The Demon of the Hartz

The solitudes of the Hartz forest in Germany, but especially the
mountains called Blockberg, or rather Blockenberg, are the chosen
scene for tales of witches, demons, and apparitions. The occupation of
the inhabitants, who are either miners or foresters, is of a kind that
renders them peculiarly prone to superstition, and the natural
phenomena which they witness in pursuit of their solitary or
subterraneous profession, are often set down by them to the
interference of goblins or the power of magic. Among the various
legends current in that wild country, there is a favourite one which
supposes the Hartz to be haunted by a sort of tutelar demon, in the
shape of a wild man, of huge stature, his head wreathed with oak
leaves, and his middle tinctured with the same, bearing in his hand a
pine torn up by the root. It is certain that many persons profess to
have seen such a man traversing, with huge strides, the opposite ridge
of a mountain, when divided from it by a narrow glen; and indeed the
fact of the apparition is so generally admitted, that modern
scepticism has only found refuge by ascribing it to optical deception.