True Ghost Stories

A woman once asked me to help her brother who had spent more than a dozen years in a psychiatric hospital. She looked after him conscientiously, visiting him twice a week, travelling twelve miles one way. She confessed: "Mrs Pratnicka, I won't be able to put up with this much longer, I love my brother but I've fallen in love with a magnificent man who has asked me to marry him. While our mother was alive, my brother had a brilliant future, he finished his studies, he took a PhD, he knows four languages fluently, but after she died it all went went to pieces". It was immediately clear to who was the cause of all these troubles, but just in case I checked to see if there was the ghost of his mother possessing this man. When I told the sick man's sister about it, she wasn't in the least bit surprised. "It's a fact, their relationship was very special. Our mother couldn't see the world beyond my brother, everything was done for him, no-one else counted, not our father nor I. While she was alive my brother didn't particularly requite her love, he was simply a normal boy. Only when she died something started to happen, maybe because he really did love her as powerfully". I led the ghost of the emother away and three days later the doctors in the hospital asserted: "You're a lucky man, you're quite well again, go home and don't even think about us again". They released him from the hospital and he went to his sister. Their joy was unconfined. They phoned me right away and I could hear them talking over each other: "Mrs Pratnicka, my brother's come back, and you'll never believe this but he's talking normally, he even remembers everything. This is the first time in twelve years that we're drinking coffee together". They were crying with joy, laughing and then crying again. They must have talked for about an hour. But their joy did not last long because the ghost of the mother had no intention of leaving for ever, and with her return so did the illness. It was even worse than before: the brother very nearly made the sister's house go up in smoke. She called me, I led the ghost away, and he calmed down instantly. Luckily, he realized what the cause of his misfortune was and resolved that he wouldn't put up with it any longer. Earlier he used to surrender to her - but now, even though he loved his mother, he wanted to live his own life. He understood that the ghost of his mother, wanting to help him like she had done before, was quite simply harming him. He wanted very much to be well and he wouldn't allow her to remain. It was extremely difficult but he didn't give up. The gghost of his mother kept coming back from time to time until she left for good. He said goodbye to her for ever. Now he is a renowned academic and is making up for lost time. The mother used to be possessive and the son had to stand up to her. If he hadn't wanted to do so, it would have been impossible to lead her away because he would have pulled her back constantly.

One day a woman was brought to me who was extremely thin. She was 180 centimeters tall but weighed 37 kilograms. She had to be led, and when she tried to walk on her own she had to hold on to the walls. She was with her husband and two children. She had undergone a series of tests but the doctors could find no cause for her condition. When I checked her, I saw that sitting inside her was the ghost of her grandmother and she was the probable cause of her emaciation. When I told her, she bridled and said: "Not granny, never. Mrs Pratnicka, I'll never believe it, I'm sure you're quite wrong. My husband and I looked after her to the very end, she died happy and contented. No, it has to be someone else". Afterwards, her husband phoned on more than one occasion in her name, asking me to check it again. They insisted that this ghost couldn't possibly be her beloved granny. I said one thing, they said another. When I talked to the grandmother's ghost, she said something completely different. The ghost was full or reproaches directed at her granddaughter. I started to conduct long conversations with her and found out that she would never leave that "rag" (that's how she expressed herself about her granddaughter) in peace. The ghost of the grandmother would like for her to die a lousy death, and all this because she'd once kicked granny's little doggy. During our next telephone conversation I asked if such an event had really taken place. She said nothing, she was so surprised. That evening she called back and, full of remorse, said that when she was a little girl she had indeed inadvertently kicked her grandmother's dog. She couldn't imagine that her grandmother could still reproach her for it especially as she had apologized for it many times. The ghost of the grandmother continued to refuse to back down for several more weeks, wishing her granddaughter dead. When she finally did leave, the granddaughter started to put on weight at such a rate that her family joked she would be in the Guinness Book of Records for it.

And here;s another instance. A young woman, fear in her voice, phoned me. She asked me to help her husband. She suspected he might commit suicide. I asked her why she thought that. Did her husband tell her he would? "No, he didn't, but this year there have been four suicides in our house already, and my husband is changing just like the others," she replied. I asked how he was behaving: was he drinking, rowing, closed in on himself? "No, he's not drinking. My father-in-law, his brother, and brother-in-law all drank frequently. Only the mother-in-law didn't drink. He's behaving in the same weird way as they did. He sits as if he wasn't there and says nothing. We have four small children, please help me, what'll happen if he, too, kills himself? I won't manage". She started to cry. I checked. He was indeed possessed by a murderous ghost. I fought with him for about a year until he finally left. He was exceptionally malicious. In addition to that he brought a revolting smell into the house. When that ghost left a person, there was no way you could stay there. Floors were ripped up several times, the plaster was cut away until I found out about it and informed them that the cause of the unpleasant stench was a ghost. After the ghost left the threat passed. As did the odor.

One very wealthy businessman kept a Mercedes S and several other fine cars in the garage of his company, but he kept having a compulsion to wash and repair an old, decrepit Trabant. He spent virtually every spare moment in the garage. For twenty years his family bravely put up with this eccentricity. After all, they told themselves, there are far worse addictions in the world. Though he devoted all of his free time to this obsession, at least he was at home. Then came a moment when the Trabant started to disintegrate in some strange way, which had a powerful effect on its owner. He simply flew into a rage. Because of that, the family found its way to me. When I started to check whether the car had any connection to its owner's sickness, I discovered that it did, in a big way. Many years previously, before the man had started to run his own business, he'd bought the Trabant unaware that its previous owner had nearly caused an accident. The great stress that this caused led to his dying of a heart attack when he was at the wheel. During his life the Trabant was his pride and joy. After his death he stayed with it and whenever the ghost had the opportunity (when the businessman had drunk too much alcohol) he slipped into the car's new owner. As a ghost he looked out for his property very conscientiously. When I led the ghost away, the man who had been possessed by it awoke as from a long sleep. He was flabbergasted by the power of the obsession, and that he had not picked up on it himself. On a day to day basis he was a serious and wealthy man. He often said: "What luck that the ghost was so cunning and didn't want to drive round town in that old heap. Think of the humiliation that would have brought".

Once an elderly couple came to me. They had lived together for close on fifty years. Till then theirs had been a very congenial marriage, but recently the husband had started to be jealous of everything. To begin with it was even quite amusing, but when their granddaughter's friends started to be seen as rivals, or passers-by in the street, his obsession became unbearable. He suffered dreadfully, and she laughed: "Oh, old man, and what would these youngsters do with me since I've already got one foot in the grave?". But nothing could persuade him, he knew what he knew and that was the end of it. When the ghosts left, everything returned to normal, and he remembers nothing about it. As you can see, jealousy can afflict a person at any age.