Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona’s most hauntingly beautiful burial ground is believed to be haunted. Both famous spiritualists, serial killers and the cemetery’s own ghost reside on this hill in their afterlife.
As night falls, the tombstones cast eerie shadows, and whispers of ghostly legends become louder. Beyond the grave, Montjuïc Cemetery holds tales of tragic love, mysterious apparitions, and restless spirits that continue to captivate both locals and tourists alike. This historical cemetery, nestled on a hill overlooking the vibrant city, is not only a final resting place for the departed but also a portal to a world where the supernatural meets reality.
Montjuïc Cemetery, located on the rocky slopes of the Montjuïc hill overlooking the industrial port of Barcelona towards the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the largest cemeteries in the city. Established in 1883, it is a maze of streets and alleys, where history intertwines with the supernatural.
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The cemetery holds great significance for the locals, as it serves as the final resting place for many notable figures in Barcelona’s history and there are now over a million burials and cremation ashes in the cemetery. From politicians and artists to writers and musicians, the cemetery houses the remains of those who have left an indelible mark on the city. The grandeur of the mausoleums and gravestones reflects the prominence of the individuals buried within.
The Ghost of Morrot on the Montjuïc Cemetery
As the sun sets over Montjuïc Cemetery, a sense of eeriness fills the air. Whispers of ghostly legends and mysterious apparitions echo through the silent corridors. The Montjuïc Cemetery in Sants-Montjuïc in Barcelona is said to be haunted. One of the most chilling tales revolves around the infamous “Ghost of Morrot.” Legend has it that the ghosts roamed the grounds in mourning.
Read also: More ghost stories from haunted cemeteries from all around the world: Here
There is the Dalmau de Queral i Codina who was the Count of Santa Coloma. He was the viceroy of Catalonia and got caught up in the revolt of the Reapers in 1640. An angry mob got hold of him and he was lynched at the foot of the hill of the cemetery. His legend is known as the Ghost of Morrot and he is thought to be haunting the cemetery.
The Grave of Ms Amalia Domingo Soler
There are many curious graves at the cemetery, among them you can for instance find the grave of Enriqueta Marti, otherwise known as The Vampire of the Raval for her crimes.
Montjuïc Cemetery: The haunted cemeteries in Barcelona holds many graves that are said to have strange things happening to them. Many notorious and people with ties to the occult and paranormal are buried her, among them, many from the spiritualist community.
One of the strange graves you can find walking to the Vial Sant Jaume on the Agrupacio XI on tomb NO. 35. In this place, Ms. Amalia Domingo Soler has her final resting place. She was a writer, women rights activist as well as a medium in the late 1800s.
Soler was famous for her channeling of a Father Germano, a ghost that had come to her and acted as her spiritual guide.
After she died she was buried on a plot of land for people that didn’t really morally align with the times. It was a place for anarchists and working class advocates. It was also where they buried executed people as well as Jews. The very name Montjuïc means Mountain of the Jews in old Catalan.
The Grave of Spiritist Jose Maria Fernandes Colavida
Interestingly, Ms. Soler’s grave is located in close proximity to another spiritist, Jose Maria Fernandes Colavida. Together, their graves create an atmosphere of otherworldly energy, drawing paranormal enthusiasts and curious visitors alike.
It is claimed by those that visit the place, the graves around that area are often said to appear more cracked and disarranged than they should.
An abandoned ghost hotel is left haunted at the beaches of Goa, India. In the unfinished Sina Hotel, it is said that the ghost of its Russian owner is lingering after being murdered and not completing the project.
In the vibrant and sun-soaked state of Goa, a land known for its pristine beaches and lively culture, stands an eerie testament to unfinished dreams and lingering spirits: the Ghost Hotel. Originally christened the Sina Hotel, this abandoned complex, built by the Russians in Agonda, famous for its beaches, has become one of the most infamous haunted sites in Goa, drawing thrill-seekers and paranormal enthusiasts alike.
The Ghost Hotel’s ominous reputation stems from a dark and tragic history. Intended to be a five star luxurious retreat, the construction of the Sina Hotel was abruptly halted due to severe legal complications in the early 1990s. It has remained in a state of abandonment ever since 1998 according to some sources.
Because of its rumors and legends that have started to grow around the hotel like its surrounding trees, hiding it from the world, the Sina Hotel has mostly gone under names like Ghost Hotel or Devil’s Hotel.
The Murder of the Owner
Adding to the mystery of its haunted rumors, it is widely believed that the property’s original owners met a violent end. And that one of the reasons of why the hotel project was abandoned was because one of the owners was murdered.
But who are the owners who are very hard to find information on. There is no clear evidence that there ever was a murder. And what about the name, Sina Hotel. Does it have anything to do with the tiny village in Russia? Or perhaps more likely, the Italian Sina Hotel, a chain of luxury hotels around the world?
Since then, tales of ghostly apparitions and unexplained phenomena have plagued the site. Locals believe that it could be the spirit of the alleged murdered owner that is still lingering on the premise.
The Haunted Hotel in the Jungle
Visitors to the Ghost Hotel at the end of the beach inside of the jungle frequently report unsettling experiences. The most commonly sighted apparition is that of the hotel’s former owner. Descriptions of his ghostly form vary, but many claim to have seen a figure wandering the derelict hallways and grounds. Some say they have felt an icy chill or a sense of being watched, while others have heard disembodied whispers echoing through the empty corridors.
Some have seen shadowy figures flit across their peripheral vision, while others have heard the sound of footsteps following them, only to find no one there when they turn around. These chilling experiences have caused many visitors to flee, unable to endure the fear and anxiety that come with working at such a haunted location.
Paranormal Seekers Vacation
Despite, or perhaps because of, these unsettling tales, the Ghost Hotel has become a must-visit destination for those seeking a brush with the supernatural. The clientele seeking the hotel is nothing like what they first intended, but nonetheless, the hotel does get its visitors.
Paranormal investigators, both amateur and professional, flock to the site, eager to capture evidence of the hotel’s spectral inhabitants. Equipped with cameras, recording devices, and other ghost-hunting gear, they explore the dilapidated rooms and corridors, hoping to document the elusive spirits that are said to dwell there.
There have also been many cases of squatters and homeless people taking refuge and at least for a time being, making the hotel a home. Most often there is someone staying at the hotel and demand money from people that dare to enter.
The Haunted Ghost Hotel
The skeletal remains of the hotel loom large against the Goan skyline, its incomplete and crumbling architecture adding to the atmosphere of desolation and dread. Overgrown vegetation has reclaimed much of the property, with vines creeping over the once-grand structures and wild plants sprouting through cracks in the concrete. This natural reclamation only heightens the sense of abandonment and eeriness that pervades the site.
In conclusion, the Ghost Hotel stands as a haunting reminder of dreams unfulfilled and lives cut short. Its eerie reputation, fueled by tales of paranormal activity and ghostly apparitions, makes it one of Goa’s most intriguing and chilling attractions.
“The Death of Halpin Frayser” by Ambrose Bierce, published in 1893, is a chilling and enigmatic story that blends elements of horror, the supernatural, and psychological terror. The narrative follows Halpin Frayser, who experiences a vivid and horrifying nightmare in which he encounters the ghost of his deceased mother in a desolate forest. The dream foreshadows his own death, with eerie details that blur the line between reality and the supernatural. Although this is not straight up a vampire story, it is a supernatural story that involves a ghostly encounter with a vampire-like entity.
The Death Of Halpin Frayser by Ambrose Bierce
For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether. – HALL.
One dark night in midsummer a man waking from a dreamless sleep in a forest lifted his head from the earth, and staring a few moments into the blackness, said: ‘Catharine Larue.’ He said nothing more; no reason was known to him why he should have said so much.
The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is uncertain, for he is dead. One who practices sleeping in the woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth, and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallen and the sky from which the earth has fallen, cannot hope for great longevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two. There are persons in this world, millions of persons, and far and away the best persons, who regard that as a very advanced age. They are the children. To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore. However, it is not certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure.
He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, looking for doves and such small game as was in season. Late in the afternoon it had come on to be cloudy, and he had lost his bearings; and although he had only to go always downhill — everywhere the way to safety when one is lost — the absence of trails had so impeded him that he was overtaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness to penetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root of a large madrono and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God’s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable host of his companions sweeping westward with the dawn line, pronounced the awakening word in the ear of the sleeper, who sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, a name, he knew not whose.
Halpin Frayser was not much of a philosopher, nor a scientist. The circumstance that, waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of a forest, he had spoken aloud a name that he had not in memory and hardly had in mind did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate the phenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, as if in deference to a seasonal presumption that the night was chill, he lay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep was no longer dreamless.
He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, and why he travelled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple and natural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bed surprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest. Soon he came to a parting of the ways; leading from the highway was a road less travelled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long abandoned, because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned into it without hesitation, impelled by some imperious necessity.
As he pressed forward he became conscious that his way was haunted by invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against his body and soul.
