by Hans Holzer
No, she couldn’t.
In September, three years later, a group consisting of a local television reporter, a would-be psychic student, and an assortment of clairvoyants descended on the building in search of psychic excitement. All they got out of it were mechanical difficulties with their cameras. The ghosts were long gone.
* * *
Ghosts are not just for the thrill seekers, nor are they the hallucinations of disturbed people. Nothing is as democratic as seeing or hearing a ghost, for it happens all the time, to just about every conceivable type of person. Neither age nor race nor religion seem to stay these spectral people in their predetermined haunts.
Naturally I treat each case on an individual basis. Some I reject on the face of the report, and others only after I have undertaken a long and careful investigation. But other reports have a ring of truth about them and are worthy of belief, even though sometimes they are no longer capable of verification because witnesses have died or sites have been destroyed.
A good example is the case reported to me recently by a Mrs. Edward Needs, Jr., of Canton, Ohio. In a small town by the name of Homeworth, there is a stretch of land near the highway that is today nothing more than a neglected farm with a boarded-up old barn that’s still standing. The spot is actually on a dirt road, and the nearest house is half a mile away, with wooded territory in between. This is important, you see, for the spot is isolated and a man might die before help could arrive. On rainy days, the dirt road is impassable. Mrs. Needs has passed the spot a number of times, and does not particularly care to go there. Somehow it always gives her an uneasy feeling. Once, the Need’s car got stuck in the mud on a rainy day, and they had to drive through open fields to get out.
It was on that adventure-filled ride that Mr. Needs confided for the first time what had happened to him at that spot on prior occasions. Edward Needs and a friend were on a joy ride after dark. At that time Needs had not yet married his present wife, and the two men had been drinking a little, but were far from drunk. It was then that they discovered the dirt road for the first time.
On the spur of the moment, they followed it. A moment later they came to the old barn. But just as they were approaching it, a man jumped out of nowhere in front of them. What was even more sobering was the condition this man was in: he was engulfed in flames from head to toe!
Quickly Needs put his bright headlights on the scene, to see better. The man then ran into the woods across the road, and just disappeared.
Two men never became cold sober more quickly. They turned around and went back to the main highway fast. But the first chance they had, they returned with two carloads full of other fellows. They were equipped with strong lights, guns, and absolutely no whiskey. When the first of the cars was within 20 feet of the spot where Needs had seen the apparition, they all saw the same thing: there before them was the horrible spectacle of a human being blazing from top to bottom, and evidently suffering terribly as he tried to run away from his doom. Needs emptied his gun at the figure: it never moved or acknowledged that it had been hit by the bullets. A few seconds later, the figure ran into the woods—exactly as it had when Needs had first encountered it.
Now the ghost posse went into the barn, which they found abandoned, although not in very bad condition. The only strange thing was a cluster of spots showing evidence of fire: evidently someone or something had burned inside the barn without setting fire to the barn as a whole. Or had the fiery man run outside to save his barn from the fire?
* * *
Betty Ann Tylaska lives in a seaport in Connecticut. Her family is a prominent one going back to Colonial days, and they still occupy a house built by her great-great-great -grandfather for his daughter and her husband back in 1807.
Mrs. Tylaska and her husband, a Navy officer, were in the process of restoring the venerable old house to its former glory. Neither of them had the slightest interest in the supernatural, and to them such things as ghosts simply did not exist except in children’s tales.
The first time Mrs. Tylaska noticed anything unusual was one night when she was washing dishes in the kitchen.
Suddenly she had the strong feeling that she was being watched. She turned around and caught a glimpse of a man standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room of the downstairs part of the house. She saw him only for a moment, but long enough to notice his dark blue suit and silver buttons. Her first impression was that it must be her husband, who of course wore a navy blue uniform. But on checking she found him upstairs, wearing entirely different clothes.
She shrugged the matter off as a hallucination due to her tiredness, but the man in blue kept returning. On several occasions, the same uncanny feeling of being watched came over her, and when she turned around, there was the man in the dark blue suit.
It came as a relief to her when her mother confessed that she too had seen the ghostly visitor—always at the same spot, between the living room and kitchen. Finally she informed her husband, and to her surprise, he did not laugh at her. But he suggested that if it were a ghost, perhaps one of her ancestors was checking up on them.
Perhaps he wanted to make sure they restored the house properly and did not make any unwanted changes. They were doing a great deal of painting in the process of restoring the house, and whatever paint was left they would spill against an old stone wall at the back of the house.
Gradually the old stones were covered with paint of various hues.
One day Mr. Tylaska found himself in front of these stones. For want of anything better to do at the moment, he started to study them. To his amazement, he discovered that one of the stones was different from the others: it was long and flat. He called his wife and they investigated the strange stone; upon freeing it from the wall, they saw to their horror that it was a gravestone—her great-great-great-grandfather’s tombstone, to be exact.
