The Princess of the Wraiths by Peregrinus Hierusalemsis

In my memoir “The Princess of the Wraiths,” I describe how my Cuernavaca house, Quinta Santa Hildegarda, has a reputation of being haunted. My mother and my grandfather had paranormal experiences there. Also, a guy named Román also had a paranormal experience there. 

 The story that I will now tell did not happen during a formal ghost hunting type of event. I never went out at night looking for ghosts using technology. However, I was looking for ghostly answers, and I did find a ghost!

Quinta Santa Hildegarda was built in 1970, way back before I was born. My grandfather Tomás commissioned it. There were no previous houses there. It was an uninhabited dry lava field.

Usually, people think that ghosts are souls of dead people from past times. However, not having existed before 1970, my house did not have a reason to be haunted. I knew that Santa María Ahuacatitlán, the Cuernavaca neighborhood where my house is found was a place where battles happened in the past. The followers of general Emiliano Zapata fought there during the time of the Mexican Revolution. 

I wanted to find answers about why my house was supposedly haunted. I also wanted to know how common ghosts were in my neighborhood. Thus, I engaged in a ghost hunting project.  I would not look for actual ghosts during nighttime. I think that is ridiculous. I would look for living people in my neighborhood and ask them whether they knew any anecdote relating to the battles or people who fought during the Mexican Revolution in my neighborhood. In that way I would indirectly know in what places people died while suffering in the past. I would also ask people to tell me about any ghost sightings in their houses. 

Plenty of people told me what they knew. Apparently, the past of my neighborhood was extremely violent. The grandparents of many people told them about the war… Ghost sightings were also extremely common. Many people listened to poltergeists and saw ghostly apparitions. My father was driving the car while I was stopping to talk to people. I visited most of the important buildings in Santa María Ahuacatitlán to ask about battles and ghostly apparitions. 

At one point, I attempted to reach the convent. As I said, my father was driving the car. We did not know how to reach the convent. We saw a man. He was a bit strange. He wore the outfit worn by farmers during the 19th century. He had a hat like the ones worn by Revolution fighters. As a walking stick, he was using a maize (Zea mays) stem. We asked him how to reach the convent. He told us. We thanked him. He then said, “May God be with you.” After saying these words, he disappeared. He did not walk away. He just disappeared in front of us as if he would have teleported himself! 

It was not nighttime. It was daytime! We were not highly afraid, apparently the ghost was happy with us, he even blessed us, but that was still very weird.

Even if my ghost tour did not involve looking for ghosts using technology during nighttime, I saw a ghost! 

So as a ghost hunting tip, I tell you that it is good to look for ghosts in an indirect fashion. Not attempting to find them, but just to know about them or why they appear by talking to people and visiting haunted sites. I did not find the ghost. The ghost found me! 

These are the geographic coordinates of the place where we talked to the ghost: 18.977086627651648, -99.26609410207682

I do not discuss this sighting in my memoir “The Princess of the Wraiths.” However, there are other ghost sightings written down there. In my memoir I recorded all the ghost sightings in my house. I have never seen a ghost in my house. However, other people have seen them.  

You can read my memoir online on Scribd

The so-called “Princess of the Wraiths” is the villain at the end of the book.

   

The Princess of the Wraiths

Peregrinus Hierusalemsis

Genre: YA Memoir

Publisher: Books to Hook Publishing, LLC.

Date of Publication: 21st of June 2025

ISBN: 979-8-89283-269-4

Word Count: 262,705 

Cover Artist: Katarzyna Burzmińska 

Book Description:

Biologist-turned-author Peregrinus Hierusalemsis presents “The Princess of the Wraiths: an herbal, bestiary, human zoo, and memoir,” a captivating book that intertwines science, spirituality, and personal growth. This memoir offers a profound look at the intersections of love, knowledge, and resilience, all while reflecting on the author's rich experiences. 

Peregrinus describes the cultural experiences that he lived while growing up in Mexico between the years 1984 and 2002. He also discusses his later life in the United Kingdom and Sweden. During this time, the 2000s culture is explored.

At its core, the book conveys a powerful message: knowledge and wisdom are the ultimate tools for living a successful life. Through deeply personal anecdotes, Peregrinus touches on universal themes such as the influence of global events on individual lives, overcoming fears, seeking spiritual teachers, and navigating love and relationships. Richly illustrated with 94 handmade natural history and people-focused illustrations, this memoir provides not only an intellectual feast but also a visual delight. 

Key highlights include childhood fears of ghosts, mystical experiences, navigating young adult relationships, and insights into the biodiversity of our natural world. Peregrinus also sheds light on his experience avoiding toxic relationships, a lesson that inspired the title, “The Princess of the Wraiths.” The Princess of the Wraiths is a woman who is able to produce nightmares using hypnosis. Defeating her was Peregrinus’s greatest challenge. Through this work, readers will uncover how science and spirituality can coexist to offer a broader understanding of reality. 

This unique memoir is available for free online, making it an accessible and enriching read for anyone interested in exploring the depths of science, spirituality, and personal evolution.

FREE Download at Scribd

Excerpt:

 

Regarding death, my grandmother Lorenza used to tell me an anecdote that happened to her while she was a kid. She was an orphan, so she went to live with her grandmother, who became her primary caregiver. My great-great-grandmother lived in Los Ranchos de San José, a village close to Villa Guerrero, State of Mexico. In her house, there was a black cherry tree (Prunus serotina). One night, a great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) perched on a branch of the tree and started to vocalize. My great-great-grandmother thought that such an event was an omen. She claimed that meant that she would soon die. Thus, she told Lorenza to do whatever she could to scare the owl. My grandmother Lorenza was unable to scare the owl. The owl vocalized in the same place for several nights, and my great-great-grandmother died less than a month after the owl started hooting. After the burial, Ismaela arrived to tell her niece Lorenza that she should leave the house to go to live with her, as Lorenza was still a kid. When both were leaving the house, Lorenza claimed that she did not want to leave the building, as she was able to listen to the ghostly voice of my dead great-great-grandmother who was calling her inside…

According to the Graeco-Roman Olympian religion, Ascalaphus was an angel of the Hades God. Hades is the dwelling place of the souls of the dead. The task of Ascalaphus was to snatch the souls of dying people to Hades. Ascalaphus was transformed into an owl by Persephone the Kore, the queen of Hell. Since then, owl Ascalaphus has visited dying people before they finally died. That is why Pliny the Elder stated in his “Natural History” that the Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) was an extremely bad omen. Spanish bishop St. Isidore of Seville transferred this superstition to Christian Catholicism in his book “Etymologiae.”

About the Author:

Peregrinus Hierusalemsis is a biologist, writer, and seeker whose life has woven together science, philosophy, and spirituality. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh (2010) with a degree in biology, he has published scientific papers on biodiversity and worked in plant sciences, entomology, and molecular biology since 2009. His professional passion lies in systematics, the classification of living things, while his personal explorations reach into philosophy, metaphysics, and the world’s ancient spiritual traditions.

From early encounters with eastern philosophy in childhood karate lessons in Mexico, to late-night debates on western philosophy with friends, to the guidance of a spiritual teacher during his A-level years in the UK, Peregrinus has always sought to understand life’s hidden patterns. These experiences, alongside his scientific training, shape his unique voice which can be described as a bridge between the empirical and the mystical.

His debut work, The Princess of the Wraiths: an herbal, bestiary, human zoo, and memoir, invites readers into a journey that blends memoir with natural history, spiritual reflection, and philosophical inquiry.