by Hans Holzer
Eventually, the discussion got around to the footsteps. They, too, kept hearing them, it seemed. After they had compared notes on their experiences, the Meyerses asked more questions. They were told that before the house was divided, it belonged to a single owner who had committed suicide in the house. No wonder he liked to walk in both halves of what was once his home!
* * *
You’d never think of Kokomo, Indiana as particularly haunted ground, but one of the most touching cases I know of occurred there some time ago. A young woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Hamilton was in the habit of spending many of her summer vacations in her grandmother’s house. The house dates back to 1834 and is a handsome place, meticulously kept up.
Miss Hamilton had never had the slightest interest in the supernatural, and the events that transpired that summer, when she spent four weeks at the house, came as a complete surprise to her. One evening she was walking down the front staircase when she was met by a lovely young lady coming up the stairs. Miss Hamilton noticed that she wore a particularly beautiful evening gown. There was nothing the least bit ghostly about the woman, and she passed Miss Hamilton closely, in fact so closely that she could have touched her had she wanted to.
But she did notice that the gown was of a filmy pink material, and her hair and eyes were dark brown, and the latter, full of tears. When the two women met, the girl in the evening gown smiled at Miss Hamilton and passed by.
Since she knew that there was no other visitor in the house, and that no one was expected at this time, Miss Hamilton was puzzled. She turned her head to follow her up the stairs. The lady in pink reached the top of the stairs and vanished—into thin air.
As soon as she could, she reported the matter to her grandmother, who shook her head and would not believe her account. She would not even discuss it, so Miss Hamilton let the matter drop out of deference to her grandmother. But the dress design had been so unusual, she decided to check it out in a library. She found, to her amazement, that the lady in pink had worn a dress that was from the late 1840s.
In September of the next year, her grandmother decided to redecorate the house. In this endeavor she used many old pieces of furniture, some of which had come from the attic of the house. When Miss Hamilton arrived and saw the changes, she was suddenly stopped by a portrait hung in the hall.
It was a portrait of her lady of the stairs. She was not wearing the pink gown in this picture but, other than that, she was the same person.
Miss Hamilton’s curiosity about the whole matter was again aroused and, since she could not get any cooperation from her grandmother, she turned to her great aunt for help. This was particularly fortunate since the aunt was a specialist in family genealogy.
Finally the lady of the stairs was identified. She turned out to be a distant cousin of Miss Hamilton’s, and had once lived in that very house.
She had fallen in love with a ne’er-do-well, and after he died in a brawl, she threw herself down the stairs to her death.
Why had the family ghost picked her to appear before, Miss Hamilton wondered.
Then she realized that she bore a strong facial resemblance to the ghost. Moreover, their names were almost identical—Mary Elizabeth was Miss Hamilton’s, and Elizabeth Mary, the pink lady’s. Both women even had the same nickname, Libby.
Perhaps the ghost had looked for a little recognition from her family and, having gotten none from the grandmother, had seized upon the opportunity to manifest herself to a more amenable relative?
Miss Hamilton is happy that she was able to see the sad smile on the unfortunate girl’s face, for to her it is proof that communication, though silent, had taken place between them across the years.
* * *
Mrs. Jane Eidson is a housewife in suburban Minneapolis. She is middle-aged and her five children range in age from nine to twenty. Her husband Bill travels four days each week. They live in a cottage-type brick house that is twenty-eight years old, and they’ve lived there for the past eight years.
The first time the Eidsons noticed that there was something odd about their otherwise ordinary-looking home was after they had been in the house for a short time. Mrs. Eidson was in the basement sewing, when all of a sudden she felt that she was not alone and wanted to run upstairs. She suppressed this strong urge but felt very uncomfortable. Another evening, her husband was down there practicing a speech when he also felt the presence of another. His self-control was not as strong as hers, and he came upstairs. In discussing their strange feelings with their next-door neighbor, they discovered that the previous tenant had also complained about the basement. Their daughter, Rita, had never wanted to go to the basement by herself and, when pressed for a reason, finally admitted that there was a man down there. She described him as dark-haired and wearing a plaid shirt.
Sometimes he would stand by her bed at night and she would become frightened, but the moment she thought of calling her mother, the image disappeared. Another spot where she felt his presence was the little playhouse at the other end of their yard.
The following spring, Mrs. Eidson noticed a bouncing light at the top of the stairs as she was about to go to bed in an upstairs room, which she was occupying while convalescing from surgery.
The light followed her to her room as if it had a mind of its own!
When she entered her room the light left, but the room felt icy. She was disturbed by this, but nevertheless went to bed and soon had forgotten all about it as sleep came to her. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, she woke and sat up in bed.
Something had awakened her. At the foot of her bed she saw a man who was “beige-colored,” as she put it. As she stared at the apparition it went away, again leaving the room very chilly.
