A faithful account of the appearance of the White Lady was published in The Iris, a Frankfort journal, in 1829, and was vouched for by the editor, George Doring. Doring’s mother, who was companion to one of the ladies at the Prussian Court, had two daughters, aged fourteen and fifteen, who were in the habit of visiting her at the Palace. On one occasion, when the two girls were alone in their mother’s sitting-room, doing some needlework, they were immeasurably surprised to hear the sounds of music, proceeding, so it seemed to them, from behind a big stove that occupied one corner of the apartment. One girl got up, and, taking a yard measure, struck the spot where she fancied the music was coming from; whereupon the measure was instantly snatched from her hand, the music, at the same time, ceasing. She was so badly frightened that she ran out of the room and took refuge in someone else’s apartment.
On her return some minutes later, she found her sister lying on the floor in a dead faint. On coming to, this sister stated that directly the other had quitted the apartment, the music had begun again and, not only that, but the figure of a woman, all in white, had suddenly risen from behind the stove and began to advance towards her, causing her instantly to faint with fright.
The lady in whose house the occurrence took place, on being acquainted with what had happened, had the flooring near the stove taken up; but, instead of discovering the treasure which she had hoped might be there, a quantity of quick-lime only was found; and the affair eventually getting to the King’s ears, he displayed no surprise, but merely expressed his belief that the apparition the girl had seen was that of the Countess Agnes of Orlamunde, who had been bricked up alive in that room.
She had been the mistress of a former Margrave of Brandenburg, by whom she had had two children, and when the Margrave’s legitimate wife died the Countess hoped he would marry her. This, however, he declined to do on the plea that her offspring, at his death, would very probably dispute the heirship to the property with the children of his lawful marriage. The Countess then, in order to remove this obstacle to her union, poisoned her two children, which act so disgusted the Margrave that he had her walled up alive in the room where she had committed the crimes. The King went on to explain that the phantasm appeared about every seven years, but more often to children, to whom it was believed to be very much attached, than to adults.
Against this explanation, however, is the more recent one that the White Lady is Princess Bertha or Perchta von Rosenberg. This theory is founded on the discovery of a portrait of Princess Bertha, which was identified by someone as the portrait of the White Lady whom they had just seen.
In support of this theory it was pointed out that once when certain charities which the Princess had stated in her will should be doled out annually to the poor were neglected, not only was the White Lady seen, but music and all kinds of other sounds were heard in the house where the Princess had died. Very possibly, however, in neither of these theories is there any truth, and the secret of the White Lady’s activity lies in some subtle and, perhaps, entirely unsuspected fact. It is, I think, quite conceivable that she is no earth-bound soul, but some impersonating elemental, which—like the Banshee—has, for some strange and wholly inexplicable reason, attached itself to the unfortunate Hohenzollerns, and their relatives and kinsmen.
Ballinus and Erasmus Francisci, in their published works, give numerous accounts of the appearance of this same apparition; whilst Mrs Crowe asserts that it was seen shortly before the publication of her “Night Side of Nature.” It would be interesting to know whether it appeared to the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, or to any of his family, before this last greatest and most signally disastrous of all wars.
William Brereton in his “Travels” (i. 33) gives rather a different description of this ghost. He says that the Queen of Bohemia told him “that at Berlin—the Elector of Brandenberg’s house—before the death of anyone related in blood to that house, there appears and walks up and down that house like unto a ghost in a white sheet, which walks during the time of their sickness until their death.”
In this account it will be noticed that there is no mention of sex, so that the reader can only speculate as to whether the apparition was the ghost of a man or a woman. Its appearance, however, according to this account, strongly suggests a ghost of the sepulchral and death-head type—an ordinary species of elemental—which suggestion is not apparent in any other description of it that we have hitherto come across. Other ancient German and Austrian families, besides those of the ruling houses, possess their family ghosts, and here again, as in the parallel case of the Irish and their Banshee, the family ghost of the Germans or Austrians is by no means confined to the “White Lady.” In some cases of German family haunting, for example, the phenomenon is a roaring lion, in others a howling dog; and in others a bell or gong, or sepulchral toned clock striking at some unusual hour, and generally thirteen times. In all instances, however, no matter whether the family ghost be German, Irish, or Austrian, the purpose of its manifestations is the same—to predict death or some very grave calamity.[12]
In the notes to the 1844 edition of Thomas Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland,” we find this paragraph taken from the works of the Brothers Grimm and manuscript communications from Dr Wilhelm Grimm: