Hawk Mountain Hermit Meets Gruesome Demise

We found this article on Reading Eagle.com.
Thought to share with all.

By Charles J. Adams III
Reading Eagle


Kempton, PA -
Matthias Berger was an original, and an enigma. He was fluent in German and English, known to be skilled in old German calligraphy, and was a fine carpenter.


Berger (or Burger, or Berg, as he was variously called) was a solid Democrat and a devout Catholic. He was a voracious reader and, by all accounts, hardly anti-social.


But, Matthias Berger has gone down in Berks County history as "The Hermit of Hawk Mountain."


The northern tier of Berks County was rugged and remote in the mid-19th century, and tales of recluses and hermits in the region often surfaced in the pages of the local press. Even for a hermit, Matthias Berger’s lifestyle was nothing extraordinary. But, his ultimate fate is what entered him into the files of Berks the Bizarre.


In the springtime of 1879, the Kempton correspondent of the Reading Weekly Eagle, a northern Berks minister, and an Albany Township resident familiar with the tough terrain ventured to visit with "the aged anchorite in the wilds of the Blue Mountain," as the writer called Berger.


G.C. Linz went there for the story. the Rev. J.W. Bachman went to offer spiritual greetings. D.B. Berk guided them as only he knew the way from Eckville up an old and abandoned road to the place Berger called home.


The road was not suited for horses or carriages. It was a 45-minute hike from the foot of the mountain to the hermitage. Those who climbed the hill early in the morning weren’t sure what kind of reception they would get.


Yet, each of them knew that Matthias was, by all accounts, a gentle and congenial man. When they reached the roughly 60-feet square clearing in the woods and called on the mud hut, they found Matthias Berger quite eager for the visit.


His hovel was about 7 feet square, and as many feet high. A wood stove, a bunk just large enough to accommodate Matthias’ 5-foot-6-inch frame, and a small chest were all the furnishings. Books and various papers were filed in every crack and crevice of the structure, and some tools and utensils were grouped in one corner.


As the visitors marveled at Matthias’ humble abode, their host told them how he had left his native Germany in 1846 after both of his parents had died, how he had hoped to ply his trade as a carpenter in America, and how he found no such work here.


He was unclear about the specific reason he decided to shun society and live a solitary existence on that particular mountain, but he did know and tell that it was Aug. 5, 1861, when he arrived at what would become his home in the thick mountainside forest.


Matthias baked his own breads, gathered fruits and herbs from the woods, and carted fresh water from the nearest spring, a quarter-mile away.


He said he lived in strict accordance with the Catholic faith and solicited the favors of neighbors in the valley to take him to Reading four times a year to worship in St. Paul’s church. He made friends in the city (including Michael Krug of North Ninth Street, with whom he stayed on his visits), but was quick to return to his mountain because the noise in the city gave him headaches.


Matthias also ventured to the polls in Kempton every election day to vote — always for the Democrats. He would occasionally hike down to the valley and help farmers during plantings and harvests. They would pay him in grains and small amounts of cash. He said he survived well on the mountain with those seasonal bounties.


In his mid 60s at the time of the visit, Matthias said he had never been seriously ill but felt that his days were numbered. In a cryptic claim to his visitors, the hermit said it was once revealed to him that he would die in Reading in the Easter week of 1881.


Matthias Berger lived through that, and several more Easter weeks. No one could have revealed to him when — and how — he would meet his destiny.


On July 17, 1890, the stark headline, "Hermit Found Murdered" appeared on the front page of the Eagle. Indeed, it was Berger who was the victim of a senseless, heinous crime.


By that time, many locals in the northeast corner of Berks had come to know him and paid regular visits to what had become an almost legendary homestead. In late June 1890, concern began to mount that Berger may be in trouble. He had not been seen in the valley, or by those who passed near his hut, for about two weeks.


A search party was formed, and on July 16, Harry Mohl found Berger’s battered body on a trail about a mile from his shanty.


The hermit’s white hair was spattered with blood. His shoes had been stolen, and the pockets of his raggedy coat were turned inside out. His body was badly decomposed, leading investigators to believe he had been dead for at least a week.


When the searchers reached the hermit’s clearing in the woods, they found total chaos. The inside of his hut was ravaged and ransacked, his clothing and books were scattered about, and all that seemed to be untouched by the vandals was a crucifix.


He had been seen in Drehersville a few weeks before with $50 in gold pieces, and those coins were not found. Just 14 cents remained in his pocket, and 16 more cents were found just outside the door of the hut.


Investigators surmised that the killers may have seen him with the gold pieces and made their way to his hut to rob him. Based on evidence at the scene, there was a violent struggle, which the 77-year old Berger lost.


The horrible crime drew attention across the region (and in Philadelphia and New York). Peter Burkey, a Hamburg undertaker, transported the body from the mountain and the Rev. George Bornemann (later the founder of St. Joseph Hospital and Gethsemane Cemetery) of St. Paul’s took charge of the burial services in Reading’s "German Cemetery."


It was reported that despite his lonely existence, Berger had somehow accumulated more than $1,600 in a bank account in Reading.


That money, if it ever existed, was not in the account. And Berger’s murderers were never found.


The lonely life and mysterious death of Matthias Berger quickly became the stuff of folklore in northern Berks. It wasn’t long after his demise that folks claimed they saw his ghost gliding through the trees and along the trails of the eastern slope of what we now call Hawk Mountain.


And, to this day, it is said that the old hermit’s spirit indeed remains within those trees and along those trails.


Charles J. Adams III is the author of more than 30 books on ghosts and hauntings in the mid-Atlantic states. He is currently seeking stories about haunted places in Columbia, Northumberland, and Montour counties. Contact him at gohaunting@aol.com