflection of the moon on something deep in the room, but a reflection of the hall fire in a set of eyes standing in the doorway just steps from him. Klaus had opened his mouth to call out, to alert the Duke and the household to this intruder, when the fire crumbled again and a brief flame flickered up and silenced him. For in the momentary light of that flame, Klaus saw what was standing in the doorway across from him.

A tall figure with pale skin thinly covered in long, black hair. Dark horns spiraling straight out of an impossibly long head. A black tongue, lolling from a mouth lined with grey needle teeth. Hooves where a man should have feet, and one hand filled with gently clinking chains to bind its victims. And in the other hand, pure darkness, void, emptiness,

the rough, black sack in which to stuff those who would never return. It was Krampus, the opposite of Saint Nicholas, the devil's own minion, sent each Christmas Eve to collect those who were beyond forgiving. Klaus had heard stories about Krampus. Every year at the Christmas festival in the nearest village, an old man put on a mask and tried to scare the little children into behaving, threatening to carry them off in his sack if they didn't.

Well, that sort of thing Klaus scoffed at. But this, this creature was real and beyond imagining. More horrible than any mask or picture. More terrible than anything that had ever crept up out of his worst nightmares. The most terrible thing was that the fire had flared up, just for an instant. Just long enough to show the creature standing there, staring at Klaus. And then the flame strangled out and the darkness returned.

And Klaus was alone with this devil Krampus in the dark closeness of the hallway. With only the creature's softly glowing eyes visible. Klaus knew why Krampus was here, of course. And Klaus knew he deserved it. Deserved to go into the sack, to disappear, to be carried off by this demon. Klaus knew he wouldn't be missed. And the sadness of that.

The same sadness from his dream that night. Overwhelmed him again, suddenly. So that he didn't even think to try and run through any of the doorways around him. He sat in his chair and stared at the eyes and his only movement was the gentle shaking that terror brings. And then the eyes began to move

toward him. In the darkness he heard the soft tread of hard hooves on the old stone floor the menacing music of the chains as they swung gently closer to him Klaus's shaking increased

and he tore his gaze away from those terrible eyes and he sat with his head down waiting now now away from those terrible eyes, and he sat with his head down, waiting. Now. Now. Now.

Get it over with. If you had to go, let it be now. Now. Now. The fire flared a final time, and Klaus could smell it. The beast Krampus was so close beside him now that Klaus could smell its breath. It smelled of fire. The chains dangling from Krampus' clawed fist tapped the fingers of Klaus' hand where it convulsively gripped the arm of the chair,

and Klaus felt the white heat of fire where the chain touched him. Klaus pulled his hand away and looked up and saw Krampus standing there, long, black tongue sliding over bared, gray teeth, staring, but not at Klaus.

Staring at the door just beside him, the door into the Duke's bedchamber. And then Krampus stepped forward, forward and through, stepped through the thick oak door as if there wasn't any door there at all. And then the firelight failed, and darkness returned to the hall, and Klaus toppled from the chair in a faint. If you're ever lucky enough to take a trip to Austria, and you find yourself hiking through thick forest up a lonely little valley in Carinthia,

you may come upon the ruins of a castle. There's plenty of ruins on the hills around there, fallen monuments to ancient fears. But the particular ruin I'm thinking of is flanked by the remains of a chapel that used to be attached to it. The roof fell in centuries ago and most of the inscriptions

in the interior have weathered away to eligibility. But at least one remains that you can make out in the wall just behind the crumbling altar.

If you can read Latin or if you have a translation provided to you, like I did, then you can see that it asks forgiveness for the soul of the Duke who disappeared. And at the bottom, you'll read that the inscription was made in the 1730s, at the request of the local bishop. This bishop, it turns out, was widely known, still remembered, loved for his great kindness,

gentleness, and piety. Bishop Klaus was his name. Camp Monsters is part of the REI Podcast Network We'd like to send a special season's greetings out to one of our listeners, Angelica Bra Thanks for listening, Angelica As always many thanks to our own Saint Nick Angelica Braugh. Thanks for listening, Angelica. As always, many thanks to our own St. Nick, our engineer, Nick Patry,

and to our producer, Chelsea Davis, who... is probably bluffing about having a sack that will make you disappear forever if you miss a deadline. I think. Our executive producers, hard at work, far away at the North Pole, are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby. This Mini Monster episode

was written and performed by yours truly, Weston Davis. Weather and whatever you're celebrating this time of year, be smart this holiday season, and be safe,

for all of us. A better day, a better year, is dawning. Thanks for listening. you