The Vallins of Spjute

The grandfather of old Vallin in Spjute was from Ullånger. He was a quite unusually godless person, according to what is told. When he was dead and lay for a while in a chamber, the maid came into the death room on some errand. Then the dead man sat up and read a verse from the old hymn book, which begins: “O eternity, your length truly frightens me, which has a beginning but never an end.” Then he lay down again and was as dead and cold as before. That happened sometime in the late 1700s. From him descended these Vallins, who ran the old inn in Spjute, which has been moved to the museum in Härnösand. There has always been a lot of mischief at that farm. A son in the house was driving home late one dark evening. Then it shone so brightly from all the windows in the farm that he was absolutely sure that important guests had arrived at the farm, but when he came closer, all the lights went out at once. It was just an apparition. Another time there was a shoemaker who rented a room at the farm. In his room, there were constantly so many large rats. One evening he took a revolver and shot at one of the rats, but he never did that again, for the rat transformed before his eyes into a pig. But all this happened a long time ago.