 Throughout our history, people have been able to simply disappear. Before forensic science or DNA testing, it was quite easy for a person just to change identities. It was probably also fairly easy to hide children who were at risk. At risk because of who their parents were, who their bloodline was, especially when it came to the warring families of Europe. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. A very special thank you to all of our patrons and our producers here on Esoteric Atlanta. Without you guys, we most certainly would not be able to do what we do. We appreciate you so much. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about Casper Hauser. Before we go into our subject at hand, I do want to remind you guys that our yoga intensive online course is going to be starting on Sunday, November 20th at 2 p.m. If you missed our last video with Embi and me as we talk about this course, I will put a link to that video down in the description box below. If this is a course that you are interested in taking, I will also put a link to book the course down in the description box below. Once again, this course is not affiliated with Esoteric Atlanta, the channel. We will not be talking about conspiracies or any type of truth or stuff on this course. This course will strictly be dedicated to the theory and practice of yoga. This course also includes two sessions with Emmy for Reiki and will end on Sunday, December 11th. Only serious students should apply for this course as this course is going to be very, very intense, hence why it's called an intensive. I also have an email address down in the description box below. If you would like to email me specifically regarding this course, if you have any questions or concerns, again, I ask with this particular email, please only send the emails regarding this course. The Esoteric Atlanta email address does get jam-packed full of emails and I don't want to lose. I want to kind of keep this organized, so please only people who are asking about the course send emails to that email address. I also want to remind you guys that as a traditional yoga teacher, I am not affiliated with the yoga alliance or any teacher training. In my opinion, the yoga alliance is completely cabal. It's not true yoga nor do they teach true yoga, nor can anyone become a yoga teacher in 200 hours. That's just ridiculous. In fact, my teacher in India takes this so seriously that if I were to be involved with the yoga alliance or with a teacher training program, I would lose my authorization. So if you think by taking this course that I'm going to give you some hours for a teaching credentials to the yoga alliance, I'm sorry, I cannot do that. And I would highly suggest that you rethink maybe your relationship with the yoga alliance, again, just in my opinion, especially if you're interested in true real authentic yoga. All right, with that being said, let's get into the story of Casper Houser. Now I have to admit something to you guys. I thought I had heard of every strange story out there, but this one was a new one for me. I was actually planning on doing a whole other Mystery Monday this week, but I ran across this story and I was like, who the hell was this guy? I have so many different thoughts and opinions on the subject and I cannot wait to hear your opinions and your conspiracies down in the comment section below. On May 26th of 1823, a boy wandered into Nuremberg, Germany from the woods outside of the town early one morning. The boy looked to be about 16 years old. However, the first thing people noticed about this boy was that he had the walk of a toddler. His clothes were fairly dingy and his shoes were way too small for his feet as his toes poked out through the shoe. He did have a nice silk bow tie on with the initials KH on the silk bow tie. Eventually, a local shoemaker approached the boy. The boy had two letters on him. One was a letter that was written by this boy's supposed caretaker. The caretaker said in a letter that this boy was of no relation to him and that the letter should be sent to the captain of the fourth squadron of the Sixth Cavalry Regiment, a man named Captain Von Wessings. The caretaker also went on to say in the letter and I quote that the boy was kept hip and that the boy never even saw the identity of the caretaker or his family. In his words, he said he was raised a step from the house in order that nobody might know where he was brought up. The letter also claimed that the little boy could read and write and that he did not have parents. But if he did have parents, he would have been a learned man, meaning that this boy was of high birth. The caretaker also said that the boy never knew the caretaker's identity as well because if his identity had been known, then the caretaker ran the risk of losing his own life. The caretaker said that when he brought the boy into town, he made the boy walk in front of him with his eyes down on the ground, where the caretaker eventually left him on the edge of town, hoping that the boy himself would wander into the town center. The second letter was an older letter. It was a letter that was allegedly written by the young boy's birth mother. Her identity was not mentioned in the letter, although she did say that the boy's birthday was April 30th, 1812. She instructed the caretaker to please raise her son and raise her son to be a cavalryman and that when he was of age 16, 17 years old, that he was to be sent to the captain of the cavalry to be of service. And so allegedly, according to the caretaker, this is what he did for the boy. He trained him to be a cavalryman and in the letter