Inquiry at the local church cleared up the mystery of how the tombstone had gotten out of the cemetery. It seems that all the family members had been buried in a small cemetery nearby. But when it had filled up, a larger cemetery was started. The bodies were moved over to the new cemetery and a larger monument was erected over the great-great-great-grandfather’s tomb. Since the original stone was of no use any longer, it was left behind. Somehow the stone got used when the old wall was being built. But evidently great-great-great-grandfather did not like the idea. Was that the reason for his visits? After all, who likes having paint splashed on one’s precious tombstone? I ask you.
The Tylaska family held a meeting to decide what to do about it. They could not very well put two tombstones on granddad’s grave. What would the other ancestors think? Everybody would want to have two tombstones then; and while it might be good news to the stonecutter, it would not be a thing to do in practical New England.
So they stood the old tombstone upright in their own backyard. It was nice having granddad with them that way, and if he felt like a visit, why, that was all right with them too.
From the moment they gave the tombstone a place of honor, the gentleman in the dark blue suit and the silver buttons never came back. But Mrs. Tylaska does not particularly mind. Two Navy men in the house might have been too much of a distraction anyway.
* * *
Give ghosts their due, and they’ll be happy. Happy ghosts don’t stay around: in fact, they turn into normal spirits, free to come and go (mostly go) at will. But until people come to recognize that the denizens of the Other World are real people like you and me, and not benighted devils or condemned souls in a purgatory created for the benefit of a political church, people will be frightened of them quite needlessly. Sometimes even highly intelligent people shudder when they have a brush with the uncanny.
Take young Mr. Bentine, for instance, the son of my dear friend Michael Bentine, the British TV star. He, like his father, is very much interested in the psychic. But young Bentine never bargained for firsthand experiences.
It happened at school, Harrow,
one of the finest British “public schools” (in America they are called private schools), one spring. Young Bentine lived in a dormitory known as The Knoll. One night around 2 A.M., he awoke from sound sleep. The silence of the night was broken by the sound of footsteps coming from the headmaster’s room. The footsteps went from the room to a nearby bathroom, and then suddenly came to a halt. Bentine thought nothing of it, but why had it awakened him? Perhaps he had been studying too hard and it was merely a case of nerves. At any rate, he decided not to pay any attention to the strange footsteps. After all, if the headmaster wished to walk at that ungodly hour, it was his business and privilege.
But the following night the same thing happened. Again, at 2 A.M. he found himself awake, to the sound of ominous footsteps. Again they stopped abruptly when they reached the bathroom. Coincidence? Cautious, young Bentine made some inquiries. Was the headmaster given to nocturnal walks, perhaps? He was not.
The third night, Bentine decided that if it happened again, he would be brave and look into it. He fortified himself with some tea and then went to bed. It was not easy falling asleep, but eventually his fatigue got the upper hand and our young man was asleep in his room.
Promptly at 2, however, he was awake again. And quicker than you could say “Ghost across the hall,” there were the familiar footsteps!
Quickly, our intrepid friend got up and stuck his head out of his door, facing the headmaster’s room and the bathroom directly across the corridor.
The steps were now very loud and clear. Although he did not see anyone, he heard someone move along the passage.
He was petrified. As soon as the footsteps had come to the usual abrupt halt in front of the bathroom door, he crept back into his own room and bed. But sleep was out of the question. The hours were like months, until finally morning came and a very tired Bentine went down to breakfast, glad the ordeal of the night had come to an end.
He had to know what this was all about, no matter what the consequences. To go through another night like that was out of the question.
He made some cautious inquiries about that room. There had been a headmaster fourteen years ago who had died in that room. It had been suicide, and he had hanged himself in the shower. Bentine turned white as a ghost himself when he heard the story. He immediately tried to arrange to have his room changed. But that could not be done as quickly as he had hoped, so it was only after another two-and-a-half weeks that he was able to banish the steps of the ghostly headmaster from his mind.
His father had lent him a copy of my book, Ghost Hunter, and he had looked forward to reading it when exams eased up a bit. But now, even though he was in another room that had not the slightest trace of a ghost, he could not bring himself to touch my book. Instead, he concentrated on reading humor.
Unfortunately nobody did anything about the ghostly headmaster, so it must be that he keeps coming back down that passage to his old room, only to find his body still hanging in the shower.
You might ask, “What shall I do if I think I have a ghost in the house? Shall I run? Shall I stay? Do I talk to it or ignore it? Is there a rule book for people having ghosts?” Some of the questions I get are like that. Others merely wish to report a case because they feel it is something I might be interested in. Still others want help: free them from the ghost and vice versa.
But so many people have ghosts—almost as many as have termites, not that there is any connection—that I cannot personally go after each and every case brought to my attention by mail, telephone, e-mail, or television.
In the most urgent cases, I try to come and help the people involved. Usually I do this in connection with a TV show or lecture at the local university, for someone has to pay my expenses. The airlines don’t accept ghost money, nor do the innkeepers. And thus far I have been on my own, financially speaking, with no institute or research foundation to take up the slack. For destruction and bombs there is always money, but for research involving the psychic, hardly ever.
Granted, I can visit a number of people with haunted-house problems every year, but what do the others do when I can’t see them myself? Can I send them to a local ghost hunter, the way a doctor sends patients to a colleague if he can’t or does not wish to treat them?
Even if I could, I wouldn’t do it. When they ask for my help, they want my approach to their peculiar problems and not someone else’s. In this field each researcher sees things a little differently from the next one. I am probably the only parapsychologist who is unhesitatingly pro-ghost. Some will admit they exist, but spend a lot of time trying to find “alternate” explanations if they cannot discredit the witnesses.
I have long, and for good scientific reasons, been convinced that ghosts exist. Ghosts are ghosts. Not hallucinations, necessarily, and not the mistakes of casual observers. With that sort of practical base to start from, I go after the cases by concentrating on the situation and the problems, rather than, as some researchers will do, trying hard to change the basic stories reported to me. I don’t work on my witnesses; I’ve come to help them. To try and shake them with the sophisticated apparatus of a trained parapsychologist is not only unfair, but also foolish. The original reports are straight reports of average people telling what has happened in their own environment. If you try to shake their testimony, you may get a different story—but it won’t be the truth, necessarily. The more you confuse the witnesses, the less they will recall firsthand information.
My job begins after the witnesses have told their stories.
In the majority of the cases I have handled, I have found a basis of fact for the ghostly “complaint.” Once in a while, a person may have thought something was supernormal when it was not, and on rare occasions I have come across mentally unbalanced people living in a fantasy world of their own. But there just aren’t that many kooks who want my help: evidently my scientific method, even though I am convinced of the veracity of ghostly phenomena, is not the kind of searchlight they wish to have turned on their strange stories.
What to do until the Ghost Hunter arrives? Relax, if you can. Be a good observer even if you’re scared stiff. And remember, please—ghosts are also people.
There, but for the grace of God, goes someone like you.
CHAPTER FIVE
Famous Ghosts
HERE WE DEAL WITH the ghosts of famous people, whose names nearly everyone will recognize. This category includes historical celebrities, national figures, heroes, leaders, and also celebrities of Hollywood, the theatre, people who once made headlines, and people who had some measure of fame, which is usually a lot more than the proverbial fifteen minutes that, according to the late Andy Warhol, everyone can find.
There are many houses or places where famous ghosts have appeared that are open to the public. These include national monuments, local museums, historical houses and mansions. But are the famous ghosts still there when you visit? Well, now, that depends: many ghostly experiences are, as I have pointed out, impressions from the past, and you get to sort of relive the events that involved them in the past. It is a little difficult to sort this out, tell which is a bona fide resident ghost still hanging around the old premises and which is a scene from the past. But if you are the one who is doing the exploring, the ghost hunter as it were, it is for you to experience and decide for yourself. Good hunting!
GHOSTS IN FICTION
Ghosts, phantoms and spirits have always been a staple for novelists and dramatists. Mysterious and worrisome ghosts are both part of the human experience yet outside the mainstream of that world. Many of the false notions people have about ghosts come from fiction. Only in fictional ghost stories do ghosts threaten or cause harm: in the real afterlife, they are too busy trying to understand their situation to worry about those in the physical world.
From Chaucer’s Canterville ghost with his rattling chain to Shakespeare’s ghost of Hamlet’s father, who restlessly walked the ramparts of his castle because of unresolved matters (such as his murder), in literature, ghost
s seem frightening and undesirable. No Caspers there.
The masters of the macabre, from E. T. A. Hoffman to Edgar Allan Poe, have presented their ghosts as sorrowful, unfortunate creatures who are best avoided.
The Flying Dutchman is a man, punished by God for transgressions (though they are never quite explained), who cannot stop being a ghost until true love comes his way. Not likely, among the real kind.
* * *
Edith Wharton’s novels offer us far more realistic ghosts, perhaps because she is nearer to our time and was aware of psychical research in these matters.
There is a pair of ghostly dancing feet in one of Rud-yard Kipling’s Indian tales that used to keep me up nights when I was a boy. Today, they would merely interest me because of my desire to see the rest of the dancer, too.
Arthur Conan Doyle presents us with a colorful but very believable ghost story in “The Law of the Ghost.” Lastly, the ghosts of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are not really ghosts but messengers from beyond, symbolic at best.
Please don’t rush to Elsinore Castle in Denmark in search of the unfortunate king who was murdered by his brother because, alas, both the murdered king and his brother Claudius are as much figments of Shakespeare’s imagination as is the melancholy Dane, Hamlet, himself.
Television ghosts tend to be much less frightening, even pleasant. The ghosts in “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” starring Rex Harrison, were sarcastic, almost lovable. The ghostly couple the banker Topper had to contend with was full of mischief, at worst, and helpful, at best.
And they did all sorts of things real ghosts don’t do, but special effects will have their say.
* 1
The Conference House Ghost
ONLY AN HOUR OR SO by ferry boat from bustling Manhattan lies the remote charm of Staten Island, where many old houses and even farms still exist in their original form within the boundaries of New York City.