by Joe Nickell
Such anecdotal evidence, however spine-tingling it may be to some, has no weight in the scientific investigation of paranormal claims. If spooky happenings at Bechburg Castle are not due to the suggested causes already given—a prankster latching a door, the wind carrying voices, or the echo of one's own footsteps—clearly there are other possible explanations (see Nickell 1995, 39–77; 2001). We must ask: how, without a brain, can a disembodied spirit think, walk, or say boo? Science has never attributed a single occurrence to the alleged supernatural realm.
VAULT WITH A VIEW
A large, grassy mound seems strangely out of place near the front of Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Vermont. At the top of the mound is a small glass window encased in a square of cement that invites passersby to peer into the grave below (figure 5.3). The window was placed there at the behest of its tenant, and therein lies a spooky tale.
The deceased was Dr. Timothy Clark Smith (1821–1893). Between stints as a schoolteacher, merchant, and Treasury Department clerk, he studied medicine at New Haven (1834–1844) and the University of New York (1853–1855), obtaining his medical degree in 1855. He subsequently became a staff surgeon in the Russian army (1855–1856). Afterward, he served as US consul, first at Odessa, Russia (1861–1875), and then at Galatz (1878–1883) (Robinson 1950, 117). One source states that Smith's travels earned him the sobriquet “Odessa” Smith (Marquard 1982).
Smith died on February 25, 1893, at Middlebury, Vermont. I found his obituary in a later (March 3) Middlebury Register. It reported that he “died suddenly on Saturday morning at the Logan House [hotel] where he had been living. After breakfast, he walked out into the office and stood by the stove when stricken.” A local news article in the same issue noted that he was “formerly a resident of this town,” adding that “many will remember the old red store where Timothy Smith, Sr., traded, and afterwards his son.” The article also noted that “the deceased leaves a wife and several children.”
A modern newspaper feature story on the grave (Marquard 1982) says of Smith's era:
It was the late 1800s—in times before embalming—and folks didn't have to travel far to hear tales of people who had been presumed dead, only to be buried alive.
One legend has it that Smith particularly feared contracting sleeping sickness, and waking up on the cold side of a coffin cover.
Smith therefore devised a plan that involved postponing his burial until he was assuredly dead and having his arched burial vault provided with stairs and a viewing window at the top of a glassed shaft.
One of Smith's children, Harrison T. C. Smith of Gilman, Iowa, reportedly traveled to New Haven “to supervise construction of the unusual crypt” (Marquard 1982). The vault has two rooms, cemetery sexton Betty Bell told me (2003), the second being for Smith's wife, Catherine (Prout) Smith.
According to the feature article, there are other legends about the tomb. One is that Smith had it outfitted with “tools for his escape.” Although condensation and plant growth inside the shaft now block one's view, residents in years past claimed to see the tools along with Smith's bones. Said one, “You can see the face of the skeleton down there with a hammer and chisel crossed on the ground next to it” (Marquard 1982). Another source claims that when Smith was interred, “in the corpse's hand they placed a bell that he could ring should he wake up and find himself the victim of a premature burial” (Citro and Foulds, 2003, 292).
Curiously perhaps, ghost tales about the grave seem scarce. The authors of Curious New England (Citro and Foulds 2003, 292) attempt to provoke the credulous. Mentioning the bell allegedly placed in Smith's hand, they say, “So if you decide to visit the cemetery, keep very quiet…and listen.” I did but, not surprisingly, heard nothing.
Area resident John Palmer (2003) told me that for fun he used to send impressionable children to the site to scare them. He still felt guilty about one such event. He had his two older boys take a couple of six-year-olds to the grave, telling them a person was alive down there. Then suddenly they exclaimed, “The ground is moving!” whereupon Palmer—who had hidden in the trees—jumped out screaming. The two youngsters were so scared that they ran into each other's arms and fell down.
Actually, Palmer told me, although as a child he had himself played there with other children, he never saw any ghosts or even heard any ghost tales. I guess Timothy Clark Smith is dead after all.
In the search for spirits of the dead, one often encounters legends—proliferating tales that can prove as elusive as the ghosts they tell of. Here are three examples of “haunted” places that illustrate how things may not be quite what they are reputed to be.
WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE
A stacked and sprawling architectural wonder, the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, once comprised an estimated 500 rooms, although it was significantly reduced by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. However, when Sarah Winchester died in 1922, the house she obsessively built onto still contained 160 rooms with 2,000 doors (including some that opened onto blank walls), 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, and as many fireplaces, secret passageways, and more, including, controversially, a blue séance room where she reportedly rendezvoused secretly with spirits. (See figure 6.1.)
Sources claim that Sarah Winchester, grief stricken at the death of her husband, William, heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune, sought out a medium to contact his spirit. The medium allegedly directed her to make amends for the deaths caused by the rifles, to appease the victims’ ghosts by building a house for them. As a consequence, the Winchester Mystery House is claimed to be America's most haunted mansion, tenanted by perhaps thousands of ghostly guests (Nickell 2004, 128–30; Guiley 2000, 405–407; Winchester Mystery House 1997; Hauck 1996, 75–76; Winer and Osborne 1979, 33–49).
