by Joe Nickell
Moreover, famed Western New York ghost raconteur (and author's friend) Mason Winfield (1997, 64–65) observes that Malinda is not alone among reported ghosts at Van Horn. Indeed, the list is long and is summarized by Lee (2008, 61):
Groundskeepers swore they saw a young woman, in a long white dress, walking on the lawn. Volunteers in the interior of the mansion heard crying and footsteps in unoccupied rooms. Workmen ran from their jobs, spooked. Motorists jammed on their brakes to avoid a mysterious child in the road who then disappeared. Internal lights were seen in the dark, empty mansion. A certain coolness is felt in a certain bedroom. A rocking chair is seen moving of its own volition in the nursery.
But all such incidents have ready explanations: the effects of suggestion and expectation, misperceptions, simple physical causes, pranking, and so on. The devil—or ghost in this case—is in the details.
The stories have been told and retold in such a way that it is difficult to determine precisely what happened originally in each case. Moreover, incidents became altered, or even multiplied, or were otherwise exaggerated. For instance, a motorist who reportedly skidded to avoid a girl darting from the mansion and then vanishing (Winfield 1997, 64) might only have had a common apparitional experience in which a mental image springs from the subconscious (see appendix). Or it might even have been a real girl who was lost sight of by the seriously distracted motorist. On the other hand, a version of the tale says the girl was Malinda and that she was “standing in the middle of the street” (Hauck 1996, 296). In time the happening supposedly became repeated: “Motorists [plural] jammed on their brakes to avoid a mysterious child in the road who then disappeared” (Lee 2008, 61). So sketchy are the reports that they should not be described as unexplained mysteries but rather as worthless evidence.
Where more facts are known, however, inferences may be made. For instance, a senior guide at Van Horn told me that several people had seen a spectral woman looking out a front upstairs bedroom window. However, the solution was an easy one, she noted, pointing to a manikin fitted with a white wedding dress that had previously stood in the window! She had herself had two sightings of, she believed, Malinda. However, one occurred while she was “cleaning,” when, at such times of doing routine work, one's mind may be near a daydreaming state, conducive to having an apparitional experience. Her other encounter occurred while she was giving a tour and was brief and vague. Another guide, who has worked at the mansion for many years, told me she had never experienced a ghost and, in fact, believed that ghosts were contrary to Christian teaching.
And then there is the mansion's reputedly haunted dollhouse (figure 10.3), which “is said to have miniature furnishings that get rearranged seemingly on their own” (Crocitto 2011). However, my guide explained what she thought was actually happening. As an experiment, she told me, she had deliberately removed the clear plastic cover and specially positioned items, such as a chair, then monitored the site to see if anything actually moved. It never did (Nickell 2011). She concluded people were probably just misremembering the prior arrangement.
EVOLVING PHENOMENON
We have better luck tracking the Van Horn Mansion's transformation into a “haunted” place. From the time the mansion was completed in 1823 until 1967 (including use as a restaurant from 1949 to 1959), there is no published contemporary record or authentic oral tradition of the house ever being haunted. Indeed, Newfane historian Judson Heck contacted several former residents of the house and they universally “denied any mysterious episodes” (Sherwood 1986).
It was during the period between 1967 and 1970, when the place became abandoned, that it acquired a reputation for being haunted (Lee 2008, 60). A volunteer at Van Horn stated that the mansion “was all boarded up and neglected, the porch was falling off, the grass was untended and it did look spooky.” She stated, “I don't think there are any ghosts in the house and I don't think there ever were.” She concluded that the spooky aspect prompted people to invent ghosts (Smitten 2004, 193). Derelict buildings do seem to invite notions of ghosts and hauntings—as happened, for example, to the Belhurst Castle (an inn at Geneva, New York) and the historic Octagon House (at Genesee County Village, Mumford, New York) (see Nickell 2001, 294–95; 2004, 321). When such houses are restored and opened as businesses, the “haunting” lore is frequently seized upon as a convenient promotional gimmick.
In 1970 the budding ghostlore gained a boost when a newspaper story—published on Halloween—told of a recent series of séances held in the deserted mansion. “Was it just our imagination, or could we hear a woman softly crying?” asked the mystery-mongering reporter (Nelson 1970). Scratching sounds, footsteps, a “cold spot” greeted an unlikely group of “researchers.” In the dark, distinct raps were heard in response to questions posed. “The taps told us it was Malinda; she was not alone; that she was unhappy, frightened and more.” Because similar rapping communications had marked the beginning of modern spiritualism in 1848 but later proved to have been a hoax (see chapter 23), I also suspect deception in this instance of too-good-to-be-true, copycat spirit communication.
Once the Malinda fakelore was established and publicized, it would not abate; rather, it increased as a bandwagon effect over subsequent years. In 1989 a “psychic” named “Lady Salem,” who was “dressed in a floor-length black shroud,” led a small group through the house while engaging in other occult antics, including holding a séance in which a candle flame answered questions by being unresponsive for no and animated for yes. (I suspect someone may have been surreptitiously blowing.) Also, “Lady Salem” placed one member, Kathleen Ganz, in a “trance” by having her stare into a flame, whereupon, says Ganz (1989), “a soldier named Jeremy started talking through me.”
I myself sat in on some séances there in 2003 (Nickell 2011), including one, conducted by a medium using the table-tipping phenomenon. (Sitters place their hands on the top of, usually, a pedestal table, and it tips once for yes, twice for no. See appendix for “ideomotor effect.”) I got loving messages from an aunt and uncle—whom, alas, I had just invented! I never saw anything I regarded as authentic spirit communication, but I was impressed by the credulity of superstitious folk.
Meanwhile, Van Horn Mansion gained an entry in Haunted Places: The National Directory (Hauck 1996, 296) and then in other compendia like Ghost Stories of New York State (Smitten 2004, 192–95). The Van Horn Ghost bandwagon was merrily rolling on.
Indeed, it seems to be running out of control. After Malinda's grave was supposedly located in the flower garden and her tombstone placed there, a sign was installed that read: “Since this work was started there have been no sightings of Malinda.” Yet on my visits there in September 2011, that statement had been covered over, proof that once a ghost tale gains traction it may be very difficult to rein in.
Animal ghosts are, well, a strange breed. In the popular imagination animals may, like their human counterparts, continue their existence after death.
A PHANTOM HORSE
Such was the case of a phantom horse, “Gloa,” I investigated in Germany in 2002. Colleague Martin Mahner and I found ourselves in the village of Wehrheim, sitting on bales of hay in a horse shed and listening to an interesting story.
The horse, Gloa, was the beautiful and beloved pet of its owner, Rosemarie Schäuble (2002), who was still grieving over the Icelandic mare's death some two years earlier. Ms. Schäuble was convinced that Gloa had since manifested herself in two dramatic ways. First, the vegetation had withered at the very spot where she had died, leaving a bare area in the shape of Gloa's silhouette. Second, one day while visiting the field where Gloa had grazed, Ms. Schäuble suddenly saw the mare approach, only to then vanish just as suddenly.
Although these reported phenomena seem striking, an on-site investigation readily revealed plausible explanations. Regarding the bare spot, there were similar barren patches here and there in the surrounding area. It seems likely that whatever soil conditions caused these also caused the supposedly par
anormal patch. Its appearance after the horse's death may have been coincidental, or the bare spot may simply not have been noticed previously.
The silhouette of the horse formed by the bare patch is in the eye of the beholder. People whom I showed photos of the spot did not recognize a horse's shape until it was pointed out to them. The human brain, wishing to make sense of things, has the ability to perceive random shapes as specific images. That is how we see pictures in clouds, inkblots, and so forth, a popular example being the Man in the Moon. Such images are known as simulacra (see appendix).
As to Ms. Schäuble's fleeting glimpse of Gloa's ghostly figure, such apparitional experiences tend to occur when people are performing routine chores or are otherwise close to a daydream state, and they “may be related to the dreamer's current concerns” (Baker 1990, 179–82). I suspect that when Ms. Schäuble visited the pasture to feed the horses, a memory of Gloa was triggered subconsciously and was momentarily superimposed on the visual scene. As Ms. Schäuble told me, Gloa often used to come up to the fence to greet her, just as the apparition of her did.
While explanations for the reported phenomena in this case seem mundane, they nevertheless serve to remind us that appearances can be deceiving—especially when they involve our most cherished wishes and beliefs. Understandably, when a loved person or pet dies we may have trouble “letting go,” and wishful thinking may prevail.
SPIRITUALIST CONTACT
As the belief in spirit contact arose in the mid-nineteenth century, certain self-styled “mediums” (those who claim to intercede between ordinary folk and spirits of the dead), occasionally mentioned a pet—often a dog—in a reading. Now, some pet psychics like Christa Carl conduct “séance readings” for animals that have “passed over.”
Thus, the owner of a dog named Brandy, Carl said, who had broken away from her kennel and was killed, wanted to communicate with her spirit. “I learned from her,” the pet medium claims, “that she didn't know why she had been put in the kennel. She had felt abandoned, unloved, uncared for.” Carl explained things to Brandy, she said, “and now she's at peace” (Cooper and Noble 1996, 102). Of course there is not a shred of proof that the spirit was contacted or even existed—except in the imaginations of Christa Carl and the dog's grieving, guilt-ridden, and credulous owner.
SPECTRAL HOUNDS
In addition to hopes, fears may prompt belief in ghostly entities. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is based on a gigantic hound that appears on the moor to foreshadow the death of one of the Baskerville clan. Although fictional, the story was based on a widespread ancient English tradition of a spectral hound (Cohen 1989, 144). Such folklore is common to areas steeped in the supernatural, such as Devon, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. Often called Black Shuck, the creature is said to be entirely black and as big as a calf, sporting glowing eyes—even when he is described as headless! (Guiley 2000, 48–49). Also in Scotland, Vaughn family members were supposed to see a black dog before one of them died.
Another spectral English canine was a white dog. It was said to appear prior to executions at the infamous Newgate Prison. It would be spotted outside the gates (Cohen 1989, 144).
GHOSTLY MONGOOSE
Mischief may be at the root of other encounters. Take the bizarre case of Gef, the supposed ghost (or poltergeist) of a talking mongoose! He appeared in 1931 on the Irving farm on the Isle of Man (in the Irish Sea). He was never reliably seen but instead tossed stones at unwelcome visitors, “urinated” through cracks in the walls, and performed other mischief. However, doubters—of which there were many—noted that the events centered around the family's twelve-year-old daughter, Viorrey; indeed Gef allegedly lived in the girl's room. The skeptics were convinced Viorrey was simply playing pranks, using ventriloquism and other tricks, the effects then being hyped by reporters and credulous paranormalists. Indeed a reporter for the Isle of Man Examiner caught the girl making a squeaking sound, although her father insisted the noise came from elsewhere in the room (Psychic Pets 1996, 72–83). (Poltergeist phenomena will be taken up more fully in later chapters.)
Spirits of the dead are among the supernatural beings historically encountered by Native Americans. Alaskan Eskimos, according to a Smithsonian ethnography report (Murdoch 1885), often used weapons to fend off ghosts, even carrying a drawn knife for protection when traveling at night.
Today, not even weapons, apparently, can rid Juneau's Alaskan Hotel of its ghosts, one of whom was allegedly even created by an angry man's vengeful axe.
ALASKAN BORDELLO
Built in 1913 as a hotel and bordello (prostitution was legal in Alaska until 1956), the Alaskan (figure 12.1) experienced a colorful history before declining (under the name Northlander Hotel, beginning in 1961) and finally being condemned in 1977. It was subsequently restored and, in 1981, placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
On May 31, 2006, when a cruise ship I was on made a stopover in Juneau (and I gave a scheduled talk and radio interview), I was able to tour the area courtesy of Michael S. Stekoll, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Alaska Southeast. We stopped to investigate the historic “haunted” hotel, where we were given a tour by owner Bettye Adams and her son Joshua (see figure 12.2).
