Haunted wells in Greek villages
Greek folk tales
In Greek folklore, every well, especially large ones with underground caverns, has its own ghost.
1. Venia’s Well (from Chios)
As we go from the market to the crossroads, beyond St. Efstratios’ church, adjacent to the wall of Mazagka’s house there is a well cutting off the road; it’s narrow and not very deep, but inside it has caves and archways.
Almost every night at midnight, a man emerges from it, riding a wild horse, and he runs, he runs fast and very noisily around the surrounding streets, and then he returns and falls back in the well. The rider is called Venia.
Whoever drinks from this well goes mad. And that’s why, if wanting to ask someone if they’ve lost their mind, they ask him: “Did you drink from Venia’s well?”
2. The ghosts in the wells (Apeiranthos, Naxos)
Krini well has its own ghost, and it doesn’t always look the same, sometimes it appears as one animal, sometimes as another. And in the well called Karava, the ghost is a cat that weaves.
3. The ghost of Loukki (Astypalaia)
Inside a cave near the village is a well called Loukki. There a ghost comes out at night and chases passers by. This ghost has wings and you can hear them beating when it is washing in the water. Nobody drinks from the water of this well unless they cross themselves first, because otherwise the ghost harms it.
4. The Moros of the well (Zakynthos)
A girl went to the well every day at noon to get water. There on the edge of the well there was frequently a Moros with a pipe and fez, a beautiful Moros, with two big blue eyes. When the Moros saw her, he would take the bucket, fill it, and give it to her.
In time, the girl became a bride. The groom, on finding this out, told her not to go back to that well for water. She wanted to go, because she thought that the Moros would show her where some treasure was buried. One day, seeing the bride going to the well, her husband followed her. When she arrived, he said “Did I not tell you not to come back?” and as he continued to berate her, he disappeared, and shortly afterwards shouting was heard coming from the well. The Moros had thrown him in the well.
The girl was frightened and never went back to the well. That night, she saw him in her sleep. She awoke at dawn, went to the town, and never returned to the village out of fear.
5. The beast in the spout (Suburb of Kardamili municipality in Oetylos)
At the old spout in the ‘Burb [suburb], a beast comes out at night. Many have seen it, and it is a white stag, and in its mouth it holds one of the five spouts of the source.
6. The Drakonera [Dragon-Water] (Lower Souli, Marathon)
In the marsh that is in Lower Souli, [is] a lake called Drakonera and the nearby mountain, is Drakonera mountain. There, slightly above the marsh is a small cave, and a ghost comes out of it. That is why nobody wants to go inside, unless they are many, and well-armed.
Nikolaos Politis, Traditions: Studies on the Life and Language of the Greek People, Athens, Historical Publications, 1904; trans. by Sasha Chaitow © 2024
About these wondertales
In the late 19th century, Greek folklorist and philologist Nikolaos Politis systematised early folklore collection and study in Greece by recruiting teachers, doctors, and priests from around the country and asking them to record the wondertales told in their region, complete with regional dialect. He wanted all possible expressions of traditional folk life: oral tradition (songs, proverbs, blessings, narratives etc), descriptions of social organisation, everyday life (clothing, food, household), professional life (agricultural, animal husbandry, seafaring), religious life, justice, folk philosophy and medicine, magic and superstitions, folk art, dance, and music.
He gathered these artefacts of Greek folk life and applied ethnographic and comparative methods of his day to their study. Politis published comparative studies in relation to other Balkan nations as well as to the myths and histories of antiquity. Though his methods were relatively simplistic and are now outdated, his collections form a valuable corpus of records and have been exhaustively studied by later scholars as the field in Greece became more sophisticated.
In this series of snippets, I aim to translate a handful of his most interesting or amusing stories since they have never been translated into other languages. They are presented as-is, with minimum commentary where it is needed for context. Many of these deserve commentary and analysis; this will form the topics of longer-form article in due course.
Read more about why they’re called wondertales in the first section of my article here.
I loved these ones! Thank you so much!