The grey kallikanjaroi of Katavolos.
My grandma lived in the tiny village of Katavolos in northern Corfu during the Nazi occupation. Unlike the Italians before them, the Nazis were a bunch of completely heartless, humorless people, who sneered at the Greek villagers in Corfu and treated them like dirt.
So there's this myth from the middle ages where there's supposedly a World Tree under the surface of the Earth, sort of like the Norse Yggdrasil. There's all sorts of kallikanjaroi (sort of goblins) chopping and sawing its roots all year long, trying to make it fall. Once they succeed, goodbye surface world, because the spells keeping them underground stem from the health of the World Tree. Only thing that stops them is that each Christmas Eve they have weakened the Tree's roots so much that the spells break down and they can finally climb to the surface, but by the time it's Christmas the Tree's roots have healed enough to start the spells again, so the kallikanjaroi run back down because they fear the sun, and by the time they get down below the surface the roots have completely healed, so the kallikanjaroi have to start the ordeal all over again every year.
Back to Nazi occupied Corfu, in the Katavolos village. My grandma was a little kid, and she and her family ate a very poor meal since the Nazis had confiscated almost everything they found. Before the war everyone gathered in the church to attend mass. Not that year. So they had barred the doors and everyone was getting ready to sleep, when they heard a German patrol passing by the house.
Suddenly they hear the Germans yelling toward someone in the woods next to the house. Katavolos was on a rocky hill full of old, twisted olive trees. This is an actual picture from my country house in Corfu a few years ago, back then it was full of trees like these, so you can get the ambience I hope. Anyway the people inside the house hear the Germans yelling at someone outside the village. They very audibly became very nervous as they approached the outer skirts of the village. Then one of them started shooting towards the trees. Silence for a minute. Then a lot of commotion was heard, lots of branches breaking, grass being stomped, the patrolmen sounding really panicked, and they suddenly started running back towards the village, while some very heavy thudding sounds came from the trees.
Take note, this was all stuff my Grandma's family heard, nobody saw a thing. They heard the Germans running towards the village square, toward the big house they had taken over as headquarters. Then they heard the great big thuds from the center square as well, as well as great wooden barrels rolling on the road. The Germans made it to their headquarters and locked themselves in after firing a few shots at their unknown assailants, probably without success. All that time, only the Germans were heard. Whoever else was out there never made a sound. But after that, all hell broke loose. Whoever was out there was so pissed off that they started tearing up the place. Great big barrels, filled to the brink with olive oil, were ripped from their bases and rolled as if they were empty things weighing nothing. Some crashed here and there, one passed over my Grandma's house and very audibly rolled down the hill. There was very violent banging at the wooden windows and doors at every house, as if someone was trying to break in. This lasted about ten minutes, and everyone was panicking.
Then, it suddenly all stopped, as if it never happened at all. People were heard shuffling their feet outside the house, creeping back towards the woods. My grandma glimpsed a peek outside the window blinds.
She thought she was looking at a kid at first because of his size, but when her eyes adjusted at the moonlight, she saw this grinning man, looking around for something, with a permanent pissed-off grin, and what she first thought was a weird hat was actually the top of his head. He looked naked and his skin was completely grey in color, as if he had rolled in cement dust. I drew what she described to me, although she told me he was a bit wider at the shoulders than that. Then another one just like him passed over and ran towards the woods after stomping the ground like he was looking for some hidden trapdoor. The first one followed him and disappeared behind an olive tree.
Nothing else happened that night. The whole ordeal ended at around twelve thirty after midnight. The next morning the villagers saw that everything was banged up as if by sledgehammers, and every barrel was rolled out of its place and crashed and destroyed. Scratch marks were on every house wall and door. The only building left unharmed was the tiny church in the village square. Lots of footprints that belonged to barefoot children with very elongated toes, about three times the normal length.
The Nazis left their headquarters at noon. One was missing. They all acted as if he never existed. They inspected the village but never went near the edge where the olive forest began. Before the sun even went down, they went back to their headquarters and locked themselves in. The next day, as soon as the sun was shining, they informed the villagers that there would be a new patrol coming by the next week, and to not think of doing anything suspicious. Then they left.
My Grandma actually called them faeries (neraides), but I don't think that name fits the description really well. She told me one night she heard them rolling barrels over the hill the summer that followed, just before August 15 (the day Greek Orthodox Christians celebrate the Virgin Mary) and they disappeared ever since.