About that same time, the Eidsons noticed that their electric appliances were playing tricks on them. There was the time at 5 A.M. when their washing machine went on by itself, as did the television set in the basement, which could only be turned on by plugging it into the wall socket. When they had gone to bed, the set was off and there was no one around to plug it in.
Who was so fond of electrical gadgets that they were turning them on in the small hours of the morning?
Finally Mrs. Eidson found out. In May of 1949, a young man who was just out of the service had occupied the house. His hobby had been electrical wiring, it seems, for he had installed a strand of heavy wires from the basement underground through the yard to the other end of the property. When he attempted to hook them up to the utility pole belonging to the electric company, he was killed instantly. It happened near the place where Mrs. Eidson’s girl had seen the apparition. Since the wires are still in her garden, Mrs. Eidson is not at all surprised that the dead man likes to hang around.
And what better way for an electronics buff to manifest himself as a ghost than by appearing as a bright, bouncy light? As of this writing, the dead electrician is still playing tricks in the Eidson home, and Mrs. Eidson is looking for a new home—one a little less unusual than their present one.
* * *
Eileen Courtis is forty-seven years old, a native of London, and a well-balanced individual who now resides on the West coast but who lived previously in New York City. Although she has never gone to college, she has a good grasp of things, an analytical mind, and is not given to hysterics. When she arrived in New York at age thirty-four, she decided to look for a quiet hotel and then search for a job.
The job turned out to be an average office position, and the hotel she decided upon was the Martha Washington, which was a hotel for women only on Twenty-Ninth Street. Eileen was essentially shy and a loner who only made friends slowly.
She was given a room on the twelfth floor and, immediately on crossing the threshold, she was struck by a foul odor coming from the room. Her first impulse was to ask for another room, but she was in no mood to create a fuss so she stayed.
“I can stand it a night or two,” she thought, but did not unpack. It turned out that she stayed in that room
for six long months, and yet she never really unpacked.
Now all her life, Eileen had been having various experiences that involved extrasensory perception, and her first impression of her new “home” was that someone had died in it. She examined the walls inch by inch. There was a spot where a crucifix must have hung for a long time, judging by the color of the surrounding wall. Evidently it had been removed when someone moved out…permanently.
That first night, after she had gone to bed, her sleep was interrupted by what sounded like the turning of a newspaper page. It sounded exactly as if someone were sitting in the chair at the foot of her bed reading a newspaper. Quickly she switched on the light and she was, of course, quite alone. Were her nerves playing tricks on her? It was a strange city, a strange room. She decided to go back to sleep. Immediately, the rustling started up again, and then someone began walking across the floor, starting from the chair and heading toward the door.
Eileen turned on every light in the room and it stopped. Exhausted, she dozed off again. The next morning she looked over the room carefully. Perhaps mice had caused the strange rustling. The strange odor remained, so she requested that the room be fumigated. The manager smiled wryly, and nobody came to fumigate her room. The rustling noise continued, night after night, and Eileen slept with the lights on for the next three weeks.
Somehow her ESP told her this presence was a strong-willed, vicious old woman who resented others occupying what she still considered “her” room. Eileen decided to fight her. Night after night, she braved it out in the dark, only to find herself totally exhausted in the morning. Her appearance at the office gave rise to talk. But she was not going to give in to a ghost. Side by side, the living and the dead now occupied the same room without sharing it.
Then one night, something prevented her from going off to sleep. She lay in bed quietly, waiting.
Suddenly she became aware of two skinny but very strong arms extended over her head, holding a large downy pillow as though to suffocate her!
It took every ounce of her strength to force the pillow off her face.
Next morning, she tried to pass it off as a hallucination. But was it? She was quite sure that she had not been asleep.
But still she did not move out, and one evening when she arrived home from the office with a friend, she felt a sudden pain in her back, as if she had been stabbed. During the night, she awoke to find herself in a state of utter paralysis. She could not move her limbs or head. Finally, after a long time, she managed to work her way to the telephone receiver and call for a doctor. Nobody came. But her control started to come back and she called her friend, who rushed over only to find Eileen in a state of shock.
During the next few days she had a thorough examination by the company physician which included the taking of X-rays to determine if there was anything physically wrong with her that could have caused this condition. She was given a clean bill of health and her strength had by then returned, so she decided to quit while she was ahead.
She went to Florida for an extended rest, but eventually came back to New York and the hotel. This time she was given another room, where she lived very happily and without incident for over a year.
One day a neighbor who knew her from the time she had occupied the room on the twelfth floor saw her in the lobby and insisted on having a visit with her. Reluctantly, for she is not fond of socializing, Eileen agreed. The conversation covered various topics until suddenly the neighbor came out with “the time you were living in that haunted room across the hall.”
Since Eileen had never told anyone of her fearsome experiences there, she was puzzled. The neighbor confessed that she had meant to warn her while she was occupying that room, but somehow never had mustered enough courage. “Warn me of what?” Eileen insisted.
