by Hans Holzer
Dr. L.: You live here? This is your house?
Entity: (Violent gesture, loud voice) No, oh no! I hide here.
Mr. Walker: In the woods?
Entity: Cannot leave here.
Dr. L.: Whom do you hide from?
Entity: Big, big, strong…big, big, strong….
Dr. L.: Is he the one that beat you?
Entity: (Shouts) All…I know…I know…I know….
Dr. L.: You know the names?
Entity: (Hands on Mr. Walker’s shoulders) Know the plans….
Dr. L.: They tried to find the plans, to make you tell, but you did not tell? And your head hurts?
Entity: (Just nods to this) Ah…ah….
Dr. L.: And you’ve been kicked, and beaten and stoned. (The entity nods violently.)
Mr. Walker: Where are the plans?
Entity: I hid them…far, far….
Mr. Walker: Where did you hide the plans? We are friends, you can tell us.
Entity: Give me map.
(The entity is handed note pad and pen, which he uses in the stiff manner of a quill. The drawing, showing the unsteady and vacillating lines of a palsy sufferer, is on hand.)
Entity: In your measure…Andreas Hid…. (drawing)
Mr. Walker: Where the wagon house lies?
Entity: A house…not in the house…timber house…log….
Mr. Walker: Log house?
Entity: (Nods) Plans…log house…under…under… stones…fifteen…log…fifteen stones…door…plans—for whole shifting of….
Mr. Walker: Of ammunitions?
Entity: No…men and ammunitions…plans—I have for French.… I have plans for French…plans I have to deliver to log house…right where sun strikes window….
Dr. L.: Fifteen stones from the door?
Entity: Where sun strikes the window…. Fifteen stones… under…in log house…. There I have put away… plans…. (agitated) Not take again!
Mr. Walker: No, no, we will not let them take you again. We will protect you from the English.
Entity: (Obviously touched) No one ever say—no one ever say—I will protect you….
Mr. Walker: Yes, we will protect you. You are protected now for always.
Entity: Don’t send me away, no?
Dr. L.: No, we won’t send you away.
Entity: Protect…protect…protect….
Dr. L.: You were not born in this country?
Entity: No.
Dr. L.: You are a foreigner?
Entity: (Hurt and angry, shouts) Yeah…dog! They call me dog. Beasts!
Dr. L.: Are you German? (The entity makes a disdainful negative gesture.) Polish?
Entity: Yes.
Dr. L.: You came here when you were young?
Entity: (His voice is loud and robust with the joy of meeting a countryman.) Das…das…das! Yes…brother? Friends? Pole? Polski, yeah?
Mr. Walker: Yes, yes.
Entity: (Throws arms around Walker) I hear…I see… like…like brother…like brother…Jilitze…Jilitze….
Mr. Walker: What is your name?
Entity: Gospodin! Gospodin! (Polish for “master”)
Mr. Walker: What’s the name? (in Polish) Zo dje lat?
Entity: (Touching Mr. Walker’s face and hands as he speaks) Hans? Brother…like Hans…like Hans…me Andre—you Hans.
Mr. Walker: I’m Hans?
Entity: My brother…he killed too…I die…I die… die…die….
Mr. Walker: Where? At Tappan? Stony Point?
Entity: Big field, battle. Noise, noise. Big field. Hans like you.
Mr. Walker: How long ago was this battle?
Entity: Like yesterday…like yesterday…I lie here in dark night…bleed…call Hans…call Hans…Polski?
Mr. Walker: Did you die here?
Entity: Out here…. (pointing down) Say again…protect, friend…. (points at himself) Me, me…you…Andreas? You like Hans…friend, brother…you…Andreas?
Dr. L.: Do you know anything about dates?
Entity: Like yesterday. English all over. Cannot…they are terrible…. (hits his head)
Dr. L.: You were with the Americans?
Entity: No, no.
Dr. L.: Yankees?
