Ghastly Ghosts by Gina D. B. Clemen (2)
Anne Boleyn is a very active royal ghost. In 1533, she became King Henry VIII's second wife. But Henry soon got tired of her because she did not give him a son.
In 1536, Henry decided to marry another woman. He accused Anne Boleyn of treason and put her in the Tower of London. She was beheaded on Tower Green in May 1536.
Her ghost is white and transparent. She haunts Tower Green, the White Tower and the church in the Tower. Sometimes she appears with her head. At other times, she holds her head in her hand!
The ghosts of Henry's other unlucky wives - Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour - haunt Hampton Court Palace, just outside London.
In 1972, a nine-year-old girl visited the Tower of London with her father.
The tourist guide said, 'Anne Boleyn and other royal prisoners were beheaded on Tower Green. The executioner used a big axe to cut off their heads.'
'That's not true! I saw Anne Boleyn a minute ago. But the executioner did not use an axe because Anne Boleyn was a queen. He used a special sword from France.'
The other visitors were surprised. The little girl was right.
'How do you know this?' asked her father.
'I saw the whole execution on Tower Green a few minutes ago!' she said.
Perhaps the most famous ghosts of the Tower are the two princes. They were heirs to the English throne. When Edward V became King of England in 1483, he was only twelve years old and his brother Richard was ten. Their uncle Richard wanted to be King of England. He took the princes to the Tower and soon they disappeared.
People began asking questions, 'Where is young King Edward, where is his brother?'
People said that Richard was responsible for the murder of the princes.
Then one night a soldier saw two children at the bottom of the stairs. They had long white nightclothes. They looked at the soldier silently. They were very sad and frightened. Suddenly they disappeared. Then the soldier understood. The children were the ghosts of the two princes. Many people saw the two ghosts at the bottom of the stairs and people still see them now.
In 1647, workmen found the skeletons of two children under the stairs. The skeletons were buried immediately. On windy nights, the ghosts of the sad princes still haunt the Tower of London.
The Tower is a very spooky place at night!
CHAPTER SIX
American Spooks
Ghosts, spooks, poltergeists and phantoms are part of America's past and present. Halloween is the festivity of ghosts and the supernatural, and as you know, it is celebrated on October 31.
The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, is the spookiest American monument to ghosts. It is a famous tourist attraction and people say that mysterious spooks live there.
Sara Winchester was part of the rich Winchester family. The family made Winchester rifles in the 1800s. During the nineteenth century, these rifles killed many people.
When Sara Winchester's husband and baby daughter died, she was very unhappy. Strange things were happening to her. She went to a psychic expert and asked for help.
The expert told her, 'The spirits of the people killed by a Winchester rifle are angry with you. They want revenge!'
'What can I do?' Mrs Winchester asked.
The expert answered, 'The spirits want you to build a big home for them. You must follow all their instructions. And you cannot rest - you must work seven days a week.'
Mrs Winchester bought a house in the country. For thirty-eight years, she built a home for ghosts! She and the workmen worked seven days a week. She lived in the haunted house and every evening she wore a long blue dress and had dinner and secret meetings with the ghosts. They gave her instructions for building the strange house. Every night she slept in a different bedroom.
Today the Winchester Mystery House has 160 rooms and is similar to a maze. There are stairs that go nowhere, doors that open onto walls and a window in the floor! Thirteen was a favourite number of the ghosts because there are thirteen bathrooms and all the stairs have thirteen steps.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. He was a famous American writer. His grandfather was a judge at the Salem witch hangings. He was very interested in ghosts, evil spirits and demons.
Every evening after work, Hawthorne went to the Atheneum Library to read the newspaper. Reverend Harris went to the Atheneum Library too. He was an old minister of the church. Hawthorne saw Reverend Harris every evening for many years. But they were not friends.
One evening a friend of Hawthorne said, 'Reverend Harris died last week.'
'What? Are you sure?' Hawthorne asked.
'Yes, of course,' his friend answered and went away.
'How is that possible? I saw Reverend Harris at the library this evening and all last week,' Hawthorne thought.
For many weeks, Hawthorne saw Reverend Harris at the library. He sat in his usual chair and read the newspaper. But the other people at the library could not see him! Hawthorne said nothing to the others.
He was afraid to talk to the ghost. He was also afraid to touch it. After about a month, the ghost started looking at him.
'Why is Reverend Harris' ghost looking at me? Perhaps he wants to say something,' Hawthorne thought.
He was confused. He saw the ghost and did not know what to do. One evening he went to the library and Reverend Harris' chair was empty. Hawthorne never saw the ghost again.
For years he thought, 'Why did I see Reverend Harris' ghost? Why didn't the other people see him?'
Hawthorne thought about Reverend Harris' ghost for a long time, but he was never able to solve the mystery. The White House in Washington D.C. is also a haunted house! The ghosts of assassinated American Presidents haunt it. Abraham Lincoln's ghost is the most famous.
