“‘Yes,’ chimed in Bonivon, ‘we have good cause to remember ghosts, since we stayed six weeks in a haunted hotel in Bucharest, and never had such an infernally uncomfortable time either before or since. We never saw the ghost ourselves, but one of the other lodgers declared he did, and used to wake us every other night by the most unholy screams.’
“They then talked a lot about their adventures in the Balkans, and finally alluded to Ferdinand of Bulgaria. ‘If ever a man is haunted, he is,’ Guilgaut remarked. ‘I believe he never leaves his room at night without the shadow of Stambuloff, whose death he brought about in 1895. It simply steps out from the wall and follows him.’
“‘That is a lot of exaggeration,’ Bonivon said with a laugh. ‘But, quite seriously, we heard on very excellent authority that on more than one occasion a figure has been seen accompanying Ferdinand sometimes when dining and sometimes when walking, and that it has been recognised by the spectators as Stambuloff, the dead Minister. Once, we were told, Ferdinand visited a certain Princess, and it was remarked that Her Royal Highness appeared strangely embarrassed and perturbed. At last someone ventured to enquire of the lady-in-waiting, who also appeared to be greatly perturbed, what was the matter. “It’s that man,” was the whispered reply, “that man who persists in standing beside His Majesty. He never takes his eyes from our faces, and he looks just like a corpse.” Her interrogator asked her to describe the figure, which he said was quite invisible to him.
“‘She did so, and the description tallied exactly with that of Stambuloff.’
“‘Tell him about Ferdinand and the fortune-teller,’ Guilgaut said.
“‘Yes, that happened when we were staying close to his Kohary estates,’ Bonivon responded. ‘Ferdinand is notoriously sly and mean, and one day, as he was passing through the village where we were staying, he chanced to encounter a charming Hungarian maiden, who eked out a very precarious livelihood hawking ribbons and telling fortunes. Ferdinand had his hand read, and, thinking to trap the girl, disguised himself and went to her again the following evening. To his astonishment, although the make-up was skilful, for Ferdinand is a born actor in more senses than one, the girl recognised him at once as the gentleman who had been to her the previous evening. “I was expecting you,” she said. “Expecting me?” Ferdinand stammered. “How is that? I’ve told no one.” “Oh, fie!” the girl remonstrated, shaking her finger at him. “The gentleman who accompanied you last night came here himself an hour ago and told me you were coming.” “What was he like?” Ferdinand asked, shaking all over. “Like,” the girl retorted pertly. “Why, you know as well as I do,” and she rattled off a description of the man, which tallied exactly with that of the dead Stambuloff, whom, by-the-way, Guilgaut and I had seen many scores of times in the early eighties. “Your friend,” the girl continued, “left a message for you. He said—tell him when he comes that he will perish in very much the same manner as I have done; and he showed me his hand.” “And what did you see?” Ferdinand asked. “I saw the same ending to the life line in his hand as I see in yours,” the girl replied. “Why, there is your friend! He is beckoning to you. You had better go to him.” And, to her astonishment, Ferdinand walked off in the opposite direction.
“‘We had the story first hand. She told it us two or three days afterwards, and expressed great anxiety as to the identity of the two men who had behaved so strangely to her.’”
Only one case of haunting at the actual Front has been related to me. I will state it in my own words.
It happened during the retreat from N——.
The O——’s had suffered heavily, and, in the scramble to get out of the deadly fire zone, small parties of them, owing to the nature of the country, had got isolated from the main body and left behind. This was the case with a dozen or so men of B Company, who, after racing across a field amid a hail of shrapnel, had clambered over a formidable barrier of barbed wire into a dense wood.