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Amy Quinton Halloween is right around the corner, Kat. Are you going to be doing anything? 

Kat Kerlin Yeah, you know, I'll be doing the whole trick-or-treating thing with the kids and dealing with the fallout as I eat half their candy. 

Amy Quinton Right. Do you know the meaning of Halloween? 

Kat Kerlin Yeah. Doesn't it mean like All Hallows' Eve? 

Amy Quinton Yeah, did you know that? I didn't know that. The celebration on the eve of All Hallows' Day. In Western Christianity, it's the time when you remember the dead, including Saints, also known as a hallow or holy person. So the word Halloween came from Saints evening. 

Kat Kerlin Yeah, I have heard that. 

Amy Quinton And some say—because I looked it up in Wikipedia— that it started before Christianity and has roots from a pagan festival called Samhain in Celtic-speaking countries. The ceremony marked the end of harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year and a time of year when the boundary between this world and the other world, the world of the dead, thinned. 

Kat Kerlin Oh, that's a little spooky. Are we going to be telling old ghost stories in this episode of Unfold? 

Amy Quinton Oh, much worse than that, because all of what we are about to unfold is true. It is not a ghost story. 

Kat Kerlin Names have not been changed to protect the innocent? 

Amy Quinton Nope. It is a dark moment in European history. It begins in 18th century Germany. 

Kat Kerlin Why? What happened in 18th century Germany? 

Amy Quinton It's very unsettling. Morbid. 

Kat Kerlin Death? 

Amy Quinton Murder. 

Kat Kerlin Murder? 

Amy Quinton The killing of small children. 

Kat Kerlin Jeez, that's awful. 

Amy Quinton And suicide. 

Kat Kerlin Also awful. 

Amy Quinton Precisely. That's why this special Halloween episode of Unfold is called 'Murder, Suicide and the Macabre.' It's also got fornication, child murder, sex with the devil, executions, witches, blood libel and briefly Qanon. 

Kat Kerlin Good times. This is going to be so fun. Perfect for Halloween. 

Amy Quinton Coming to you from UC º£½ÇÔ­´´, this is Unfold, a podcast that breaks down complicated problems and unfolds curiosity-driven research. I'm Amy Quinton. 

Kat Kerlin And I'm Kat Kerlin. So we begin in 18th century Germany? 

Amy Quinton Yes, , a history professor at UC º£½ÇÔ­´´, has studied one particular macabre trend from that period of time, which she will unfold for us. It's 1704. We're .

Kathy Stuart Agnes Schicken. So she was a young woman in Wertenbach, which is a Protestant territory in Germany in the Holy Roman Empire. And she is wandering the countryside, walking from village to village. 

Amy Quinton She was outside one of these villages when she came across, in her words, four beautiful little boys playing together along the roadside. 

Kathy Stuart So she encounters these groups of children playing and she tries to convince them to walk with her into the forest to go for a walk. And the other kids, most of the kids say, 'No.'  They won't go. And one little boy agrees to walk off with her alone into the forest. 

Kat Kerlin He went off with her alone. I, I would kill my kid if he ever did that. He would he would know better. 

Amy Quinton The boy is a seven-year-old named Hans and he's the son of a local cow herder. And everything about that day seems innocent, at first. 

Kathy Stuart And she spends the afternoon with him and they have a wonderful time and they go for walks. And there's this tender scene where she has the little boy on her lap and she is actually delousing him, which is a very tender, moment of tenderness. 

Kat Kerlin That that's a moment of tenderness? So I guess it's like grooming, maybe?

Amy Quinton Apparently. But then it starts to get late and little Hans wants to return home for the evening. At that point, Agnes throws the child violently to the ground. 

Kathy Stuart Then she takes out the knife and she's going to murder the boy. And the boy becomes frightened and he begs for his life and he even prays a prayer to appease her. 

Amy Quinton Twice, Agnes is moved by his prayers 

Kathy Stuart And for a moment she seems to be ready to abandon her plan. But then she's embittered and she decides to go through with it, and she cuts his throat and then she says to him, "You are a sweet angel before God." 

Amy Quinton Agnes says this apparently just after cutting the boy's throat so deeply that she could look down into his neck. 

Kat Kerlin Amy, this is making me sick. Like, why on earth would she do this to an innocent child? 

Amy Quinton Well, she immediately turns herself in. Later in her confession, Agnes says the child was now saved and that she had only done it so she could also leave this world. She wanted to be executed. 

Kat Kerlin She was suicidal. 

Amy Quinton Right. 

Kat Kerlin Why didn't she just kill herself rather than someone else? 

Amy Quinton Because suicide was a sin, one worse than murder so the suicidal, like Agnes, thought it was better to be executed. 

Kathy Stuart The prohibition to commit suicide prevents many of these people from actually going through with what we can call direct suicide, because contemporary's call, suicide by proxy, indirect suicide. And quite explicitly, they articulate the idea that if I go through with this suicide now, I am damned forever and this pulls them back from the brink. But then they find this other option where they can remove themselves from the world and avoid damnation. And that's the fundamental logic that explains suicide by proxy. 

Kat Kerlin Agnes then wasn't alone in committing indirect suicide or suicide by proxy? This was a trend among the suicidal?

Amy Quinton A pretty dark one that many historians have overlooked. Kathy scoured through archival criminal testimony and found more than 300 cases in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. 

Kat Kerlin She says suicide was worse than murder. But isn't murder also a sin? I mean, how can murderers avoid eternal damnation? 

Amy Quinton It makes sense if you believe in salvation in Christianity, which says that as long as sinners repent their sins before they are executed, it's a get-out-of-hell-free card. Kathy says executions, which were typically a public beheading, were like an express elevator to heaven.  

Kathy Stuart Something happened to criminals in preparing them for death that turned them from a malefactor into a penitent, poor sinner where they were absolutely cleansed of sin. And so what they would do is they would take the Eucharist. They would have confession. They would have absolution. They would have incredibly intensive spiritual counseling in