You don’t know who I am
Look, how many times do I need to remind you? I am not Veronica Cybo! Even walls know by now that ghouls don’t have a name, that they haunt crumbly old castles and ancient mansions, without ever having to give proof of their existence. In fact, it’s you humans that want to give us a bad reputation, make us responsible for some extravagant trait or some spiteful game, whatever it may take. People say ghosts are a curse, but think of a poor guy like me, who spends day in, day out jumping up out of nowhere and dressing up, wearing wigs… and still never gets recognised!
I was here first
Photo by: Michele Spinapolice
Photo by: Michele SpinapoliceMy misery began years ago, when that blasted noblewoman, covered in ribbons
and crosses, thought it would be a great idea to come by and leave her memory
roaming within these walls. As if it were enough to get rid of one enemy to
earn a ghost’s license… But let it
be known, so never to go back to it, that I was here years before that old bag
set foot in villa San Cerbone. I’d
been here for centuries, when this was a beautiful castle with coaches and
horses, and you could walk down to the town on a cobbled path, lizards darting
around it. At the time I whittled my days away with harmless pranks, hiding behind columns or underneath beds to spring
up on people and shout “Boo”. But nothing of it, no legend, no superstition was
told – these Figline people didn’t
even bother to write a short story about me!
A prank ended badly
Then she got here, with her horrible past history of cheating and dead bodies. It all revolved around Veronica, her pain, the fact she’d beheaded Caterina, her exile, goodness knows what else. No one cared about me, not a single soul. I needed some kind of plan, a great plot so to get my revenge! So when the day came that this Graziani chap came about, some kind of famous historian and supposed expert on local traditions, I took it upon myself to play a prank on him. “Oh he’ll recognise me, I’m sure!” I thought as I went to wait for him, all dressed up in the past century’s extremely fashionable clothes, loitering in the guest room. But when I finally decide to get on with it, I ended up getting tangled in the living room curtains! I wriggled and squirmed and kicked around, and when I finally manage to get to my feet I saw the historian standing a stone’s throw from me. But his reaction, having apparently drunk a little too much at dinner, was to widen his eyes at the sight of me and start screaming like a banshee, only to then hurtle down the stairs “That’s just a curtain!” I tried screaming as I went after him but nope… he didn’t want to hear a word. That’s how, on that evening, the story of the two women running after each other in the villa’s rooms originated.
Someone who leaves a mark
Photo by: Silvano Monchi
Photo by: Michele SpinapoliceI’ve tried so many other times, with such a variety of different hairstyles - every so often I even like dressing up as a nurse and chatting to people. One day I even left a footprint of mine onto the wall. For heaven’s sake! Are you blind, or what? Does it really look like some 15th century bigot’s footprint to you? We’ve even gone and become a single comune with Incisa now… one can only hope some of these new fellow citizens have a bit more of a brain!