“The woman who had the room just before you moved in,” the neighbor explained haltingly, “well, she was found dead in the chair, and the woman who had it before her also was found dead in the bathtub.”
Eileen swallowed quickly and left. Suddenly she knew that the pillowcase had not been a hallucination.
* * *
The Buxhoeveden family is one of the oldest noble families of Europe, related to a number of royal houses and—since the eighteenth century, when one of the counts married the daughter of Catherine the Great of Russia—also to the Russian Imperial family. The family seat was Lode Castle on the island of Eesel, off the coast of Estonia. The castle, which is still standing, is a very ancient building with a round tower set somewhat apart from the main building. Its Soviet occupants have since turned it into a museum.
The Buxhoevedens acquired it when Frederick William Buxhoeveden married Natalie of Russia; it was a gift from mother-in-law Catherine.
Thus it was handed down from first-born son to first-born son, until it came to be in the hands of an earlier Count Anatol Buxhoeveden. The time was the beginning of this century, and all was right with the world.
Estonia was a Russian province, so it was not out of the ordinary that Russian regiments should hold war games in the area. On one occasion, when the maneuvers were in full swing, the regimental commander requested that his officers be put up at the castle. The soldiers were located in the nearby town, but five of the staff officers came to stay at Lode Castle. Grandfather Buxhoeveden was the perfect host, but was unhappy that he could not accommodate all five in the main house. The fifth man would have to be satisfied with quarters in the tower. Since the tower had by then acquired a reputation of being haunted, he asked for a volunteer to stay in that particular room.
There was a great deal of teasing about the haunted room before the youngest of the officers volunteered and left for his quarters.
The room seemed cozy enough, and the young officer congratulated himself for having chosen so quiet and pleasant a place to spend the night after a hard day’s maneuvers.
He was tired and got into bed right away. But he was too tired to fall asleep quickly, so he took a book from one of the shelves lining the walls, lit the candle on his night table, and began to read.
As he did so, he suddenly became aware of a greenish light on the opposite side of the room. As he looked at the light with astonishment, it changed before his eyes into the shape of a woman. She seemed solid enough. To his horror, she came over to his bed, took him by the hand, and demanded that he follow her. Somehow he could not resist her commands, even though not a single word was spoken. He followed her down the stairs into the library of the castle itself. There she made signs indicating that he was to remove the carpet. Without questioning her, he flipped back the rug. She then pointed at a trap door that was underneath the carpet. He opened the door and followed the figure down a flight of stairs until they came to a big iron door that barred their progress. The figure pointed to a corner of the floor, and he dug into it. There he found a key, perhaps ten inches long, and with it he opened the iron gate. He now found himself in a long corridor that led to a circular room. From there another corridor led on and again he followed eagerly, wondering what this was all about.
This latter corridor suddenly opened onto another circular room that seemed familiar—he was back in his own room. The apparition was gone.
What did it all mean? He sat up trying to figure it out, and when he finally dozed off it was already dawn. Consequently, he overslept and came down to breakfast last. His state of excitement immediately drew the attention of the count and his fellow officers. “You won’t believe this,” he began and told them what had happened to him.
He was right. Nobody believed him.
But his insistence that he was telling the truth was so convincing that the count finally agreed, more to humor him than because he believed him, to follow the young officer to the library to look for the alleged trap door.
“But,” he added, “I must tell you that on top of that carpet are some heavy bookshelves filled with books which have not been moved or touched in over a hundred years. It is quite impossible for any one man
to flip back that carpet.”
They went to the library, and just as the count had said, the carpet could not be moved. But Grandfather Bux-hoeveden decided to follow through anyway and called in some of his men. Together, ten men were able to move the shelves and turn the carpet back. Underneath the carpet was a dust layer an inch thick, but it did not stop the intrepid young officer from looking for the ring of the trap door. After a long search for it, he finally located it. A hush fell over the group when he pulled the trap door open. There was the secret passage and the iron gate. And there, next to it, was a rusty iron key. The key fit the lock. The gate, which had not moved for centuries perhaps, slowly and painfully swung open, and the little group continued its exploration of the musty passages. With the officer leading, the men went through the corridors and came out in the tower room, just as the officer had done during the night.
But what did it mean? Everyone knew there were secret passages—lots of old castles had them as a hedge in times of war.
The matter gradually faded from memory, and life at Lode went on. The iron key, however, was preserved and remained in the Buxhoeveden family until some years ago, when it was stolen from Count Alexander’s Paris apartment.
Ten years went by, until, after a small fire in the castle, Count Buxhoeveden decided to combine the necessary repairs with the useful installation of central heating, something old castles always need. The contractor doing the job brought in twenty men who worked hard to restore and improve the appointments at Lode. Then one day, the entire crew vanished—like ghosts. Count Buxhoeveden reported this to the police, who were already besieged by the wives and families of the men who had disappeared without leaving a trace.
Newspapers of the period had a field day with the case of the vanishing workmen, but the publicity did not help to bring them back, and the puzzle remained.