Kitty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Winterjoy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
One Sunday Morning
Ida always went to the seven o’clock Sunday morning service at her church. Usually she heard the clanging of the church bells while she was eating breakfast. But this morning she heard them while she was still in bed.
“That means I’m late,” she thought.
Ida jumped out of bed, quickly dressed and left without eating or looking at the clock. It was still dark outside, but it usually was dark at this time of year. Ida was the only one on the street. The only sounds she heard were the clatter of her shoes on the pavement.
“Everybody must already be in church,” she thought.
Ida took a short cut through the cemetery, then she quietly slipped into the church and found a seat. The service had already begun.
When she caught her breath, Ida looked around. The church was filled with people she had never seen before. But the woman next to her did look familiar. Ida smiled at her. “It’s Josephine Kerr,” she thought. “But she’s dead! She died a month ago.” Suddenly Ida felt uneasy.
She looked around again. As her eyes began to adjust to the dim light, Ida saw some skeletons in suits and dresses. “This is a service for the dead,” Ida thought. Everybody here is dead, except me.”
Ida noticed that some of them were starting at her. They looked angry, as if she had no business there. Josephine Kerr leaned toward her and whispered, “Leave right after the benediction, if you care for your life.”
When the service came to an end, the minister gave his blessing. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” he said. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you …”
Ida grabbed her coat and walked quickly toward the door. When she heard footsteps behind her, she glanced back. Several of the dead were coming toward her. Others were getting up to join them.
“The Lord lift up his countenance to you …” the minster went on.
Ida was so frightened she began to run out the door.
“Get out!” one of them screamed. Another shouted, “You don’t belong here!” and ripped her coat away. As Ida ran through the cemetery, a third grabbed the hat from her head. “Don’t come back!” it screamed, and shook its arm at her.
By the time Ida reached the street, the sun was rising, and the dead had disappeared.
“Did this really happen?” Ida asked herself, “or have I been dreaming?”
That afternoon one of Ida’s friends brought over her coat and hat, or what was left of them. They had been found in the cemetery, torn to shreds.
*****
Schwartz first heard this story in the 1950s when he attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He says that the above text is based on his recollections of the story and references in Krappe, Balor, pp 114-25 (1) and JAF 60:159-62. (2)
The Alexander Haggerty Krappe is the author of the resources. The first is his book, Balor with the Evil Eye: Studies in Celtic and French Literature (1927) and the second is his entry in Journal of American Folklore (1947). The examples in the later journal entry are the same examples as are in the book. The following are not all the examples, just the ones I thought coolest.
Under THE SQUIRE’S ADVENTURE IN PERSLESVAUS, there is a King Arthur story, surprisingly enough.
“King Arthur’s court has fallen under a curse; it is becoming deserted, and the adventures, once so frequent, have stopped completely. To win back its lost splendour, the king decides to make a pilgrimage to the chapel of Saint Augustine, an undertaking beset with peril but from which the model of knighthood would assuredly be last to shrink. Accordingly, he bids his squire Chaos get ready for the journey, on which he is to start early the next morning Chaos obeys and then lies down to sleep in the hall without undressing. He dreams and imagines that dawn has broken, that he has overslept himself and that the monarch has set out without him. He rises in a hurry and follows, as he thinks, his master. He comes to a chapel in the middle of a cemetery where he finds many coffins. In the chapel he beholds a dead knight lying on a bier, with four lighted candles in as many candlesticks wrought of fine gold. He seizes one of these, conceals it about his body and leaves the chapel. In the wood he encounters an ugly black man, who demands from him the stolen candlestick. As he refuses to give it up, the other smites him with a knife. With a start and a cry he wakes up, to find himself in Arthur’s hall, seriously wounded and the candlestick beside him. He has just time to tell his story and to confess his sins; then he dies. King Arthur sets out alone, reaches the chapel, where a mass is being celebrated, but cannot enter until it is finished. The hermit who celebrated it then gives him the clue of what has caused the decay of his court and the instructions how to remedy it. The rest of the tale is of no bearing on the scene which is the object of discussion.”
In the next story, I added (in brackets) information for clarity. The brackets are not in the original publication.
“Marie Cornic is the heroine of another Breton story. [She was] the wife of a sea-captain whom she loved excessively, as her friends and relatives believed, deeply imbued as they were the the peasant’s superstitious interpretation of the max ne quid nimis [nothing in excess].
One night she woke up with a start, believing that she had heard a bell and that early mass was about to begin. A vague, ghostly light flooded her bedroom. She dressed in a hurry and went to church. She found it crowded with people, but the officiating priest was a stranger. The collection was taken up, but to her consternation she found her pockets empty. She was told to put her wedding ring on the plate, which she tremblingly did. Then a strange anxiety seized her heart and she wept in silence. When the clock struck six she awoke as from a trance; the parish priest entered, recognised her, and asked her what she was doing there so early. Only then did she notice that the crowd she had seen had disappeared, and she told him her strange adventure. Her wedding ring was found under the altar cloth. Two weeks later she learned that her husband had been shipwrecked on the English coast and that he had died that same night and that same moment when she had been compelled to part with her ring.”
I like this next one, as it’s a nice spooky Christmas Eve story. I think the telling of ghost stories on Christmas Eve is a lost tradition. Let’s bring it back!!