that was addressed to the captain of the cavalry, Wessings, he told Wessings, you can use him as a cavalryman or if you don't need him, just kill him, hang him, whatever, I don't care. Now the mother had mentioned that her son had been christened with the name Casper. And the man had said he'd given the boy the last name Houser. Now we know that that Houser is the German word for house, or it also means someone who protects someone else. Now after reading these letters, the shoemaker also noticed that not only did this boy Casper toddle like a toddler, just learning how to walk, but his speech was also like that of a young child. Whenever a horse would try to buy, Casper would point at the horse and say horse. Again, a bit like a two or three year old would do, not a 16 year old kid. He also would repeat the phrase, I want to be a cavalryman. I want to be a cavalryman. But the shoemaker said that it didn't seem like he actually understood what he was saying. As the shoemaker started to ask him more questions, all Casper did was repeat the questions that had been asked to him. The shoemaker did eventually get the boy to Captain Wessings and Wessings turned around and brought the boy to the police. The police decided that even though there appeared to be a delay in learning, it was clear that this young man Casper was not an idiot, nor was he a madman. Now again, these are the words that were used in the 19th century, the word idiot or madman. In today's language, we would probably say he is not, he has no learning disabilities, nor is he mentally handicapped or mentally ill. Now they decided to hold Casper in the city jail almost like a bag of wine. And this is when they also started to notice even more peculiar behaviors coming from Casper. Again, Casper would listen intently to what people around him were saying, repeating what they were saying, almost as if he was trying to learn the language. The jailer's 11-year-old boy came around and would hang out with Casper, and that is really how Casper learned how to speak German, was from the 11-year-old little boy. They also noticed that Casper would easily cry. He was very emotional, almost like again, he was stunted in growth, like a small child throwing a temper tantrum or a small child to his missing, his parents. They also noticed that even though the shoes he came to town in were too small for him and his toes poked out of the soles of the shoes, his feet were as soft as the palm of a hand. Meaning that it was pretty clear that this kid was not used to wearing shoes and was also not used to walking around that much. No calluses had formed on his feet. I mean by the time you're 16, your foot's pretty formed when it comes to calluses and strength in the sole of the foot. You think about it, infant's foot or baby's foot, they're very soft. And that's how this 16-year-old's foot appeared. The jail that Casper was kept in was called Lugsland Tower, which is still around to this day. And while in this tower even more peculiar things started to happen, they realized that Casper would often get sick if he ate food that wasn't bread and water. In fact, the only thing he seemed to want were just bread and water. They also gave Casper a candle for when it got dark out and he was so mesmerized by the candle that he would go to touch it and burn himself. They also gave Casper a mirror. And he was very confused by the mirror and would often go to look behind the mirror to see where the other boy was who was staring back at him. Eventually the town decided that they would raise money for this poor child. He kind of became adopted by the town of Nuremberg. It seems that it was kind of like an old-fashioned GoFundMe where they were finding funds to figure out who this kid was, get him schooled, get him medically treated, get him taken care of. And during this time Casper was brought in and studied by a local professor by the name of Frederick Dahmer. Dahmer started working with Casper intently. Dahmer and some of the police would take Casper into the woods to try to get him to recount where he had been. Only every time they took him into the woods, he would have a mental breakdown and start crying like he was desperately afraid of the forest. As Casper started to learn how to speak, he started to tell them stories of his childhood. Casper claimed that he had been kept in a dark cell that was about six feet long and three feet wide with only a straw bed to sleep in. He confirmed that he only ate bread and drank two kinds of water. One was clear water and the other was bitter water. He said every time he drank the bitter water he would fall asleep into a deep deep deep sleep. When he would awake his hair would have been cut and his nails trimmed and his clothing cleaned up. He also claimed that in this little jail cell he was kept in there was a bucket for him to use the restroom. For entertainment Casper said he only had a couple of toys, a toy horse and a toy dog all made from wood. And that whole time Casper claimed that no, he had never actually seen his captor. Dahmer started to notice that Casper had a very very keen sense of sight in the dark. He could see things in the dark than others could. In fact Dahmer even noted that sometimes Casper was better in the dark than he was in the light as if again he had been kept in a dark cell for most of his life. Casper talked about how he would have this reoccurring dream. In this reoccurring dream he was in a huge castle with an elaborately dressed woman. It was speculated by Dahmer that these weren't dreams but were memories from a time, a life before Casper was sent to live with his caregiver. Dahmer