More Aloni

The Koukoutakis aloni by Alfa Hotel is not the only one in the vicinity. Up the road past the Hotel and in front of the church of Agios Theodoru is another fine specimen of an aloni.

The church itself is built the wrong way round. Instead of facing East, as is customary in all Orthodox churches, Agios Theodoru is built facing North East. If you look inside carefully, you will see the remains of some fine frescoes, possibly from the famous frescoe painter Ioanis Pagomenos. There is also a 1000 year old cemetery below the current one. Just below the chuch walls are the remains of a small pirgos, a small watch tower, where, in Venittian days, the police would sit to watch the main road which ran by here then.

Since the main road used to go by here and because it was such a wide flat area that could hold many people, according to local stories, it was a place of gathering and secret speeches in the night.

It's a place where they once shot a Turk who was dumping his rubbish below onto a house of a Christian. The Christian got pissed off, got his musket out and and blew the Turk away!

On the other side of the clearing, heading down toward the Alfa Hotel by the pathway, are the remains of Kaouris Kafe; all the Turks used to gather there and below this is the cursed house -a haunted house where the children would die in the night until my great grandmother, Aleka, broke the spell by 'purchasing' one child. Also here is the position called kathia - meaning a sit down - where the hunters would sit on a moonlight night to hunt hares.

Many people have claimed to have seen a ghost here in the evenings while they were out hunting for hares and rabbits. Some of the sightings have been put down to pranksters who were caught because they boasted about it later in the kafenion but most of the ghost sightings have never been solved - leaving the villagers wondering if Agioss Theodoru is haunted? (It's right by the village cemetery and if you can't get a ghost there where would you get one?)