by Hans Holzer
“She calls me Bertram,” the communicator admitted now. “I’m not ashamed of my name.”
I nodded. “I’m here to help you right old wrongs, but you must help me do this. I can’t do it alone.”
“I didn’t kill…got rid of her….” he added, apparently willing to talk.
“You mean, your wife?”
“Had to.”
“Did you kill anyone?” I continued the line of discussion.
“Killed…to protect…not wrong!”
“How did you kill?”
“A rifle….”
Was he perhaps referring to his service in the Revolutionary War? He certainly did some shooting then.
But I decided to return to the “Bertram Delmar” business once more. Constant pressure might yield results.
“Truthfully, will you tell us who you are?”
Deliberately, almost as if he were reading an official communiqué, the voice replied, “I am Bertram Delmar and I shall not say that name….”
“You must say ‘that name’ if you wish to see Theo again.” I had put it on the line. Either cooperate with me, or I won’t help you. Sometimes this is the only way you can get a recalcitrant spirit to “come across”—when this cooperation is essential both to his welfare and liberation and to the kind of objective proof required in science.
There was a moment of ominous quiet. Then, almost inaudibly, the communicator spoke.
“An awful name…Arnot.”
After the investigation I played the sound tapes back to make sure of what I had heard so faintly. It was quite clear. The communicator had said “Arnot.”
My first reaction was, perhaps he is trying to say Aaron Burr and pronounce Aaron with a broad ah. But on checking this out with both Mrs. Campbell and Dr. Burr I found that such a pronunciation was quite impossible. The night after the séance I telephoned Dr. Burr at his Washington home and read the salient points of the transcript to him.
When I came to the puzzling name given by the communicator I asked whether Arnot meant anything, inasmuch as I could not find it in the published biographies of Burr. There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line before Dr. Burr spoke.
“Quite so,” he began. “It is not really generally known, but Burr did use a French cover name while returning from France to the United States, in order to avoid publicity. That name was Arnot.”
But back to the Cafe Bizarre and our investigation.
Having not yet realized the importance of the word Arnot, I continued to insist on proper identification.
“You must cleanse yourself of ancient guilt,” I prodded.
“It is awful…awful….”
“Is Theo related to you?”
“She’s mine.”
“Are you related to her?”
“Lovely…little one…daughter.”
Finally, the true relationship had come to light.
“If Theo is your daughter, then you are not ‘Bertram.”‘
“You tricked me…go away…or else I’ll kill you!”
The voice sounded full of anger again.
“If you’re not ashamed of your name, then I want to hear it from your lips.”
Again, hesitatingly, the voice said,
“Arnot.”
“Many years have gone by. Do you know what year we’re in now?”
“Ten….”
“It is not 1810. A hundred fifty years have gone by.”
“You’re mad.”
“You’re using the body of a psychic to speak to us….”
The communicator had no use for such outrageous claims.
“I’m not going to listen….”
But I made him listen. I told him to touch the hair, face, ears of the “body” he was using as a channel and to see if it didn’t feel strange indeed.
Step by step, the figure of Sybil, very tensed and angry a moment before, relaxed. When the hand found its way to the chin, there was a moment of startled expression:
“No beard….”
I later found that not a single one of the contemporary portraits of Aaron Burr shows him with a chin beard. Nevertheless, Alice McDermott had seen and drawn him with a goatee, and now Sybil Leek, under the control of the alleged Burr, also felt for the beard that was not there any longer.
Was there ever a beard?
“Yes,” Dr. Burr confirmed, “there was, although this, too, is almost unknown except of course to specialists like myself. On his return from France, in 1812, Burr sported a goatee in the French manner.”
* * *
By now I had finally gotten through to the person speaking through Sybil Leek, that the year was 1967 and not 1810.
His resistance to me crumbled.
“You’re a strange person,” he said, “I’m tired.”
“Why do you hide behind a fictitious name?”
“People…ask…too many…questions.”
“Will you help me clear your name, not Bertram, but your real name?”
“I was betrayed.”
“Who is the President of the United States in 1810?” I asked and regretted it immediately. Obviously this could not be an evidential answer. But the communicator wouldn’t mention the hated name of the rival.
“And who is Vice-President?” I asked.
