Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child finds an old crossbow bolt hidden in the rocks of the Hohle Gasse and is transported to 1307, where they witness Tell waiting in the shadows for Gessler's carriage. The child faces a choice that has haunted storytellers for centuries: warn the tyrant or let history take its course? In the narrow lane between the rock walls, the child discovers that the second arrow was never just about revenge -- it was about a father's promise to protect his son.
On December 5th, a child's handmade Iffele suddenly begins to glow on its own, and the candlelight figures on its panels come alive. Led by a tiny glowing St. Nicholas, the child is guided through the darkened streets of Kuessnacht on a quest to find the real Samichlaus before the procession begins at 8:15 -- past the thunderous Trychler, the cracking whips of the Geisslechloepfer, and the eerie unison horns that echo through the night.
Near the Astrid Chapel on the lakeshore, a child touches the old pear tree trunk preserved in the small museum and is pulled back to the morning of 29 August 1935. They see the Packard approaching on the lake road, the young queen smiling over her map, and must decide whether they can -- or should -- try to change the course of a single, terrible moment that a nation still mourns ninety years later.
A child boards a mysterious old steam cogwheel train at Vitznau that turns out to be the ghost of the very first Rigi railway from 1871. Engineer Niklaus Riggenbach is at the controls, and at every station the mountain reveals its secrets -- Turner painting the blue sunrise, Queen Victoria on her determined horseback ride, Mark Twain scribbling in the mist. The Queen of the Mountains has been collecting visitors' stories for centuries, and now she shares them all on one magical ascent.
At the excavated ruins of the Gesslerburg, a child accidentally awakens the ghost of a medieval knight who insists he is not the tyrant Gessler but the much-maligned Hartmann, whose white-pillow coat of arms still marks the district. The ghost demands the child help clear his name, leading them through 700 years of confused identity -- where legend has buried the real history beneath layers of myth.
A child visiting Kuessnacht before the Klausjagen is challenged by an old Geisslechloepfer to learn the ancient art of whip-cracking before sundown. Each crack of the sheepskin whip drives away a different winter spirit, and the child must master all seven before the streetlights go dark at 8:15. As the cannon fires and the village plunges into darkness, the child joins the procession and discovers that the oldest sounds can still shake the coldest night.
A child on the Seebodenalp cable car suddenly finds themselves on horseback in 1868, riding alongside a stout, determined English queen who insists on reaching the Rigi Kaenzeli viewpoint despite the steep terrain. Along the way, they discover why the mountain was named 'Queen of the Mountains' -- and that sometimes two queens, one of flesh and one of stone, can recognize each other at the summit where the Alps stretch out in every direction.
A child visiting the Heimatmuseum discovers a dusty model of Friedrich Albrecht's 1859 balloon lift and accidentally sets it in motion. Miniature helium balloons lift the child and the model gondola off the ground, and they ride the imaginary aerial railway up the slopes of the Rigi, seeing every era of the mountain's history from above -- from the first summit inn in 1816 to Riggenbach's cogwheel train to the cable cars of today. The balloon that never flew finally gets its chance.
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