One Spirit or Another

I have always liked the idea of ghosts. If there is a choice between paying attention to scientific research and going with the more fun belief, you can bet I’ll go with the latter. If anyone ever asked me whether I believe in ghosts, I said “sure – why not?” and I have been compiling my list of who I am going to haunt for years.

However, at 3am one July lying rigid with terror in a period style canopied bed in a pitch dark room at the top of a turret towering above a 15th century French Chateau, I was beginning to question just how much fun it was to believe in ghosts. Quite how my siblings and I had drawn the short straw and ended up spending the week in the turret reachable only by a shadowy, musty-smelling spiral staircase which wound past the castle chapel I don’t know, but there we were. My sister and I were cowering together under the covers, praying for the electricity to come back on before the clunky, uneven footsteps that were slowly making their way up the stone steps reached the top. But no such luck. The footsteps paused on the tiny landing, the sudden floorboard creak causing my sister to stuff the duvet in her mouth to stop from screaming...

All week I had insisted to everyone – everyone being my family plus my parents’ best friends and all their kids: 24 Glaswegians in all, staying in the castle nestled in the Bordeaux countryside to celebrate all four dads’ 50th birthdays – that there was something strange about the fact that all 24 of us – at least, those of us who’d gone to bed by that point – awoke independently at 3am, every night. All week, everyone said that I was talking nonsense and told me off for scaring the wee ones, but now it seemed that I had been right all along. Until… the moon drifted out from behind a cloud, filling the room with an eerie blue light, just as the door opened and a white figure stumbled into the room.

Stumbled?

“Boonnjooouurrr” intoned a deep, creepy voice.

“Can you not say anything better?” hissed a most definitely alive, although not without suggestion of being full of some sort of spirit, voice from the landing.
“I don’t know any better in French!” the ghost replied in a hurt tone.
“Did you not do ‘A’ level?”
“Aye, in Spanish!”
“Useless!” proclaimed our cousin Sean, yanking the sheet from our brother Ryan’s head, shortly before the two of them clattered back down the steps amid a shower of abuse and pillows from my sister and I.

However this didn’t explain the waking at precisely 3am, the footsteps that had been heard when Ryan and Sean were safely in the games room (verified by third party witnesses,) the unreachable turret window which opened and closed with no explanation, not to mention the joiner working on the castle renovations shortly before our arrival who had suddenly packed up and left after seeing the figures of a couple walking on the terrace. We thought about holding a séance, but were afraid that if the ghost came through and started blethering away about who it was and why it was haunting the castle, we’d be frantically thumbing through “Let’s Speak French!” begging it to speak slowly and asking for deux bagettes si’il vous plait.

On the last day, I managed to persuade the curator to tell me the story of doomed couple Émile and Jacqueline who had lived – and died tragically – in the castle in the mid-18th Century. Without my mentioning anything of us waking up, he told me that both husband and wife had died within days of one another by jumping from the turret window at – 3am. This story can be verified - Émile was a private in the French army during the 1700s and it was during a sojurn to Spain that Jaqueline allegedly began the affair with a local man that ultimately led to their saddening endings. Whether or not that tragic event proves that the two of them are still kicking about the castle or not is another matter, but, I will certainly think twice in the future about visiting a castle where the ghosts don't speak English. This year, for all the mums' 50ths, we are headed for a castle in Tuscany... Se le cose vanno l'urto nella notte, chi andiamo chiamare? Qualcuno che parla l'italiano!

(www.freetranslation.com)