Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Religion: Ghost Stories
St. John Bosco (1815-88) made a pact with his friend and fellow student Comollo that whoever died first would try to communicate to the other the state of his own soul. Comollo died on April 2, 1839, and on the night of April 3, after the funeral, 23-year-old John Bosco sat waiting on his bed in a dormitory containing 20 other seminarians.
So begins one of the most famous of modern ghost stories. "Midnight struck," as Bosco himself later told it, "and I then heard a dull, rolling sound from the end of the passage . . . While the noise...
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