BeautifullyDark

      Just then another knock, and the priest began to speak to the ghost, but was cut off when the artist yelled, for he had seen the ghost sitting in the fourth pew. He could see him clearly, and later, when the priest told him he imagined it, he would become angry, forgoing any further conversation and retiring to bed. The priest, though, would have his own experience later that night.
      The priest lay in bed. What really was that the artist saw? He wasn’t sure he exactly believed the artist, but he hadn’t meant to upset him either. As he was beginning to fall asleep, he heard three clear knocks close by in his room. They sounded odd—not quite something of this world. As with anything before in his life, he knew there was a dead man in his room. He began to pray. He prayed for the dead man, and as he did so, he began to feel the chill in the air and soon fell asleep. 
The next few nights passed in peace. The priest congratulated himself on freeing the ghost.

      “I really think I scared the ghost.,” laughed the priest. The artist smiled and began to climb up the scaffold.

      Knocks from one corner, then the other.

      The artist felt cold and wanted to leave. He finished the paint he mixed and left. However, the priest grabbed hold of his arm. 

      “Let’s face it.”

      The artist freed himself and looked to see the ghostly form of a man, all in black, glide down the aisle toward the sanctuary light.

      “Father! Do you see him? There! There! He’s just blown out the sanctuary light.”

The priest went to investigate, while the artist left.

      The following weeks passed with a familiar rhythm. The artist and the priest would work, and as soon as the chill became present, the artist would pack up and leave.

           On the nights that the priest did not join, the artist would make newspaper blinders and do his best to ignore the ghost, even when the ghost began to burn candles.

      This story is quite incredible and is written in detail by Louis Adamic in his article for Harper’s. The artist’s name is Maxo Vanko, and the priest who was the Father of the Croatian Catholic Church of St. Nicholas is Father Zagar. 

      The author wrote that he believed his friend and wrote the article before other publications picked it up.

      What I find amusing is that in his book “Real Hauntings: America’s True Ghost Stories,” Hans Holzer apparently speaks to the priest and is still upset at having never seen the ghost for himself. “Father X. paused. I was impressed by his well-told story, and I knew at once why Father H. wanted no part of us. How could he ever admit having been in the presence of a spirit without having seen it? Impossible.”

1. The Millvale Apparition
2. Holzer, Hans. “The Restless Ghost of the Parish Priest.” Real Hauntings: True American Ghost Stories.

      This week I focused on why we see ghosts in our dreams and if it is just the subconscious or if like some believe, they really do appear.

      So far in my very limited research, it’s thought that when you dream of a ghost it represents unresolved issues, or the manifestation of your grief.¹ But what about all of the anecdotal stories where the dead communicate something important, urgent even, that a dream couldn’t predict?

      Let’s ignore the completely reasonable possibilities that it’s the subconscious mind working over something and using the symbolism of a ghost. Or that the brain is acting out a play in which the dreamer accomplishes something by speaking with someone who has passed on. Instead, this is going to be focused on the stories that aren’t so easily explained. Starting with the common stories shared by people all throughout the world who have dreams of someone who was alive at the time they went to bed, dream of them saying goodbye, and awake to find out that the person has indeed died. These stories are adapted from various books and sources linked in references.

      Mr. Hans Holzer pulled up outside an impeccably clean church. There was nothing at all about it to suggest a haunting, and yet that was why he was here. For the purpose of this week’s story though, I am not focused on why he is there, but instead one of the priests he meets. After being told by the oldest Father that he wasn’t going to speak on the subject of it’s resident ghost, Mr. Holzer has a conversation with the assistant priest that tells him a curious story of when he was studying theology in Croatia.

      While there he made a friend, who like him, believed in the existence of ghosts, even when their peers scoffed at the idea. The friends made a pact that the first to die should come back and give a sign to the other. Not to long after the priest knew his friend had died after seeing him sit in a chair smiling and waving to him whilst he was asleep. He later learned that his friend had died in an accident at around the same time as his dream. (Holzer The Restless Ghost of the Parish Priest)²

      This next story is about a woman who states she was having money problems at the time of her grandmother’s death. She began to dream of her grandmother repeatedly telling her that if she needed money to go look under her mattress. The woman ignored the dreams, but they persisted. So finally decided to see what she would find, she goes and looks under the mattress and finds $1,500 in Mexican Pesos.³

      I am a huge fan of Nuke’s Top 5 and there is a clip where a woman who had recently lost her husband was in a sleep clinic being monitored for her breathing issues. As she is sleeping, her sleep apnea starts and in the clip you can see a pale hand reach out and nudge her.⁴ (go to about the time mark 1:00:00). I know this isn’t about dreaming, but I liked the story too much not to share.

