Marie Holasová

“We used to come to the Svojanov castle. If I’m not mistaken, I think that we would go there quite often. It was a nice place for camping. We would sleep in tents underneath the battlements. We mostly stayed there for a night or two. We cooked our own food there. There was a spot called ‘lady jump’… Milada Červená intervening: no ‘virgin jump’. Marie Holasová: See, we have differing recollections. Milada Červená: It’s important because she was a virgin. Marie Holasová: She jumped out of unhappy love – it was a tragedy. That night we only had a little smoldering bone fire. You know there’s a difference between a bone fire which can be festive like a pagoda, and a normal fire where you can grill your sausages. It still drives me mad today when someone makes a pagoda and then ends up grilling sausages. They can’t call themselves true Scouts if they do that. Well, anyway, on that night, we had a small bone fire, it was a dark night and above our heads was the silhouette of the battlements. You have to imagine this scene. There was one tower and a rampart next to it. All of a sudden, someone or something began to howl above our heads. It might already have been around midnight. Maybe we weren’t sitting by the bone fire anymore by then, we were probably already in our tents. We crawled out of our tents and out of nowhere… we saw a white-clad figure jumping over the battlements. We couldn’t believe our own eyes. I mean we didn’t believe in ghosts or legends about white ladies. But it was really impressive the way it jumped from one bulwark to another. Do you know what it was? The foreman of our group, a very witty guy, got together with the castle keeper and they put a white sheet on a long stick. At a long distance, you’d believe almost anything. Even in ghosts, if it’s midnight and if it makes howling sounds.”

“Our beloved leader Miluška was on a ‘24hour-on-your-own’ task. This was especially tough in a park. It was much easier on the fringe of a forest where you can hide and stick your head out every now and then but it’s much harder in a park. We didn’t do it on a purpose but incidentally we ran into her as she was hiding in bushes. But we didn’t say a word about it.”