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Black Spirits and White: A Book of Ghost Stories

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Title: Black Spirits and White: A Book of Ghost Stories

Author: Ralph Adams Cram

Release date: September 22, 2008 [eBook #26687]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26687

Credits: Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACK SPIRITS AND WHITE: A BOOK OF GHOST STORIES ***

Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

BLACK SPIRITS AND WHITE

CARNATION SERIES

Black Spirits & White

_A Book of Ghost Stories_

BY
RALPH ADAMS CRAM

[Device]

CHICAGO
STONE & KIMBALL

MDCCCXCV

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. The oe
ligature is represented by [oe].

"BLACK SPIRITS AND WHITE,
RED SPIRITS AND GRAY,
MINGLE, MINGLE, MINGLE,
YE THAT MINGLE MAY."

Contents

PAGE
NO. 252 RUE M. LE PRINCE 3
IN KROPFSBERG KEEP 33
THE WHITE VILLA 55
SISTER MADDELENA 83
NOTRE DAME DES EAUX 115
THE DEAD VALLEY 133
POSTSCRIPT 151

No. 252 RUE M. LE PRINCE.

No. 252 Rue M. le Prince.

When in May, 1886, I found myself at last in Paris, I naturally
determined to throw myself on the charity of an old chum of mine, Eugene
Marie d'Ardeche, who had forsaken Boston a year or more ago on receiving
word of the death of an aunt who had left him such property as she
possessed. I fancy this windfall surprised him not a little, for the
relations between the aunt and nephew had never been cordial, judging
from Eugene's remarks touching the lady, who was, it seems, a more or
less wicked and witch-like old person, with a penchant for black magic,
at least such was the common report.

Why she should leave all her property to d'Ardeche, no one could tell,
unless it was that she felt his rather hobbledehoy tendencies towards
Buddhism and occultism might some day lead him to her own unhallowed
height of questionable illumination. To be sure d'Ardeche reviled her as
a bad old woman, being himself in that state of enthusiastic exaltation
which sometimes accompanies a boyish fancy for occultism; but in spite
of his distant and repellent attitude, Mlle. Blaye de Tartas made him
her sole heir, to the violent wrath of a questionable old party known to
infamy as the Sar Torrevieja, the "King of the Sorcerers." This
malevolent old portent, whose gray and crafty face was often seen in the
Rue M. le Prince during the life of Mlle. de Tartas had, it seems, fully
expected to enjoy her small wealth after her death; and when it appeared
that she had left him only the contents of the gloomy old house in the
Quartier Latin, giving the house itself and all else of which she died
possessed to her nephew in America, the Sar proceeded to remove
everything from the place, and then to curse it elaborately and
comprehensively, together with all those who should ever dwell therein.

Whereupon he disappeared.

This final episode was the last word I received from Eugene, but I knew
the number of the house, 252 Rue M. le Prince. So, after a day or two
given to a first cursory survey of Paris, I started across the Seine to
find Eugene and compel him to do the honors of the city.

Every one who knows the Latin Quarter knows the Rue M. le Prince,
running up the hill towards the Garden of the Luxembourg. It is full of
queer houses and odd corners,--or was in '86,--and certainly No. 252
was, when I found it, quite as queer as any. It was nothing but a
doorway, a black arch of old stone between and under two new houses
painted yellow. The effect of this bit of seventeenth-century masonry,
with its dirty old doors, and rusty broken lantern sticking gaunt and
grim out over the narrow sidewalk, was, in its frame of fresh plaster,
sinister in the extreme.

I wondered if I had made a mistake in the number; it was quite evident
that no one lived behind those cobwebs. I went into the doorway of one
of the new hôtels and interviewed the concierge.

No, M. d'Ardeche did not live there, though to be sure he owned the
mansion; he himself resided in Meudon, in the country house of the late
Mlle. de Tartas. Would Monsieur like the number and the street?

Monsieur would like them extremely, so I took the card that the
concierge wrote for me, and forthwith started for the river, in order
that I might take a steamboat for Meudon. By one of those coincidences
which happen so often, being quite inexplicable, I had not gone twenty
paces down the street before I ran directly into the arms of Eugene
d'Ardeche. In three minutes we were sitting in the queer little garden
of the Chien Bleu, drinking vermouth and absinthe, and talking it all
over.

"You do not live in your aunt's house?" I said at last, interrogatively.

"No, but if this sort of thing keeps on I shall have to. I like Meudon
much better, and the house is perfect, all furnished, and nothing in it
newer than the last century. You must come out with me to-night and see
it. I have got a jolly room fixed up for my Buddha. But there is
something wrong with this house opposite. I can't keep a tenant in
it,--not four days. I have had three, all within six months, but the
stories have gone around and a man would as soon think of hiring the
Cour des Comptes to live in as No. 252. It is notorious. The fact is,
it is haunted the worst way."

I laughed and ordered more vermouth.

"That is all right. It is haunted all the same, or enough to keep it
empty, and the funny part is that no one knows _how_ it is haunted.
Nothing is ever seen, nothing heard. As far as I can find out, people
just have the horrors there, and have them so bad they have to go to the
hospital afterwards. I have one ex-tenant in the Bicêtre now. So the
house stands empty, and as it covers considerable ground and is taxed
for a lot, I don't know what to do about it. I think I'll either give it
to that child of sin, Torrevieja, or else go and live in it myself. I
shouldn't mind the ghosts, I am sure."

"Did you ever stay there?"

"No, but I have always intended to, and in fact I came up here to-day to
see a couple of rake-hell fellows I know, Fargeau and

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