Tradition: Liechtenstein Mythology
Alternative Names: Keres, The Spirit of Sücca
Category: Ghost
The Myth
Sücca-Keres was once a herdsman who worked on the Sücca alpine pasture on Kulm Mountain in Liechtenstein. When he took the position, he was required to swear an oath promising faithful and honest service to his master. However, Keres broke his oath by secretly stealing cheese and butter and selling them in the village of Triesen. He often walked back and forth near the Guferwald forest while carrying out his activities.
After Keres died, he was buried in Triesen. When people later attempted to dig up his body, three fingers emerged from the earth. His body looked exactly as it had when he was buried, except that it had turned black. Frightened, the people immediately covered the grave again. Soon afterward, nobody wanted to work as a herdsman on the Sücca pasture, because Keres’s ghost haunted the old herdsman’s hut. People travelling from the Malbuntal and Älpelti valleys sometimes saw him looking out of its window, wearing a leather cap and loincloth just as he had when he was alive.
Eventually, a priest was summoned to drive the ghost away. Keres begged to remain on the hilltop, where he could still hear the bells of the Sücca herdsmen and look down upon his father’s estate. The priest allowed him to retreat into a hole on the hilltop, which became known as the Keres Hole. Another version says that two Capuchin monks banished him there. When they asked why he was condemned to wander, Keres replied that it was not the theft that had condemned him, but the broken oath.
Even after his disappearance from the herdsman’s hut, Keres continued to frighten people near the hilltop. Schoolgirls once approached the hut to collect walking sticks left behind by the herdsmen, but a shutter suddenly flew open and a broad-faced man wearing a leather cap and a red breast cloth peered out. Recognizing him as Keres, the girls fled in terror. On another occasion, goats suddenly bolted across the hillside, and their shepherd later saw Keres looking out of the hut’s window. The shepherd thought the animals had sensed the ghost before he did.
The Keres Hole remained a place of fear. When a poor widow’s goat fell into it, a shepherd climbed down on a rope to rescue the animal. Inside, he thought he saw a hand illuminated by a strange light, holding up three fingers as if taking an oath. Terrified, he scrambled out, and the people above covered the hole with chopped wood. Another tale tells of a boy who threw stones into the hole and then ran away in fright, claiming that a man had climbed out. The ghost of Sücca-Keres was believed to remain bound to the place because he had violated the oath he had sworn as a herdsman.
Sources
“Keres.” SAGEN.at – Liechtensteiner Sagen, collected by Otto Seger. Reproduced by SAGEN.at. https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/liechtenstein/seger/keres.html