MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Let me ask you a question: Do you snore? First of all, make sure it's not your neighbor who is complaining about your snoring. Once that possibility is ruled out, make sure again. Then grab a chair and place it in the center of the room. Start spinning around it while counting to twenty-two out loud. When you get to twenty-two, hurry up to take a seat. If the chair expels you, that means there is someone sitting on it, probably a ghost. Now focus: you have a ghost sitting in the chair. Sneakily go find a thick rope, pounce on the ghost and tie him to the chair with the rope. If he resists, grab the lamp from the nightstand and hit him on the head. Then call a cab and ask the cabbie to take you to the furthest cemetery. (Don't forget the chair.) Tell the cabbie to wait for you until you leave the cemetery. There, you stand before the chair and pronounce the following spell: "I conjure you, ghost, free yourself from your chains just as I free you from your restraints!" ...

At sunset, a group of women storms into the town hall shouting: "Elders! Hurry! The town is in danger!" Evron stands as the spokesperson for his colleagues: "What's up, women?" "A band of enraged goys is heading here with bad intentions!" "Lightning has struck the golden dome of their church and now they blame the Jews for it", another woman explains. "According to Stefan Sobreski, they have the intention to bathe all Jewish men of legal age in Bordelaise sauce!" A premonition of impending catastrophe falls on the wise men of Chelm. They have had very bad experiences related to the Bordelaise sauce. In a bistro of Lublin they were charged an astronomical amount for a chicken a la Bordelaise and, on another occasion, in a French restaurant they ordered a dish called “Escargots bordelaises” ignoring that in French the word ‘escargots’ means snails which, as every Jew knows, are not kosher. The elders begin to mourn and tear th...

The cemetery of the village of Chelm is located on the outskirts of Chelm, and in turn the outskirts of Chelm are located where the cemetery is. Thanks to this fortunate coincidence, when you go to the outskirts of Chelm, you necessarily go to the cemetery and when you go to the cemetery you must necessarily go to the outskirts of Chelm. This is a very convenient situation because, those villagers in Chelm who have the bad luck to die, are ashamed to say they are dead, and in this way they can always say that they have gone to live on the outskirts. And this situation is not only convenient for the deceased, but it is also useful to the wise men of Chelm on this particular occasion. Because, when their neighbors see them stone-faced parading all together through the main streets at nightfall and ask them where they are going, they respond "to the outskirts". They have obviously done their homework, that is to say, they have spent the day listening to Mordekai read passages ...

“Stop!", Evron exclaims, and Mordekai stop reading and runs away to play with Evron's children. (This time, the meeting is not held at the town hall but at Evron's house.) “Ah, this is very profound, indeed. So profound that if it were a deep well and we threw a stone in it, we wouldn’t hear its collision with the water.” Everyone stares at him, stunned. “Why do you look at me that way? It has been said: You look like a meshugener (mad man) feeding a lamb.” Suddenly, Pesha, Evrom's wife, is heard shouting: “Evrom! Evrom! ” Evron jumps from his seat like a flunkey: “What happens, daughter of Judah? Peace be with you!” And rushes out of the room. Chelm elders start whispering: “What’s the matter with Evrom? He speaks in a weird way. It seems he has been infected by Kabbalah’s style." “Kabbalah has gone straight to his head!" “Oy gevalt! He’s drunk with Kabbalah!" “Maybe he is becoming a kabbalist! A Yiddisher kabbalist!” “Maybe he's becoming ...

«Stop here!» , Evron orders Mordecai, the young Lublin reader hired by the wise men of Chelm to read the Zohar. «We will think about this quote.» «I don't know what we have to think about. The thing is clear as day» Elijah says. «Then, explain it to the rest of us idiots, if you are so kind.» "Well, it's very simple. He says we should go to the cemetery to listen to the dead." There is a great deal of confusion and shouting. Evron climbs into a chair and from there tries to reassure the others: «Folks, calm down! Calm down and let me speak!» Gradually, the congregation settles down and the wise men of Chelm listen to Evron who addresses them standing on the chair: “Elijah has had little tact in saying it so abruptly. But I also think that this is what Kabbalah demands from us.” These words cause quite a stir. "Listen", Evron continues, “We’ll appoint a delegation to go to the cemetery tonight in order to hear what the dead have to tell us.” A commot...

No, Squattedman did not die in the tremendous explosion in Edison's warehouse. He didn't even suffer the least scratch. Of course, he took a fright. A hell of a fright. But now it's all over. Tammany Hall has been broken up. I am not saying that there are no longer corrupt politicians or street gangs. But now they all run around like headless chickens. From now on, the task of Squattedman would be the ordinary task of any superhero: rescue people in distress, prevent a robbery or a murder, safeguard the peace and order of the planet, stop the indiscriminate cutting down of trees and poaching, prevent the derailment of a train or the sinking of a ship, or warn a confident buyer that the second-hand car they are selling to him is actually a lot of junk assembled to give the appearance of a Ford T... He got back pain just thinking about it. But it was his duty, and if a man should not escape his duty, even less a super-man! Compliance with the duty was the most important prin...

With his hands clasped behind his back, Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, in his elegant red double-breasted coat, contemplates the landscape from the wide window of his office. Then someone knocks on the door. -Come in. -Excellency, I've already reviewed the correspondence. -Something important? -The Archduchess Feodora regrets not being able to attend the dance this Saturday. The Count of Wettin reminds you of the invitation to a hunting party in the Black Forest next week. And then there are the reports of the war. Prussia has joined a Sixth Coalition against Napoleon... The Duke turns around with surprised expression. -”Sixth” have you said? They have skipped the Fifth! Can't they count beyond three, those louts?! -The Fifth Coalition is what your Excellency knew as the Fourth Coalition. Before, there was a Third one, but it was so brief that your Excellency missed it. You thought they were the final throes of the Second Coalition. Suddenly the Duke bang ...

Michael and Jacob held one of their periodic discussions about the convenience of carrying a weapon with them. On that occasion Michael was especially angry because his friend had bought a gun without consulting him before. While Jacob’s attention was briefly distracted, Michael confiscated the weapon arguing the danger posed by that gun in his hands because, when Jacob stared at something, he tended to become cross-eyed and also his pulse trembled and once, in a shooting cabin of Coney Island, the manager had to hide under the counter in view of the erratic movements of his shooting hand. But the discussion was suddenly interrupted when someone knocked on the office’s door. Such was the elegant way of dressing and distinguished bearing of their new client that Michael and Jacob thought they were in the presence of an English lord, or of a direct descendant of an English lord, or of an English descendant of a Chinese lord, or maybe of a squirrel in a tux. -Good morning, my name is Ri...

A man named John Burgess spent the nights in Highgate Cemetery with the hope of contacting some dead person, that is, a lost soul. For that tortuous way he aspired to be admitted as a member in the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). That was his great aspiration in life, but he did not have a qualification that would support him. He had tried to impress them by doing some somersaults, but Gurney was a much better acrobat, besides they did not need any acrobat at all. What they required -he was told- was someone who maintained contact with the dead. So Burgess made that decision to walk at night among the tombs, which for any other would have been unbearable, but not for him. Burgess was not afraid of anything except of his wife Mildred, and that only when she was present. In fact, that was an added reason to spend the nights away from home. He invented an excuse: he told her that he hunted owls and other nocturnal raptors. However, he never brought any wild game, to which he argued ...