It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! Blood, he then observed, was about him everywhere. The weeds growing rankly by the roadside showed it in blots and splashes on their big, broad leaves. Patches of dry dust between the wheel-ways were pitted and spattered as with a red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculations of crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage.
All this he observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. It seemed to him that it was all in expiation of some crime which, though conscious of his guilt, he could not rightly remember. To the menaces and mysteries of his surroundings the consciousness was an added horror. Vainly he sought, by tracing life backward in memory, to reproduce the moment of his sin; scenes and incidents came crowding tumultuously into his mind, one picture effacing another, or commingling with it in confusion and obscurity, but nowhere could he catch a glimpse of what he sought. The failure augmented his terror; he felt as one who has murdered in the dark, not knowing whom nor why. So frightful was the situation — the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxious plants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholy or baleful character, so openly in his sight conspired against his peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of earth — that he could endure it no longer, and with a great effort to break some malign spell that bound his faculties to silence and inaction, he shouted with the full strength of his lungs! His voice, broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the forest, died into silence, and all was as before. But he had made a beginning at resistance and was encouraged. He said
‘I will not submit unheard. There may be powers that are not malignant travelling this accursed road. I shall leave them a record and an appeal. I shall relate my wrongs, the persecutions that I endure — I, a helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet!’ Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a penitent: in his dream.
Taking from his clothing a small red-leather pocket-book one half of which was leaved for memoranda, he discovered that he was without a pencil. He broke a twig from a bush, dipped it into a pool of blood and wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the world whence it had come. But the man felt that this was not so — that it was near by and had not moved.
A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness — a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence — some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction he did not know — dared not conjecture. All his former fears were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held him in thrall. Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood, might sometime rescue him if he should be denied the blessing of annihilation. He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood without renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave!
II
In his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his parents in Nashville, Tennessee. The Fraysers were well-to-do, having a good position in such society as had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their children had the social and educational opportunities of their time and place, and had responded to good associations and instruction with agreeable manners and cultivated minds. Halpin being the youngest and not over robust was perhaps a trifle ‘spoiled.’ He had the double disadvantage of a mother’s assiduity and a father’s neglect. Frayser pere was what no Southern man of means is not — a politician. His country, or rather his section and State, made demands upon his time and attention so exacting that to those of his family he was compelled to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder of the political captains and the shouting, his own included.
Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent and rather romantic turn, somewhat more addicted to literature than law, the profession to which he was bred. Among those of his relations who professed the modern faith of heredity it was well understood that in him the character of the late Myron Bayne, a maternal great-grandfather, had revisited the glimpses of the moon — by which orb Bayne had in his lifetime been sufficiently affected to be a poet of no small Colonial distinction. If not specially observed, it was observable that while a Frayser who was not the proud possessor of a sumptuous copy of the ancestral ‘poetical works’ (printed at the family expense, and long ago withdrawn from an inhospitable market) was a rare Frayser indeed, there was an illogical indisposition to honour the great deceased in the person of his spiritual successor. Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an intellectual black sheep who was likely at any moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in metre. The Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk — not practical in the popular sense of devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation of politics.
In justice to young Halpin it should be said that while in him were pretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moral characteristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the famous Colonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court the Muse, but in truth he could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake and smite the lyre.
In the meantime the young man was rather a loose fish, anyhow. Between him and his mother was the most perfect sympathy, for secretly the lady was herself a devout disciple of the late and great Myron Bayne, though with the tact so generally and justly admired in her sex (despite the hardy calumniators who insist that it is essentially the same thing as cunning) she had always taken care to conceal her weakness from all eyes but those of him who shared it. Their common guilt in respect of that was an added tie between them. If in Halpin’s youth his mother had ‘spoiled’ him he had assuredly done his part toward being spoiled. As he grew to such manhood as is attainable by a Southerner who does not care which way elections go, the attachment between him and his beautiful mother — whom from early childhood he had called Katy — became yearly stronger and more tender. In these two romantic natures was manifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance of the sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening, softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manners were not infrequently mistaken for lovers.
Entering his mother’s boudoir one day Halpin Frayser kissed her upon the forehead, toyed for a moment with a lock of her dark hair which had escaped from its confining pins, and said, with an obvious effort at calmness:
‘Would you greatly mind, Katy, if I were called away to California for a few weeks?’
It was hardly needful for Katy to answer with her lips a question to which her tell-tale cheeks had made instant reply. Evidently she would greatly mind; and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyes as corroborative testimony.
‘Ah, my son,’ she said, looking up into his face with infinite tenderness,’ I should have known that this was coming. Did I not lie awake a half of the night weeping because, during the other half, Grandfather Bayne had come to me in a dream, and standing by his portrait — young, too, and handsome as that — pointed to yours on the same wall? And when I looked it seemed that I could not see the features; you had been painted with a face cloth, such as we put upon the dead. Your father has laughed at me, but you and I, dear, know that such things are not for nothing. And I saw below the edge of the cloth the marks of hands on your throat — forgive me, but we have not been used to keep such things from each other. Perhaps you have another interpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go to California. Or maybe you will take me with you?’
It must be confessed that this ingenious interpretation of the dream in the light of newly discovered evidence did not wholly commend itself to the son’s more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least, a conviction that it foreshadowed a more simple and immediate, if less tragic, disaster than a visit to the Pacific Coast. It was Halpin Frayser’s impression that he was to be garroted on his native heath.
‘Are there not medicinal springs in California?’ Mrs. Frayser resumed before he had time to give her the true reading of the dream — ‘places where one recovers from rheumatism and neuralgia? Look — my fingers feel so stiff; and I am almost sure they have been giving me great pain while I slept.’ She held out her hands for his inspection. What diagnosis of her case the young man may have thought it best to conceal with a smile the historian is unable to state, but for himself he feels bound to say that fingers looking less stiff, and showing fewer evidences of even insensible pain, have seldom been submitted for medical inspection by even the fairest patient desiring a prescription of unfamiliar scenes. The outcome of it was that of these two odd persons having equally odd notions of duty, the one went to California, as the interest of his client required, and the other remained at home in compliance with a wish that her husband was scarcely conscious of entertaining.
While in San Francisco Halpin Frayser was walking one dark night along the water-front of the city, when, with a suddenness that surprised and disconcerted him, he became a sailor. He was in fact ‘shanghaied’ aboard a gallant, gallant ship, and sailed for a far countree. Nor did his misfortunes end with the voyage; for the ship was cast ashore on an island of the South Pacific, and it was six years afterward when the survivors were taken off by a venturesome trading schooner and brought back to San Francisco.
Though poor in purse, Frayser was no less proud in spirit than he had been in the years that seemed ages and ages ago. He would accept no assistance from strangers, and it was while living with a fellow survivor near the town of St. Helena, awaiting news and remittances from home, that he had gone gunning and dreaming.
III
The apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood — the thing so like, yet so unlike, his mother — was horrible! It stirred no love nor longings in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories of a golden past — inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the finer emotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from before it, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from the ground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only he retained control, and these he dared not remove from the lustreless orbs of the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but that most dreadful of all existences infesting that haunted wood — a body without a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, nor intelligence — nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. ‘An appeal will not lie,’ he thought, with an absurd reversion to professional slang, making the situation more horrible, as the fire of a cigar might light up a tomb.
For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew grey with age and sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in this monstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of his consciousness with all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace, regarding him with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrust its hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The act released his physical energies without unfettering his will; his mind was still spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowed with a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well. For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a dead intelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator — such fancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by a leap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directing will as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist.
But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? The imagination creating the enemy is already vanquished; the combat’s result is the combat’s cause. Despite his struggles — despite his strength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the cold fingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw above him the dead and drawn face within a hand’s-breadth of his own, and then all was black. A sound as of the beating of distant drums — a murmur of swarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead.
IV
A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. At about the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff of light vapour — a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of a cloud — had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St. Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the summit. It was so thin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would have said: ‘Look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.’
In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edge it clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and farther out into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it extended itself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appeared to come out of the mountain-side on exactly the same level, with an intelligent design to be absorbed. And so it grew and grew until the summit was shut out of view from the valley, and over the valley itself was an everextending canopy, opaque and grey. At Calistoga, which lies near the head of the valley and the foot of the mountain, there were a starless night and a sunless morning. The fog, sinking into the valley, had reached southward, swallowing up ranch after ranch, until it had blotted out the town of St. Helena, nine miles away. The dust in the road was laid; trees were adrip with moisture; birds sat silent in their coverts; the morning light was wan and ghastly, with neither colour nor fire.
Two men left the town of St. Helena at the first glimmer of dawn, and walked along the road north-ward up the valley toward Calistoga. They carried guns on their shoulders, yet no one having knowledge of such matters could have mistaken them for hunters of bird or beast. They were a deputy sheriff from Napa and a detective from San Francisco — Holker and Jaralson, respectively. Their business was man-hunting.
