The Bloody Lady of Valtoch

Northwest of the village there once stood an isolated farmstead called Valtoch. Tradition held that its name came from the German Waldhof, meaning a forest farm. Far from human paths, surrounded by woods and silence, the solitary holding became the setting of one of the darkest local legends.

It tells of a woman whom people began to call the bloody lady of Valtoch.

No one today knows what really happened in her house. The legend claims, however, that she went mad and murdered her two daughters with her own hands. Yet that was not the end of the terrible deed.

According to the old tale, she bathed in their blood.

The legend does not explain why she did something so dreadful. Perhaps she believed some strange superstition; perhaps she had lost her mind. All that is certain within the tale is that from the moment the girls died, she never found peace again.

She tried to escape her past.

She took refuge at the isolated Valtoch farm, far from people and places that reminded her of her crime. But she could not hide from her own conscience.

At night, she supposedly heard voices.

Perhaps the crying of her dead daughters. Perhaps only the wind passing through the trees. The longer she lived alone, however, the more she felt that something was watching her.

Her remorse eventually drove her to one final, desperate decision.

She drowned herself.

But according to legend, even death brought her no release.

After dark a female figure began to appear around Valtoch. Her clothes and body were said to be stained with blood, and people believed she was the soul of a woman unable to free herself of her guilt even after death.

The apparition had its route.

On dark nights it emerged from the farmstead and slowly walked along a long avenue of trees. It did not run or pursue anyone. It merely moved silently between the trees, as if repeating the last journey of its life again and again.

The avenue led to a crossroads where an old linden tree grew.

There the bloody lady always stopped.

A bench stood beneath the tree. The ghost supposedly sat on it and rested motionless for a while. Anyone seeing it from a distance might at first think an ordinary woman was sitting there.

Only on coming closer would they see the bloodstained figure and a dead woman's pale face.

Then the apparition rose and vanished as silently as it had appeared.

The following night its journey might begin again.

The legend of Valtoch's bloody lady is therefore more than a story of murder and death. Above all, it is a tale of guilt from which, according to old legends, no escape was possible even beyond life.

The isolated Valtoch holding has long since lost its former significance. Yet in the legend there remains a long avenue, an old linden tree and a bench on which, at night, a woman is said to rest, vainly seeking peace for a crime that was not forgiven even after her death.