My aunts have told me this story so many times. They are quite old now, and I have not seen them in a long time. Still, I can hear their voices when I think about it, especially when they get to the scary parts.
So. My family, especially my mother, used to live in a big farmhouse in a region that is almost 500 km from where I live now, which is about 311 miles for those of you who use miles. Basically very far. I honestly think we will never go back. That area is far away, and it has almost no tourist value, so there is no “easy” reason to visit, and life happens.
The last time the farmhouse was visited, it was my mother and my aunts together. They went because they were invited to the wedding of some cousins who never emigrated, unlike them. And my aunts and my mother told me they got emotional, because when they arrived, the house was in bad shape. Abandoned, neglected, almost sad.
A place that used to be full of people, now empty.
This is not the house of the story, but it can give you an idea of a typical abandoned ruined farm in rural Italy.
It was a dark and stormy night. I know, I know. That is how many stories start. There is some famous author who wrote that line first, I cannot remember who, and there is a name for that kind of cliché, I cannot remember that either, but everyone uses it, and I am using it too because it fits perfectly here...
It was dark, it was stormy (maybe blizzard), and it was freezing. The kind of cold we call “dog cold” in Italy, meaning it gets into your bones. The house was big, but it was cold. No heating. My aunts always say that in winter, at dinner and in the morning for breakfast, everyone gathered close to the fireplace, and only after that they went to their rooms, which had no radiators at the time.
Now, outside there were the stables. The animals slept there standing up: sheep, mares, and donkeys. And that night, someone had to go out to check on them.
Maybe there was a loud noise, maybe it was one of the animals making a horrible sound. My aunts tell it slightly differently each time, but the point is: the family heard something that did not feel normal. So they had to pick someone to go. It was probably my aunts’ uncle, or my aunts’ father, something like that. One of the men of the house.
He took the lantern and went out into the dark, with the wind and the cold and the storm. He reached the first stable and checked. Nothing. Which was normal, because that one was usually just… well, manure.
He went to the second one. That one was empty too, because it was open and too exposed. Animals could not survive there in winter. So again, he saw nothing special. Just straw, some wood.
Then he reached the next stable. The one where the animals were.
And that is where things changed.
He said he saw all the animals with white pupils. Not just eyes reflecting light like animals do at night. He said it was like their pupils were white. And they looked at him in a way that made his blood turn cold. Some sheep were bleating at him, the mares were making noise, and he felt like they were not “his” animals anymore. He used a phrase that my aunts always repeat because it scared them: he said they looked like they were not of this world.
He ran back to the house.
When he came back into the warm room, everyone saw his face. Completely pale. He could not speak properly. He was trying to explain, but the words were not coming out, like he was blocked. It took him time to say what he saw.
Two other men, and I do not know exactly who they were, maybe relatives, maybe workers, did not even wait for the full explanation. They grabbed their coats and went out immediately, following the direction the uncle was pointing to, toward the stables.
And when they arrived, everything was normal.
Animals normal. Eyes normal. No strange behavior. Nothing.
So of course, people made fun of the uncle. They teased him. They said it was the storm, the cold, his imagination. But he was sure. He insisted he did not imagine it. And my aunts say he stayed silent for a couple of days, because everyone was laughing and he felt humiliated, but also because he was genuinely shaken.
Then, a couple of nights later, something happened again.
Another night, cold and long. And again, those strange sounds. My aunts describe them as moans, almost human but not really, like something suffering, but also like something calling. And then, in the morning, they found two sheep on the ground.
Their throats were cut. Blood everywhere. Not a normal animal attack. Not wolves. They were sure about that. Because wolves do not use blades. And because if wolves kill, they usually eat. Here, the meat was not the point. The blood was.
At that point they called the major and the major made sure the police also came. An investigation started. And from the village, the next morning, people came too. Some to help, some just to look, some because they were curious, some because they wanted to show solidarity.
People said it was not the first time. Similar things had happened before in the village. Not sheep, maybe cats, maybe other small animals. Animals found dead, in a strange way, like the life had been taken out of them.
At first it was just one person saying it quietly, almost like a joke, like a superstition people keep around “just in case”. Then more people repeated it, and suddenly it did not sound like a joke anymore.
“Xe roba de strie.”
“They are back. The strie.”
Witch work.
