A young high society woman was travelling in Austria many years ago. She had a young daughter, just two or three years old, whom she loved dearly.
One evening, she arrived at an inn that was part of an old landowner’s domain. The walls were extremely thick and the doors and windows were low and deeply-set.
The inn had a good reputation and the young countess had no reason to be apprehensive. A bed was placed for the young girl in her mother’s room, a candle was lit, and the ladies-in-waiting went to dine. They had been gone for a while when a door to the rooms opened and a venerable old woman appeared. She was wearing old-style clothes, with a scarf bearing a coat-of-arms. She slowly approached the child’s cradle, and seemed to look at her kindly. As if she were a mother concerned about not waking her child, she then bent down and kissed the young girl on the forehead before leaving the room.
The countess was touched; she thought the old woman had come to make sure the child was well and didn’t need anything. The next day, before leaving, she wished to thank her and asked to see her. The people at the inn told her they did not know who the old woman was, but she was notorious, and had been been feared for centuries. She always appeared in the same costume and the children whose foreheads she kissed all died within a year, and this was indeed the case with the countess’s daughter.
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THE DISFIGURED THIEF
8 July 2019 - 2 mins
It was 19th century Greece during King Otto of Bavaria’s reign. An elusive thief named Christos Davelis was ravaging the area of Mount Pentecliicus around north Athens. Word also had it that he was very handsome: so much so that he may well have seduced the Duchess of Plaisance. Sophie de Marbois was Lebrun’s widow,…
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THE MURDEROUS GARDENER
24 February 2019 - 1 min
My aunt Bébelle, the Countess of Paris Isabelle d’Orléans Bragance, told me that when she was young she often visited one of her maternal aunts who owned a very beautiful villa on the banks of Lake Geneva. The aunt was especially proud of her garden, and of her roses in particular. One day, the aunt…
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“THERE IS ROOM FOR ONE MORE”
31 January 2019 - 2 mins
I saw this story in a very old black and white film. I read it in a collection of stories published by Benson, and had read before that it in a collection of true tales, of which I cannot recall the author. It took place in England in between 1905 and 1910. A man is…
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PHOTOS OF THE SPANISH ROYAL FAMILY
17 August 2018 - 3 mins
Infant Alfonso of Orleans and his wife princess Beatrice of Great Britain, uncle Ali, aunt Bee. He belongs to the Spanish branch of the Orleans family; he was an exceptionally gifted pilot, original, always unexpected, adored by his nephews and nieces, including me. She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, a famous beauty like her…
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A GHOST AT SANDRINGHAM
14 July 2021 - 4 mins
My father, Christopher, had the most profound affection for his aunt, Queen Alexandra of England, wife of King Eduard VII, and frequently stayed at the various English palaces. In the early years of the twentieth century, he found himself at Sandringham for the weekend, where he had a strange experience that I was reminded of…
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GRADISCH
20 June 2021 - 6 mins
Countess Caroline Goëss was a mean and absolute unpleasant character. She owned Gradisch Castle at the beginning of the 19th century. It likely originated as a fortress in the line of fire from which steeples to towers signalled danger in the Middle Ages. It later became a charming and elegant abode on a human scale….
