A Mallorcan Christmas Ghost Story

The year is 1817. It is two days before Christmas. There is a full moon in a clear, starry night sky. Two young men are walking home from an inn in the area of Fartàritx in Manacor. They are startled by an apparition standing by a street corner. Is it flesh and blood? What is it? The young men, though afraid, edge towards the apparition. They call out. "Who are you?" The apparition doesn't speak. It makes no sound at all, even as it suddenly disappears from view. Where has it gone? The young men, bolder now, race to the spot at the corner of the street. They look left, they look right. The apparition is nowhere to be seen.

The young men chuckle. It must have been a friend wearing a sheet who was trying to spook them. They laugh at their stupidity, slap each other on the back and say their good nights as they head to their homes. They think they have been fooled, but the next day they are forced to think again.

The Christmas Eve market is thronged, but the local people are huddling together, some are holding onto each other. The two young men had not been the only ones to see a strange apparition. There is fear and the people speak of only one thing: the ghost. The mayor comes among the people. He calls for the men of the neighbourhood to join with him. That night they will hunt for the apparition. The priest, though, warns the people. Tells them not to speak of it. "If this thing is or of the devil, to even name it is to give succour to forces of darkness. I forbid you to utter its name."

"Father," one man speaks out, "this thing is spreading fear. My wife saw it. From our yard. She said it was a terrible sight. It will bring ruin if we do not find it." The two young men speak as well. "We saw it too, Father. It was a fearful thing. And ... And it can just disappear. We saw how it can."

The mayor then announces. "We will find it, but we will honour the advice of the Father, and not speak of it. We will gather at six this evening. Bring scythes or forks and, Miquel, please bring your gun."

As the sun goes down, the men of the neighbourhood congregate. They form three groups and they scour the streets for several hours, despite this being Christmas Eve. But they see nothing. Indeed, seeing anything is made more difficult as on this night the moon is no longer full and a Tramuntana wind has brought in cloud. Eventually, they head to the church, their fruitless hunt over.

Had the ghost been no more than a practical joke? Some thought so. Others were less sure. One theory was that it was indeed a ghost, the ghost of a Jewish woman who had died at the hands of the Inquisition. That the ghost did not reappear again on Christmas Eve led many to believe that it would not be seen again, but they were to be wrong, just as they had been wrong to search when the moon wasn't full.

The apparition did reappear. It reappeared unerringly when two events coincided, a full moon and the proximity of a religious celebration. Over the following three years, it was spotted several times, always briefly, never speaking and always disappearing without sound. However, there were still those who were unconvinced that it was really a ghost. Suspicion fell on a simpleton called Pere-Joan, and when he died in 1820, the suspicions seemed as though they may have been right. Or were they?

The neighbourhood of Fartàritx ceased to suffer this strange visitation, but it began to appear elsewhere. In the S'Antigor area, for instance, then Barracar and Sa Moladora. The ghost continued to materialise, even into the last century, and so whenever there was a full moon and a religious fiesta, the people of Manacor were in a state of anxiety, though on one occasion they discovered that the ghost was indeed a hoax, a young woman being forced at gunpoint to remove a sheet; she had been hoping to scare her boyfriend.

The young woman was not the ghost of Manacor, but the story of the ghost is a true one. The events of Christmas 1817 may not have happened quite as I have suggested, but it is possible that they might have done. But one thing makes my version inaccurate, and that is the fact that the ghost had started appearing much earlier. In the eighteenth century. Was the ghost a prank or was it not?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.