1. World of Dreams
2. Holzer, Hans. “The Restless Ghost of the Parish Priest.” Real Hauntings: True American Ghost Stories.
3. Money under the mattress
4. Sleep Apnea

If I told you there is a story about two woman in the early twentieth century who seemingly were transported to just before the French Revolution, would you believe it to be true?

In 1901, two British women Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, decided on taking a tour of the Petit Trianon. During the course of their walk, they became lost and began to experience incidents they wouldn’t be able to explain. Not being able satisfactorily answer what they experienced, they spent years piecing together evidence, then wrote a book under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont.

      What is interesting about their story is that they took great pains to figure out what they went through, and both these women were respected. Charlotte Anne Moberly was the first principal of St. Hugh’s Hall. “Annie’s credentials earned the confidence of parents who would not normally consider further education for their daughters. Under her leadership the numbers of female students at St Hugh’s Hall increased, and it was renamed St Hugh’s College. The college has a radical tradition: during its early years it had an active role in the women’s suffrage movement in Oxford and was part of the Oxford Women’s Suffrage Society. “¹

      Miss Jourdain “left Corran in 1903 to become vice-principal and, from 1905, tutor in French at St Hugh’s, at a sacrifice of income and status that was rewarded when she succeeded Miss Moberly as principal in April 1915. In these years she emerged as a complex, controversial, and powerful personality. “²

      So here they are, vague notion of where they want to go in mind, supported by a Baedecker’s map. The first thing they encountered was that Moberly saw a woman in a building nearby shaking out a white cloth. However, Jourdain makes no account of this in her story.

Walking on they both come across two gardeners that were styled in long grayish green coats and tricorn hats. According to their later findings, that style had not been worn since Marie Antoinette’s time. While standing there, Jourdain writes that she saw a little cottage with a woman and two girls standing in the doorway with jug. This was not seen by Moberly. They were directed by the men to go up one of the paths, and as they followed it, they both had a sense of gloom and depression. The path they were on lead them to a gazebo type structure with a man sitting in the middle giving off a hostile air. Neither of the women wanted to go past him. The very air and woods around them changed, becoming “flat and lifeless”. ³ (Moberly & Jourdain 5)     

They chose a path to their right and began walking, when this time they were approached by another man who came running to them, telling them to continue on in the direction they were going to get to the maison. He wore buckled shoes and disappeared as suddenly as he appeared.

      Coming across a large lawn, Moberly saw “a lady was sitting, holding out a paper as though to look at it at arm’s length. I supposed her to be sketching, and to have brought her own camp-stool.” (Moberly & Jourdain 8), while Jourdain had a feeling of a person being nearby and needing to move her skirts out of the way. ³ (Moberly & Jourdain 20)

      Lastly, they both encountered a young man who directed them the proper way to gain entrance to the building, where in Moberly’s account she saw a wedding party walking arm in arm around the room and was trying to hear what guide was saying. “When we were in the front entrance hall we were kept waiting for the arrival of a merry French wedding party. They walked arm in arm in a long procession round the rooms, and we were at the back, — too far off from the guide to hear much of his story.”³ (Moberly & Jourdain 10)

      But in Jourdain’s version she “looked round the rooms in the wake of a French wedding party. ”  with no mention of the guide talking or the actual people having been in the room. Her account makes it seem as if they just departed rather than waiting for them like in Moberly’s version.³ (Moberly & Jourdain 20)

      It’s a neat story as it is, made all the more interesting when you take the women’s character into consideration. Neither women seemed in their lives to be ones to make a story like this up. They do a huge amount of research, and provide their evidence as to validate what they saw was real.

