When I was a little boy, the ghosts were more real to me than the people. The people were despotic and changeable governing my world with a confusing and alarming inconstancy. The ghosts, on the other hand, could be relied on to go about their haunting in a calm and orderly manner. Bearded or bewigged, clad in satin or velvet or nunlike drapery, they whispered their way along the dark corridors of the castle where I was born and spent the first ten years of my life, rarely interfering with or intruding on the lives of the living.
My mother couldnīt understand why the servants were frigthened of the ghosts. Sitting in the sunny bow window of the Big Drawing Room, she would watch yet another maid - scanty possessions stuffed into a carpet-bag - fleeing down the drive that led through towering beech trees to the main road, and murmur sadly.
"I can never get them to understand that the ghosts wonīt hurt them. If only they just ask the poor things what they want…"