Of the Living Spectre by Thomas A. Janvier

Apparitions of dead people, Senor, of course are numerous and frequent. I myself -- as on other occasions I have mentioned to you -- have seen several spectres, and so have various of my friends. But this spectre of which I now am telling you -- that appeared on the Plaza Mayor at noonday, and was seen by everybody -- was altogether out of the ordinary: being not in the least a dead person, but a person who wore his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and was alive in them; yet who certainly was walking and talking here on the Plaza Mayor of this City of Mexico in the very self-same moment that he also was walking and talking in a most remote and wholly different part of the world. Therefore -- in spite of his wearing his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and being alive in them -- it was certain that he was a spectre: because it was certain that his journeying could have been made only on devils' wings. The day on which this marvel happened is known most exactly: because it happened on the day after the day that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, had his head murderously split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that gentleman was killed in that bad manner on the 25th of October in the year 1593. Therefore -- since everything concerning this most extraordinary happening is known with so great an accuracy -- there can be no doubt whatever but that in every particular all that I now am telling you is strictly true.[8]

Because it began in two different places at the same time, it is not easy to say certainly, Senor, which end of this story is the beginning of it; but the beginning of it is this: On a day, being the day that I have just named to you, the sentries on guard at the great doors of the Palace -- and also the people who at that time happened to be walking near by on the Plaza Mayor -- of a sudden saw an entirely strange sentry pacing his beat before the great doors of the Palace quite in the regular manner: marching back and forth, with his gun on his shoulder; making his turns with a soldierly propriety; saluting correctly those entitled to salutes who passed him; and in every way conducting himself as though he duly had been posted there -- but making his marchings and his turnings and his salutings with a wondering look on the face of him, and having the air of one who is all bedazzled and bemazed.