‘How far is it?’ inquired Holker, as they strode along, their feet stirring white the dust beneath the damp surface of the road.
‘The White Church? Only a half mile farther,’ the other answered. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘it is neither white nor a church; it is an abandoned schoolhouse, grey with age and neglect. Religious services were once held in it — when it was white, and there is a graveyard that would delight a poet. Can you guess why I sent for you, and told you to come armed?’
‘Oh, I never have bothered you about things of that kind. I’ve always found you communicative when the time came. But if I may hazard a guess, you want me to help you arrest one of the corpses in the graveyard.’
‘You remember Branscom?’ said Jaralson, treating his companion’s wit with the inattention that it deserved.
‘The chap who cut his wife’s throat? I ought; I wasted a week’s work on him and had my expenses for my trouble. There is a reward of five hundred dollars, but none of us ever got a sight of him. You don’t mean to say — ‘
‘Yes, I do. He has been under the noses of you fellows all the time. He comes by night to the old graveyard at the White Church.’
‘The devil! That’s where they buried his wife.’
‘Well, you fellows might have had sense enough to suspect that he would return to her grave some time!’
‘The very last place that anyone would have expected him to return to.’
‘But you had exhausted all the other places. Learning your failure at them, I “laid for him” there.’
‘And you found him?’
‘Damn it! he found me. The rascal got the drop on me — regularly held me up and made me travel. It’s God’s mercy that he didn’t go through me. Oh, he’s a good one, and I fancy the half of that reward is enough for me if you’re needy.’
Holker laughed good-humouredly, and explained that his creditors were never more importunate.
‘I wanted merely to show you the ground, and arrange a plan with you,’ the detective explained. ‘I thought it as well for us to be armed, even in daylight.’
‘The man must be insane,’ said the deputy sheriff. ‘The reward is for his capture and conviction. If he’s mad he won’t be convicted.’
Mr. Holker was so profoundly affected by that possible failure of justice that he involuntarily stopped in the middle of the road, then resumed his walk with abated zeal.
‘Well, he looks it,’ assented Jaralson. ‘I’m bound to admit that a more unshaven, unshorn, unkempt, and uneverything wretch I never saw outside the ancient and honourable order of tramps. But I’ve gone in for him, and can’t make up my mind to let go. There’s glory in it for us, anyhow. Not another soul knows that he is this side of the Mountains of the Moon.’
‘All right,’ Holker said; ‘we will go and view the ground,’ and he added, in the words of a once favourite inscription for tombstones: ‘”where you must shortly lie” — I mean if old Branscom ever gets tired of you and your impertinent intrusion. By the way, I heard the other day that “Branscom” was not his real name.’
‘What is?’
‘I can’t recall it. I had lost all interest in the wretch and it did not fix itself in my memory — something like Pardee. The woman whose throat he had the bad taste to cut was a widow when he met her. She had come to California to look up some relatives — there are persons who will do that sometimes. But you know all that.’
‘Naturally.’
‘But not knowing the right name, by what happy inspiration did you find the right grave? The man who told me what the name was said it had been cut on the headboard.’
‘I don’t know the right grave.’ Jaralson was apparently a trifle reluctant to admit his ignorance of so important a point of his plan. ‘I have been watching about the place generally. A part of our work this morning will be to identify that grave. Here is the White Church.’
For a long distance the road had been bordered by fields on both sides, but now on the left there was a forest of oaks, madronos, and gigantic spruces whose lower parts only could be seen, dim and ghostly in the fog. The undergrowth was, in places, thick, but nowhere impenetrable. For some moments Holker saw nothing of the building, but as they turned into the woods it revealed itself in faint grey outline through the fog, looking huge and far away. A few steps more, and it was within an arm’s length, distinct, dark with moisture, and insignificant in size. It had the usual country-schoolhouse form — belonged to the packing-box order of architecture; had an underpinning of stones, a moss-grown roof, and blank window spaces, whence both glass and sash had long departed. It was ruined, but not a ruin — a typical Californian substitute for what are known to guide-bookers abroad as ‘monuments of the past.’ With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structure Jaralson moved on into the dripping undergrowth beyond.
‘I will show you where he held me up,’ he said. ‘This is the graveyard.’
Here and there among the bushes were small enclosures containing graves, sometimes no more than one. They were recognized as graves by the discoloured stones or rotting boards at head and foot, leaning at all angles, some prostrate; by the ruined picket fences surrounding them; or, infrequently, by the mound itself showing its gravel through the fallen leaves. In many instances nothing marked the spot where lay the vestiges of some poor mortal — who, leaving ‘a large circle of sorrowing friends,’ had been left by them in turn — except a depression in the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners. The paths, if any paths had been, were long obliterated; trees of a considerable size had been permitted to grow up from the graves and thrust aside with root or branch the enclosing fences. Over all was that air of abandonment and decay which seems nowhere so fit and significant as in a village of the forgotten dead.
As the two men, Jaralson leading, pushed their way through the growth of young trees, that enterprising man suddenly stopped and brought up his shotgun to the height of his breast, uttered a low note of warning, and stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon something ahead. As well as he could, obstructed by brush, his companion, though seeing nothing, imitated the posture and so stood, prepared for what might ensue. A moment later Jaralson moved cautiously forward, the other following.
Under the branches of an enormous spruce lay the dead body of a man. Standing silent above it they noted such particulars as first strike the attention — the face, the attitude, the clothing; whatever most promptly and plainly answers the unspoken question of a sympathetic curiosity.
The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the hand was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to — what?
Near by lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of which was seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of a furious struggle; small sprouts of poison-oak were bent and denuded of leaf and bark; dead and rotting leaves had been pushed into heaps and ridges on both sides of the legs by the action of other feet than theirs; alongside the hips were unmistakable impressions of human knees.
The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glance at the dead man’s throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those were purple — almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the head was turned back at an angle otherwise impossible, the expanded eyes staring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet. From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black and swollen. The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger-marks, but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must have buried themselves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their terrible grasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet; the clothing was saturated; drops of water, condensed from the fog, studded the hair and moustache.
All this the two men observed without speaking — almost at a glance. Then Holker said:
‘Poor devil! he had a rough deal.’
Jaralson was making a vigilant circumspection of the forest, his shotgun held in both hands and at full cock, his finger upon the trigger.
‘The work of a maniac,’ he said, without withdrawing his eyes from the enclosing wood. ‘It was done by Branscom — Pardee.’
Something half hidden by the disturbed leaves on the earth caught Holker’s attention. It was a redleather pocket-book. He picked it up and opened it. It contained leaves of white paper for memoranda, and upon the first leaf was the name ‘Halpin Frayser.’ Written in red on several succeeding leaves — scrawled as if in haste and barely legible — were the following lines, which Holker read aloud, while his companion continued scanning the dim grey confines of their narrow world and hearing matter of apprehension in the drip of water from every burdened branch:
‘Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood In the lit gloom of an enchanted wood. The cypress there and myrtle twined their boughs,
Significant, in baleful brotherhood.
‘The brooding willow whispered to the yew; Beneath, the deadly nightshade and the rue, With immortelles self-woven into strange Funereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew.
‘No song of bird nor any drone of bees, Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze: The air was stagnant all, and Silence was A living thing that breathed among the trees. ‘Conspiring spirits whispered in the gloom, Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb. With blood the trees were all adrip; the leaves Shone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom.
‘I cried aloud! — the spell, unbroken still, Rested upon my spirit and my will. Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn, I strove with monstrous presages of ill!
‘At last the viewless — ‘
Holker ceased reading; there was no more to read. The manuscript broke off in the middle of a line.
‘That sounds like Bayne,’ said Jaralson, who was something of a scholar in his way. He had abated his vigilance and stood looking down at the body.
‘Who’s Bayne?’ Holker asked rather incuriously.
‘Myron Bayne, a chap who flourished in the early years of the nation — more than a century ago. Wrote mighty dismal stuff; I have his collected works. That poem is not among them, but it must have been omitted by mistake.’
‘It is cold,’ said Holker; ‘let us leave here; we must have up the coroner from Napa.’
Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in compliance. Passing the end of the slight elevation of earth upon which the dead man’s head and shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard substance under the rotting forest leaves, and he took the trouble to kick it into view. It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words, ‘Catharine Larue.’
‘Larue, Larue!’ exclaimed Holker, with sudden animation. ‘Why, that is the real name of Branscom — not Pardee. And — bless my soul! how it all comes to me — the murdered woman’s name had been Frayser!’
‘There is some rascally mystery here,’ said Detective Jaralson. ‘I hate anything of that kind.’ There came to them out of the fog — seemingly from a great distance — the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh which had no more of joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemed barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled those hardy man-hunters with a sense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their weapons nor think of them; the menace of that horrible sound was not of the kind to be met with arms. As it had grown out of silence, so now it died away; from a culminating shout which had seemed almost in their ears, it drew itself away into the distance until its failing notes, joyous and mechanical to the last, sank to silence at a measureless remove.