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TELČ
30 March 2021 - 5 mins
Unlike the facetious Countess Caroline Goess, the White Lady of Telč thought only of doing good. She had the unusual name Perchta. She had married a count of Liechtenstein, a namesake but entirely unrelated to the principality. He was a wicked, brutal man whose odious methods often forced her to seek refuge at her brother’s…
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THE DWARF OF GRAZZANO PART 2
11 March 2021 - 9 mins
One winter morning, it was freezing in the Grazzano library where the infamous séance took place. The seance that had, in a sense, resurrected Aloysa. The ghost took some time to show itself. Amazingly, there was nothing dwarf-like about it. On the contrary, the precisely contoured silhouette in the door was that of a tall…
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The Massacre’s Surviving Cross
22 December 2021 - 2 mins
One July night in 1918, Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their five children and a few servants and loyal companions were murdered, as everyone knows, in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. A few days later, the White Army liberated the city from the Bolsheviks. Then began the investigation into the imperial family’s…
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GLEICHENBERG
31 October 2021 - 6 mins
“We are witches; we want to suffer punishment and be executed,” howled the chained women. There were about forty of them, excessively made-up and dressed in brightly coloured rags. Count Trautmansdorff, the illustrious lord in charge of life and death in Styria, watched them doubtfully. He knew these peasants, these farmers. He had vaguely heard…
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THE DWARF OF GRAZZANO PART 1
11 March 2021 - 4 mins
“Spirit, are you there?” asked Count Giuseppe. They were six or seven seated at the round table in the library at Grazzano, the enormous castle next to Piacenza. The room where time seemed to have stopped had been left in darkness, and nothing disturbed the thick silence They were anxious, tense, and fixated on the…
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THE TZAR’S TREASURE
1 December 2020 - 6 mins
At the beginning of 1917, Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children found themselves left with a handful of loyal servants who refused to abandon them when they were imprisoned in their home at Alexander Palace. Then, in July of that year, the interim government decided to send the Russian Imperial Family…
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A Great-Uncle’s Treasure
11 December 2021 - 2 mins
The other day, I went to the American hospital for a check-up. I came across Dr Ribadeau-Dumas. I remembered his surname because it was the same as one of my schoolmates as a child. He remembered me because he examined my arteries ten years ago. “You gave me the book about your great-uncle that you…
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THE CASTLE OF TREASURE
21 September 2021 - 3 mins
Alexander was a lawyer at a Swiss bank in Geneva. He was immensely bored of it, as we well understand. One day, he dropped everything and took his family away to a new life. With his initiation, they purchased a large castle in the south of France, in Ariège, in the middle of a little-known…
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THE WHITE LADY OF THE HOHENZOLLERN
17 August 2020 - 3 mins
In July 1857, King Frederick William IV of Prussia and his queen were on their way to the springs of Marienbad when they stopped in Saxony to visit the king and queen who were not only cousins but friends. At that time, the Saxony Court was at the summer residence of Pillnitz Castle where the…
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MURDER AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE III
30 May 2020 - 5 mins
“Sellis’ torso was propped against the back of his bed, his head practically detached from his body. His sheets and nightshirt were bloodied. Precisely as you saw earlier, except he appeared to you standing upright while the footmen found the poor man on his bed. The guard sergeant immediately noticed that an open, bloodied razorblade…
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MURDER AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE I
30 May 2020 - 5 mins
It was thanks to Henry VIII that the monarchy settled at St. James’s, where it continues to reside, at least fictitiously, for to this day, the decrees of Queen Elizabeth II bear the words, “Given at our Court of St. James’s”. Over the centuries, Henry VIII’s palace has been reduced, half destroyed by fires, and…
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ANNE AND SARAH
24 May 2019 - 3 mins
In the winter of 1711, France and Louis XIV felt absolutely crestfallen. Frost had annihilated the harvest; it was so cold that people were dying in the streets; the Spanish War of Succession had been dragging on for more than ten years; there was no more money, troops, resources, and no more hope. France’s enemies…
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THE DIWAN AND THE DANCER
9 November 2018 - 1 min
In Queen Ahilya’s inner circle there was a diwan, a minister of whom she was particularly fond. His name was Boliya Sarkar Chatri. She found him so remarkable that she offered him one of her relatives, a princess from Indore, in matrimony: but the diwan was smitten with a beautiful and loving dancer. He…
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MUMBAI, TAJ MAHAL PALACE HOTEL
10 July 2018 - 2 mins
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai is probably one of the most famous palaces of India. It dates back to the 20th century and remains by far one of my favourite hotels of the country, and one of my favourite hotel worldwide, due to its extraordinary location by the ocean, extravagant and sumptuous architecture,…