After the temporary suppression of the Jesuit order in Austria towards the end of the eighteenth century, the monastery, or rather château, of Zampach fell into the hands of different owners, who were generally absentees. If, therefore, the Jesuit novice continued his nightly walks in the deserted passages, no one could bear witness to his apparition. When, in 1884, the estate and château of Zampach were purchased by Countess Lützow, and became— as they have since continued—our residence for about half the year, the question of the “Zampach ghost” became a subject of discussion. Bohemian peasants are perhaps not unnaturally reticent on such subjects, and I am afraid that some of my visitors rather believed that the “ghost” was a fiction imagined by me for the purpose of preventing the sittings in the smoking-room from continuing beyond midnight.
But since last year the existence of the Zampach ghost is a certainty—at least, to the same extent as that of any other ghost—a very necessary qualification!
Two English friends who were studying at Dresden came to Zampach to spend Christmas with us. The conversation in the smoking-room one evening turned to the Zampach ghost, and we decided, a few minutes before twelve—“the hour of ghosts,” as it is called in German—to go to the Countess’s morning-room, near which, as already mentioned, the novice is traditionally said to have been immured. We left the door leading from the morning-room to the passage, along which the ghost is said to pace, open, but at the stroke of midnight a sudden gust of wind closed it. Shortly afterwards we distinctly heard footsteps in the passage; they appeared to be the steps of a person wearing sandals, such as the novice is traditionally reported to have worn. These footsteps, now louder, now more faint, could be heard for at least ten minutes, and I cannot deny that we were decidedly frightened. For a moment it appeared as if the door were being opened, and we hoped, or rather feared, that we should see the ghost whose footsteps we had so distinctly heard. But the door was almost immediately closed. My friends reminded me of the German notion, that ghosts never appear to several people together, but only to one person, who is alone. I suggested that one of them should, next midnight, go alone to the “ghost-room”; but somehow the suggestion was not taken up.
Traditionally connected with the legend of the novice is that of the mysterious fountain in the grounds of Zampach, from which, it is said, a female figure, clad entirely in white, rises for a short time at midnight, only to disappear again after a few minutes. It is said that the bride of the novice threw herself into this fountain when she heard of the disappearance of her lover, and that she nightly leaves her grave to join him in his wanderings through the deserted passages of the castle of Zampach. It is, however, very possible that the tale of the mysterious white apparition is of far more ancient, even ancient, even pagan, origin. The ancient Bohemians believed in the existence of nymphs, known as Rusalky, who peopled the springs, and occasionally appeared to passers-by. I must, however, plead guilty to never having seen the nymph, or Rusalka, of Zampach.
Photo. by J. Caswall Smith, Oxford Street.
