Bettelwurfgeist. Legend
The legend of the Bettelwurf ghost is told as follows:
After the pious forest brothers, nuns moved into the convent building at St Magdalena; however, not all of them were pious and kind.
Then one day a poor Salzberg miner came to the convent gate and asked for alms for his hungry brood of children. Grumbling, the gatekeeper handed him a piece of rock-hard bread. At that, the poor man was seized by a wild rage and shouted: “You can eat this beggar’s bread yourselves, you misers!” And with a mighty throw, he hurled the bread against the rock face. But bread – whether hard or soft – is a gift from God that must be treated with care. That is why the nun was utterly horrified by this act. She cried out: “You must atone for this. You will find no rest in the grave. Your spirit will have to wander restlessly through this valley."
And so it came to pass. The man has never been seen since. Invisible, he haunts the rock faces of the Halltal, drifting to and fro. In winter he triggers dust avalanches; in summer he sets off mudslides from the crumbly rock. On warm days when the foehn wind blows, one can hear his howling and raging from the crevices of the rocks.
But the nun’s greed was also punished. An earthquake in 1670 severely damaged the convent building, and 19 years later it was completely destroyed by another earthquake. The rugged, steep rock against which the Salzberg miners had thrown their hard bread, the “Bettel”, was called “Bettelwurf” by the locals.
