The House Call - Summary | The Magic of the Words

English | Summary | Unit One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

One: Stories of the Supernatural

The House Call | A story from Germany

            “The House Call” is a story of appearance-after-death. It occurred in the city of Germany in 1903. The main character of the story is an old German doctor named Dr. Emil Braun. While he was trying to have his dinner at 9:30, a little girl came to his house for call. She told him that her mother was very sick. Despite his wife’s unwillingness and his overtiredness, Dr. Braun decided to help the child’s mother and followed the child. He thought it was an order to him by God.

            It was raining. The child led him past the hospital where Braun was the head surgeon, to an old house in the tenement area of the outskirts of the city. The doctor tries his best of his age to catch up the girl but could not do so. She finally led him at the top of the fifth floor of an old house.

            The girl took the doctor to a room where a woman was very sick, and lying in the bed as if dead. Dr. Braun immediately recognized the woman because she used to work at the same hospital as he did.

            The doctor noticed that the woman was suffering from pneumonia. He gave her some medicine. Sitting on chair near the woman, he started talking to the woman. Her name was Elda. The doctor told her how her daughter had come to call him, but the woman said that her daughter Adelheid was already dead. She died three months before. The doctor had a look of surprise on his face as he looked around the room. The little girl was not there.

            The woman said that she had kept her daughter’s shoes and shawl to remind her of her daughter. She pointed to the corner of the room where they had been kept. The doctor got up and looked at the shawl and shoes. They were shabby and wet. It feared him a lot. The woman told the doctor that he was mistaken about who went to get him that night. She further said he came over there because she had been thinking about him; she had been wishing, and praying earlier that night that he would have come for her checkup.

            It was sure to the doctor that the child was dead and her spirit went to call him. Finally, he touched her feverish head once more, he ran to heel to see his wife.