Spirits at the Porte.
French ambassador to Turkey may retire because of uncanny happenings.
From our own correspondent. Paris, Sunday.
It is stated here that M. Constans, the French Ambassador at Constantinople, is seriously thinking of giving up his post and retiring to France. It is alleged that for a long time past the Ambassador – who, it may be stated, is a very matter-of-fact man – has been subjected to annoyances of an occult character.
Weird noises are heard throughout the Embassy at night. On several occasions the Ambassador has been disturbed in bed, being thrown up two or three feet from the bed, as though somebody pushed against the mattress.
But of late more serious incidents have occurred. First of all, one of the Ambassador’s servants died mysteriously; then the steward died suddenly; and now the Embassy porter has been carried off in the same way.
It appears that the French Embassy has the reputation of being haunted, and, according to the “Cri de Paris,” M. Constans, the Ambassador, seriously contemplates retirement.
Daily Mirror, 2nd March 1908.
A French Ambassador “Retired” By A Ghost.
The “Cri de Paris” is responsible for an entertaining story as to the real reason for the retirement of M. Constans, the French Ambassador at Constantinople. It states that his life in the Turkish capital has been made unbearable by a ghost. The palace which is his summer residence has long possessed the reputation of being haunted ever since a certain prince was found hanged there.
It seems that M. Constans has been subjected to various kinds of annoyances by the ghost. All sorts of strange noises have filled the palace, and on several occasions M. Constans, who is a somewhat stout man, has been roughly shaken in his bed in a most extraordinary manner.
He decided to change to the Winter Palace, but now it seems the ghost followed him to the Winter Palace also, and manifested its presence in a decidedly unpleasant and dangerous fashion.
During the last few months several sudden deaths have occurred at the French Embassy. First of all, M. Constans’s dragoman died most mysteriously; shortly afterwards the sudden death occurred of the indendant; and then Rigo, the Embassy porter, expired in an equally mysterious way.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 4th March 1908.
The Ghost of Noise.
Have you ever heard the invisible ‘poltergeist’?
In the year 1908, with this “so-called twentieth century” in full course, a diplomatist is stated to have threatened that he will no longer be ambassador to the Sublime Porte, giving for a reason his objection to ghosts that tramp in embassy passages, ghosts that disturb the night with their clamour, that awake an ambassador disrespectfully by tossing him from his mattress.
We have no sympathy to spare for the house haunted by the pensive White Lady. A few nervous folk may be disturbed when she flits along the oack corridor. There are guests who profess that their blood runs chill at seeing her, silent and luminous, appear at the foot of the four-post bedstead. But there can be no doubt that she gives a valuable flavour to an ancient house, comparable with the bouquet that age gives to old port. Harmless, luminous, flighty after a melancholy fashion, the White Lady drives no freeholder from his home.
Far otherwise it is with that evil ghost which is driving the French Ambassador from his kiosque on the Bosphorus. The Germans only have a name for him, the Poltergeist, the noisy racketting ghost. But he belongs to the whole world. Everywhere we hear of him and in every age.
This is the noisy ghost who disturbed the Wesleys at Epworth, until the family lost all interest in his rattlings and knockings. The children of the house called him “Jeffrey,” this Poltergeist. “Send us some news,” writes one of the daughters, “we have heard nothing but Jeffrey for weeks past.”
This is the ghost who in a certain Cornish house trundles the massive fire-dogs from end to end of the closed wing. Open a door upon the noise and it ceases. The fire-dogs are on the hearth, there is order and silence.
This is the ghost whose evil custom it is to drag at your bed-curtains. The passing of the four-poster has embarrassed many a Poltergeist, for ghosts are conservative and slow to learn new tricks. Some, however, have a hideous variety of accomplishments, and finding you in a modern brass bedstead with a spring mattress, asleep in a modern bedroom with a sanitary wallpaper, will haul at your bolster, pluck away your pillow, and tangle you in your counterpane as handily as though you were the tenant of the Red Bed in the Tapestried Wing.
The naturalist who studies the Poltergeist with the patience and good humour which he would bring to the study of the Okapi will soon find an answer.
The Poltergeist vexes you by night, because he is dissatisfied with his limitations. Observe that the Poltergeist is never visible. The White Lady, seen in the corridor at midnight, takes her toll of a shudder as we drop the candlestick and flatten ourselves against the dark panels, and she is content. But the Poltergeist, who walks unseen, yearns in vain for visibility. To realise himself, to bring himself before us, he must rap and clatter. These haulings at our curtains, these twitchings at our pillow, are manifestations of a baffled egoism that survives the tomb, a discontent as of an actor with a silent part.
You must fly him or bear with him. Like the cat, the ghost attaches himself to houses rather than to persons, a comforting thought for nervous folk. But until science will light our oak galleries and tapestried bed-chambers with a ray in which he shall be visible as any White Lady, the uneasy Poltergeist will vex us.
Evening News (London), 5th March 1908.