L'Esprit En France

It all happened in France all those years ago. I was staying overnight at an old auberge in Paris. It had been a long day working on business as well as sight-seeing whenever the opportunity allowed. But now I was really tired and shattered at the same time; if that is at all possible.

I jumped into bed and, as a last dutiful act of loyalty to my employer, I decided to read a Census Report showing population trends over the years in different French locations and how this would affect our business in this country.

A few minutes afterwards, as I was reading, I noticed a ghost standing by the foot of my bed. He was staring at me. I was frightened out of my Census.

He was wearing an old style type costume, a bit like the three musketeers or something from that era. And he had a patch on one eye.

When I gathered whatever courage there was left lying around all over the place, I asked him, pointing at the patch on his eye, "Are you a ghost of a pirate?"

"Oh non, Monsieur," he replied in a typical French accent, "I am not a peerate! I got zis one day when I entered a room through ze keyhole in ze door, and somebody put ze key in ze door at ze same time!"

"Oh!" I said, as he continued.

"I also used to enter ze rooms by sliding under ze doors, you know. But I stopped doing zat too. One day, I slid under ze door and zere was a woman cleaning ze room on ze other side. She sucked me into her vacuum cleaner!

"But not anymore, Monsieur. Now I travel ze conventional ghostly way by walking through ze solid walls!"

"Oh ..." I said in an English accent; not knowing how to say it in French.

"Ze problem  about ze walking through ze walls," he continued, "eez zat sometimes zere is a cupboard in ze ozer room and I end up locked in a cupboard. Or if zere is a table or ozer furniture zat is low I get ze corner of ze furniture hitting me in ze private bits!"

I winced as I felt his pain.

At this point a clock somewhere struck 10:35pm.

"Oh ... I must go to my wife Suzette" he said. "Madame Penoir, my wife, she gets veree upset when I am late! I usually tell her ze stories zat I am haunting tourists in old auberges; but she is not believing me. She says she can see right through me!"

And with zese words, sorry ... these words, he jumped out of the window and landed in the river below. I think he was in Seine!