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Daniélou, Alain – The Way to the Labyrinth [translated by Marie-Claire Cournand]

Rewa Kothi had not been lived in for many years. It was sometimes rented out for weddings, but no one wanted to live there, for it was known to be haunted. People said that a disciple had killed his master in the palace, then committed suicide. No one warned us about the ghost, but we soon became aware of his presence.

When Raymond and I first started hearing sighs and sounds of laughter coming from the galleries, we thought we were playing tricks on each other but soon realized that there was no one there. Little by little we grew accustomed to the ghost and spoke very politely to him when he manifested his presence. Our servants, however refused to sleep in the house. The ghost normally lived in the back part of the palace, in the ancient harem where we had arranged a few rooms for our guests. The stories we heard from them were always the same. In the middle of the night they would hear the sound of a door being opened from the underground gallery beneath them. Someone would then climb up the stairs and wander around the terrace on the second floor, talking to himself the whole time. Finally he would go on to the main building, return, and calmly go back down the stairs.

One day at breakfast, Madame Wadia, president of the Indian PEN Club, who was staying with us for a few days, asked us in an embarrassed voice: "ls one of you by any chance a sleepwalker?"
"No."
"I really don't know what else it can be. The person who walks near my room at night speaks French!"
This is how we found out that our sharp-eared ghost had learned to speak our language. I wonder if he ever found this useful in the world of shadows.