“Politics…are bad…they kill you…I would not betray anyone…. I was wronged…politics…are bad….”
How true!
“Did you ever kill anyone?” I demanded.
“Not wrong…to kill to…preserve…. I’m alone.”
He hesitated to continue.
“What did you preserve? Why did you have to kill another person?”
“Another…critical…I’m not talking!”
“You must talk. It is necessary for posterity.”
“I tried…to be…the best…. I’m not a traitor…soldiers…beat the drum…then you die…politics!!”
As I later listened to this statement again and again, I understood the significance of it, coming, as it did, from a person who had not yet admitted he was Aaron Burr and through a medium who didn’t even know where she was at the time.
* * *
He killed to preserve his honor—the accusations made against him in the campaign of 1804 for the governorship of New York were such that they could not be left unchallenged. Another was indeed critical of him, Alexander Hamilton being that person, and the criticisms such that Burr could not let them pass.
He “tried to the best” also—tried to be President of the United States, got the required number of electoral votes in 1800, but deferred to Jefferson, who also had the same number.
No, he was not a traitor, despite continued inference in some history books that he was. The treason trial of 1807 not only exonerated the former Vice-President of any wrongdoing, but heaped scorn and condemnation on those who had tried him. The soldiers beating the drum prior to an execution could have become reality if Burr’s enemies had won; the treason incident under which he was seized by soldiers on his return from the West included the death penalty if found guilty. That was the intent of his political enemies, to have this ambitious man removed forever from the political scene.
“Will you tell the world that you are not guilty?” I asked.
“I told them…trial…I am not a traitor, a murderer….”
I felt it important for him to free himself of such thoughts if he were to be released from his earthbound status.
“I…want to die…” the voice said, breathing heavily.
“Come, I will help you find Theo,” I said, as promised.
But there was still the matter of the name. I felt it would help “clear the atmosphere” if I could get him to admit he was Burr.
I had already gotten a great deal of material, and the séance would be over in a matter of moments. I decided to gamble on the last minute or two and try to shock this entity into either admitting he was Burr or reacting to the name in some telling fashion.
I had fa
iled in having him speak those words even though he had given us many incidents from the life of Aaron Burr. There was only one more way and I took it. “Tell the truth,” I said, “are you Aaron Burr?”
It was as if I had stuck a red hot poker into his face. The medium reeled back, almost upsetting the chair in which she sat. With a roar like a wounded lion, the voice came back at me,
“Go away…GO AWAY!!…or I’ll kill you!”
“You will not kill me,” I replied calmly. “You will tell me the truth.”
“I will kill you to preserve my honor!!”
“I’m here to preserve your honor. I’m your friend.”
The voice was like cutting ice.
“You said that once before.”
“You are Aaron Burr, and this is part of your place.”
“I’M BERTRAM!”
I did not wish to continue the shouting match.
“Very well,” I said, “for the world, then, let it be Bertram, if you’re not ready to face it that you’re Burr.”
“I’m Bertram…” the entity whispered now.
“Then go from this place and join your Theo. Be Bertram for her.”
“Bertram…you won’t tell?” The voice was pleading.
“Very well.” He would soon slip across the veil, I felt, and there were a couple of points I wanted to clear up first. I explained that he would soon be together with his daughter, leaving here after all this time, and I told him again how much time had elapsed since his death.
“I tarried…I tarried…” he said, pensively.
“What sort of a place did you have?” I asked.
“It was a big place…with a big desk…famous house….” But he could not recall its name.
Afterward, I checked the statement with Mrs. Campbell, the curator at the Morris-Jumel mansion. “That desk in the big house,” she explained,” is right here in our Burr room. It was originally in his law office.” But the restless one was no longer interested in talking to me.
“I’m talking to Theo…” he said, quietly now, “in the garden…. I’m going for a walk with Theo…go away.”
Within a moment, the personality who had spoken through Sybil Leek for the past hour was gone. Instead, Mrs. Leek returned to her own self, remembering absolutely nothing that had come through her entranced lips.
“Lights are bright,” was the first thing she said, and she quickly closed her eyes again.
But a moment later, she awoke fully and complained only that she felt a bit tired.
I wasn’t at all surprised that she did.
