Wonderful Sausage

The Wonderful Sausage is a scary story for kids about a butcher in New Orleans who murders people, grinds them up and sells them as meat. It is based on a supposedly true story recounted in Gumbo Ya-Ya as “The Ghost Who Walked The Sausage Factory”. A different version of this story appeared in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz.

Many years ago, in New Orleans, there was a German man named Hans Muller who owned a sausage factory. The couple were very hard-working, but Muller was growing tired of his wife. She had become old and wrinkled before her time and he no longer found her attractive. He started having an affair with a younger woman.

One dark night, Hans Muller had an argument with his wife. He lost his temper and killed her, stuffing her body into the big meat grinder in the factory. Then he ground her up into sausage meat until nothing of her was left. To keep his evil deed a secret, he told everyone that his wife had left town.

Muller mixed his new sausage meat with ground pork and then seasoned it with salt and pepper. He added some sage and thyme and a bit of garlic and, to give it a special flavor, he smoked it in his smokehouse for a while. He called his recipe “Muller’s Wonderful Sausage” and sold it as a delicacy.

There was such a demand for this wonderful sausage that Muller was sold out before he knew it. He started keeping an eye out for people who he could turn into tasty sausage meat.

One day a nice, plump woman came into his shop. Muller knocked her out and ground her up. Another time, a fat little boy came by. Muller picked him up, shoved him into the grinder and turned him into minced meat. One by one, all of the children in the town began to go missing and so did their kittens and puppies. Nobody had any idea of what was really going on.

Things went on like that for years, but Muller started getting lazy. Customers began complaining about finding bits of bone and cloth in their sausages. One woman even bit into her sausage and found a gold wedding ring. His girlfriend heard the gossip and broke up with him, telling him she didn’t want to see him anymore.

One night, Muller was working in the factory when he heard a mysterious Thump! Thump! Thump! coming from his boiling vat. Then, as he watched in horror and disbelief, the bloody ghost of his wife emerged from the grinder. Her head was crushed to a pulp, her brains were dripping down her face and her eyesballs were hanging out.

Muller started shrieking in terror and fled from the place. The neighbors heard his screams and wanted to know what was going on. When they went into the factory, they found a stack of dead bodies piled up in the storage room, just waiting to be ground up into meat. When people saw this, they realized what had become of all the missing children and puppies and kittens.

The neighbors called the police and when they arrived, they found Hans Muller cowering in his factory, screaming and crying and waving a big butcher knife around. He was raving like a maniac and kept saying his wife was coming out of the sausage grinder to get him.

Muller spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum and eventually committed suicide. The ghost of his wife was never seen again and neither was his wonderful sausage meat.