In Austria, the stories of the 19th century portrait painter Joseph Aigner are widely known about his encounter with a ghost / phantom monk, who twice prevented him from committing suicide.
As a gifted artist, Aigner already enjoyed success in his youth, but he apparently had some mental problems. From time to time, irrational bouts of despair rolled over the artist. The idea of committing suicide turned into a manic idea. To overcome himself, to abandon the terrible thought that pushes him to death, the artist had no strength.
When he was eighteen years old, he made his first attempt to commit suicide. Aigner hanged himself from the rafters of the attic of his parents' house in Vienna. The same second he knocked the stool out from under his feet, a Capuchin monk appeared in front of him.
His figure, according to Aigner, seemed to have grown instantly from the floor of the attic. Sliding his hooked finger into the loop that tightened on the artist's throat, the monk released the pressure of the loop on his neck. And he made a short fiery speech, during which he somehow convinced the young man that life is worth living.
The monk helped Joseph Aigner free himself from the noose around his throat, and then disappeared from the attic, melting into thin air.
Four years have passed. Aigner, again seized by the maniacal idea of committing suicide, again attempted suicide. And again a Capuchin monk suddenly appeared before him. Like the last time, he held a soul-saving conversation with the artist - psychological treatment, dissuaded him from saying goodbye to life ahead of time. And then disappeared from sight.
Joseph Aigner later became a revolutionary and rebel. Exactly eight years after his second meeting with the mysterious monk Aigner, he was arrested and sentenced to death, but shortly before his execution he was suddenly pardoned. The same Capuchin monk came to the city court and talked for a long, very long time with the judicial officials.
The rebel Aigner committed such grave crimes that, according to all articles of the law, the inevitable death penalty awaited him. We do not know how the mysterious monk managed to persuade the judges to abolish the death sentence handed down to J. Aigner. It remains to assume the only thing here: the ghost of the monk had some kind of hypnotic effect on the judges, to put it simply - devilishly darkened them. And the sentence was overturned.
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From the verbal descriptions made by the judges who spoke with the monk, Aigner immediately recognized the Capuchin monk, who had previously prevented him from committing suicide twice. Struck by the next saving intervention of a ghostly monk in his life, the artist J. Aigner drew his portrait from memory.
In 1889, the artist turned sixty-eight years old. And he finally realized his manic idea - he committed suicide by firing a bullet from a revolver into his own forehead. Shrouded in the darkness of uncertainty, whether the ghost of a Capuchin monk appeared to him a moment before his suicide finally took place.
However, something else is known for certain. The funeral service over the body of the suicide was conducted by the same monk who had appeared out of nowhere. Friends and acquaintances of the deceased, who were present at the service, identified the monk from the portrait painted by Joseph Aigner many years ago …