speculated that Casper's imprisonment started around the age of three. Hence why most of his mannerisms when first found in the town, the next that of a three-year-old. Very soon the story of Casper Hauser became one of the biggest sensations all across Europe. Now we have to remember it in the 19th century, during this time of our history there were no reality shows, there were no radios, there were no actors and actresses that were super, super famous like we have now on covers of magazines. The only celebrities, the only gossip anyone ever really had was that of the royal family, they were the local celebrities. So a story like this would have been like our modern day reality shows. Who the hell is this kid? This is the strangest thing ever. Well over time Dahmer started to notice other things about Casper Hauser that perhaps Casper wasn't always honest. In fact Dahmer would catch Casper in a lot of lies. On October 17th of 1829 Casper did not show up for his lunch. He was found in Dahmer's basement bleeding from a wound in his forehead. He claimed he had been attacked by a man, a hooded man dressed in all black while he was using the restroom. He said the attacker said that Casper had to die and Casper claimed that he recognized the voice as the voice of his caretaker. Casper said the man was going in for the kill, he was trying to slit Casper's neck but Casper moved and therefore got a slash across his forehead. Now Dahmer did not believe this story. Dahmer again thought that even though Casper's case was very interesting, he noticed and was starting to notice patterns of lying. He believed that Casper cut himself for attention. And then again on April 3rd of 1830 another incident happened. A gun was heard going off from Casper's bedroom. When help ran up to the bedroom they found Casper laying on the floor bleeding from his right side. He claimed that he had been climbing up on some bookshelves trying to retrieve a book when he accidentally knocked down a pistol. The pistol went off and hit him across the right side of the head. Was this just a simple accident or again was this another way for Casper to try to garnish attention. Soon after that Casper was moved to another house, the house of Baron Von Tutcher. Very soon this Baron also noticed a habit of Casper lying and being greatly attention seeking. In 1831 a British nobleman by the name of Lord Standhope took interest in Casper and Casper's story. It seems that Lord Standhope believed that Casper was lost nobility or aristocracy. And Standhope had this theory that Casper wasn't German but rather Hungarian. And so Standhope came and collected Casper and brought him all over Europe seeing if there was anything that would trigger any memories. However nothing triggered memories but Casper did start to remember some Hungarian language. Towards the end of their escapades throughout Europe Standhope also started to lose faith in Casper Hauser's story. It seemed that Standhope started to believe or come under the suspicion that Casper Hauser was a con artist. In 1832 Standhope transferred Casper Hauser to the home of Johann Mayer. It is noted that even though Standhope was doubting Casper at this time he did continue to pay for his expenses. In 1832 Casper did get himself a job as a copyist in a local law office. Which is good because by 1833 many of Casper's patrons who had been supporting him started to pull back support as they started to doubt Casper's credibility. It is said that on December 9th of 1833 Casper Hauser and Johann Mayer got into a huge fight. Apparently they were fighting over the holiday season. Casper was still under the impression that Standhope would be joining them for Christmas and then after that he would be going off to England with Standhope. And the only reason why I bring up this argument that happened on December 9th is because of the timeline after this fight. Now if we believe Casper's story then this fight really has nothing to do with what happened but if we think Casper is a con man then this or an attention seeking con man I should say then this fight has everything to do with what happened a few days later. On December 14th Casper came home with a deep wound in his chest. He claimed he was lured into a garden where he was handed a bag and then he was stabbed. Casper got people to follow him to the garden where a bag was found with a note inside. It was a hand written note in pencil and it was written backwards almost as if someone had written the letter while looking in a mirror. The author gave the initials MLO but no one has a clue who this person was. People also noted that it had been snowing that day and instead of two sets of footprints there was only one Casper's footprints. Casper ended up succumbing to his injuries on December 17th 1833. His last words were reportedly I didn't do it myself. Now here's some things I failed to mention at the beginning of the story. The alleged older letter that was written by allegedly Casper's birth mother with the letter written by the caretaker were written in the same handwriting. This handwriting also matched the handwriting of the letter written in pencil and the garden where Casper had been allegedly stabbed. Not only did all the handwriting match on all three letters but they also matched the handwriting of Casper himself. Not only that but the same spelling and grammar mistakes were made in the letters that were commonly made by Casper. People started to believe that Casper Hauser stabbed himself in order to regain sympathy and regain interest into his story. With that being said if he did stab himself he accidentally killed himself. Lord