Krampus Stories: The Legend and Three Christmas Tales

Who Is Krampus? The Legend

In parts of Austria, southern Germany, South Tyrol and neighboring Alpine regions, St. Nicholas does not travel alone. On the evening of December 5, known as Krampusnacht, he visits children with a companion: Krampus, a shaggy, horned creature with a long red tongue, cloven hooves and rattling chains. St. Nicholas rewards good children; Krampus deals with the rest.

In the old stories, Krampus swats misbehaving children with a bundle of birch switches and, in the most frightening versions, stuffs them into a sack or basket and carries them away. His exact origins are debated. Many folklorists see him as a blend of pre-Christian Alpine winter figures and the Christian tradition of St. Nicholas’s companions, but the evidence for older pagan roots is uncertain.

Traditions today: Krampus parades, called Krampusläufe, are held in many Alpine towns in late November and early December, with performers in elaborate hand-carved masks and fur costumes. Illustrated Krampus greeting cards became popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the 2015 horror comedy film Krampus helped spread the figure far beyond the Alps.

Story 1: The List on the Fridge

Every year, Oma pinned two lists to the refrigerator on the first of December. One said GOOD in neat handwriting. The other said NOT YET. Tobias was eleven and too old to believe in it, but he still checked which list his name was on. This year it was on neither.

He asked his grandmother why. She took the lists down without answering and put them in the stove. That night, the bells began. Not sleigh bells; heavier, duller, like a cow bell dragged through snow. They stopped outside the house. Something with hooves climbed the porch steps slowly, one, two, three, and stood at the door.

Oma did not open it. She sat in the hall in her coat, holding a bundle of birch twigs tied with red ribbon, and spoke through the door in the old dialect Tobias had never learned. The thing outside answered. Its voice was low and patient. When it laughed, the glass in the front door frosted over from the outside.

In the morning there were hoofprints on the porch and a third list on the refrigerator, written in an unfamiliar, spiky hand. It had only one name on it: Oma’s. Beneath her name, someone had added: Paid in full. She smiled when she saw it, and for the rest of the winter she would not tell Tobias what she had promised, or what she had been carrying in the basket the year she was eleven.

Story 2: The Mask Carver

Every Krampus mask in the valley was carved by Herr Brandl, and every one was different. People drove for hours to buy them: pine faces with real goat horns, painted teeth, eyes that seemed to follow you across the workshop. Lena was his apprentice the winter he finished his last one.

“This one is for the parade,” he said, setting it on the bench. It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen, and the most alive. “Whoever wears it walks at the back. Always at the back.” Lena asked why. He said that the mask chooses the walker, not the other way around, and that it would only be worn once.

On the night of the Krampuslauf, thirty Krampuses ran through the square, ringing their bells and chasing screaming teenagers. Lena counted them from the bakery steps. Thirty-one. The last one walked slowly, at the back, in Herr Brandl’s mask. None of the other runners had seen him put it on.

The next morning Herr Brandl did not open the workshop. The mask was back on his bench, and his chair was empty. Lena kept the shop for him through the winter. She never wore the mask. But every December, on the fifth, she finds it on the bench facing the door, and she counts the runners in the parade twice.

Story 3: The Sack by the Fire

The holiday cabin came with an odd decoration: an empty burlap sack hanging on a hook by the fireplace, so old that the cloth had gone almost black. The owner’s note said, Please do not take down the sack. It belongs to the house.

Daniel’s two kids found it funny. They had been fighting all week, and on the night of December 5 they shouted at each other until their father sent them to bed. Around midnight, Daniel woke to the sound of bells somewhere in the trees and a slow, heavy step crossing the living room.

He went downstairs. The fire had burned low. The sack on the hook was full now, round and heavy, and it moved, just slightly, as if something inside were breathing. Daniel’s heart stopped. He ran upstairs to the children’s room and found them both asleep, safe, holding hands for the first time all week.

When he came back down, the sack was empty again and hanging still. On the hearth lay two small bundles of birch twigs tied with red ribbon, one for each child, and a third, much larger, laid deliberately across his own boots. Daniel was the one who had shouted loudest that evening. He did not sleep again until the bells had gone.

How to Tell a Krampus Story

Krampus stories are traditionally told in December, often on the evening of December 5. They work best with a rule and a reckoning: someone has behaved badly, a warning is given, and Krampus arrives to settle the account. The bells are your best sound effect. Ring a bell softly, offstage, before the creature appears, and let your listeners imagine the rest.

Keep the tone right for your audience. In many Alpine homes, Krampus is a figure of fun as much as fear, and young children usually meet him in a friendly form. The three stories above are written for teens and adults. For more seasonal reading, try our Halloween poems in October, or the campfire scary stories any time of year.

Krampus Stories — FAQ