Many, many years ago, there was something unclean about the little woodland at Winkästeig and Pfi, near Muolen. Not far from Risershus lived the Holz-Nann; she spent more time in the forest than at home. And she caused a great deal of mischief there. She would often bewitch children so that they could not find their way out of the wood again until it was dark night. More than one man, too, would suddenly be unable to go any farther, and he himself would not know why.
The neighbours complained, their cows were bewitched; in short, everyone feared her. One day, music was being played at the inn in Risershus, and the Holz-Nann came right out of her little house because of it. Then she took the crazy notion that she wanted to hang herself from a thread. She tried it, and indeed it succeeded. One evening she was buried up in the forest. Soon afterwards, people began to say that the Holz-Nann haunted the wood.
Now once a carpenter from Häggenschwil was on his way home from Muolen through the forest. Mischievously he called out: “Holz-Nann, come! Come and fetch me!”
When he was soon almost home, he noticed that his black chalk-line reel had come open inside his sack. He followed the line back, and in the forest he saw that it had fallen out at the very place where he had called to the Holz-Nann. With a stick he dug into the ground and saw that the Holz-Nann was buried there. He turned deathly pale, fell down, and was a corpse.
In the same forest there were also Steiwörfer, that is, stone-throwers. Whenever someone went through the forest, they threw stones at people; but no one was ever struck.
G. Kägi
Popular tradition says that witches can even hang themselves from a “Spinnmuggefade,” that is, from a thread as fine as a spider’s filament.
Oral tradition