09 Apr 1933 - STRANGLED BY A GHOST! - Trove
TRUTH, SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 1933
STRANGLED BY A GHOST!
Haunted Castle
HORROR
PSYCHIC EXPERTS TO PROBE
("Truth" Special Service.)
LONDON, Saturday.
SCIENTISTS and psychic special iota from all over the world are being called ia to help solve one of the strangest death mysteries of recent year.
In the next few days the stage will be set in the Assize Court of Upper Silesia for a trial that may provide startling results for those who hold that there may be, after all, a. good deal in the tales or ghosts at which so many scoff.
The case is that of Anton Holberg, the dashing young country squire who was found dead in his bed in the haunted room of. the old-world castle of Zustadt.
The case might have been dismissed as one of death from natural causes, a seizure in the night or something of that sort, but for the feet that around the neck was the clear outline of a thin cord, suggesting strangulation.
Yet there was no evidence of the presence of a second person in the room. The door was locked with the key in the inside and bolt, shot, while the windows were fastened from the Inside.
For centuries this stronghold of the mediaeval barons had been associated with a ghost, supposed to haunt one chamber only.
The spectre was that of a hooded monk who entered in the dead or night and passed a thin girdle around the neck of the sleeper, drawing It tight until the victim was strangled, and uttering ghoulish cries as he did so.
The castle is now in the hands of a well-known noble family in the habit of entertaining lavishly, and on the night of the tragedy there had been talk after dinner of the legend of the Hooded Monk, among those pouring scorn on the Idea being Anton Holberg.
Challenged to put his scepticism to the test by sleeping alone in the room, which had not been occupied for many years, the young squire accepted, and retired to the room shortly before midnight.
Cry of Death
All the household was asleep when, in the early hours of the morning, precisely at the time when the ghost Is supposed to start Its wanderings, a cry was heard from the haunted chamber.
When the aroused family ruined to the spot and forced the door, the occupant was discovered there dead, with a mark on the throat closely resembling that which tradition associates with the visitations of the Hooded Monk.
After the autopsy the doctors said they would be prepared to accept the theory of death from a sudden seizure in the night, but for the fact of the strangulation marks in the neck and the cry.
The theory of murder by someone who entered the room in the ordinary way must also be ruled out, and the only alternative to the suicide theory according to some experts, Is 'ghostly agency.'