Real Women of Gaming

Sam Joseph, aka ThanaVonHel, writes about everything paranormal from her lifelong experiences and learning. She felt that she could write something about it since she has plenty of information that she can share.

 Do we have nightmares? Yes, we always do.

I was born and grew up within the Pennsylvania Dutch culture. Let me tell you a little bit about them first to help make things sense to you to understand about them better. 

(Source: https://www.padutchcompanion.com)

The Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) were the people that escaped from religious persecution, and those who wanted to have a safer and more tolerable environment. The land that was bought by William Penn and he made it a safe place for them to stay within themselves for who they were. The Thirty’s Years War forced them to find passage to America but how? They sold themselves.

Yes, that is true that about three-fourths of the population, were called the Redemptioners, sold themselves to just get to where they could be safe under a several years of indentured servitude contracts. They were put on plantations or made to perform other work to pay off the costs that the sponsor had paid or shipping company which had advanced the cost of their voyage.  The first Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants were mainly farmers, lumber workers, and craftsmen. I’m one of the many descendants from this group that arrived on a couple of ships called Concord (in 1683) and John and William (in 1732).

          Anyway, you get the gist of who they were. I grew up being told that I must be careful to go around the town’s cemetery because some of these indentured servants, who practiced the Braucherei which was literally hexers, had conjured an interesting entity, as I would call it, because it was perceived either the spiritual form of a witch, or a spirit sent by them to cause harm. Another term for this is a bedgoblin, the German version of creature that literally gives you nightmares.

(Source: https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Trotterkopf)

   They were called the Trotterhead (Trotterkopf). It was explained in a book called “Long Lost Friend” by John G. Hohman. There is a possible another title that is revised for this one; “The Long Forgotten Friend”. It was written in the early 1800s and was published in German in 1820 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. It was then translated into English in 1856; There are different editions out there, so I don’t know which one to use to describe this enthralling creature.

(Source: Amazon.com ; https://www.amazon.com/POW-WOWS-Long-Lost-Friend/dp/0244222509)

   I was told about the Trotterhead because when I was staying over at my grandmother’s house for the weekend, and she was very concerned when I woke up breathing very heavily like something or even someone was sitting on my chest. She had called the pow-pow doctor that night, and I didn’t completely get all what he said because I am a Deaf person who uses American Sign Language mainly and I solely wrote a lot with my grandmother.

Then I went back asleep because I didn’t want to stay awake which was not the issue for her and the pow-pow doctor. Then in the morning, my grandmother had this whole page that wrote out about what happened while I was asleep. That was when I first heard about the Trotterhead. As I read what she wrote with her beautiful and delicate cursive handwriting, the reason why they were called the Trotterhead is because of the stomping on our chests if we are not protected while sleeping. When I finished the page, she gave me the book I had mentioned above, and it made complete sense. There was a protection spell that the pow-pow doctor cast to tell the Trotterhead to stay away from the property forever.

My grandmother explained that the Pennsylvania Dutch word, The Trotterhead is the English version of the “Trotterkopf” so the Kopf is the suffix of “head”. That leads to some versions of a nightmare such as stomping around in the head while you sleep and having a sit down on your chest because they were waiting for another entity, called the Nachtmahr (literally translated as a nightmare), to join this creature to make things worse. It also affects the livestock according to the myth. Maybe is that why some horses have witch knots in their manes to be protected?

This is something unheard of that I wanted to share to start the SPOOKY SEASON!