Contrary to common belief, the colder months of the year are a wonderful time to be in Britain. Yes, it somehow gets bitterly cold even though temperatures don’t drop below zero very often. Yes, the mist can get so thick that you get wet even when it’s not raining. And yes, you never quite get away from the cold draft that seems to blow through every house, pub and cafe. But few places beat Britain on quaint eeriness during dark autumn and winter nights. It’s the perfect place to enjoy a good ghost story.
I knew Britain had a long tradition of ghost and horror stories long before I moved here. I read many of them from a young age to learn English. Nowadays, I’m particularly enthralled with M. R. James, not least because a number of his stories are set in East Anglia, where I live and where autumn and winter can be particularly eerie. There is still a tradition here of reading and performing ghost stories. Last week, I attended an M. R. James evening in the keep of a Norman castle. “Only in Britain,” I thought.
But is this true? Of course, there is a very British tradition of ghost stories. Since I’ve lived here, I’ve loved that they are a Christmas thing in this country, the most famous example being Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. M. R. James (a medieval scholar by day) originally read his stories to his students at Cambridge on Christmas Eve. I also watch the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas every year.
However, Germany, too, boasts a great literary canon of creepy tales. Some of the best came from a man who has been called the godfather of modern horror stories: E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Hoffmann (a Prussian and a Königsberger, by the way) only lived for 46 years, from 1776 to 1822. But in that time, he managed to create a gothic horror and fantasy legacy that shaped much of what was to come in that genre. He’s now probably best known for his tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet is based. But he also penned plenty of other supernatural stories, which influenced the works of many giants of the genre who came after him, from Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens to Franz Kafka, Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Louis Stevenson. Naturally, I would never go so far as to say a German invented the modern ghost story, but Hoffmann was certainly a pioneer in that particular literary territory.
Germany has a rich tradition of ghost stories. Maybe not quite so tightly tied to autumn and winter rituals as is the case in the UK, but worthy of recognition nonetheless. So on this autumnal Sunday, the first one in November and oh-so-close to Halloween, let me regale you with my retelling of one of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s lesser-known stories from 1819 (just four years after Napoleon’s final defeat). It is called Eine Spukgeschichte or A Ghost Story, and it goes something like this…
You know, I spent some time at Colonel P.’s estate shortly before the last campaign. The Colonel was an amiable, jovial sort of man, just as calm and confident as his wife. Their son was away fighting when I visited, so the manor was occupied only by the couple, their two daughters, and an elderly French governess. The purpose of the latter was unclear to me, as both girls were well past the age of being governessed.
The older of the two girls was called Auguste. A prettier blonde you’ve never seen, and so full of life! She was not without intelligence, but flighty and silly in her mannerisms. She could never focus on one thing. In the space of less than ten minutes, I saw her stitching, reading, drawing, singing and dancing. In one moment, she’d cry bitterly for her poor cousin who had fallen in battle, the next she’d burst into shrill laughter when the Frenchwoman accidentally dropped her tobacco tin on the little pug, who immediately suffered a terrible sneezing fit. Conscious that the dog had been born in Padua, northern Italy, the governess began apologising to the animal loudly in Italian. Auguste couldn’t stop laughing. But for all her capriciousness, she was gracious and lovely without trying.
Her younger sister Adelgunde posed a strange contrast. Even now, I search in vain for words to describe the impression she made on me when I first saw her. Imagine the most beautiful person, the most wondrous appearance – but deathly pale with white cheeks and lips, a creature that moves quietly, slowly, always with measured, furtive steps. On the rare occasion that a sound escaped her barely parted lips, it was as if a ghostly shiver ran through one’s very bones. And yet, it was clear that a keen intelligence resided in the girl alongside a friendly disposition and a gentle femininity. But her eyes were heavy with tears and her smile full of pain.
I found it particularly curious how anxious the family was around Adelgunde. It was as if they tried to spare her any overexcitement. If a conversation strayed here or there, it was abruptly ended. But the most curious thing was that every night when the clock struck eight, she was ushered to bed like a little child. The governess, both parents and her sister insisted most urgently that she must retire to her room, causing her to miss dinner every evening, which was only served at nine.
The lady of the manor, possibly pre-empting a question I never asked, offered an explanation. Adelgunde was a sickly young lady, prone to spells of fever which often befell her around 9 o’clock. The doctor had advised that she should be in bed by that time every night and left well alone. I only found out much later what the real, terrible circumstances were that cruelly disturbed a family existence that had once been so carefree.
Adelgunde had been the brightest and most cheerful child. Then, her fourteenth birthday came along. Many friends were invited, and the girls played in the vast gardens so merrily that they forgot the time and didn’t notice that a dark and sinister evening was drawing in. In the magical light of dusk, they performed all manner of strange dances, evoking fairies and other nimble spirits.
