Halloween is coming! This year we propose you a challenge: three stories. One of them is real, another one is folklore and the third one is completely made-up. Are you able to tell them apart?
History number 1: A Second Chance.
Giuseppe, the local barber of Craco, Italy, around 1850, really loved his wife, and his love was intensely reciprocated. They had always been neighbors and friends: they had played together, they had told their dreams and hopes to each other, they had shared their first kiss. Theirs was the kind of love in which they couldn’t bear the thought of spending one day without each other.
Renata was a beautiful girl and his father didn’t approve of her relationship with Giuseppe: he thought her beauty could grant her a wealthier admirer, even someone from the nobility. He would never accept the son of a barber as his daughter’s husband.
Giuseppe was desperate. Renata would not marry him against her father’s wishes. When he thought they would never marry, his grandmother gave him a present that could change their fate: it was a ring with an exquisite, glowing emerald, very valuable.
“Your grandfather won my love with this ring,” she said. “I know you already have Renata’s love, but maybe this ring will convince her father that you’re worthy.”
And, in fact, the ring did the trick. Renata’s father gave his consent and a few months later Renata and Giuseppe married. There never were two happier people on the face of the Earth. They had two children, a beautiful house near the church in Craco and the prosperity that comes with hard work and responsibility.
Life was good until Renata got sick. She died of consumption in 1856 and from that moment on everything went downhill for Giuseppe and his two kids. People stopped going to his barbershop, scared of a possible contagion and he didn’t help his business with his sad mood and violent outbursts.
On a cold day of december, Giuseppe was crying while visiting the tomb of his beloved wife, telling her how he was failing: his business in ruins, their savings almost totally spent and their children missing their mother; even worse, missing their father too.
Then the most strange of things happened: the bells installed on the coffins began to ring, as if announcing a general awakening of the dead, the earth trembled with an ominous roar. The coffin containing Renata’s body stood up, the lid opened and Renata’s body appeared.
She had not aged one day, still rosy and fresh, with the same appearance as when she was alive. She extended her left hand, or maybe her left hand fell, and on it there was the ring.
Giuseppe thought that Renata was giving him the ring so he could pay for his debts and provide for their children. He kneeled, kissed her hand and took the ring.
Giuseppe didn’t squander this second chance: the money he got from the ring gave him a boost, but he went back to being the hard-working and responsible father that his children needed. He even bought the ring back a few years later and moved Renata’s body to a family mausoleum.
It is rumored that when he died he took the ring with him to the mausoleum, but it is also rumored that no thief ever dared to steal it.
History number 2: The Haunted House.
November 1912. A family of five and their servants moved to a house built around 1870, with narrow windows that didn’t let the sun in and floors heavily carpeted that muffled all sounds. Well, all the sounds made by living things, because it wasn’t uncommon for Graham, the husband, to hear heavy footsteps walking down the stairs outside his bedroom… on a staircase that didn’t exist. He also felt watched by some presences that weren’t there and he complained that the phone rang in the middle of the night, but no one was calling. One night he was awakened by the fire department, with their sirens and screams, but when he looked through the windows he could only see the ominous trees looming over the house in silence.
Henrietta, the housewife, had her share of horrific experiences too. She constantly felt cold and tired, and no amount of scarves or sleep could alleviate her misery. She also heard the heavy footsteps her husband complained about, footsteps that seemed to belong to a man of great weight. Her plants died, indifferent to her upkeep and maintenance. Her children grew pale and listless.
A few times she could see a strange woman, dark haired and dressed in black, coming towards her. Henrietta, being a very brave woman, ran to the lady in black, but when she got to her she transformed into a reflection of Henrietta on a mirror or a window. Henrietta was blonde and she never wore black.
But the terror really came one day when little Brandon, 4 years old, entered Henrietta’s room and asked:
“What do you want, mommy?”
“Nothing, dear,” Henrietta answered.
“But you called me!” he cried.
“I did nothing of the sort!” Henrietta protested.
Brandon went away, but Agnes, the children’s nurse, stayed and said:
“This house is haunted!”
After all her experiences, a chill went down Henrietta’s spine. Nonetheless, she was a rational person and chuckled the feeling away.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, perhaps not too convincingly.
Agnes told her the same things her husband and Henrietta had experienced, especially the footsteps at night. And she added that one evening, while Henrietta and Graham were at the opera, Brandon woke and screamed:
“Agnes! Agnes! Don’t let the big fat man touch me!”
That was more than Henrietta could stand, She decided to put an end to their collective suffering and leave the house.
A few months later everyone was happy, the big fat man was a bad memory and the lady in black never showed up again.
History number 3. The Wounded Vampire.
This story takes place in England, around 1875. Amelia and her two brothers, Edward and Michael, rented an old, big house in the country. During the summer, Amelia was trying to sleep when she heard some weird noises in the window. She forced herself to look and discovered a strange creature in the shape of an old man with a brown face and flaming eyes. The creature was trying to remove the lead in the window pane with a long fingernail. He looked at her with malice, but Amelia could do nothing, entranced in some kind of stupor that paralyzed her. At last, when the creature opened the window, Alice cried as loud as she could. Her two brothers came immediately, but the creature was long gone.
Michael didn’t pay much attention to his sister’s story, but Edward prepared for another apparition of the monster. He set out to defend his sister: he acquired a pistol and slept every night near it. A few days passed and one night his sister began to cry for help again; he went to her bedroom and saw the monster very clearly, crouched on the windowsill.
Edward fired his gun and the bullet impacted on the creature’s leg. It screamed with a piercing sound and ran amazingly fast out of the house and through the grounds. The brothers chased him to the local cemetery and, out of fear, they waited at the door until the morning came. Once the sun was up, they entered the cemetery, followed the blood trail and arrived at a vault. Inside it they discovered a corpse with a wound on his leg, undoubtedly a vampire.
The brothers burned the creature with the help of some local parishioners. The creature never came back to haunt their sister’s dreams.
Well, these are our three stories. As you can see, the three of them could have been true, or completely false, or something in between. An earthquake opening tombs? The tale of a gullible housewife? A pervert lurking in a cemetery, executed without a proper trial?
Choose wisely. Below is the solution, scroll down a little, but not before you’ve made up your mind.
The solution.
History number 1: A Second chance. FALSE. It is true that in seismic areas sometimes the dead come back to life because the earthquakes break everything, tombs and coffins included. But unfortunately this story, though somewhat plausible, is completely made-up. Some elements that add credibility to the story: it takes place in Basilicata, Italy, a place with a lot of seismic activity; there was a big earthquake in 1857. And Craco is one of the most beautiful ghost villages in the world. Check it out!
History number 2. A Haunted House. TRUE. This story was published by William Wilmer in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in 1921. We have changed very few things. In the end Henrietta (fictitious name) decides to leave the house, but in reality she never did: her brother-in-law suspected that the whole family was being poisoned and sent Professor S to investigate the house. He found the furnace in a very bad condition, pouring gases of carbon monoxide inside the house. Carbon monoxide explains hallucinations, headaches and the rest of the symptoms described in the story and is the first cause in explainable house hauntings. Once the furnace was fixed, the hauntings disappeared.
History number 3. The Wounded Vampire. FOLKLORE. This story is usually told as the vampire of Croglin Grange, and it’s supposed to have taken place in Cumberland, England. It’s a popular tale that appeared in Story of My Life by Augustus Hare, in 1890, and afterwards was republished by Montague Summers, but he pointed that it should be dismissed as a piece of folklore.
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