Open the Coffin

First in a dream then into my office came a centuries old ghost tapping on my desk with a fan.</P><P>The mother of emperors kings and queens herself sole sovereign over half the world for fifty-one years Juana was Archduchess of Austria Queen of Castile Queen of Aragon Sicily Sardinia Naples Mexico Peru and all the lands to the west of Africa. Yet Simon & Schuster's great reference book <i>The Timetables of History</i> does not even mention her death in 1555. Two and a half centuries before the United States was born Juana the First of Spain attempted to establish a democratic government that would have spanned the Americas from pole to pole. How could such a person simply vanish into a footnote of modern times? Betrayed first by her husband then her father then her son Juana was declared insane. Under iron-clad secrecy she was committed to the horrors of a stone room without light for nearly a decade. The answer seems all too sinister. She was a young widow never trained to rule sitting on the throne of the greatest empire of the time. She was a woman too passionate too outspoken too much trouble. The dark secret for five hundred years was an international conspiracy. She was made to disappear.</P><P>Juana's appearance in a Twentieth Century office building was independently perceived by other people at the same time. And what is to be made of her odd Birth Card connections with the author?</P>