A maid who once worked at the hotel allegedly took her own life at the old Visnes Hotel, deep in the Norwegian fjords. Now it is said she is lingering in the afterlife in the old rooms she once worked in.
An ancient ghost coming from the depths of graves across the nordic countries, the Haugbúi Draugr could be both dangerous and even deadly. Not merely a specter, but the rotten flesh of the dead, the ghosts are remembered as The Walking Dead of the North.
In the dark Hendrick Street in Dublin, there once were two houses said to be some of the most haunted ones in town. Occupied by at least six ghosts, some say they still linger in their old street.
In the pre civil war Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, the mausoleum of W.W Pool is said to be the grave of The Richmond Vampire. A more recent urban legend is now also connected with The Church Hill Tunnel collapse.
Old cities carry old ghost stories, and Bern in Switzerland is no exception. From the old buildings filled with history to the depth of the Aare river, here are some of the most haunted places in Bern.
Centuries after the vampire panic starting with the death of Petar Blagojević, another vampire was said to haunt the Serbian village, Kisiljevo. Who was Ruža Vlajna and what happened to her?
Said to be the mass burial place for the dead Irish Independence rebels from 1798, the Croppie’s Acre in Dublin is said to be haunted by their lingering souls.
Once a green paradise, the legend says the fairies protected the people of Val Gerina valley in the Swiss alps. Driven by greed to impress a woman however, the son meant to continue the tradition and friendship with the fairies, brought it all down.
Haunted by its former Fellows, Trinity College in Dublin is said to be filled with eerie spirits where even the bell tolls after dark when the shadows take over campus.
A woman wearing a white saree is said to haunt the road close to the well known as Chudail Baudi and said to try to get into the cars of those passing on the road as well as crying from the depths of the water hole.
In the breathtaking landscapes of Himachal Pradesh, Shimla is celebrated for its natural beauty and tranquil vistas. However, beyond the serene mountains and lush valleys, the state harbors a darker, enigmatic side.
Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India
Among the most haunted places in India, Shimla is home to the enigmatic Chudail Baudi, a location steeped in eerie tales and haunting mysteries that have sent shivers down the spines of many.
The Chudail Baudi in Shimla
Chudail Baudi: a haunted place on Nawbihar-Chota Shimla road.//Source: Deepak Sansta / Hindustan Times)
Chudail Baudi is situated on the Shimla Highway between Chota Shimla to Navbahar, cocooned within verdant forests and picturesque natural splendor. This particular stretch of road close to the water hole is known to have a large amount of accidents according to local tales.
The water hole found in the forest is also known as the Witch’s Well. The term “Baudi” translates to a well, and as per local legends, this well at Chudail Baudi was excavated during the British colonial era. However, this well holds more than water—it holds a chilling curse, believed to be the creation of a vindictive spirit.
The Woman in White Saree
Local folklore narrates the haunting tale of a woman who met a tragic fate many years ago, and her lingering spirit is said to torment this well. She is often described as an English woman with long black hair and a white saree. Many claim that she is asking passing cars for lift or just constantly staring at you from the backseat of your car if you refuse her.
According to the legend, the woman was unjustly accused of adultery, a crime that led her husband to mete out a gruesome punishment—he buried her alive near this very well. Her restless spirit is thought to haunt Chudail Baudi, forever seeking retribution against those who cross her path.
Chilling Encounters on the Road
Around Chudail Baudi, many have recounted eerie experiences bordering on the paranormal, especially on the surrounding roads. It is said that cars automatically slow down in the area, no matter how much you try to accelerate. It is also said that if you encounter the woman in the white saree and doesn’t give her a lift, she will chase after your car. A story very similar to The Ghost of the Lady in White Sari of Delhi Cantt.
There are tales that her showing up has caused many accidents on the nearby roads, where even some of the car crashes have cost more lives.
Read more: Check out all of the Haunted Roads around the world
Some claim to have heard a woman’s anguished cries echoing from the depths of the well, while others have witnessed a spectral figure, ethereal and haunting, hovering above the water’s surface. Venturing close to the well after nightfall, they describe an unsettling silence.
The Future of Chudail Baudi
Although the haunted legends around the water hole are well known in the region, this doesn’t stop life for moving forward. Plans are to make this area a playground for the local kids. The question is, will the haunting stop for this reason? Or perhaps it will just get more fuel?
The partially submerged Jal Mahal water palace in Jaipur certainly looks haunted, slowly drowning and abandoned for years. Rumors of it being haunted and people hearing screams from the palace goes around, but what is the truth?
Jal Mahal, the breathtaking water palace in Jaipur, stands as a testament to the grandeur and architectural brilliance of Rajasthan’s history. This 300-year-old marvel, with its five stories built in the middle of the serene Man Sagar Lake, a man-made reservoir created in 1596, has always been a subject of wonder and admiration.
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Four of its five floors remain submerged in water, leaving only the top story visible, creating an enchanting sight that draws tourists and locals alike. This also causes people to not be able to go there and see for themselves how it is there. But beneath its tranquil beauty lies an eerie mystery that leads many to question: is Jal Mahal haunted?
A Historical Jewel
Constructed in the 18th century by Maharaja Madho Singh I, Jal Mahal was initially designed as a summer retreat and a hunting lodge for the royal family. The locals claim that the palace was built during an intense famine and drought as the lake floor was dry during the construction.
Read more: Check out all of the Haunted Castles around the world
Despite its beauty, Jal Mahal now stands abandoned in the middle of the lake. The palace’s isolation and the inaccessibility of its submerged levels contribute to its mysterious aura. While the fifth floor remains a popular spot for photography and sightseeing, the secrets of the lower submerged floors remain hidden from the public eye, fueling speculation and intrigue.
Haunting Legends of Jal Mahal
The haunting reputation of Jal Mahal is not as well-documented as some other haunted sites in Rajasthan, yet whispers of supernatural occurrences persist. The palace’s abandonment and its eerie silence at night have given rise to various ghost stories and legends.
Screams in the Night: One of the most talked about legends is how some claim to have heard screams coming from the submerged palace.
Mysterious Lights: On occasion, mysterious lights have been reported flickering within the palace, despite the absence of any known electrical connections. These lights are said to appear suddenly and vanish just as quickly, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
Apparitions: There are tales of ghostly figures seen moving across the palace terrace and balconies. These apparitions are often described as shadowy silhouettes that disappear upon closer inspection, leaving an unsettling feeling among those who witness them.
Exploring the Mystique of Jal Mahal
For visitors seeking a unique experience, a visit to Jal Mahal at dusk or dawn, when the palace is shrouded in the soft light of the rising or setting sun, can be particularly evocative. There are no names though, no particular happening or anything but its look that would allude to it being haunted. The tranquil beauty of the palace, combined with its haunting legends, offers a rare opportunity to explore the intersection of history, architecture, and the supernatural.
On this serene vacation island with its lush beaches, it is said that Madh Island Road and the nearby beaches are haunted by a would-be bride that was brutally murdered in the area.
Madh Island Road, located in Mumbai, India, is known for its picturesque beach and luxurious resorts facing the Arabian Sea. However, what many people don’t know is that this seemingly idyllic location is also home to one of India’s most terrifying ghost stories.
This road connects the mainland of Mumbai to Madh Island, which is a small fishing village with a population of about 10,000 people. The narrow and deserted road is about 15 kilometers long and is surrounded by mangroves, salt pans, and fishing villages.
The legend goes that a woman in white haunts the road at night, causing accidents and terrorizing anyone who crosses her path both on the Madh Island Road and the surrounding beaches.
The Murdered Woman in the Mangroves
One of the most told legends about this area is about the young woman that is said to linger. According to the stories she was brutally murdered on her wedding day and her body was disposed of in the thick forests of mangroves nearby.
She is said to roam the beaches, and streets where it is said she is stopping passing cars. According to the stories she is still wearing her bridal clothes and anklets as she is sobbing. For what is uncertain. To get help or to warn people? To get some sort of revenge? In any case she is said to have been the cause of several of the road accidents that happen on these roads.
The Death on the Road
Another variant of the legend is that she wasn’t murdered per se, but died in a car crash together with her husband on their wedding night. The reasons for their crash have many variants. Some claim that they simply were unlucky, some say that the husband sped the car in front of the car and jumped, leaving his wife to fatally crash into it.
The woman died on the spot, and her spirit is said to have haunted the road ever since. According to the legend, the woman’s ghost appears on the road at night, causing accidents and terrorizing anyone who crosses her path.
When these stories are said to have happened varies, but the legends go back at least a couple of decades. According to the stories she is said to appear on nights with the full moon and staff working at the hotels nearby are said to have heard her dying screams.
The Ghost of the Bus Passengers
Another told legends from these parts is about the ghosts of passengers of a ghost that crashed somewhere along the road. It is said that ghosts haunt the road, looking for help. There are also several car crashes that are said to have left their ghosts, as they wander the road they died on for eternity.