My aunts explained it to me in their own way. They said that in that area, a long time ago, witches were hunted and persecuted. Women who lived “too free”, women who knew herbs, women who stayed close to the woods and water, women people did not understand. Many died there, or at least that is what people say. And because of that, there were always rumors that their spirits never really left, and that they still came back to the farms.
My aunts also said that, in the past, witches were accused of sacrificing animals. I do not know the details, and I am not even sure what is history and what is village imagination mixed together. But that night, with two sheep found with their throats cut and blood everywhere, the village found an explanation that felt “right” to them. Not comforting, but right.
I always try to be rational with stories like this. I always want more details. I want to know what the police did. I want to know if they found the culprit. I want to know if the mystery was solved, if there was some hidden, normal reason behind it.
But my aunts say the police did what police usually do in small places when there is nothing clear to hold onto. They came, they asked questions, they looked around, they wrote things down, and then in the end they archived the case. No culprit. No proof. No conclusion that makes you feel safe.
They also say a priest came to bless the farm.
The villagers, according to my aunts, did not really suspect anyone else. Not a neighbor, not a passing stranger, not a jealous person with a knife. They kept coming back to the same idea. The spirits of those women, the ones who had loved nature and freedom, the ones who had been punished for it. Like the village was admitting something, without admitting it clearly. Like, “we did not give them a chance back then, and now they are taking something back.”
Then something happened that, for me, takes the story to another level.
A few days later, the man who went to the stable that first night died of a stroke.
Of course, strokes happen. People die. Especially in hard lives, in cold winters, with stress and work and no doctors close by. But still. In a story like this, that detail lands heavy. My aunts always say it in a lower voice, as if saying it too loudly could invite something.
After that, some of the farm servants said they heard things in the house. A woman’s voice, not fully clear, not like a conversation, more like a whisper sliding through the hallway at night. An unworldly voice. The kind of sound that makes you sit up in bed and hold your breath, because you do not want to confirm it is real.
And I know this is disappointing, but this is also where the story ends.
Nothing else that big happened after. No more animals found like that, at least not in my aunts’ version. No dramatic final scene where someone sees the witch’s face.
Life continued, but the feeling stayed.
The stable was no longer “just a stable”. The house was no longer “just a house”.
Many years later, the farmhouse was abandoned anyway.
Not because of strie, but because people left the countryside for the city, like it happened everywhere. Families became less communal. The old way of living around one fire disappeared. And the big house that had once held so many voices slowly became a quiet building with broken shutters.
So that is it, basically.
I am sorry I do not have more, this story leaves you with questions, and maybe this is why it stayed alive in my family.
What really happened at the farm and in the village? If it was witches’ spirits, did they satisfy some hunger for blood? Was it revenge, and did it involve the man who went to check the stable? Was it just a coincidence, mixed with fear, mixed with a night of cold and suggestion? Was it a witness of some kind of collective madness?
I honestly do not know, but there is actually one last thing I can add.
Remember I told you that my mother and my aunts went back to visit the farm, for the last time, for that wedding? They had always described that place with pride. Hard life, yes, missing comforts, yes, but also a beautiful place to grow up. A big house, a big kitchen, a big fire, animals, work, family.
My mother never told me, but I could hear her thoughts: “If only we kept that farm”. It’s becoming trendy to have a farm these days.
Anyway, as I already said, when they went back, the house shocked them because it was abandoned and ruined. That already hurt.
But what really brought the feeling back was something small.
They walked to the stables, almost like they were pulled there. The doors were half broken, the wood swollen from years of rain.
Inside, it smelled like dust and old hay.
And above the main stable door, still nailed there after all those years, there was an iron horseshoe.
Not weird by itself. Lots of farms have horseshoes. But my aunts said this one was placed in a very specific way, not like decoration, not like “good luck”. It looked like protection. Like someone put it there on purpose, after that winter, and never removed it.
Then my mother noticed something else, in the corner near the threshold.
A thin, white line.
Salt.
A line of salt that should have been gone long ago. Washed away, blown away, turned grey, anything.
But it was there.
And my aunts said that in that moment they just looked at each other, and without saying it out loud, they all thought the same.
“Xe roba de strie.”
They left the stables, closed the gate as gently as they could, and they did not go back inside the house ever again.
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