The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

The Tuntschi refer to the figures made from forest materials that can be found throughout the forest surrounding the town of Görbersdorf. They are an important symbol that speak to The Societal Construction of Gender. 

Wojnicz first encounters a Tuntschi when he is out picking mushrooms with Opitz and Raimund. The local men treat the discovery as a joke; they explain that the local charcoal burners make the Tuntschi due to their long periods of separation from women. Opitz claims that any all-male community would do the same, insisting that it is a fact that men “need” a sexual outlet. Wojnicz, however, is unsettled and disturbed by the figures and his imaginings of the men having sex with them, which foreshadows the revelation of the female aspect of Wojnicz’s own identity. 

The Tuntschi initially symbolize the objectification and domination of women by the male inhabitants of the town. Their intended purpose as lifeless sex objects speaks to how the men seek to oppress the local women through discrimination and violence. Likewise, their placement in the forest situates them in a feminine-coded space, as the local men tell legends of how some of the town’s female inhabitants have fled into the forest and remained there as “feral” beings.

However, the Tuntschi later emerge as a symbol of female rebellion against patriarchal domination toward the novel’s end, when Wojnicz discovers that the men enter a frenzy and make a sacrifice to them each year to placate them. Their sacrificial ritual speaks to the men’s deep-seated anxiety toward female agency and power, while the Tuntschi’s association with the novel’s narrative voice speaks to the defiant resilience of the feminine element that the men have tried to repress.