A Venetian Ghost Story.
By Lady Sykes.
The story I am about to tell is perfectly true, and the persons who witnessed the extraordinary events which occurred some thirty years ago in the basement rooms of an old Venetian palace are still alive.
About 1874 an English family came to spend the autumn and winter at Venice. The party consisted of a father and mother, two daughters aged respectively twelve and seventeen, and a governess, the latter a German lady of about thirty-five years of age. There was at that time an hotel upon the Grand Canal which was less pretentious and less expensive than most of the more fashionable and better-known houses. It was kept by a Swiss, who had married a Venetian, and was principally frequented by Germans and Russians. The English family took the whole of the entre-sol for the winter, and two rooms upon the second floor, which latter the father and mother occupied. In the entresol there were five rooms. Two were used as sitting-rooms, and faced the Grand Canal; the little girl and the maid had another.
The two remaining chambers were different from the rest of the appartement. The windows looked into a small garden, and had a pleasant south prospect. But at some period or other, this appartement must have apparently been used as an office or strong room, as the outer door had solid iron bolts and locks, and was itself massive and heavy. The governess and the eldest girl were quartered in these two rooms. They slept in one, which was double-bedded, while the front room served for a school-room. The family came into residence in the middle of October, and had lived peacefully and quietly there for about three weeks, when the following occurrences took place.
The governess was awakened one night by a soft knocking, apparently upon the wall at the head of her bed. She lay still, listening. Presently the girl spoke to her, and asked her if she heard the noise. She replied in the affirmative. They lighted a candle and looked about, but could see nothing. The knocking continued at intervals for two or three hours.
The following night it began again, but louder, and apparently in several parts of the room, floor, ceiling, and walls. This went on for two or three days. When they spoke of the occurrence they were laughed at, and told it was “all nonsense.” By the end of the week a new manifestation showed itself. They began to see lights, phosphorescent lights, floating about the room when the candle was blown out, and the knocking grew louder and louder. They were both alarmed, but kept the matter to themselves, as they received little sympathy, the girl’s parents having hired the rooms for an extremely moderate rent for the winter, did not intend to be driven away by any supernatural visitors.
About a fortnight after the first disturbance – during which time the lights had grown more frequent and brighter – the governess woke suddenly to see a most terrible spectacle. Leaning over her face, as if the body it belonged to was kneeling down by the side of the bed, was a great face. It was that of a man. The features were distorted, the eyes and tongue protruding as if the head was that of someone who had died by strangulation. The whole countenance was irradiated by a bluish light, which seemed to proceed from itself. Notwithstanding her feeling of horror, the governess had the courage to seize the matches lying by the bed and light a candle, when the dreadful vision vanished.
The next night the same awful face was seen by the girl, who was filled with extreme terror, and both she and the governess rushed from the room, and spent the night on a sofa in the drawing-room looking on the Grand Canal. But although they were not in the haunted room, they could hear violent noises proceeding from it, knocking and rapping, and the movement of chairs and furniture.
The next day the governess told her employers she would rather leave their service than sleep in that room again, and the girl was quite ill and hysterical. The proprietor was summoned, and asked if he could give any explanation. He replied, “In a fortnight all will be well.” After some questioning he confessed that he had never been able to let these rooms during the month of November. People could not sleep well then; he did not know why, but he thought his wife might explain. He offered to give the English family rooms on the second floor, where they could be all together, but hoped they would say nothing, as it might ruin his hotel. When the wife was questioned she refused to give any explanation, only saying that Venice was an old city, and many strange things had happened there.
The family migrated to the second story, and no more was heard for a day or two. Then the father of the family went to dine with an old Venetian antiquarian who had a post as librarian in the Ducal Palace; and after dinner the old man remarked, “You are living in the C— Palace, are you not?”
Vanity Fair, 18th August 1904
regrettably I cannot find the next page of the story