“An old man, the grandfather of the storyteller, on driving home one Christmas eve, passed by an old ruined chapel. He heard a bell and believed that the chapel had been renovated recently. He entered and found a silent crowd assembled there, ready to hear the midnight mass. When the priest asked whether any one was prepared to receive the holy communion, the hero alone declared himself ready, since he had obtained absolution a short time before. No sooner had he received the host than the priest blessed him and declared that by his pious act he had redeemed him who had been condemned to haunt this place for having once refused, some 300 years ago, to bring the last sacrament to a dying man in a cold winter night. The candles went out, and the old man found himself alone in the ruins of the old chapel. At home he told his strange adventure to his wife. Two weeks later he was dead.”
The next one is wonderfully creepy. It’s a German variant.
“More gruesome, as a rule, are the Teutonic versions of the tale. Thus in a German variant going back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, the heroine, an old woman, finds the church filled with the dead, some of whom are headless. She is warned by a friend of hers, who had died three weeks previously, to leave the church immediately after the benediction if she cares for her life. She follows this friendly counsel. She hears a terrific noise behind her, and the spectres pursue her, one of them tearing off part of her dress which, on the following morning, is found in the cemetery, tore to shreds. In another variant it is her raincoat which she leaves behind and which is torn to bits by the angry ghosts.”
There are two stories in Latin. I translated them using the wonder of the internet, and I used an AI program to translate it further into plain English. The following story was recorded in the the early Middle Ages by Gregory of Tours. He says that it was localised on the ancient cemetery of Autun, which is in France, and in the basilica of St. Stephen, which is in Budapest, Hungary.
“Two local men decided to visit some holy places to pray. While they were near a cemetery church dedicated to Saint Stephen, they heard beautiful singing coming from inside. The music sounded so wonderful that they assumed monks or other religious people were holding a night prayer service.
They went into the church and spent a long time praying. When they finally stood up, they saw a choir of people singing psalms. The strange thing was that there were no lamps or candles lighting the church. Instead, everything seemed to glow with its own supernatural light. Yet they could not clearly recognize any of the singers.
As they stood there amazed and frightened, one of the singers approached them and said something like “You should not have come here. You have presumed to be present while we offer our secret prayers to God. Leave this place and go away from our dwellings, or else you will soon leave this world.”
The two men reacted differently. One immediately left. The other stayed where he was. Not long afterward, the man who remained died.
The point of the story is that the men had accidentally witnessed a supernatural gathering—most likely the souls of the holy dead, saints, or some other heavenly worshippers—holding a sacred service that ordinary living people were not meant to see. The warning proved true when the man who did not heed it soon died.”
And the last Latin one: In the tenth century, Thietmar of Merseburg localises this one at Walsleben, Germany.
“The priest of that church had a habit of getting up at dawn to sing the morning service. One day, as he passed through the cemetery courtyard, he saw a great crowd of people there. They appeared to be bringing offerings to a priest who was standing in front of the church doors.
At first he stopped in surprise. Then, after making the sign of the cross to protect himself, he walked through the crowd. Yet he did not recognize a single person among them.
Shaken and afraid, he entered the church. There he was approached by a woman who had only recently died and whom he had known well during her life.
She asked him why he was there. When he explained that he had come to conduct the morning service, she told him that all the duties he had come to perform had already been completed by those assembled there. She also foretold that he had only a short time left to live.
Later the priest told his neighbors what he had seen, and events proved that the woman’s prediction was true.”
*****
Kitty
- In what environment did you read the story? In the deep dark cold of a dead dark night.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? Yes!
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? Ain’t no way am I jumping out of bed, getting dressed and running out the door without looking at some kind of device that has the time on it. Also, if I went to church and I didn’t recognize anyone except one person, who was supposed to have been dead, I’d leave right away, especially if the congregation looks mad that I’m there.
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? My favorite character was Josephine, since she cared enough to warn Ida. My least favorite is Ida’s brain, who didn’t care to remind her to look at the clock.
- What did you think of the storytelling style? Fantasmagorial
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? Classic ghostly image that you expect to see in Scary Stories. This one’s great. It reminds me of The Lost Souls Room in the Netherworld in Beetlejuice.
- Your overall rating and why: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ This one is a good, creepy ghost story, and I liked that the ghosts were mad at her because she dared to be alive to attend their service to the dead.
Winterjoy
- In what environment did you read the story? In my bedroom/living room/kitchen aka my apartment. Hah! I’m so funny.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? I oddly remember this one!
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? I would never in a million years get up, get ready and leave for a function without looking at my clock at least 27 times. But I would run if skeletons were chasing me (also, forget the coat??).
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? My favorite character was Josephine Kerr. She was just chilling and told our friend ol’ Ida that she might want to get the hell out of there. She didn’t scream like a banshee and tear her coat up. My least favorite character was whoever rang the church bell that early because rude.
- What did you think of the storytelling style? I liked it! You could picture yourself in the timeline of Ida. For a second, I thought Ida was also dead and didn’t know it and I was sad that she wasn’t. Also, I always seem to want someone dead and not know it lol.
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? A bit more detail than in past stories of this book so far. Definitely scary! But I might have liked a drawing of the pews with all the ghosts looking back.
- Your overall rating and why: Being generous considering the ending fell off just a little. But it started strong and super creepy and I love that! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Sources:
- https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005669091&seq=126
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/536698?seq=1