The house attracts legends, certainly, but are they true? I investigated the site on October 24, 2001, as part of a California lecture and investigations tour, accompanied by colleague Vaughn Rees.
In fact, there is no proof that Mrs. Winchester ever contacted a medium, and her companion for many years, Miss Henrietta Severs, denied the widow was ever a spiritualist. The séance room was really a bedroom, and the tower's bell that supposedly summoned spirits at midnight was instead used to call workmen, as well as to serve as an alarm in case of fire. Reports of “ghostly music” were due to the fact that, when she was unable to sleep, Sarah Winchester typically played the pump organ in the Grand Ballroom.
Of course it would be unusual if such a rambling old house did not have the characteristics that often lead to reports of ghostly activity, including drafts, odd noises (caused by temperature changes and settlings of an old structure), and the legends and ambiance that create a climate of expectation. On one occasion, for instance, a shadowy figure turned out to be a Winchester staffer. As with other “haunted” places, there is no scientific evidence that the great mansion hosts a single ghost—“only,” as the late psychologist Robert A. Baker loved to say, “haunted people” (Nickell 2004, 128–39).
GHOST OF CLEMENT HALL
On a visit to the University of Tennessee at Martin to give a well-attended lecture on March 24, 2010, I learned of UTM's Ghost of Clement Hall, termed “one of the most popular ghost stories of West Tennessee” (“Ghost of Clement Hall” 2006). I determined to look into the case, ably assisted in my investigation by members of the group that sponsored my talk, Campus Freethinkers Society (president Angelia Stinnett, who helped throughout; Stetson Ford, who did online research; Trey Hamilton, who video-recorded my on-site interviews with staff; and advisor Lionel Crews, who also assisted in various ways).
Reportedly, the apparition of a young woman in white confirms the legend of a student who committed suicide on the fourth floor of the campus's oldest dormitory (figure 6.2). The story was also the subject of a 2008 movie, A Rose for Caitlin, made by Virtual Light Films (UTM students). Caitlin or Caitlyn is simply the nickname students have given to the “spirit of the unknown girl” (“Haunted Tour” 2010).
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In addition to apparitions, other allegedly ghostly phenomena include flickering lights and strange noises—in other words, nothing of a convincing evidential nature. Consider one reported sighting made by David Belote (2006), assistant vice chancellor for student affairs. He remains unsure just what he saw in the building's attic in the early 1980s. Something moved quickly between some stacked boxes, but, he says, the movement could be attributed to a bird or something else. “It could have been my imagination,” he concedes, admitting he has embellished the story over the years when relating it to students. Stephanie Mueller (2010), an advisor to special-needs students—having worked in the building for years, both day and night—attributes the flickering shadow she once saw on the floor to a failing light bulb. She added that the building's radiator heat, which expands and contracts pipes, could be responsible for many noises.
UTM's director of housing, Earl Wright (2006), believes the ghost story originated in an incident in the early 1970s. Wright's sister and her roommate, who were working on an art project, had left some life-sized Halloween-themed figures standing in a shower stall to dry. These frightened a fellow student who came upon them and, Wright thinks, sparked the ghost story. (Again see “Ghost of Clement Hall” 2006.) However, the hypothesis fails to explain many factors, including how the cutouts, promptly revealed as such, were transformed into a persistently haunting spirit.
In any case, housing director Wright (2006) insists that the allegation of a student having committed suicide on the top floor of Clement Hall is untrue. And Stephanie Mueller told me pointedly that there were “different versions” of the tale. These are what folklorists call variants, and they are evidence of the folklore process at work. The differences include the supposed reason for the “suicide” (the young woman was simply jilted, or she walked in on her cheating boyfriend in flagrante delicto) as well as the place and manner of death (she hanged herself in a men's shower stall where there is a bent curtain rod, or perhaps she died in another way, as evidenced by “blood” splatters on a hallway door). Another women's dorm, McCord Hall, likewise has a story of a suicide by hanging—possibly indicating that the legend (i.e., a supposedly true folktale) is migratory (to use other folklorist terms).
Indeed, the UTM tale's cluster of motifs (or narrative elements) provided a basis for an Internet search (generously conducted for me by CFI Libraries director Timothy Binga). This showed that similar stories of a suicidal dorm resident who returns to haunt the place of tragedy are found not only on other Tennessee campuses but also across the country, from Charlotte to Tulsa and beyond. The evidence thus suggests that it is a migratory legend—part of the narrative lore of college folk, transmitted widely. It seems that no matter how much the imaginary ghost wanders, she can always find a place to stay: among those who can most empathize with her.
TRAGICALLY “HAUNTED”
Formerly called the Winecoff Hotel, it was the site of the most tragic hotel fire, not only in Atlanta, but in all US history. Thus, it surely should be haunted—if, that is, ghosts are something more than figments of the romantic imagination. During the popular Dragon*Con festival in September 2009 and 2010, I investigated ghost claims at the refurbished hotel, collecting published tales, taking photographs, interviewing the manager, and more.
