Observations placeholder
Engel,C - German folk myth
Identifier
002344
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Hanging on a thread and dead may actually be an allegory for 'out of body'A description of the experience
From Sagen, Gebrauche und Marchen aus Westgfalen – gesammelt von A Kuhn 1859 [translated by C Engel]
At Arfeld, a small village in Germany, a number of young lads and lasses were assembled one winter evening in a warm and comfortable room, the girls spinning and singing… One of the lads, in silly playfulness, said to the girls he should like them to try whether they could hang him on a single thread of their spinning. The novel idea found ready approval. They made him stand on a chair and bound a thread around his neck, fastening it on a nail under the ceiling.
At this moment all were greatly surprised by hearing strains of exquisitively fine music penetrating into the house. They directly hastened outside the door to ascertain whence it came, but there they neither heard nor saw anything.
On returning to the room, they found to their great astonishment and dismay, that the chair had been drawn from under the lad and that the poor fellow was hanging on a thread and was dead.