      There are many theories as to what they actually experienced (if we take out the paranormal), but my vote is on the theory that the French poet Robert de Montesquiou was basically holding a fancy dress party there, and the women inadvertently stumbled upon it. The huge glaring flaw in this though, is that many of the structures (the gazebo, the ponds and streams- not mentioned here, but are mentioned in the story) hadn’t actually existed when the women were touring the area. 

      Anyways, it’s a fun little read and is free. Links provided below.

References

• About Moberly
• About Jourdain
• “An Adventure, with Appendix and Maps: by Moberly, C. A. E. (Charlotte Anne Elizabeth), 1846-1937; Jourdain, Eleanor F. (Eleanor Frances), 1863-1924 Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, London, Macmillan, 1 Jan. 1970, Book

To Be Cursed

This tale of the Lady in White is probably one of the earliest accounts. Perchta of Rozmberk at the age of twenty was married off by her father to a man she doesn’t agree with, Lord John of Lichtenstejn (also known as Jan and Johann). Recently widowed and living with his mother in law and sister, all three of them made her life hell. It’s well documented in the letters Perchta writes herself, “Take me away from these evil people and you will merit praise, as if you released a soul from purgatory.”¹

            Indeed, she goes on to write to her father, “they treat me, for at present I need this greatly; I would like to know Your Grace’s will about how I am supposed to exist in this [situation]; but you should know already that I feel exceedingly lonely and desperate.”²

      So here she is, married off and the only reason he marries her, is because he’s in debt and thinks she will have a large dowry. However her father failed to pay what was promised, leaving her to have to beg her brothers for funds.

      “That a number of his aristocratic peers intervened with him to improve his treatment of Perchta shows, however, that his neglect of his bride exceeded even male tolerance for how one mistreated one’s wife, at least if she were a Rozmberk daughter.”² and “Perchta reiterates her human status in late December 1450 (Letter 16). Writing to her father, she reminds him that she is his child and that he should have buried her rather than married her to Lichtenstejn, and pointing out that there is a limit to the shame a person can humanly bear.”²

The Tales Begin

      It is said that on John’s death bed he asked for her forgiveness and when it was denied he cursed her.⁴ I found one site claiming she was burned at the stake when she practiced black magic in a church to get her beloved Jan to love her after he abandoned her for another woman. Either there was another Perchta and Jan of Rozmberk or yet another example of how legends morph.⁵ Besides a biographer of Perchta states she died from the plague.¹

      The widely reported sightings are of her family seeing her in a white dress with keys around her waist. If she was smiling it was a sign of good luck. If she wore black gloves and appeared solemn it foreshadowed tragedy.³

      There are legends surrounding her and treasure as well. The most common story was that she looked out for the children in her family. The last child in her family, Peter Wok von Rosenberg was said to have found it.

When Peter was a baby, his nurse had fallen asleep. She woke to find Perchta taking care of him. The nurse yelled at her, and Perchta having taken great offense says she will never take care of the child again. To tell him when he is older about how much she loved and took care of him, and where she would enter and leave again. Having said that she turned and walked through the wall. When he got older he demolished the wall and discovered treasure.³

The second story regarding treasure involves a portrait of Perchta, or believed to be here. She is surrounded by Enochian script, and if you figure decipher the symbols painted there you would free her ghost and find silver treasure. However, the Enochian script⁶ was created in the sixteenth century by court astrologer and magician, Dr. John Dee (1527-1608), and his associate, Sir Edward Kelly (1555-1597), a decent hundred years after Perchta had died.

          Finally, the most recent recorded sighting of Perchta was when the Nazi’s were hoisting their flag, many witnesses saw a white figure in the Jakobínka tower. When they went to investigate they found no way to gain entry to the tower. There was no staircase or other method, so what did they see? ⁷

References

• 1:Perchta of Rozmberk – the White Lady of Bohemia
• 2:Cesky Krumlov Unesco World Heritage
• 3:The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters: Noblewomen in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia by John Klassen (Author), Eva Dolezalová (Author), Lynn Szabo (Author)
• 4:Tales and Legends of Cesky Krumlov Castle
• 5:Medium
• 6:Enochian alphabet
• 7:Treasure in Becov nad Teplou