A wonderfully haunting illustration of the Goethe poem by multimedia artist Raymond Salvatore Harmon, whose write-up on the Vimeo page is worth quoting in full:

Goethe’s poem of gothic horror has haunted me most of my life. As a child I found the poem in a collection of books at an estate auction. I read it over and over, fascinated by this idea of the fairy realm as dark and ugly, something sinister that we should fear – not the glamour and sparkle of modern fairy tales. A warning about things that haunt old woods and black forests.

The bits and pieces, techniques and layers used to create this film are many. Dozens of forms of manipulation have been brought together, from animation to live action, from drawings to rotoscoping. This is my homage to Starewicz, Svankmajer, and the Quays – their dark dreams have inspired my nightmares, have given birth to a generation who see the eyes in the forest and know that all that is fairy is not light.

For more on the figure of the Erlking, see the Wikipedia. For a decent translation, see Robert Bly’s version, “The Invisible King.”