The Stone of the Seven Witches

A stone, larger than a house, lay half in the earth in a meadow between Jevoumont and Hodbomont. The farmers wished to move it - it blocked their ploughs and made the field useless. But no animal and no man could ever move it from its place.

The judges of Franchimont had condemned seven women for witchcraft. These seven witches were to burn. But before their execution they were offered an alternative: "Move this stone to Tancremont in two nights, and you shall be freed."

The seven witches agreed. That night they gathered round the stone and began their rituals. Their voices called in dark languages. They summoned the Devil himself. And the Devil came, with eyes like fire and a voice like thunder.

"I will move the stone," said the Devil. His hands seized the stone. The stone began to rise from the earth with a sound like an earthquake. His power pulled the stone upward, and in the first night he bore the stone across fields and streams.

But in the village of Les Heidi, beyond the Wayot stream, lived a watchful farmer. He saw the darkness of that night. He heard the unnatural movement. He knew what was happening.

Before the dawn announced itself, he took his rooster. With all his strength he hurled the rooster into the air. And the rooster cried his call, as roosters do at the break of day. The Devil, panicked by the sound of white daylight, lost his grip. The stone tumbled down near Les Heidi.

On the second night the seven witches tried again. But a farmer, wiser yet than the first, had stationed himself secretly before the stone with a crucifix. When the Devil again reached his hands toward the stone, he saw the cross in a crack of the rock. His scream was dreadful - a sound that froze all creatures ten kilometers around in terror. He fled.

The stone remained where it lay. The seven witches - without their master - were led to the stake. At the place where they were burned, the judges placed the stone, rolled it slowly over the ashes like a gravestone of the condemned.

Until around 1950, when road construction destroyed the stone, it lay there - a testament to the evil that was driven away. But to this day, the old people of Theux say, you can feel where it lay between Jevoumont and Hodbomont - a coldness in the air, a coldness that comes only from devilish things.