Stanhope himself even admitted after Casper's death that he had been tricked by this boy that he firmly believed he was a con man and in fact Lord Danford actually wrote a book published a book about the experience called Tracks Relating to Casper Hauser but the story doesn't end here. You know like when you watch Dateline and for half of Dateline you think this person's guilty and then the other half of Dateline you think another person is guilty. Same thing with this case of Casper Hauser. With all of that evidence it's easy to say yes this kid was a con man. He created a story to get attention and garden patrons for his life but then things get super interesting. Around this time in Europe there was a lot of up people going on. We have the Napoleon Wars. We have so much happening. The French Revolution I mean shit is popping off left right center and because of all of this the ruling elite of Europe were also fearing for their lives and embattlement with each other and many people including a lot of the nobility across Europe who were very interested in Casper Hauser believed that Casper was a lost prince. A lost prince of one family specifically. Now again yes as I'm saying this with all the evidence we have up to now you're probably thinking yeah right the kid used that used this hostility to create a story around himself so that he wouldn't he wouldn't have to work like the rest of us do and he could literally be just like the Kardashian of Europe and have his life a reality show and have patrons paying for him everywhere he went but once we start looking at forensic DNA your opinion might change. The first test our modern day test was ran in 1928 a hundred years after Casper first appeared on the scene in Nuremberg and this study found that Casper probably stabbed himself but as we see so back the other way in 2005 a forensic analysis said that it was unlikely that Casper stabbed himself. A forensic analysis something they didn't have in 1928 and certainly didn't have in 1828 or 1833 a forensic analysis was saying you know it's kind of unlikely that this kid actually stabbed himself he might have been telling the truth someone might have actually stabbed him so who the hell was Casper Hauser. There is no evidence of him existing before 1828 before he actually came into the town of Nuremberg and you might be thinking well it was 1828 the kid was kept in a dungeon for most of his life there would be no records of him however if you remember from the letter his mother sent with him the mother whose identity we don't know she said that Casper had been baptized by the name Casper hence why the caretaker called him Casper and again the last name Hauser meant a house or someone who protects someone else so Casper was a baptized baby that was now being protected by someone else because the mother asked that to happen. What kind of a powerful mother is able to ask a complete stranger to raise her baby for her and hide his identity and and make sure that no one knows he's there make sure no one sees them. Hauser being the the clue here with this is a kid that needed to be protected and I find it interesting that this letter said that when he was 16 17 years old he could be released out into the world to go and be a cavalryman almost like then he would be protected by the military and he would almost be back in higher ranking which is what people were originally thinking was his birth rank. Now we don't know who this caretaker was and I think if we knew who the caretaker was that would answer a lot of questions because my question is even if some princess came knocking on your door and said hey boo can you raise my baby for me I would think you would need some sort of payment some sort of compensation and what mother would just leave her child and not ever go see her child unless her lives weren't so much danger that she was doing the best she could to try to keep her child alive. Now since no as I was saying before since there was no record of any Casper being anywhere and yes this is the 1800s it's not like we are now they didn't have social security numbers all that kind of stuff but you know they did have they did have baptismal records and there has been no baptismal records found with this name Casper for this time confirming this story but to play at devil's advocate if this child was of high noble birth and if because of that his life was in danger maybe the mother just said that to give him a new name I don't know of any Prince Casper's Casper doesn't really even seem like a very princely name to me I like the name though but I don't think a prince would be Casper I mean I know that the royal family got kind of pissed when Henry named his son Archie although I think that's going to be a cute name but uh that's not really a regal name is it? Many suspected that he was the lost prince of Grand Duke von Baden and his wife Stephanie. Now Stephanie was the adopted daughter of Napoleon I believe she was technically like his niece and it is believed that Casper was their child so therefore heir to their power and the Duke von Baden passed away a few years after Casper's birth which would match the memories that Casper had and would match Frederick Dahmer's original thought that Casper had lived in a palace up to the age of three and then was removed from the palace at three those dates match again this was for Casper's protection he was a small child Stephanie the wife the prince says the Duchess was vulnerable and the situation she was in I mean you're Napoleon's adopted daughter backslash niece was it possible that this prince needed to be hidden away in order to save his life in 