Beyond the opulent palaces and majestic forts of Rajasthan lies a lesser-known, eerie corner of the state: Jagatpura, a residential area where witches as well as the starved ghosts from a famine lingers.
This busy and seemingly normal residential area in the south eastern periphery of Jaipur, is infamous for its haunted vibes and spine-chilling legends among the local paranormal enthusiasts.
Read more: Check out all of the ghost stories from India
Unlike many haunted places that are abandoned and desolate, Jagatpura is a living, breathing community where residents coexist with the supernatural, making it one of the most horrifying places in Rajasthan.
A Dark History of Hunger and Famine
The haunting of Jagatpura is rooted in a dark chapter of its history. Legend has it that the ruler of this area, known for his greed and arrogance, was responsible for the suffering of his people.
As famine and starvation swept through the village, people died in masses. Which famine could it be? Rajasthan being much desert-like climate are perhaps more exposed to it and there have been several throughout the years.
You have the Rajputana famine of 1869 that killed over 1.5 million people. The Indian famine of 1899 took between one to 4.5 million lives. These are just some of the most recent ones that affected cities like Jaipur and areas like Jagatpura.
Some of the afflicted villagers cursed the king with their dying breaths. They were witches, or perhaps the curses made them witches in their afterlife? These curses, steeped in sorrow and desperation, have seemingly bound their souls to this place, eternally seeking aid from the living.
An Encounter with the Ghosts and Witches in Jagatpura
The tormented souls of the villagers are said to wander the streets, their whispers of despair carried on the wind, calling out to those who pass by for help, begging for alms and food.
Residents and visitors alike have reported sightings of witches, eerily similar to those depicted in classic Indian horror tales or Bollywood movies. These apparitions are described as old women clad in white dresses, with long, grey hair hanging loosely over their faces as they appear on the roads.
The haunted Isla de Pedrosa was a place of isolation. First for sailors with exotic diseases, then as a children’s sanatorium for those suffering from strange afflictions. In the later years it has been thought to be haunted by those isolated on the island that took those unwanted by the rest of society.
Off the coast of Cantabria, the Isla Pedrosa sits as a dark spot on the blue ocean. The island has become known as Isla Embrujada, or the haunted islands because of the strange things that are said to have taken place there.
Read more: Check out all of our ghost stories from Spain
Isolated places were in old times used as a precaution to illnesses since the time of the Black Death and often deserted islands close to the ports were used to hinder any diseases from oncoming ships. These places are called lazarettos, taken from the Bible story about the man that rose from the dead. The most famous Lazaretto is perhaps the haunted Poveglia Island in Venice.
Lazaretto: Isla de Pedrosa was for a long time used as a lazaretto for ships that came from exotic places to quarantine and prevent bringing any illness into port.
In the 19th century, Isla de Pedrosa took on a new role as a place to house sailors and other individuals suffering from exotic diseases from 1834 to help battle the diseases like yellow fever from America for instance as well as smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera and leprosy. The isolation of the island made it an ideal location for quarantine, protecting the mainland from potential outbreaks. It is said that during this time, many tragic events occurred on the island, leaving behind a haunting presence that still lingers today.
In the first decade of the 20th century it was converted from a lazaretto into a maritime children’s sanatorium. It could house over 200 children from almost half of Spain by 1910. First and foremost it was in an effort to combat tuberculosis. It wasn’t the only illness though and it operated until 1989.
The Haunting Legends of Isla de Pedrosa
One of the most chilling aspects of Isla de Pedrosa’s history is the abundance of haunting legends that surround the island. Many locals and visitors alike have reported eerie encounters and unexplained phenomena, contributing to its reputation as a haunted place.
Among the abandoned buildings on Isla de Pedrosa, there is one that stands out as particularly haunted – the abandoned theater. This theater was once frequented by the sick individuals who were quarantined on the island, and it is said that their spirits still linger within its decaying walls.
The Haunted Theatre: One of the places that are said to be more haunted than other, is the theatre found on Isla de Pedrosa that are now not in use and just left abandoned.
Visitors to the theater have reported hearing disembodied voices and footsteps, as well as seeing apparitions moving across the stage. Some have even claimed to witness performances happening in the theater, despite its state of abandonment. The ghostly presence in the theater adds to the island’s eerie atmosphere, leaving visitors with an unforgettable experience.
The Bird Girls on Isla de Pedrosa
Another haunting legend of Isla de Pedrosa involves the so-called Bird Girls. These two sisters were said to have lived on the island during the time it served as a quarantine facility sometimes in the 1960s. They were born with a rare disease called progeria that made them somehow look like birds.
This appearance led superstitious people to speculate that their conditions were caused by the devil himself.
The Strange Illnesses: After being used as a base for quarantine, they started to isolate children with strange diseases, like the Bird Girls. Here is a picture of Alfonso XIII visiting Isla de Pedrosa in 1914.
According to the legend, the Bird Girls were isolated from society and hidden away on the island and they tragically died very young, perhaps because of their affliction. Visitors to Isla de Pedrosa have reported seeing the ghostly figures of these sisters roaming the shores, their deformed bodies reminiscent of bird-like creatures. The presence of the Bird Girls adds a layer of mystery and intrigue to the island’s haunted reputation.
People Experiencing Paranormal Activity
There are plenty of people that claim to have experienced something paranormal on this island. A paranormal seeker named Anita Lauda claims to have seen spirits of children coming towards them accompanied by a nurse after an Ouija board session.
Today’s Isla de Pedrosa
In present times, Isla de Pedrosa is mostly abandoned, with only a few buildings still in use. Some of these buildings now house juvenile prisoners and serve as a reintegration center. The island’s dark past and haunted reputation make it an eerie and unsettling place for those who reside there.
Despite its haunting atmosphere, Isla de Pedrosa continues to attract visitors curious about its mysterious history. People from all over the world come to explore the abandoned buildings and soak in the eerie ambiance that surrounds the island. Isla de Pedrosa serves as a reminder of the past and a testament to the power of legends and folklore.
Said to be only a temporary bridge, the Jakni Bandh Bridge in Goa claimed the life of a bus loaded with young children. According to local lore, you can still hear their dying screams echoing off the road at night.
Between the villages of Navelim and Drampur lies Jakni Bandh Bridge shrouded in darkness—a bridge built as a temporary measure. How temporary though is uncertain as it has been the only bridge there for decades.
Known as Jakni Bandh, this seemingly innocuous structure conceals a chilling secret, one that continues to haunt the hearts and minds of those who dare to tread its path.
Although the narrow path has gone through modernization, it is still remembered for its pasts and how it costs countless lives throughout the years. The most well known story and victims being the school bus filled with children that never returned home.
The Horrible Accident on the Bridge
Jakni Bandh, initially intended as a simple connector between two communities, has become synonymous with tragedy and terror. Its traumatic past is rooted in a fateful accident in 1979 that forever altered the fabric of reality in its vicinity.
It was on a seemingly ordinary day that a mini-bus bus, teeming with children, met its untimely demise at the hands of fate, or as some blame it, the driver’s fault. What really happened that day we will never know, as none of them lived to tell.
The driver lost control of the bus in any case, toppling over the bridge’s edge, the bus plummeted into the abyss below, claiming the lives of all aboard in a horrifying instant. The locals rushed to the scene to try to help, but it was too late.
The Haunted Jakni Bandh Bridge
Since that fateful day, Jakni Bandh has become a hotbed of paranormal activity, with reports of inexplicable phenomena flooding in from all corners that are said to happen after sunset.
Passersby speak of hearing the anguished cries and blood-curdling screams of children through the night air, their voices a haunting reminder of the tragedy that befell them. But when people try to track down where the wailing of the children comes from, there is no one there.
The people reporting of paranormal activity also claim to have seen apparition of what looks like children running around in the area, long after bedtime. This cumulates especially to night time or certain nights of the year, although it is hard to find out what days the locals claim this is.
The Other Ghosts Haunting the Jakni Bandh Bridge
In addition to the sound and sighing of ghostly children running around, the place around the Jakni Bandh Bridge is also said to be haunted by a woman as well.
The Jakni Bandh Bridge: As the bridge was in 2014. //Source: Joegoauk Goa/Flickr
In the heart of Goa’s lush countryside, Jakni Bandh stands as a silent sentinel, its secrets buried deep within the recesses of memory and where school children still sometimes choose minibus drivers over bigger ones because of their convenience.
And although the road has gone through developments since then, and that it is after all said to be just a temporary thing, the Jakni Bandh Bridge still remains a dangerous place to venture, especially after dark if we are to believe the legends.
“For the Blood is the Life” by F. Marion Crawford, published in 1905, is a haunting and atmospheric vampire tale set on the coast of Italy. The story unfolds through the eyes of two friends who discover an ancient, abandoned treasure hidden in a lonely field marked by a sinister mound. They soon encounter the spectral figure of a beautiful woman who rises from her grave to drain the life from a local shepherd. As the friends delve deeper into the mystery, they uncover a tragic love story intertwined with the curse of vampirism.
