It was a dark and stormy night ... In Maremma

In a rainy day like those that unfortunately occur lately in Italy, including Tuscany, when I was a little girl and I had to stay at home, my grandmother used to tell fairy tales and legends. For this reason, the ticking of violent rain on the windows is sometimes surface from a trunk of memories baggage of images and stories related to my childhood. Among the legends that my grandmother loved to tell there were some of their traditional Maremma, set in the land of Tuscany that, today sought tourist destination, was once threatened by epidemics and bandits. A past 'stormy' has contributed to the emergence of ghost stories like the one I go now to tell.

It was a dark and stormy night that many years ago when a hunter, lost the prey that he was chasing, is found to seek immediate shelter from the rain that increasingly insistent was breaking down the mountains dell'Uccellina. Foretasting the warmth of a covered the corner jumped before a black cat that remained immobile a fix for a moment that had to seem rather long hunter. He had recently taken over the road when he made a most bizarre encounter of the first, a hooded friar throughout the next passed, no reply greeting to his uncertain but quietly went away without it being felt by the sound of his steps and that the long black robe was moved by the slightest gust of wind or washed by the roar of water.
A shiver traveled back, and as the cold was the fear come to remember the stories of ghosts that hovered around the many scattered towers to the woods of the Maremma as the Tower of San Rabano whose mole stood before his eyes. The hunter was really glad to see a refuge from the storm and he was about to turn a fire that hot when a cheep called his attention and wonder ... a brooder gold and its twelve chicks shine in darkness of the tower.
The man had heard of this animal from his grandmother and he remembered a huge treasure of which would come into possession that he had managed to capture the gold brooder (who knows if his grandmother like mine had warned of the dangers of such a hunt). What could attract prey more our hunter? Right time to imagine what riches awaited him that disappeared in pursuit of litter through pertugi that unfolds inside the tower up to lead it in a cave tetra, illuminated only by the glow of precious gems that fuoriscivano from caskets arranged along the walls while the focus was the golden hen.
But we know each treasure hunt that respects is strewn with obstacles in this case took the form of threatening guardians, as many as The coffers, which began to move towards the hunter hampers any attempt to escape. Among those figures obscure the man recognized the cat and the monk met before and their grip became increasingly tight until managed to earn an opening-legged races and finally raised overwhelmed by fatigue collapsed to the ground.
The morning's awakening to the sun illuminate the forest dell'Uccellina and the night before seemed just a bad nightmare. But once back at home was reflected how he saw the face of a man marked by fear of a real hair had become white and eyes had turned off the shine of youth.