The Spirit Appears as the Wife

Duke Johann Kasimir had a stable master of noble lineage, and this man had the strange experience that a spirit frequently appeared to him in the form of his still-living wife, which disturbed him greatly. Just like the wife wore particular clothes, so did the spirit and regularly appeared during the noon hour from eleven to twelve o’clock. For this reason, the wife never went anywhere without company so that she could be distinguished from the vexing spirit, but at the meal table the stable master still didn’t know at times which of them was actually his wife. If a cleric was present, the spirit kept away. Once the confessor of the family, one Johann Brüscher, had been invited, and when leaving the noble accompanied him to the stairway together with his wife and his sister. Then the spirit climbed up the stairs from below and grabbed the lady at her apron through a wooden grid. The lady screamed loudly, whereupon the spirit vanished. Once, the spirit lay with its arm on the threshold to the kitchen, and the cook asked: “What do you want?” Whereupon the spirit replied: “I want your mistress.” But it did not harm her.
The stable master’s wife pressured him to leave their house (which was in the Spitalgasse) and move into the house later inhabited by Dr. Frommann. Then the spirit became visible and audible and spoke: “You can move wherever you want — I will follow you, even if it means to the ends of the Earth.” But the stable master still moved out of the house and then the doors of the rear building were thrown shut with great force. The spirit was no longer seen in the abandoned building, but even more so in the new home. Then the stable master moved into another large house in a suburb near the Rosenau Castle. Finally, he moved into Ehrenburg Palace, as he had become Schlosshauptmann. There the spirit finally ceased to make appearances.
Source: Bechstein - Der Sagenschatz des Frankenlandes, p. 215f
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