Place - Sucha BeskidzkaThe Stern Lady of Sucha

In the cloisters, corridors and courtyard of the Renaissance castle in Sucha Beskidzka, a spectral figure of a lady appears in a black costume, such as that worn by widowed matrons of high birth in the eighteenth century.

An invisible hand opens a door in the suite of chambers, and a cold draft is felt as it approaches. The castle's legend has it that this is the specter of Anna Konstancja Wielopolska, née Lubomirska, secondly Małachowska, who ruled these lands from 1689 to 1725.

She was successively married to two magnates: Jan Kazimierz Wielopolski, who died shortly after their wedding, leaving her the vast estate known as the "Suska State." Her second husband, Stanisław Małachwoski, made Anna Konstancja even wealthier, but even with him she remained married for only three years. People of her stature admired the energy and prudence with which the still young widow managed her estate. But her subjects—both townspeople and peasants—feared the Stern Lady of the Sucha Castle.

Anna Constance had a truly iron fist. She established a code of laws for her subjects and held court in the Clock Tower of the castle. Even for minor offenses, she imposed floggings and sentenced those to imprisonment. Often, dressed in masculine attire, she led her hajduks on expeditions against bandits hiding in the Carpathian forest. As a rule, she sentenced those captured to death. One such execution took place in nearby Krzeszów, and the Stern Lady personally oversaw the execution of the unfortunates.

Anna Konstancja lived to a ripe old age and was buried with great pomp in the crypt of the local church. The subjects and servants breathed a sigh of relief, but the candles on the tombstone had not yet burned out when her apparition began to appear in the churchyard. Sightings continued even after the Sucha estates passed to other owners – the Branicki family and later the Tarnowski family. Anna Konstancja haunted not only palace guests but also the civic guard that operated in Sucha during the interwar period. The nightly guards, changing every night, patrolling the town's streets, often encountered, to their horror, a shadow in a widow's veil near the church or castle.