"No," replied the now visible form of the hunter, "I am a man like thyself, and stand before thee quite alone. I too was formerly a noble.
"I found such pleasure in the chase, that I besought God to permit me to hunt until the judgment-day. Unhappily my sinful wish was granted, and for four hundred and fifty years I have hunted the same deer. But my race and name are known to no one."
Thereupon the ghostly hunter vanished.
Hans von Hackelberg, a master of the hunt in Brunswick, had an unhappy dream one night on the Harzburg; it seemed to him in his dream as if he struggled with a huge wild boar which conquered him after a long combat, and that he died of his wounds.
He could not drive this terrible dream from his mind. Shortly after he encountered a boar in the Harz similar to the one in his dream. He attacked him; the struggle remained long undecided; at length Hans conquered and slew the animal. Rejoiced to see the boar stretched at his feet, he kicked the tusk with violence, exclaiming, "Thou shalt not yet kill me!"
But he had struck with such force that the sharp tooth pierced his boot and wounded his foot.
At first Hackelberg paid no attention to the wound, but continued the chase. On his return, however, the foot was so swollen, that the boot had to be cut off. He hastened back to Wolfenbüttel, but the vehicle shook the foot so that he was obliged to stop on the way at Wülperode, where he died.
Before his death he expressed a wish that he might hunt for ever, and his rash desire was granted.
The Tut-Osel, or Tut-Ursel, always accompanies him.
At midnight, when in storm and rain, Hackelberg with horse and dogs tears through the Thuringian Forest, the Harz, and the Hackel Forest, the night or death owl flies before him, which the people call the Tut-Osel.