The Green Boy in the Cave

King Murat had a brother who was made count, Count Murat. His descendants still live in Lot, the ancestral home of the lineage. In the 19th century, one of the most impressive, rich, and vast caves in all of Europe was discovered on their land, the cave of Pech Merle. A distance niece of King Murat, Aunt Bertha, vacationed in the area. She had an interesting ascendance, and an equally interesting life. She became a Buddhist and received at the property a group of Buddhist nuns from Taiwan where she had first met them.

She took the nuns around the area, making sure to show them Pech Merle. The cave system is full of underground lakes, and upon arriving at these lakes, the nuns felt the presence of a naga. Nagas are aquatic entities that form part of the Buddhist pantheon. These creatures, these water spirits, often manifest themselves in human form. The nuns prayed for the nagas present in the cave. When exiting the cave system, after spending much time admiring the stalactites, Aunt Bertha and the nuns met a young boy dressed in green from head to toe, with disheveled hair, and who stared into their eyes while laughing. The women were shocked, they tried to question him but he ran off. They reaching the parking lot and Aunt Bertha began driving them home. About ten miles from the cave, at a crossroads, the women saw the same boy all dressed in green. Now, the women hadn’t seen any other cars on the road. How could the boy possibly have gotten to the crossroads so quickly? Again the young boy stared at them and laughed. They were shocked, but they didn’t stop.

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Returning home, neither the nuns nor Aunt Bertha spoke about the young boy in green, but inwardly, they all were thinking about this apparition. A few days later, the nuns left Lot and returned to Taiwan.

After few weeks passed and Aunt Bertha received another guest, an old friend who had never before been to the region. Of course Aunt Bertha brought her to the cave, which was the grandest local attraction. Having explored the cave dozens of time with so many visitors, most recently the nuns from Taiwan, she told her friend, “Go into the cave, it is very easy, you just follow the path. If you don’t mind, I think I will stay outside, I know the cave by heart already. I will wait for you at the museum at the exit of the cave. I want to see the video they are playing.”

At the museum, Aunt Bertha sat down in an armchair and began to watch the video. On the screen flashed a number of photographs linked with the history of the cave. Suddenly, she saw in one of the photographs a figure she recognized. It was the young boy dressed all in green with disheveled hair who stared at the nuns while laughing. She learned from the film that his name was André David, and he was the one who discovered the cave in the 19th century. He was dressed entirely in green. Aunt Bertha let out a cry, she was stupefied, troubled, she didn’t know what to do, what to think. She obtained a copy of the photograph. She later sent the photograph to the nuns in Taiwan. The nuns wrote a long response. They began to cry when seeing the photograph, tears of emotion, tears from seeing the intensity spread across upon the young boy’s face. According to Aunt Bertha, the nagas had reincarnated themselves as the young boy, because they wanted the cave to be discovered in the same way that it was by André David.


by  Prince Michael of Greece