HAUNTED HOUSES

In the first days of November 1869, I left Perpignan, my hometown, to continue my pharmaceutical studies in Montpellier. My family consisted of my mother and my four sisters. I left them very happy and in perfect health.

On the 22nd of the same month, my sister Hélène—a beautiful girl of eighteen, the youngest and most beloved member of the family—gathered some friends at her mother’s house. At about three o’clock in the afternoon, they set out with my mother for the Promenade des Platanes original: "Promenade des Platanes," a well-known public park in Perpignan famous for its rows of plane trees. The weather was beautiful. After half an hour, my sister was suddenly taken ill. “Mother,” she said, “I feel a strange shudder throughout my body. I am cold, and my throat hurts. Let us go home.”

That night, at 5:00 a.m., The hours have been corrected from the first account after a careful examination of the details. my beloved sister passed away in my mother’s arms. She was choked and overwhelmed by an attack of diphtheria A serious and then-common bacterial infection that causes a thick covering in the back of the throat, making it hard to breathe which two doctors were unable to treat.

I was the only man who could have represented the family at the funeral, and my family sent one telegram after another to me in Montpellier. But by a terrible stroke of misfortune, which I still deeply regret, none of them reached me in time.

During the night between the 23rd and the 24th, I had a harrowing hallucination.

I had returned home at 2:00 a.m. with a light heart, full of the joy I had experienced at a social gathering on the 22nd and 23rd. I went to bed feeling very cheerful and was asleep within five minutes.

About 4:00 a.m., I saw my sister’s face. It was deathly pale and bleeding, and a piercing cry—mournful and unceasing—struck my ear: “What are you doing, my Louis? Please come. Please come.”

In my restless and agitated sleep, I hailed a carriage original: "took a cab," referring to a horse-drawn taxi, but despite superhuman efforts, I could not make it move. And still, I saw my sister’s face and heard her voice in my ear: “Louis, what are you doing? Please come. Please come.”

I awoke suddenly; my face was flushed, my head felt feverish, my throat was dry, my breath was short and gasping, and I was sweating profusely. I jumped out of bed, trying to com—