Lincoln was President of the United States during the American Civil War. Many Americans loved him, but he had dangerous enemies too. He stopped slavery in America, but the southern states did not agree with this.
On 5 April 1865, Abraham Lincoln had a very bad dream. He was at the White House and he heard people crying in the next room. He got up and went to the East Room. He saw a coffin in the middle of the room. Many people walked by the coffin.
'Who is inside the coffin?' he asked a man.
'The President of the United States, sir. An assassin killed him!'
'What?' said Lincoln. He looked inside the coffin and saw his own body. He was DEAD! He suddenly woke up. He was very scared about this dream. He told his wife and friends.
On 15 April 1865, Lincoln and his wife went to the theatre. He wanted to relax after a long day. At the end of the performance, John Wilkes Booth shot the President in the back of the head! The President of the United States was dead!
Was Lincoln's dream a coincidence? Or did he have supernatural powers?
In the 1920s, President Coolidge's wife saw Lincoln's face at the window of the Oval Office. He was very sad.
In the 1930s, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was a guest at the White House. One evening she heard a knock at the door. She opened it and saw Lincoln's ghost. He looked at her and then walked away.
In the 1980s, President Reagan's daughter saw Lincoln's ghost too. Today people at the White House still see his ghost in the East Room, in the Oval Office and in the halls.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Spanish Spirits
Maria, Juan and Miguel Pereira lived in the village of Belmez in southern Spain. They were farmers. On 23 August 1971, Maria Pereira was in the kitchen of her home.
Suddenly she saw an image of a human face on the kitchen floor! She tried to wash the floor but the face did not go away. It became more visible. It was the sad face of a man with big eyes.
'Juan, come quickly! There is something strange on the kitchen floor!' Maria cried.
Her husband came quickly and looked at the floor. He was terrified.
'Oh, no! What is this? A human face! Call Miguel!' Juan said.
Their son Miguel looked at the floor and said, 'What's happening? This is macabre!'
Miguel took a hammer and destroyed part of the floor. But soon after another face appeared and then another. Miguel destroyed another part of the floor. But after a few days other faces appeared. There were faces of men, women and children of different ages. Sometimes small crosses appeared too. At other times, parts of the body were visible: a woman's hand with a flower.
Soon everyone in Belmez knew about the mysterious faces. People came from other parts of Spain to see them. Many psychic experts were interested too. Professor de Argumosa of the University of Madrid started studying the faces. He also studied the chemical composition of the floor. But he found nothing unusual.
Professor de Argumosa discovered that in the 17th century the governor of Granada executed five people in Belmez. But this was not a complete explanation because there were more than five faces.
Workmen started digging under the Pereira's house. They found many skeletons under the kitchen floor. Two skeletons were headless! Was this an old cemetery? Yes, it was. In the past, there was a cemetery in the same place as the house. Perhaps the faces were the spirits of the dead in that cemetery.
Professor de Argumosa heard horrible cries and frightened voices in the Pereira kitchen. He made a recording of the cries and voices. He could also hear words in Spanish.
Experts from other countries went to Belmez to study the mysterious faces. The psychic expert Jose Martinez Romero wrote a book about them. But no one has an answer... yet!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Literary Ghosts
Ghosts and the supernatural are part of literature.
Let's meet some famous literary ghosts. William Shakespeare used ghosts in several of his plays. In Hamlet, the castle guards see the ghost of Hamlet's father one night. Then the ghost speaks to Hamlet and tells him terrible things about his murder.
Shakespeare's play Macbeth begins with three ugly witches. They tell Macbeth and Banquo strange things about their future. Later on in the play, Banquo's ghost appears at a banquet table and scares Macbeth.
In Richard III, the sad ghosts of two boy princes appear to King Richard. He murdered them earlier in the play.
In Julius Caesar, Caesar's ghost appears to remind Brutus of his crime.
The American writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were very interested in the supernatural and in spirits. Their stories often talk about ghosts, evil spirits and demons. In Poe's stories death and the supernatural are often present. In Eleonora (1842), the ghost of Eleonora returns to give a message to the narrator. In Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables (1851), unhappy people and strange spirits live in an evil, old house. His short story Young Goodman Brown (1846) talks about a young man and his adventure in the forest with witches and the devil!
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) is a complete ghost story with four ghosts: Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. The ghost of Jacob Marley is an important character of the story.
Wilkie Collins was a writer and a friend of Charles Dickens. He was the father of the modern mystery story. He also wrote a complete ghost story called The Haunted Hotel (1879).
At the end of the 19th century, the ghost story became a literary form. The Canterville Ghost (1887) by Oscar Wilde is an excellent example of a humorous ghost story. The ghost makes friends with one of the characters of the story.
In The Turn of the Screw (1898), Henry James created a macabre ghost story about two evil ghosts and their two young victims - a very frightening tale!