1998 they removed blood from underwear that were supposedly the underwear worn by Casper Hauser on the day he passed away they pulled DNA from some of the descendants of the von Baden family and the DNA did not match however in 2002 they were able to exhume some of the hair left over on the body of Casper Hauser and they ran that DNA on the hair that was legitimately Casper's against the blood on the underwear and that DNA did not match meaning that the blooded underwear used in 1998 was not the blood of Casper so after they established that the hair Casper did not match the blood meaning that wasn't Casper's they took the hair and compared the DNA of the hair again to the descendants that they know of of the von Baden family the DNA match that came up said that the DNA of Casper and the descendants were very very closely related meaning that the theory that Casper was the missing son of Duke von Baden was a viable theory after all now I've watched many discussions on this DNA testing and and and why they can't be 100% conclusive or not conclusive and a lot of it came down to that the only descendants left were female whereas Casper were male and the missing links and some of the DNA come came from the mycondrial DNA which comes from the mother's line and so if we're looking at the von Baden family Stephanie the mother which is the more dominant of the the solitaire DNA would not come into play with the descendants of the von Baden's who are not related to Stephanie if that makes sense like the Duke's brother's kids or brother's descendants who are not related to Stephanie except via marriage and so that was the one discrepancy that these scientists saw is that the only people they had to test against Casper's hair that were alive were people that would not have the same mitochondrial DNA as Casper and so it seemed from my layman's perspective listening to them talk that they actually did believe that he was the prince because the only discrepancies were from the fact that his mother was different from the mitochondrial was different from these descendants if that makes sense I hope I'm making sense I'm not a scientist why can't they just exhume the Duke why can't they just exhume the Duke and Stephanie and let's be done with it pull the hair off of the you know the bodies and test and see if that's their parents but here's the thing these are royal people they're royal people we know a thing or two of our old people right they're not just going to go exhume their bodies and so the best we have is testing Casper's DNA with descendants of the von Baden family to see what the likelihood is of them being related and it is highly likely according to the most recent DNA tests that they are related so here's my theory I think that both theories can be true what do I mean by that I know a thing or two about emotional trauma I don't know if they really understood emotional trauma like we understand emotional trauma back then as we do now I do think that Casper was the missing prince however I think that Casper had such a horrific adolescent childhood that his need for attention blew up from the age of three to sixteen he had no human interaction except for a caretaker who never spoke to him or never saw his identity he lived in total darkness in a cell he was never outside he had to go crap in a fucking bucket for Christ's sake he slept on a straw bed whenever his nails were trimmed hair was cut or bathed he was knocked out by some type of drug to knock him out and then all of a sudden he's pushed into the world a world he's never seen before he's shocked he doesn't know how to speak he can hardly walk I mean the last time he was allowed to walk he was a toddler so he still toddled at sixteen yeah the letter was right if he had been raised by his parents he would have been a very learned man because his parents were fucking royalty he's not stupid he doesn't come from stupid people as he started to recuperate and remember things I think he was so longing for human love you can't get those years back you can't get those developmental years back where children should be held and loved and cuddled and played with and so at sixteen seventeen eighteen years old he went about seeking that love when his story started to die down when people had all this interest and were coming to him and interested him and paying him attention and he felt that he felt that community that connectedness and all of a sudden the story died down and they went away maybe he did act up maybe he did lie to try to get people back to try to get that love back maybe maybe some of the other incidents that happened to him were of his own doing for attention but if he was the missing prince and there was a price tag on his head and all this tabloid media scrutiny back in the eighteen hundreds I'd say that loosely tabloid from the eighteen hundreds were constantly doing features on him where who is this kid you can't tell me that those that wish to destroy the line would come in and do something about it because one other thing that I'll leave you with Duke von Baden and Casper 20 21 years old when he passed away looked identical almost like a father and a son. Alright you guys let me know your thoughts your opinions and your conspiracies down in the description box below if you're ever in Germany there is a statue dedicated to Casper Hauser and you can visit his grave if you're from Germany let me know if you've seen this statue this monument or if you know things about this story that I don't know that weren't available in my research. Alright guys I hope you're having a wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye!