COLOGNE, Germany: A retired tax auditor from Düsseldorf has spent the past six weeks outside Cologne’s chocolate museum holding a hand-lettered sign warning that the Antichrist is on display inside, in milk chocolate. Several Cologne residents have noted that he is from Düsseldorf, which they say explains a great deal.
He means a vintage tin mold and the figure cast from it: a horned, bearded man holding a tub, with the expression of someone who is about to ask whether you’ve been good, and already knows.
The museum says the figure is Krampus, the horned companion of St. Nicholas who, in Alpine tradition, comes for badly behaved children in early December, and who has been sold in chocolate form for generations.
The auditor does not accept this. He has prepared a binder. His evidence includes the horns and the tub, which he believes is for collecting souls. His strongest point, he says, is that the figure is hollow. Chocolate figures of this kind are always hollow, which the museum has explained to him twice. He considers this a confession and has underlined it in red.
Attendance has risen by about a fifth since he arrived. The gift shop sold out of chocolate Krampus figures in October, nearly two months earlier than usual, mostly to visitors who said they had come because of the sign.
Last Tuesday, staff saw him in the gift shop buying one. He told the cashier it was for evidence. By the time he reached the tram stop, it was gone.
FTN BULLETIN: This report is fiction.