The Hound of Saint Anne

Nobody knew when the hound first appeared. The elders of Tilff said their grandparents had already spoken of it – a great black dog that roamed the forests around the hill at night. No ordinary dog. This beast was larger than a calf, with a coat so black it seemed to swallow the darkness around it.

But it was its eyes that frightened people most. They glowed like embers in a dying fire – fiery red, with a malevolent light that seemed to look straight through you. Anyone who encountered the hound on the forest path felt the cold pierce their bones, felt their heart pound and their legs refuse to move.

The hound did not bark. It did not growl. It simply stood there, motionless, with those burning eyes, and watched. As if it were waiting. As if it were guarding.

At the start of the seventeenth century the villagers decided that enough was enough. For generations they had lived in fear of the black hound. Children no longer dared play outdoors after dark. Shepherds lost sheep that had strayed too close to the forest. Travellers made detours of hours to avoid that one hill.

The parish priest proposed building a chapel on the spot where the hound was most often seen. A chapel dedicated to Saint Anne, whose intercession would be powerful enough to banish any evil.

The villagers built it together – farmers, smiths, carpenters. They hauled stone from the Ourthe and timber from the forest. On the day of consecration a procession wound through the hills, with candles, incense and hymns. The priest blessed the building and the ground surrounding it.

And it worked. At least, they believed it did. The hound was seen less often. The glowing eyes no longer peered from the undergrowth. The sheep stayed whole. The children played outside again.

But the evil on that hill was not solely of the supernatural kind. In 1777, more than a century after the chapel was built, a grim event took place that proved the darkness in human hearts can be every bit as dangerous as any spectral beast.

At the Ponton d’Ourthe inn, run by the widow Elisabeth Riguel and her niece Thérèse Piéteur, two itinerant merchants stopped for the night. The Schwartz brothers were traders who roamed the countryside hawking their wares. They knocked at the door seeking shelter and a warm meal.

What exactly happened that night was never fully established. But the Schwartz brothers never left Tilff. Their bodies were found days later near the chapel – on the very spot where the black hound had once appeared.

The murder was solved and the perpetrators brought to justice. But for the people of Tilff the incident confirmed what they had always known: that hill was a place where evil lurked, in whatever guise. And the Chapel of Saint Anne, rebuilt in stone in 1851, still stands – a silent guardian against the darkness, whether it walks on four legs or two.