For the Blood is the Life by F. Marion Crawford
We had dined at sunset on the broad roof of the old tower, because it was cooler there during the great heat of summer. Besides, the little kitchen was built at one corner of the great square platform, which made it more convenient than if the dishes had to be carried down the steep stone steps broken in places and everywhere worn with age. The tower was one of those built all down the west coast of Calabria by the Emperor Charles V early in the sixteenth century, to keep off the Barbary pirates, when the unbelievers were allied with Francis I against the Emperor and the Church. They have gone to ruin, a few still stand intact, and mine is one of the largest. How it came into my possession ten years ago, and why I spend a part of each year in it, are matters which do not concern this tale. The tower stands in one of the loneliest spots in Southern Italy, at the extremity of a curving, rocky promontory, which forms a small but safe natural harbour at the southern extremity of the Gulf of Policastro, and just north of Cape Scalea, the birthplace of Judas Iscariot, according to the old local legend. The tower stands alone on this hooked spur of the rock, and there is not a house to be seen within three miles of it. When I go there I take a couple of sailors, one of whom is a fair cook, and when I am away it is in charge of a gnome-like little being who was once a miner and who attached himself to me long ago.
My friend, who sometimes visits me in my summer solitude, is an artist by profession, a Scandinavian by birth, and a cosmopolitan by force of circumstances.
We had dined at sunset; the sunset glow had reddened and faded again, and the evening purple steeped the vast chain of the mountains that embrace the deep gulf to eastward and rear themselves higher and higher towards the south. It was hot, and we sat at the landward corner of the platform, waiting for the night breeze to come down from the lower hills. The colour sank out of the air, there was a little interval of deep-grey twilight, and a lamp sent a yellow streak from the open door of the kitchen, where the men were getting their supper.
Then the moon rose suddenly above the crest of the promontory, flooding the platform and lighting up every little spur of rock and knoll of grass below us, down to the edge of the motionless water. My friend lighted his pipe and sat looking at a spot on the hillside. I knew that he was looking at it, and for a long time past I had wondered whether he would ever see anything there that would fix his attention. I knew that spot well. It was clear that he was interested at last, though it was a long time before he spoke. Like most painters, he trusts to his own eyesight, as a lion trusts his strength and a stag his speed, and he is always disturbed when he cannot reconcile what he sees with what he believes that he ought to see.
“It’s strange,” he said. “Do you see that little mound just on this side of the boulder?”
“Yes,” I said, and I guessed what was coming.
“It looks like a grave,” observed Holger.
“Very true. It does look like a grave.”
“Yes,” continued my friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot. “But the strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top of it. Of course,” continued Holger, turning his head on one side as artists do, “it must be an effect of light. In the first place, it is not a grave at all. Secondly, if it were, the body would be inside and not outside. Therefor, it’s an effect of the moonlight. Don’t you see it?”
“Perfectly; I always see it on moonlight nights.”
“It doesn’t seem it interest you much,” said Holger.
“On the contrary, it does interest me, though I am used to it. You’re not so far wrong, either. The mound is really a grave.”
“Nonsense!” cried Holger incredulously. “I suppose you’ll tell me that what I see lying on it is really a corpse!”
“No,” I answered, “it’s not. I know, because I have taken the trouble to go down and see.”
“Then what is it?” asked Holger.
“It’s nothing.”
“You mean that it’s an effect of light, I suppose?”
“Perhaps it is. But the inexplicable part of the matter is that it makes no difference whether the moon is rising or setting, or waxing or waning. If there’s any moonlight at all, from east or west or overhead, so long as it shines on the grave you can see the outline of the body on top.”
Holger stirred up his pipe with the point of his knife, and then used his finger for a stopper. When the tobacco burned well, he rose from his chair.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll go down and take a look at it.”
He left me, crossed the roof, and disappeared down the dark steps. I did not move, but sat looking down until he came out of the tower below. I heard him humming an old Danish song as he crossed the open space in the bright moonlight, going straight to the mysterious mound. When he was ten paces from it, Holger stopped short, made two steps forward, and then three or four backward, and then stopped again. I know what that meant. He had reached the spot where the Thing ceased to be visible — where, as he would have said, the effect of light changed.
Then he went on till he reached the mound and stood upon it. I could see the Thing still, but it was no longer lying down; it was on its knees now, winding its white arms round Holger’s body and looking up into his face. A cool breeze stirred my hair at that moment, as the night wind began to come down from the hills, but it felt like a breath from another world.
The Thing seemed to be trying to climb to its feet helping itself up by Holger’s body while he stood upright, quite unconcious of it and apparently looking toward the tower, which is very picturesque when the moonlight falls upon it on that side.
“Come along!” I shouted. “Don’t stay there all night!”
It seemed to me that he moved reluctantly as he stepped from the mound, or else with difficulty. That was it. The Thing’s arms were still round his waist, but its feet could not leave the grave. As he came slowly forward it was drawn and lengthened like a wreath of mist, thin and white, till I saw distinctly that Holger shook himself, as a man does who feels a chill. At the same instant a little wail of pain came to me on the breeze — it might have been the cry of the small owl that lives amongst the rocks — and the misty presence floated swiftly back from Holger’s advancing figure and lay once more at its length upon the mound.
Again I felt the cool breeze in my hair, and this time an icy thrill of dread ran down my spine. I remembered very well that I had once gone down there alone in the moonlight; that presently, being near, I had seen nothing; that, like Holger, I had gone and had stood upon the mound; and I remembered how when I came back, sure that there was nothing there, I had felt the sudden conviction that there was something after all if I would only look back, a temptation I had resisted as unworthy of a man of sense, until, to get rid of it, I had shaken myself just as Holger did.
And now I knew that those white, misty arms had been round me, too; I knew it in a flash, and I shuddered as I remembered that I had heard the night owl then, too. But it had not been the night owl. It was the cry of the Thing.
I refilled my pipe and poured out a cup of strong southern wine; in less than a minute Holger was seated beside me again.
“Of course there’s nothing there,” he said, “but it’s creepy, all the same. Do you know, when I was coming back I was so sure that there was something behind me that I wanted to turn around and look? It was an effort not to.”
He laughed a little, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and poured himself out some wine. For a while neither of us spoke, and the moon rose higher and we both looked at the Thing that lay on the mound.
“You might make a story about that,” said Holger after a long time.
“There is one,” I answered. “If you’re not sleepy, I’ll tell it to you.”
“Go ahead,” said Holger, who likes stories.
Old Aderio was dying up there in the village beyond the hill. You remember him, I have no doubt. They say that he made his money by selling sham jewelry in South America, and escaped with his gains when he was found out.. Like all those fellows, if they bring anything back with them, he at once set to work to enlarge his house, and as there are no masons here, he sent all the way to Paola for two workmen. They were a rough-looking pair of scoundrels–a Neapolitan who had lost one eye and a Sicilian with an old scar half an inch deep across his left cheek. I often saw them, for on Sundays they used to come down here and fish off the rocks. When Alario caught the fever that killed him the masons were still at work. As he had agreed that part of their pay should be their board and lodging, he made them sleep in the house. His wife was dead, and he had an only son called Angelo, who was a much better sort than himself. Angelo was to marry the daughter of the richest man in the village, and, strange to say, though the marriage was arranged by their parents, the young people were said to be in love with eachother.
For that matter, the whole village was in love with Angelo, and among the rest a wild, good-looking creature called Cristina, who was more like a gipsy than any girl I ever saw about here. She had very red lips and very black eyes, she was built like a greyhound, and had the tongue of the devil. But Angelo did not care a straw for her. He was rather a simpleminded fellow, quite different from his old scoundrel of a father, and under what I should call normal circumstances I really believe that he would never have looked at any girl except the nice plump little creature, with a fat dowry, whom his father meant him to marry. But things turned up which were neither normal nor natural.
On the other hand, a very handsome young shepherd from the hills above Maratea was in love with Cristina, who seems to have been quite indifferent to him. Cristina had no regular means of subsistence, but she was a good girl and willing to do any work or go on errands to any distance for the sake of a loaf of bread or a mess of beans, and permission to sleep under cover. She was especially glad when she could get something to do about the house of Angelo’s father. There is no doctor in the village, and when the neighbours saw that old Alario was dying they sent Cristina to Scalea to fetch one. That was late in the afternoon, and if they had waited so long it was because the dying miser refused to allow any such extravagance while he was able to speak. But while Cristina was gone matters grew rapidly worse, the priest was brough tothe bedside, and when he had done what he could he gave it as his opinion to the bystanders that the old man was dead, and left the house.
You know these people. They have a physical horror of death. Until the priest spoke, the room had been full of people. The words were hardly out of his mouth before it was empty. It was night now. They hurried down the dark steps and out into the street.
Angelo, as I have said, was away, Cristina had not come back–the simple woman-servant who had nursed the sick man fled with the rest, and the body was left alone in the flickering light of the earthen oil lamp.
