The Monastery of the egg.

There is an abandoned monastery near where we live, past the town of Pelei: it is commonly referred to as the monastery of the egg; it is in reality Agios Demetrious.

The story goes that a monk told a woman if she had faith, she could throw her child off the cliff and the child would be unharmed. He threw an egg off the cliff to demonstrate his faith; naturally the egg did not break. When the woman, in complete faith threw her baby off the cliff, it did not survive.

That is the story, do not try it, the monastery is about 300 feet high, overlooking a gorge with a river that leads to the sea.

This by any means makes this monastery pretty scary and mysterious.

We go there often, it is very beautiful and remote, it is left open and has a small chapel, with wonderful paintings. They are intact and never disturbed, there are always candles there and quite often they are lit.
We have never seen anybody there; it is part of the mystery of the monastery, who lights them?

Up on the roof of the monastery there is another small chapel, with amazing views, even of the sea.

We arrived there one day and to our surprise there was a contingent of two Priests, and the Bishop from Spetses as well as two young Monks. One of the Priests was our local Priest, he was as surprised to see us there as we were to see him.

I thought we were there fortunately during some religious holiday.

We asked and were told by one of the Monks that it was reported that there were some satanic symbols painted on the walls, inside and outside.

This was getting interesting, satanic symbols, this was going to be really great, would there be an exorcism?

We watched and were hoping to see some ritual to neutralize the symbols.

We looked at the symbols and they did not seem too satanic, as a matter of fact they looked rather familiar.

The young Monks were looking very concerned and running around with the incense burner (thimiato), it must have been their first satanic experience.

One of the older Priests started to laugh, rolling his eyes and said they were markings from a local electrician, for the new light fixtures that the local people had ordered for the Monastery. The red circles with the x were merely to mark were the switches and the lights would go. We then recognized the symbols, we had them on our house when we were building it.

We almost had a great story to tell; we might have seen some mysterious church service to de-satanize the monastery. We would have had our own Illuminati, our own movie.

The young Monks looked shattered, foiled, no de-satanic service.

They all piled into a van and pulled away with a screech. I assume they were going to lecture the person that sent them there on a wild satanic chase, or maybe just for coffee.

I can’t wait to go again, who knows what awaits us, maybe we find out who lights the candles, or maybe meet the satanic electrician.