A GHOST STORY.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 46, 7 October 1863, Page 6

A GHOST STORY.

A young German lady (still living) had arrived with a party of friends at one of the most renowned hotels in Paris, and occupied for her part an apartment on the first floor, furnished with unusual magnificence. Here she lay awake, long after the hotel was wrapped in slumber, contemplating, by the faint glimmer of her night-lamp, the costly objects in her room, until suddenly the folding doors opposite her bed, which she had secured, flew open, and the chamber was filled with a bright light, as of day. In the midst of this there entered a handsome young man, in the undress uniform of the French navy, having his hair dressed in the peculiar mode a la Titus. Taking a chair from the bedside, he placed it in the middle of the room, 6at down, took from his pocket a pistol with a remarkable red butt and lock, put it to his forehead, and firing, fell back apparently dead. Simultaneous with the explosion the room became dark and still, but a low soft voice uttered these words, " Say an

Ave Maria for his soul." The young lady had fallen back, not insensible, but in a far more painful state —in a kind of cataleptic trance, and thus remained fully conscious of all she imagined to have occurred, but unable to move tongue or hand, until seven o'clock on the following; morning, at which hour her maid, in obedience to orders, knocked at the door. Finding that no reply was given, the maid went away, and returning at eight, in company with another domestic, repeated her summons. Still no answer; and again, after a little consultation, the poor young lady was delivered over for another hour to her agonized thoughts. At nice the doors were forced, and at the same moment speech and movement returned. She shrieked out to the attendants that a man had shot himself there some hours before, and still lay upon the floor. Observing nothing unusual, they concluded it was the excitement consequent upon some terrible dream. She was therefore placed in another apartment and was with difficulty persuaded that the scene she so minutely described had no foundation in reality. Half an hour later, the hotel proprietor desired an interview with the gentleman of the party, and declared that the scene so strangely re-enacted had actually occurred three nights before. A young French officer had ordered the best room in the hotel—and there terminated his life—using for the purpose a pistol answering the des- ! cription mentioned The body, and the weapon, still lay at the Morgue for identification ; the gentleman proceeded thither and saw both; the head of the unfortunate man exhibiting the " Titus" crop and the wound in the forehead, as in the vision. The Archbishop of Paris, struck with the extraordinary nature of the story, shortly after called upon the young lady, and, directing her attention to the expression used by. the mysterious voice, urged upon her, with much fervor, the advisability of embracing that faith to whose teaching it appeared to point.— Spicer** " Strange Things Among Us"