During the early second half of the nineteenth century there was a bloody war called the war of the Triple Alliance. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay joined their forces against a small country called Paraguay. The result was one of the biggest bloodbaths in the history of the American continent. Virtually all Paraguayan males above the age of nine were murdered and nearly all Paraguayan women were raped. Once I heard an interesting story which is related to this war. Whether this story is true or not, I do not know. According to the story, a family moved to a Paraguayan farm at the start of the twentieth century. There were two children in the family, a boy and his sister. These kids used to play together in different parts of the vast farm. Once, when the sun was setting and the clouds in the horizon were already tinged with red, they saw a dishevelled man who was running wildly across the fields. The man was wearing a torn shirt with large golden buttons. He seemed to be in great distress. He didn’t even look at the children and just continued running until he disappeared among the crops. At first the kids thought that there was nothing supernatural involved, but they soon changed their minds when, a few weeks later, they relived the exact same scene all over again. They saw the same man, running along the same path, as the sun was sinking on the horizon. During the course of the following months they witnessed the same event many times, always at the same place and at the same hour of the day. The boy talked to his grandfather about what he had seen. He described the man and his clothes. The boy’s grandfather said that the shirt with the golden buttons formed part of the uniform of the Paraguayan soldiers during the war of the Triple Alliance. The boy became more and more interested in the story of the spectre, and decided to follow the ghost in his rush flee across the fields. Every afternoon he waited for the man at the same place, always at twilight. Finally, he saw it once more and ran after him. He ran fast, following the trail of the ghost, trying to keep the pace. Then he saw that the spectre ran towards a big tree and disappeared under the ancient boughs. Nothing was ever known about the history of this soldier or the reason why he was running. His story is probably just one of the many thousands of fatidic stories related to that cruel war. Perhaps he was running to someone’s rescue or maybe he was escaping from the soldiers of the Alliance. Unfortunately, we will never be able to know.