A certain nobleman was a strzyga, although absolutely no one knew of it. One day, the nobleman fell ill and died, so he was carried away to be buried like a priest, near the door of the church. But thereafter, something began to frighten people in the church, shattering windows at night, breaking candles, and knocking over candlesticks, but no one knew the cause of these terrors. Then the wife of the nobleman who was buried there announced that she would give thirty coins and one hundred ells of bleached linen to whoever discovered what had caused the damage in the church. For a long while, no one was daring enough to volunteer, but then a girl came forward who resolved to spend a whole night in the church to find out. She took some blessed chalk and a distaff [of flax] with her, but since she was afraid to sit in the nave, she climbed up to the choir loft, drew a circle around herself with the blessed chalk, sat down, lit a candle, said a prayer, and began to spin.
At twelve o’clock that night, the nobleman buried near the door came out of his coffin and started to walk around the church. When he spotted her up in the choir loft, he began to scream: ‘You so-and-so! You’ve come here to spy on me for thirty coins and one hundred ells of linen?! So, that’s how you are! Just you wait; I’ll show you!‘
With those words, he went to the church door, which opened by itself, then walked out into the graveyard and started to dig up coffins. He had already dug up several and, as soon as he pulled them out of the ground, he would carry them into the church and pile them up under the choir loft. He was just one coffin short of being able to climb up to the girl, but then the cock crowed, and it was time for the nobleman who was a strzyga to return to his coffin. Then he began carrying the coffins back to the graveyard to bury them as fast as he could, hurrying because his time was running out. Once he had buried all the coffins, each in its place, he walked up to the church door and vanished. The girl, who knew how to read and write, and had a piece of paper, pen, and ink with her, wrote all this down as she sat in the choir loft, but she was so terrified by it that she died up there.
The priest came to the church in the morning, as did people, who were curious what had happened to the girl, wishing to hear her story, but they saw she was dead. Then the priest found what the girl had written and read it out to everyone. The girl was carried away and given a decent burial in the graveyard, then they dug up the nobleman from his grave, chopped off his head, and placed it between his feet. Thenceforth, he no longer frightened anyone or caused damage in the church.
Source: Kornel Kozłowski, Lud: pieśni, podania, baśnie zwyczaje i przesądy ludu z Mazowsza Czerskiego… (Warszawa, 1869), pp. 350, 375–376.
2. Socks & cocks