Abstract. – This article provides a table of twenty-four variants of a folktale that agree on the fact that present an unanticipated encounter between the ghost of the priest and the visionary, in a church or chapel, with a mass of the other world. Although from a geographical point of view all the stories refer to the branch of Oil languages and to the states of France, Belgium or Canada, most of them are also inserted in the culture of other language communities, such as Breton or Occitan. [France, Belgium, Canada, ethnography, purgatory, apparitions, mass, negligence, acolyte]