A historical marker on the property relates the horrific story. Before dawn on December 7, 1946, the hotel was filled with 280 guests. At that time, the brick structure was believed to be fireproof but—lacking sprinklers, fire escapes, and even fire doors—it was actually a death trap, which claimed 119 lives. Although firemen from Atlanta and surrounding towns fought valiantly for some two and half hours, “their ladders reached only to the eighth floor, and their nets were not strong enough to withstand jumps of more than 70 feet.” Consequently the bodies of those who perished by jumping were scattered on the sidewalks and piled in the alley at the rear of the building. Within days, however, reports of the horror prompted enactment of fire-safety ordinances across the country, and today the shell of the building has been transformed into the modern, safety-conscious Ellis Hotel.
Authors of ghost books—typically a superstitious, mystery-mongering lot—are at pains to give the hotel sufficient ghostly tales to befit its tragic history. Reese Christian—whose book Ghosts of Atlanta (2008) bills her as an “elite psychic medium” and member of Ghost Hounds Paranormal Research Society—warms to the task. Although lacking specific sources, she touts such phenomena as workmen's unaccountably moved tools, the sounds of noisy but empty hallways, and the repeated smell of smoke when there was no fire (Christian 2008, 51–57).
Such reports may be unexplained, but they are hardly unexplainable. Workmen may mislay tools, or fellow workers may play pranks on them; guests can hear noises from other floors; and smoke may be imagined or simply come from someone's cigarette. Some ghostly experiences in hotels—including vivid apparitions—may stem from a guest's “waking dream,” a state that occurs in the interface between wakefulness and sleep (see appendix).
At the Ellis, as at many other allegedly haunted buildings, people outside sometimes imagine they can see ghostly faces in the windows (Bender 2008, 131–34). When these are not actual faces—of guests or housekeepers—they may be nothing more than simulacra: these are the result of one's ability to perceive images in random patterns (such as the play of light and shadow upon a window), like seeing pictures in clouds. I did some experimenting with my camera at the hotel and produced the “faces” shown in one window here (figure 6.3).
The manager of the Ellis, Peter Minervini (2010), very kindly took a few minutes to sit and talk with CFI Libraries director Timothy Binga and me when we lunched at the hotel on September 4, 2010. He said he had worked there about a year and had no ghost experiences. The only thing he mentioned was an odd odor, occasionally perceived in one room, that he did not attribute to anything otherworldly. He said he was himself a skeptic regarding ghosts. The year before, I was startled when a young woman with a tour company told me there were so few credible ghost accounts in Atlanta that they were changing the name of their “Ghosts and Legends Tour.” Will wonders never cease!
Although skeptics insist ghosts are unreal, there are many ghostly encounters that seem to present startling evidence to the contrary. One such incident is presented in the book The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales by Ruth Ann Musick (1965, 28–30). The story is indeed spine tingling, but is it true as well? I first began to investigate the case for my book Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings (1995).
“HELP”
Musick's narrative, titled “Help,” relates how “Doctor Anderson” was awakened by a knock at the door “just past midnight.” He found on his doorstep a girl of twelve or thirteen who was dressed in a blue coat and carrying a white muff. She implored him to hurry to “the old Hostler place,” where her mother was desperately ill, and then she darted down the road. Anderson picked up his doctor's bag, quickly saddled his horse, and hurried on his way until “he saw the glow of a lamp in the old Hostler house.”
Finding a bedridden woman inside, the physician put wood on the dying fire and set to work to treat her fever. When she had rallied, he told her how fortunate she was that her daughter had fetched him. “But I have no daughter,” the woman whispered. “My daughter has been dead for three years.” Anderson described to her how the girl had been dressed; the woman admitted that her daughter had had such clothing and indicated where the items were hanging.
Thereupon, relates the narrative's final paragraph, “Doctor Anderson strode over to the closet, opened the door, and took out a blue coat and white muff. His hands trembled when he felt the coat and muff and found them still warm and damp from perspiration.”
How do we explain such an event? Well, first we remember to apply an old skeptic's dictum: before attempting to explain something, make sure it really happened.
ANOTHER VERSION
As it turns out, a book by Billy Graha
m contains a remarkably similar story (1975, 2–3), wherein the implication is that the little girl in the tale is not a ghost but rather an angel:
Dr. S. W. Mitchell, a celebrated Philadelphia neurologist, had gone to bed after an exceptionally tiring day. Suddenly he was awakened by someone knocking on his door. Opening it he found a little girl, poorly dressed and deeply upset. She told him her mother was very sick and asked him if he would please come with her. It was a bitterly cold, snowy night, but though he was bone tired, Dr. Mitchell dressed and followed the girl….
As Reader's Digest reports the story, he found the mother desperately ill with pneumonia. After arranging for medical care, he complimented the sick woman on the intelligence and persistence of her little daughter. The woman looked at him strangely and said, “My daughter died a month ago.” She added, “Her shoes and coat are in the clothes closet there.” Dr. Mitchell, amazed and perplexed, went to the closet and opened the door. There hung the very coat worn by the little girl who had brought him to tend her mother. It was warm and dry and could not possibly have been out in the wintry night….