Five minutes later two men looked in cautiously and crept forward toward the bed. They were the one-eyed Neapolitan mason and his Sicilian companion. They knew what they wanted. In a moment they had dragged from under the bed a small but heavy iron-bound box, and long before anyone thought of coming back to the dead man they had left the house and the village under cover of darkness. It was easy enough, for Alario’s house is the last toward the gorge which leads down here, and the thieves merely went out by the back door, got over the stone wall, and had nothing to risk after that except that possibility of meeting some belated countryman, which was very small indeed, since few of the people use that path. They had a mattock and shovel, and they made their way without accident.
I am telling you this story as it must have happened, for, of course, there were no witnesses to this part of it. The men brought the box down by the gorge, intending to bury it on the beach in the wet sand, where it would have been much safer. But the paper would ahve rotted if they had been obliged to leave it there long,so they dug their hole down there, close to that boulder. Yes, just where the mound is now.
Cristina did not find the doctor in Scalea, for he had been sent for from a place up the valley, half-way to San Domenico. If she had found him we would have come on his mule by the upper road, which is smoother but much longer. But Cristina took the short cut by the rocks, which passes about fifty feet above the mound, and goes round that corner. The men were digging when she passed, and she heard them at work. It would not hav been like her to go by without finding out what the noise was, for she was never afraid of anything in her life, and, besides, the fishermen sometimes come ashore here at night to get a stone for an anchor or to gather sticks to make a little fire. The night was dark and Cristina probably came close to the two men before she could see what they were doing. She knew them, of course, and they knew her, and understood instantly that they were in her power. There was only one thing to be done for their safety, and they did it. They knocked her on the head, they dug the hole deep, and they buried her quickly with the iron-bound chest. They must have understood that their only chance of escaping suspicion lay in getting back to the village before their absence was noticed, for they returned immediately, and were found half and hour later gossiping quietly with the man who was making Alario’s coffin. He was a crony of theirs, and had been working at the repairs in the old man’s house. So far as I have been able to make out, the only persons who were supposed to know where Alario kept his treasure were Angelo and the one woman-servant I have mentioned. Angelo was away; it was the woman who discovered the theft.
It was easy enough to understand why no one else knew where the money was. The old man kept his door locked and the key in his pocket when he was out, and did not let the woman enter to clean the place unless he was there himself. The whole village knew that he had money somewhere, however, and the masons had probably discovered the whereabouts of the chest by climbing in at the window in his absence. If the old man had not been delirious until he lost conciousness he would have been in frightful agony of mind for his riches. The faithful woman-servant forgot their existence only for a few moments when she fled with the rest, overcome by the horror of death. Twenty minutes had not passed before she returned with the two hideous old hags who are always called in to prepare the dead for burial. Even then she had not at first the courage to go near the bed with them, but she made a pretence of dropping something, went down on her knees as if to find it, and looked under the bedstead. The walls of the room were newly whitewashed down to the floor and she saw at a glance that the chest was gone. It had been there in the afternoon, it had therefore been stolen in the short interval since she had left the room.
There are no carabineers stationed in the village; there is not so much as a municipal watchman, for there is no municipality. There never was such a place, I believe. Scalea is supposed to look after it in some mysterious way, and it takes a couple of hours to get anybody from there. As the old woman had lived in the village all her life, it did not even occur to her to apply to any civil authority for help. She simply set up a howl and ran through the village in the dark, screaming out that her dead master’s house had been robbed. Many of the people looked out, but at first no one seemed inclined to help her. Most of them, judging her by themselves, whispered to each other that she had probably stolen the money herself. The first man to move was the father of the girl whom Angelo was to marry; having collected his household, all of whom felt a personal interest in the wealth which was to have come into the family, he declared it to be his opinion that the chest had been stolen by the two journeymen masons who lodged in the house. He headed a search for them, which naturally began in Alario’s house and ended in the carpenter’s workshop, where the thieves were found discussing a measure of wine with the carpenter over the half-finished coffin, by the light of one earthen lamp filled with oil and tallow. The search-party at once accused the delinquents of the crime, and threatened to lock them up in the cellar till the carabineers could be fetched from Scalea. The two men looked at each other for one moment, and then without the slightest hesitation they put out the single light, seized the unfinished coffin between them, and using it as a sort of battering ram, dashed upon their assailants in the dark. In a few moments they were beyond pursuit.
That is the end of the first part of the story. The tresure had disappeared, and as no trace of it could be found the people supposed that the thieves had succeeded in carrying it off. The old man was buried, and when Angelo came back at last he had to borrow money to pay for the miserable funeral, and had some difficulty in doing so. He hardly needed to be told that in losing his inheritance he had lost his bride. In this part of the world marriages are made on strictly business principles, and if the promised cash is not forthcoming on the appointed day, the bride or the bridegroom whose parents have failed to produce it may as well take themselves off, for there will be no wedding. Poor Angelo knew that well enough. His father had been possessed of hardly any land, and now that the hard cash which he had brought from South America was gone, there was nothing left but debts for the building materials that were to have been used for enlarging and improving the old house. Angelo was beggared, and the nice plump little creature who was to have been his, turned up her nose at him in the most approved fashion. As for Cristina, it was several days before she was missed, for no one remembered that she had been sent to Scalea for the doctor, who had never come. She often disappeared in the same way for days together, when she could find a little work here and there at the distant farms among the hills. But when she did not come back at all, people began to wonder, and at last made up their minds that she had connived with the masons and had escaped with them.
I paused and emptied my glass.
“That sort of thing could not happen anywhere else,” observed Holger, filling his everlasting pipe again. “It is wonderful what a natural charm there is about murder and sudden death in a romantic country like this. Deeds that would be simply brutal and disgusting anywhere else become dramatic and mysterious because this is Italy, and we are living in a genuine tower of Charles V built against Barbary pirates.”
“There’s something in that,” I admitted. Holger is the most romantic man in the world inside of himself, but he always thinks it necessary to explain why he feels anything.
“I suppose the found the poor girl’s body with the box,” he said presently.
“As it seems to interest you,” I answered, “I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”
The mood had risen by this time; the outline of the Thing on the mound was clearer to our eyes than before.
The village very soon settled down to its small dull life. No one missed old Alario, who had been away so much on his voyages to South America that he had never been a familiar figure in his native place. Angelo lived in the half-finished house, and because he had no money to pay the old woman-servant, she would not stay with him, but once in a long time she would come and wash a shirt for him for old acquaintance’ sake. Besides the house, he had inherited a small patch of ground at some distance from the village; he tried to cultivate it, but he had no heart in the work, for he knew he could neer pay the taxes on it and on the house, which would certainly be confiscated by the Government, or seized for the debt of the building material, which the man who had supplied it refused to take back.
Angelo was very unhappy. So long as his father had been alive and rich, every girl in the village had been in love with him; but that was all changed now. It had been pleasant to be admired and courted, and invited to drink wine by fathers who had girls to marry. It was hard to be stared at coldly, and sometimes laughed at because he had been robbed of his inheritance. He cooked his miserable meals for himself, and from being sad became melancholy and morose.
At twilight, when the day’s work was done, instead of hanging about in the open space before the church with young fellows of his own age, he took to wandering in lonely places on the outskirts of the village till it was quite dark. Then he slunk home and went to bed to save the expense of a light. But in those lonely twilight hours he began to have strange waking dreams. He was not always alone, for often when he sat on the stump of a tree, where the narrow path turns down the gorge, he was sure that a woman came up noiselessly over the rough stones, as if her feet were bare; and she stood under a clump of chestnut trees only half a dozen yards down the path, and beckoned to him without speaking. Though she was in the shadow he knew that her lips were red, and that when they parted a little and smiled at him she showed two small sharp teeth. He knew this at first rather than saw it, and he knew that it was Cristina, and that she was dead. Yet he was not afraid; he only wondered whether it was a dream, for he thought that if he had been awake he should have been frightened.
Besides, the dead woman had red lips, and that could only happen in a dream. Whenever he went near the gorget after sunset she was already there waiting for him, or else she very soon appeared, and he began to be sure of her blood-red mouth, but now each feature grew distinct, and the pale face looked at him with deep and hungry eyes.
It was the eyes that grew dim. Little by little he came to know that someday the dream would not end when he turned away to go home, but would lead him down the gorge out of which the vision rose. She was nearer now when she beckoned to him. Her cheeks were not livid like those of the dead, but pale with starvation, with the furious and unappeased physical hunger of her eyes that devoured him. They feasted on his soul and cast a spell over him, and at last they were close to his own and held him. He could not tell whether her breath was as hot as fire, or as cold as ice; he could not tell whether her red lips burned his or froze them, or whether her five fingers on his wrists seared scorching scars or bit his flesh like frost; he could not tell whether he was awake or asleep, whether she was alive or dead, but he knew that she loved him, she alone of all creatures, earthly or unearthly, and her spell had power over him.