When it was fully dark, Adelgunde gathered her friends around her and began to tell them a story she had heard many times from the old gardener who had long since passed away. A terrible spectre haunted these old grounds. After dark, it appeared by the ancient walls at the end of the garden in the shape of a White Woman. “Come,” Adelgunde called, wrapping herself in a white shawl. “I will show you.” The girls ran giggling after her as she sped down a narrow path between high hedges to the ancient ruins at the bottom of the garden.
Then suddenly, Adelgunde stopped and stared into the darkness between the stone arches. She stood transfixed as the manor clock struck nine somewhere in the distance behind her. “Don’t you see?” she whispered, her voice stricken and full of terror. “It’s her, right in front of me! No! She’s stretching out her hand to me! No! Don’t you see?!’ Her friends saw nothing, but the ghostly white shape of Adelgunde kindled fear in their hearts as well, and they ran away into the darkness. Now all alone in the night, the girl collapsed as though struck by Death himself.
When she awoke in her bedroom hours later, shivering from head to toe, she told her parents what had happened, how she had seen an eerie figure shrouded in mist, stretching out a hand towards her. Naturally, this was put down to the overactive imagination of a child playing in the dusk with her friends on her birthday. In the cold light of day, Adelgunde recovered swiftly and seemed to have suffered no lasting harm from the episode. Oh, how wrong this hasty assumption was!
In the evening, the family sat together when the clock struck nine. Adelgunde suddenly jumped up and cried: “There it is! There it is! Can’t you see? It’s right in front of me!” This terrible scene was repeated every evening thereafter. The clock struck nine, and the girl became terrified, adamant that a shape materialised that no one else could see.
Poor Adelgunde was declared insane, and the family, ashamed of her condition, hid the girl from visitors in the evenings. This is what I had witnessed during my stay at the manor. All kinds of doctors were called in to cure her of her fancies. The girl pleaded with them tearfully to leave her alone. The figure was real, she insisted. She wasn’t mad. Adelgunde wasn’t even frightened of the ghostly apparition anymore, although she admitted that every time she saw it, she felt drained and exhausted afterwards, as though her inner self had been dragged out of her, floating around outside her body, leaving it lifeless and weak.
Finally, a famous physician was called in and suggested to trick the girl out of her imagination. The sound of the clock striking nine, he explained, was so strongly connected to her nighttime terrors that it triggered the hallucination each evening. If she could be made to believe that it was not nine o’clock, she would not see the White Woman and therefore realise that she had imagined things all along.
This ill-fated plan was implemented immediately. In the night, all the clocks in the manor and even the one in the church tower in the nearby village were secretly changed back one hour so that Adelgunde woke up in the morning, thinking it was one hour later than it really was. In the evening, the family did their best to distract her. Her mother told funny stories, and her father wound up the Frenchwoman, which always made his daughters laugh.
Then the heavy clock on the wall struck eight, when really it was nine o’clock. Adelgunde stopped laughing abruptly and sank into her chair, suddenly limp and lifeless. Her knitting slid out of her weak fingers, and she rose as if in a trance. “What is this?” she murmured. “An hour early? It is right here! Right in front of me! Can’t you see?” Desperate, her father shouted, “Adelgunde, it’s nothing! You’re imagining it! Pull yourself together. It’s nothing! There is no ghost!”
As if no longer master of her own body, Adelgunde reached down and picked up a plate from the table. As if handing it to someone, she stretched out her arm, and her fingers let go of the porcelain in mid-air. The plate didn’t fall. It just hung there as if held by an invisible hand. Then it began to float around the room before being gently placed back on the table. This time, everyone saw what the girl saw.
Adelgunde’s mother and sister collapsed in shock, their minds unable to cope with the sight of this undeniable yet inexplicable phenomenon. In the following days, both fell into a delirious fever. Shortly after, the mother was dead.
Her older sister Auguste survived, but surely death would have been more merciful than her current condition. Once so beautiful and vivacious, she is now in the grip of madness, convinced she is the spectre her sister had brought into the house and that everyone who beholds her will instantly die of fright. She doesn’t leave her room, barely speaks and hardly even dares to breathe. Staff now only open the door, place food into her room and retreat as quickly as possible so as not to upset her. Can you imagine a situation more tormenting?
The Colonel seemed outwardly unaffected at first, but his stiff and disturbed manner pointed to the deeply corrosive effect the phenomenon had had on his spirit. After the death of his wife, he fell into deep despair and followed the flags into the new campaign. He fell in battle. I heard that when the order to attack came, he ran into enemy fire as if driven by the Furies.
Only the French governess and Adelgunde survived the ordeal more or less unscathed. The old lady, because she had only glimpsed the terrible sight of the floating plate briefly before sinking down on her knees, her face to the ground and praying for deliverance. The girl endured because the previous apparitions had steeled her. Adelgunde’s soul had learned to accept that there are things between heaven and earth that no rational mind can explain.
Marvellous. Thank you. If you read MRJ as a child I bet you were well behaved! He’s up there in my pantheon.
Terrifying! Although not a Hoffmann work, it did inspire me to re-read Goethe's Erlkönig
which could have been written by Hoffmann I think! Now I am ready for some Wodehouse to counteract this....