The Adamses and their excitable staff reported various ghostly goings-on in several rooms of the Alaskan. In number 311, a manager having died there the previous February, staff members believed they could sense a ghostly presence, a subjective impression I was unable to share. Room 313 had yielded a photo by a former resident that showed several “orbs,” bright spheres believed by many to be a form of “spirit energy”; actually, however, when they are not mere reflections from shiny surfaces, orbs commonly result from the camera's flash rebounding from dust particles or water droplets close to the lens (Nickell 2006, 25).
MURDEROUS ATTACK?
It is room 315, however, that is most discussed, although the phantom habitué is supposedly the same as “the specter in room 321” and elsewhere in the hotel, according to the author of Haunted Alaska, Ron Wendt (2002, 71). He elaborates:
The ghost of the Alaskan Hotel carries a tragic story. In life, she was once the bride of a gold prospector. The man told her he was going to the Haines area to search for gold. He put her up at the Alaskan Hotel and said he would return in three weeks.
When her husband failed to return, the woman became desperate. She was out of money and had nowhere to run. An acquaintance told her there was a way she could support herself, and so she turned to prostitution.
About three months later, the miner returned. When he found out that his wife had been working as a prostitute, he killed her at the hotel. (73)
Although the names of these dramatis personae are unrecorded, someone has somehow learned that the woman's name was Alice and that her husband killed her with “a hatchet” dislodged “from beneath his waistcoat” (Adams 2006, 5–6). But wait: maybe it was really a revolver with which he “shot her dead in that very room”—room 315 (Adams n.d., 56). Sources are also unsure whether the man was really the woman's husband or merely her suitor; they are equally uncertain as to whether he was indeed a miner or instead “captain of his own fishing boat” who “went out to fish and possibly to whale”1 (Adams n.d., 55).
According to the latter version, inexplicably, while at sea, this captain heard rumors of his girlfriend's infidelity and attempted to return to Juneau in a storm. According to a version of the story that does not involve murder (Adams n.d., 55–56):
Death came quickly to all beneath the turbulent waves, but the man continued, unhindered by flesh. He knocked, bodiless at the door, but none answered. So they say that the man simply stays there, waiting for his love to answer him, right around the time of month that he died.
Or so “they say.”
That there are proliferating versions of this story is at once evidence of folklore in the making and reason to be skeptical of its historicity. Its basic
folk motifs (or story elements)—involving unfaithfulness, revenge, tragedy, and haunting2—persist, even when the factual details are questionable.
ENCOUNTERS
Some form of the ghost tale apparently traces back at least to the time the building was called the Northlander Hotel and Marguerite Franklin was owner. She gave a discounted rate on the “haunted” room to a young, poor employee who worked the “graveyard” shift (midnight to eight a.m.). That woman soon reportedly sensed the presence of a “smelly fisherman,” even hearing his creaking footsteps and heavy breathing as well as smelling him. She seems to have been an impressionable, possibly even “fantasy-prone,” young lady who may have had “waking dreams,” which occur in the twilight between being fully asleep and awake (Nickell 1995, 40–42). Or, since she slept during the daytime, one wonders if she might merely have perceived the occasional hotel guest in the hallway. Supposedly the incidents occurred from the twenty-fourth to the thirtieth of each month, but there is no convincing record of such consistency (Adams n.d., 55–56).
As to reported apparitions, those are said to be of the legendary woman turned prostitute. States Wendt (2002, 71), “Witnesses have observed her walking down the hall, then simply vanishing from sight.” My own investigations, as well as research data, demonstrate that such experiences often derive from altered states of consciousness, such as when a person is tired or in a relaxed state or performing routine chores. In imaginative individuals, a mental image might be superimposed upon the visual scene as a sort of mental double exposure (Nickell 2000, 18).
Certainly, the Alaskan Hotel's ghosts seem to have much in common with those alleged at other “haunted” sites, as well as with other mysterious entities—monsters and aliens—of the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. “Where do entities come from?” asked noted psychologist Robert A. Baker (in an afterword to Nickell 1995, 275). He answered, “from within the human head, where they are produced by the ever-active, image-creating human mind.”