Entity: No, no. Big word…Re…Re…Republic… Republic…. (drops back to the floor with an outcry of pain)
Dr. L.: You are still with friends. You are resting. You are safe.
Entity: Protection…protection…the stars in the flag…the stars in the flag…Republic…they sing….
Dr. L.: How long have you been hiding in this house?
Entity: I go to talk with brother later…. Big man say, you go away, he talk now…. I go away a little, he stays…he talk…he here part of the time….
By “big man” the entity was referring to his guide, Uvani. The entity rested quietly, becoming more and more lifeless on the floor. Soon all life appeared to be gone from the medium’s body. Then Uvani returned, took control, sat up, got back up into the chair without trouble, and addressed us in his learned and quiet manner as before.
Uvani: (Greeting us with bended arms, bowing) You will permit me. You do not very often find me in such surroundings. I beg your pardon. Now let me tell to you a little of what I have been able to ascertain. You have here obviously a poor soul who is unhappily caught in the memory of perhaps days or weeks or years of confusion. I permit him to take control in order to let him play out the fantasy…in order to play out the fears, the difficulties…. I am able thus to relax this one. It is then that I will give you what I see of this story.
He was obviously kept a prisoner of…a hired army. There had been different kinds of soldiers from Europe brought to this country. He tells me that he had been in other parts of this country with French troops, but they were friendly. He was a friend for a time with one who was friendly not only with your own people, but with Revolutionary troops. He seems, therefore, a man who serves a man…a mercenary.
He became a jackboot for all types of men who have fought, a good servant. He is now here, now there.
He does not understand for whom he works. He refers to an Andre, with whom he is for some time in contact, and he likes this Andre very much because of the similar name…because he is Andre(w)ski. There is this similarity to Andre. It is therefore he has been used, as far as I can see, as a cover-up for this man. Here then is the confusion.
He is caught two or three times by different people because of his appearance—he is a “dead ringer”…a double. His friend Andre disappears, and he is lost and does what he can with this one and that one, and eventually he finds himself in the hands of the British troops. He is known to have letters and plans, and these he wants me to tell you were hidden by him due east of where you now find yourselves, in what he says was a temporary building of sorts in which were housed different caissons. In this there is also a rest house for guards. In this type kitchen he…he will not reveal the plans and is beaten mercilessly. His limbs are broken and he passes out, no longer in the right mind, but with a curious break on one side of the body, and his leg is damaged.
It would appear that he is from time to time like one in a coma—he wakes, dreams, and loses himself again, and I gather from the story that he is not always aware of people. Sometimes he says it is a long dream. Could it therefore be that these fantasies are irregular? Does he come and go? You get the kind of disturbance—“Am I dreaming? What is this? A feeling that there is a tempest inside of me….” So I think he goes into these states, suspecting them himself. This is his own foolishness…lost between two states of being.
(To Mr. Walker who is tall and blue-eyed)
He has a very strong feeling that you are like his brother, Sahib. This may account for his desire to be near you. He tells me, “I had a brother and left him very young, tall, blue-eyed,” and he misses him in a battlefield in this country.
Now I propose with your prayers and help to try to find his brother for him. And I say to him, “I have asked for your pr
otection, where you will not be outcast, degraded, nor debased, where you will come and go in freedom. Do as your friends here ask. In the name of that God and that faith in which you were brought up, seek salvation and mercy for your restlessness. Go in peace. Go to a kindlier dream. Go out where there is a greater life. Come with us—you are not with your kind. In mercy let us go hand in hand.”
Now he looks at me and asks, “If I should return, would he like unto my brother welcome me?” I do not think he will return, but if you sense him or his wildness of the past, I would say unto you, Sahib, address him as we have here. Say to him, “You who have found the God of your childhood need not return.” Give him your love and please with a prayer send him away.
May there be no illness, nor discord, nor unhappiness in this house because he once felt it was his only resting place. Let there indeed be peace in your hearts and let there be understanding between here and there. It is such a little way, although it looks so far. Let us then in our daily life not wait for this grim experience, but let us help in every moment of our life.