When the moon rose high that night the shadow of that Thing was not alone down there upon the mound.
Angelo awoke in the cool dawn, drenched with dew and chilled through flesh, and blood, and bone. He opened his eyes to the faint grey light, and saw the stars were still shining overhead. He was very weak, and his heart was beating so slowly that he was almost like a man fainting. Slowly he turned his head on the mound, as on a pillow, but the other face was not there. Fear seized him suddenly, a fear unspeakable and unknown; he sprang to his feet and fled up the gorge, and he never looked behind him until he reached the door of the house on the outskirts of the village. Drearily he went to his work that day, and wearily the hours dragged themselves after the sun, till at last it touched the sea and sank, and the great sharp hills above Maratea turned purple against the dove-coloured eastern sky.
Angelo shouldered his heavy hoe and left the field. He felt less tired now than in the morning when he had begun to work, but he promised himself that he would go home without lingering by the gorge, and eat the best supper he could get himself, and sleep all night in his bed like a Christian man. Not again would he be tempted down the narrow way by a shadow with red lips and icy breath; not again would he dream that dream of terror and delight. He was near the village now; it was half an hour since the sun had set, and the cracked church bell sent little discordant echoes across the rocks and ravines to tell all good people that the day was done. Angelo stood still a moment where the path forked, where it led toward the village on the left, and down to the gorge on the right, where a clump of chestnut trees overhung the narrow way. He stood still a minute, lifting his battered hat from his head and gazing at the fast-fading sea westward, and his lips moved as he silently repeated the familiar evening prayer. His lips moved, but the words that followed them in his brain lost their meaning and turned into others, and ended in a name that he spoke aloud — Cristina! With the name, the tension of his will relaxed suddenly, reality went out and the dream took him again, and bore him on swiftly and surely like a man walking in his sleep, down, down, by the steep path in the gathering darkness. And as she glided beside him, Cristina whispered strange, sweet things in his ear, which somehow, if he had been awake, he knew that he could not quite have understood; but now they were the most wonderful words he had ever heard in his life. And she kissed him also, but not upon his mouth. He felt her sharp kisses upon his white throat, and he knew that her lips were red. So the wild dream sped on through twilight and darkness and moonrise, and all the glory of the summer’s night. But in the chilly dawn he lay as one half dead upon the mound down there, recalling and not recalling, drained of his blood, yet strangely longing to give those red lips more. Then came the fear, the awful nameless panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the world we see not, neither know of as we know of other things, but which we feel when its icy chill freezes our bones and stirs our hair with the touch of a ghostly hand. Once more Angelo sprang from the mound and fled up the gorge in the breaking day, but his step was less sure this time, and he panted for breath as he ran; and when he came to the bright spring of water that rises half way up the hillside, he dropped upon his knees and hands and plunged his whole face in and drank as he had never drunk before — for it was the thirst of the wounded man who has lain bleeding all night upon the battle-field.
She had him fast now, and he could not escape her, but would come to her every evening at dusk until she had drained him of his last drop of blood. It was in vain that when the day was done he tried to take another turning and to go home by a path that did not lead near the gorge. It was in vain that he made promises to himself each morning at dawn when he climbed the lonely way up from the shore to the village. It was all in vain, for when the sun sank burning into the sea, and the coolness of the evening stole out as from a hiding-place to delight the weary world, his feet turned toward the old way, and she was waiting for him in the shadow under the chestnut trees; and then all happened as before, and she fell to kissing his white throat even as she flitted lightly down the way, winding one arm about him. And as his blood failed, she grew more hungry and more thirsty every day, and every day when he awoke in the early dawn it was harder to rouse himself to the effort of climbing the steep path to the village; and when he went to his work his feet dragged painfully, and there was hardly strength in his arms to wield the heavy hoe. He scarcely spoke to anyone now, but the people said he was “consuming himself” for love of the girl he was to have married when he lost his inheritance; and they laughed heartily at the thought, for this is not a very romantic country. At this time Antonio, the man who stays here to look after the tower, returned from a visit to his people, who live near Salerno. He had been away all the time since before Alario’s death and knew nothing of what had happened. He has told me that he came back late in the afternoon and shut himself up in the tower to eat and sleep, for he was very tired. It was past midnight when he awoke, and when he looked out toward the mound, and he saw something, and he did not sleep again that night. When he went out again in the morning it was broad daylight, and there was nothing to be seen on the mound but loose stones and driven sand. Yet he did not go very near it; he went straight up the path to the village and directly to the house of the old priest.
“I have seen an evil thing this night,” he said; “I have seen how the dead drink the blood of the living. And the blood is the life.”
“Tell me what you have seen,” said the priest in reply.
Antonio told him everything he had seen.
“You must bring your book and your holy water to-night,” he added. “I will be here before sunset to go down with you, and if it pleases your reverence to sup with me while we wait, I will make ready.”
“I will come,” the priest answered, “for I have read in old books of these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste life and blood.”
Antonio cannot read, but he was glad to see that the priest understood the business; for, of course, the books must have been instructed him as to the best means of quieting the half-living Thing for ever.
So Antonio went away to his work, which consists largely in sitting on the shady side of the tower, when he is not perched upon a rock with a fishing-line catching nothing. But on that day he went twice to look at the mound in the bright sunlight, and he searched round and round it for some hole through which the being might get in and out; but he found none. When the sun began to sink and the air was cooler in the shadows, he went up to fetch the old priest, carrying a little wicker basket with him; and in this they placed a bottle of holy water, and the basin, and sprinkler, and the stole which the priest would need; and they came down and waited in the door of the tower till it should be dark. But while the light still lingered very grey and faint, they saw something moving, just there, two figures, a man’s that walked, and a woman’s that flitted beside him, and while her head lay on his shoulder she kissed his throat. The priest has told me that, too, and that his teeth chattered and he grasped Antonio’s arm. The vision passed and disappeared into the shadow. Then Antonio got the leathern flask of strong liquor, which he kept for great occasions, and poured such a draught as made the old man feel almost young again; and gave the priest his stole to put on and the holy water to carry, and they went out together toward the spot where the work was to be done. Antonio says that in spite of the rum his own knees shook together, and the priest stumbled over his Latin. For when they were yet a few yards from the mound the flickering light of the lantern fell upon Angelo’s white face, unconscious as if in sleep, and on his upturned throat, over which a very thin red line of blood trickled down into his collar; and the flickering light of the lantern played upon another face that looked up from the feast, upon two deep, dead eyes that saw in spite of death — upon parted lips, redder than life itself — upon two gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop. Then the priest, good old man, shut his eyes tight and showered holy water before him, and his cracked voice rose almost to a scream; and then Antonio, who is no coward after all, raised his pick n one hand and the lantern in the other, as he sprang forward, not knowing what the end should be; and then he swears that he heard a woman’s cry, and the Thing was gone, and Angelo lay alone on the mound unconscious, with the red line on his throat and the beads of deathly sweat on his cold forehead. They lifted him, half-dead as he was, and laid him on the ground close by; then Antonio went to work, and the priest helped him, thought he was old and could not do much; and they dug deep, and at last Antonio, standing in the grave, stooped down with his lantern to see what he might see.
His hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples; in less than a month from that day he was as grey as a badger. He was a miner when he was young, and most of these fellows have seen ugly sights now and then, when accidents have happened, but he had never seen what he saw that night — that Thing which is neither alive nor dead, that Thing that will abide neither above ground nor in the grave. Antonio had brought something with him which the priest had not noticed — a sharp stake shaped from a piece of tough old driftwood. He had it with him now, and he had his heavy pick, and he had taken the lantern down into the grave. I don’t think any power on earth could make him speak of what happened then, and the old priest was too frightened to look in. He says he heard Antonio breathing like a wild beast, and moving as if he were fighting with something almost as strong as himself; and he heard an evil sound also, with blows, as of something violently driven through flesh and bone; and then, the most awful sound of all — a woman’s shriek, the unearthly scream of a woman neither dead nor alive, but buried deep for many days. And he, the poor old priest, could only rock himself as he knelt there in the sand, crying aloud his prayers and exorcisms to drown these dreadful sounds. Then suddenly a small iron-bound chest was thrown up and rolled over against the old man’s knee, and in a moment more Antonio was beside him, his face as white as tallow in the flickering light of the lantern, shoveling the sand and pebbles into the grave with furious haste, and looking over the edge till the pit was half full; and the priest said that there was much fresh blood on Antonio’s hands and on his clothes.
I had come to the end of my story. Holger finished his wine and leaned back in his chair.
“So Angelo got his own again.” he said. “Did he marry the prim and plump young person to whom he had been betrothed?”
“No; he had been badly frightened. He went to South America, and has not been heard of since.”
“And that poor thing’s body is there still, I suppose,” said Holger. “Is it quite dead yet, I wonder?”
I wonder, too. But whether it be dead or alive, I should hardly care to see it, even in broad daylight. Antonio is as grey as a badger, and he has never been quite the same man since that night.
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An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.
