The cruel junker of Tapa manor

Tapa manor once had a cruel junker named Joosep, whom the workers called the Devil's partner. When he died, maids were ordered to watch over the body until a coffin was made. At midnight they heard rumbling in the yard, the corpse bared its teeth, and three times one arm slid off its chest. The next night an old woman sat with him, knitting; she noticed his portrait on the far side of the table, then saw the dead man smile and try to sit up, and fled screaming. Long after the funeral he was still seen sitting opposite the bailiff as he wrote up the workdays. Tapa is now a railway town in Lääne-Viru County.