The braids of the horses

Pianelleto is a village of the Val Noveglia, which is slowly becoming a ghost town in our country. Keeping it alive are just three people – two women and a man – and the youngest one is 80 years old. They grew up in those mountains and decided to never leave. One of the ancient women told me the story of a mysterious fact happened in these places.

They say that the elves, who were living in the nearby woods, were coming at night in the stables of the village, to make braids to the tails of the horses. In the morning, the owners found this trick and they had to spend a lot of time untying the braids. Some nights later, the elves, who are very spiteful, kicked the unlucky horses. The farmers, desperate about the situation, decided to ask the priest of the village for a blessing with the holy water. After the blessing of the priest, the horses had their tails braided never again.  

The weird people of Lavacchielli

In the Val Noveglia there is a village abandoned since long time. It is Lavacchielli. Near its falls, some people says to have heard many times an old man praying. They say that more than a century ago a man, quite old already, went to live as an hermit in the stoned houses of Lavacchielli, but he seemed like disappearing in the beginning of the 1900s: no one have ever heard about him anymore, nor the body was found.

Lavacchielli is a village of mysterious people… They say, actually, that long time ago, there was a dowser, who could separate the waters of the Rio della Fontana and the Lite. It seems that his spirit never left those places and that it appears suddenly in front of the people who enter the woods for some excursion…