Mr. Walker was softly repeating the closing prayer. Uvani relinquished control, saying, “Peace be unto you…until we meet again.” The medium fell back in the chair, unconscious for a few moments. Then her own personality returned.
Mrs. Garrett rose from the chair, blinked her eyes, and seemed none the worse for the highly dramatic and exciting incidents which had taken place around her—none of which she was aware of. Every detail of what had happened had to be told to Mrs. Garrett later, as the trance state is complete and no memory whatsoever is retained.
It was 2:45 P.M. when Mrs. Garrett went into trance, and 4 P.M. when the operation came to an end. After some discussion of the events of the preceding hour and a quarter, mainly to iron out differing impressions received by the participants, we left Mr. Walker’s house and drove back to New York.
On December 2, 1952, Mr. Walker informed me that “the atmosphere about the place does seem much calmer.” It seems reasonable to assume that the restless ghost has at last found that “sweeter dream” of which Uvani spoke.
In cases of this nature, where historical names and facts are part of the proceedings, it is always highly desirable to have them corroborated by research in the available reference works. In the case of “The Ghost of Ash Manor” (Tomorrow, Autumn 1952) this was comparatively easy, as we were dealing with a personality of some rank and importance in his own lifetime. In this case, however, we were dealing with an obscure immigrant servant, whose name is not likely to appear in any of the regimental records available for the year and place in question. In fact, extensive perusal of such records shows no one who might be our man. There were many enlisted men with the name Andreas serving in the right year and in the right regiment for our investigation, but none of them seems to fit.
And why should it? After all, our Andrewski was a very young man of no particular eminence who served as ordinary jackboot to a succession of colonial soldiers, as Uvani and he himself pointed out. The search for Andreas’ brother Hans was almost as negative. Pursuing a hunch that the Slavic exclamation “Jilitze…Jilitze…” which the ghost made during the interrogation, might have been “Ulica…Ulica….” I found that a Johannes Ulick (Hans Ulick could be spelled that way) did indeed serve in 1779 in the Second Tryon County Regiment.
The “fifteen stones to the east” to which the ghost referred as the place where he hid the plans may very well have been the walk leading from the house to the log house across the road. Some of these stone steps are still preserved. What happened to the plans, we shall never know. They were probably destroyed by time and weather, or were found and deposited later in obscure hands. No matter which—it is no longer of concern to anyone.
* 7
A Revolutionary Corollary: Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.
NATHAN HALE, AS EVERY schoolboy knows, was the American spy hanged by the British. He was captured at Huntington Beach and taken to Brooklyn for trial. How he was captured is a matter of some concern to the people of Huntington, Long Island. The town was originally settled by colonists from Connecticut who were unhappy with the situation in that colony. There were five principal families who accounted for the early settlement of Huntington, and to this day their descendants are the most prominent families in the area. They were the Sammes, the Downings, the Busches, the Pauldings, and the Cooks. During the Revolutionary War, feelings were about equally divided among the townspeople: some were Revolutionaries and some remained Tories. The consensus of historians is that members of these five prominent families, all of whom were Tories, were responsible for the betrayal of Nathan Hale to the British.
All this was brought to my attention by Mrs. Geraldine P. of Huntington. Mrs. P. grew up in what she considers the oldest house in Huntington, although the Huntington Historical Society claims that theirs is even older. Be that as it may, it was there when the Revolutionary War started. Local legend has it that an act of violence took place on the corner of the street, which was then a crossroads in the middle of a rural area. The house in which Mrs. P. grew up stands on that street. Mrs. P. suspects that the capture—or, at any rate, the betrayal—of the Revolutionary agent took place on that crossroads. When she tried to investigate the history of her house, she found little cooperation on the part of the local historical society. It was a conspiracy of silence, according to her, as if some people wanted to cover up a certain situation from the past.
