Another Summoning
Around the middle of the 40s, a woman in Utting am Ammersee died soon after she had given birth to her first child. Child and mother stayed together. However, if a woman and her first child die soon after birth, then her child is put into her arms, and Heaven is opened to her in this manner. And she is carried to the grave like a maiden by other maidens, and a little maiden’s crown is put on her grave. This is an ancient belief, and the custom is widespread everywhere.
After this, five men in Utting gathered to summon the soul that had been shorn of her body. According to some lore they had learned from God knows where, they started their undertaking in the following manner. At midnight and at the twelfth stroke of the bell, they stepped into the graveyard completely nude, dug up the grave of the departed woman, lifted her out with her coffin, and laid down one of their own into the empty grave — nude as he was.
While they carried the coffin around the graveyard three times — maintaining the utmost silence while doing so — the summoning went on with the intended goal of beseeching the departed soul to convey the lottery numbers which would be drawn in the third-next lottery drawing. For this reason, they had clearly written down all ninety numbers of the lottery on a piece of paper, and put that piece of paper into the mouth of the man lying in the grave. And the five numbers that would be pulled would have to vanish from the paper.
Everything occurred as they had learned, and without any problems. Five numbers had vanished as expected, and they eagerly bet on them with a lot of money. In the third drawing, these numbers indeed came up. But unfortunately, the money — which would have run into the thousands — did not. The whole story had become known, the summoners were thrown into prison, and their stakes were declared void. In this manner, their dreams of fortune were quickly gone, and in the end, the Evil Enemy had merely played one of his pranks once again.