The Press., 1905-05-31
SOME ROYAL GHOSTS
SPECTERS THAT PROWL ABOUT OLD
 COUNTRY PALACES.

Queen Elizabeth Has . Weakness
 For Windsor and Catherine of AP-
 agOn For Hampton Court - Prus- sia's White Lady.
 The report that Queen Elizabeth has again been seen promenading the libra " of Windsor castle reminds one of the curious fact that, with but one soli- tary exception, these restless royalties who cannot sleep peacefully in their graves are women.
 It is some years now since Queen Bess was last caught in the act of re- visiting her old palace at Windsor, and the circumstances were these: A young officer of. the guards was reading one evening in the library when he saw a woman, clad from head to heels in black, walk slowly across the library and pass into an adjacent room. The officer, moved by curiosity at such an unexpected sight, followed the lady and to his Gmazement found that she had vanished as completely from view as if the floor had swallowed her, and this although the only exit from the room was the one through which he had followed her.
 Why the wandering lady should on such slight evidence be identified as Elizabeth of glorious memory is not made clear, but at Windsor castle 1t is firmly believed that Anne Boleyn's daughter still tenants a suit of rooms adjacent to the library.
 Hampton Court palace is richer than the castle of Windsor in royal spooks Catherine of Aragon, in spite of her not too pleasant memories of her hus- band, Henry VIII, is said still to walk in black attire, taper in hand, down one of the staircases and to disappear through the Queens gate" and, more disconcerting still, Henry's second Catherine has. so they say, been seen rushing along corridor with stream ing hair and white apparel, closely pur- sued by equally unsubstantial soldiers bent on capturing her.
 This is supposed to be a re-enactment of scene which actually took place not many days before Catherine How ards death on Tower hill in 1542. The unhappy queen, who was then a pris- oner in a room adjoining the long gal lery, escaped from her guards and rush. ed away to throw herself at the feet of her royal husband and beg for mer- cy. She was pursued by her guards, who caught her at the door of the chap el where Henry was praying and drag ged her back again to her prison cham ber
 III fated Anne Boleyn does not seem to have ended her troubles on the block at the Tower, for has she not been seen driving down the avenue of Blickley park behind four headless horses, driv- en by an equally incomplete coach man? And fair Rosamond seems doom ed to wEho' nights along the river bank at GOdstone, awaiting her royal lover, who never keeps his tryst. But English royalties have by no means a monopoly of pOstmortem per ambulation. There is certain beauti- full white lady, very fair and queenly, who is said to haunt the rooms and cor riders of the castle of Schonbrunn. Fair as the vision is, her appearances are never welcome, for they are said always to herald a death in the i'm perial family of Austria. She was seen in 1867 just before Maximilian, em- peror of Mexico and brother of the Aus trian emperor, was foully murdered and again before the deaths of Arch duke Rudolph and his mother, the beau tiful empress.
 The royal house of Prussia also has its white lady," who Is only seen in the palace at Berlin before the death of some member of the reigning family. Unlike her sister of Schonbrunn castle, however, the white lady of Germany is said to be i'll favored, if not downright repulsive, and instead of torch or scep- ter she carries in her hand common or domestic broom; hence she has been irreverently christened 'the sweeper"
 There are white ladies attached to other European courts, notably that of Hesse- -Darmstadt, the lady who inspir- ed Wagners "Lohengrin," but the odd est of all these royal wraiths is cer- tainly the red man who confines his patronage to the royalties of France. He used to dog the steps of Catherine de- Medici, wife of one French king and mother of three, along the corri- dors at the Tuileries; he had 8 long in- terview, so 1t is chronicled, with the great Napoleon before he started on his i'll starred Russian campaign, and it may have been through not following the specter's advice that Napoleon had such a sorry home coming. And it is reported that he was seen by the Em- press Eugenie shortly before disaster finally overlook the house of Napoleon.