The house had had a “strange depressing effect on all its past residents,” according to Mrs. P. Her own father, who studied astrology and white magic for many years, related an incident that occurred in the house. He awoke in the middle of the night in the master bedroom because he felt unusually cold. He became aware of “something” rushing about the room in wild, frantic circles. Because of his outlook and training, he spoke up, saying, “Can I help you?” But the rushing about became even more frantic. He then asked what was wrong and what could be done. But no communication was possible. When he saw that he could not communicate with the entity, Mrs. P.’s father finally said, “If I can’t help you, then go away.” There was a snapping sound, and the room suddenly became quiet and warm again, and he went back to sleep. There have been no other recorded incidents at the house in question. But Mrs. P. wonders if some guilty entity wants to manifest, not necessarily Nathan Hale, but perhaps someone connected with his betrayal.
At the corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, Manhattan, one of the busiest and noisiest spots in all of New York City, there is a small commemorative plaque explaining that Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary spy, was executed on that spot by the British. I doubt that too many New Yorkers are aware of this, or can accurately pinpoint the location of the tragedy. It is even less likely that a foreigner would know about it. When I suggested to my good friend Sybil Leek that she accompany me to a psychically important spot for an experiment, she readily agreed. Despite the noises and the heavy traffic, the spot being across from Grand Central Station, Sybil bravely stood with me on the street corner and tried to get some sort of psychic impression.
“I get the impression of food and drink,” Sybil said. I pointed out that there were restaurants all over the area, but Sybil shook her head. “No, I was thinking more of a place for food and drink, and I don’t mean in the present. It is more like an inn, a transit place, and it has some connection with the river. A meeting place, perhaps, some sort of inn. Of course, it is very difficult in this noise and with all these new buildings here.”
“If we took down these buildings, what would we see?”
“I think we would see a field and water. I have a strong feeling that there is a connection with water and with the inn. There are people coming and going—I sense a woman, but I don’t think she’s important. I am not sure…unless it would mean foreign. I hear a foreign language. Something like Verchenen.* I can’t quite get it. It is not German.”
“Is there anything you feel about this spot?”
“This spot, yes. I think I want to go back two hundred years at least, it is not very clear, 1769 or 1796. That is the period. The connection with the water puzzles me.”
“Do you feel an event of significance here at any time?”
“Yes. It is not strong enough to come through to me completely, but sufficiently drastic to make me feel a little nervous.”
“In what way is it drastic?”
“Hurtful, violent. There are several people involved in this violence. Something connected with water, papers connected with water, that is part of the trouble.”
Sybil then suggested that we go to the right to see if the impressions might be stronger at some distance. We went around the corner and I stopped. Was the impression any stronger?
“No, the impression is the same. Papers, violence. For a name, I have the impression of the letters P.T. Peter. It would be helpful to come here in the middle of the night, I think. I wish I could understand the connection with water, here in the middle of the city.”
“Did someone die here?”
Sybil closed her eyes and thought it over for a moment. “Yes, but the death of this person was important at that time and indeed necessary. But there is more to it than just the death of the person. The disturbance involves lots of other things, lots of other people. In fact, two distinct races were involved, because I sense a lack of understanding. I think that this was a political thing, and the papers were important.”
“Can you get anything further on the nature of this violence you feel here?”
“Just a disturbed feeling, an upheaval, a general disturbance. I am sorry I can’t get much else. Perhaps if we came here at night, when things are quieter.”
I suggested we get some tea in one of the nearby restaurants. Over tea, we discussed our little experiment and Sybil suddenly remembered an odd experience she had had when visiting the Hotel Biltmore before. (The plaque in question is mounted on the wall of the hotel.) “I receive many invitations to go to this particular area of New York,” Sybil explained, “and when I go I always get the feeling of repulsion to the extent where I may be on my way down and get into a telephone booth and call the people involved and say, ‘No, I’ll meet you somewhere else.’ I don’t like this particular area we just left; I find it very depressing. I feel trapped.”