* * *
Almost immediately after I had returned home, I started my corroboration. After discussing the most important points with Dr. Samuel Engle Burr over the telephone, I arranged to have a full transcript of the séance sent to him for his comments.
So many things matched the Burr personality that there could hardly be any doubt that it was Burr we had contacted. “I’m not a traitor and a murderer,” the ghostly communicator had shouted. “Traitor and murderer” were the epithets thrown at Burr in his own lifetime by his enemies, according to Professor Burr, as quoted by Larry Chamblin in the Allentown Call-Chronicle.
Although he is not a direct descendant of Aaron Burr, the Washington educator is related to Theodosia Barstow Burr, the Vice-President’s first wife. A much-decorated officer in both world wars, Professor Burr is a recognized educator and the definitive authority on his famous namesake. In consulting him, I was getting the best possible information.
Aaron Burr’s interest in Mexico, Professor Burr explained, was that of a liberator from Spanish rule, but there never was any conspiracy against the United States government. “That charge stemmed from a minor incident on an island in Ohio. A laborer among his colonists pointed a rifle at a government man who had come to investigate the expedition.”
Suddenly, the words about the rifle and the concern the communicator had shown about it became clear to me: It had led to more serious trouble for Burr.
Even President Wilson concurred with those who felt Aaron Burr had been given a “raw deal” by historical tradition. Many years ago he stood at Burr’s grave in Princeton and remarked, “How misunderstood…how maligned!”
It is now 132 years since Burr’s burial, and the falsehoods concerning Aaron Burr are still about the land, despite the two excellent books by Dr. Samuel Engle Burr and the discreet but valiant efforts of the Aaron Burr Association, which the Washington professor heads.
In piecing together the many evidential bits and pieces of the trance session, it was clear to me that Aaron Burr had at last said his piece. Why had he not pronounced a name he had been justly proud of in his lifetime? He had not hesitated to call repeatedly for Theo, identify her as his daughter, speak of his troubles in France and of his political career—why this insistence to remain the fictitious Bertram Delmar in the face of so much proof that he was indeed Aaron Burr?
All the later years of his life, Burr had encountered hostility, and he had learned to be careful whom he chose as friends, whom he could trust. Gradually, this bitterness became so strong that in his declining years he felt himself to be a lonely, abandoned old man, his only daughter gone forever, and no one to help him carry the heavy burden of his life. Passing across into the nonphysical side of life in such a state of mind, and retaining it by that strange quirk of fate that makes some men into ghostly images of their former selves, he would not abandon that one remaining line of defense against his fellow men: his anonymity.
Why should he confide in me, a total stranger, whom he had never met before, a man, moreover, who spoke to him under highly unusual conditions, conditions he himself neither understood nor accepted? It seemed almost natural for Burr’s surviving personality to be cautious in admitting his identity.
But this ardent desire to find Theo was stronger than his caution; we therefore were able to converse more or less freely about this part of his life. And so long as he needed not say he was Burr, he felt it safe to speak of his career also, especially when my questions drove him to anger, and thus lessened his critical judgment as to what he could say and what he should withhold from me.
Ghosts are people, too, and they are subject to the same emotional limitations and rules that govern us all.
Mrs. Leek had no way of obtaining the private, specific knowledge and information that had come from her entranced lips in this investigation; I myself had almost none of it until after the séance had ended, and thus could not have furnished her any of the material from my own unconscious mind. And the others present during the séance—my wife, Mrs. Allmen, and the television people—knew even less about all this.
Neither Dr. Burr nor Mrs. Campbell were present at the Cafe Bizarre, and their minds, if they contained any of the Burr information, could not have been tapped by the medium either, if such were indeed possible.
Coincidence cannot be held to account for such rare pieces of information as Burr’s cover name Arnot, the date, the goatee, and the very specific character of the one speaking through Mrs. Leek, and his concern for the clearing of his name from the charges of treason and murder.
That we had indeed contacted the restless and unfree spirit of Aaron Burr at what used to be his stables, now the only physical building still extant that was truly his own, I do not doubt in the least.
The defense rests, and hopefully, so does a happier Aaron Burr, now forever reunited with his beloved daughter Theodosia.
* 9
Assassination of a President: Lincoln, Booth, and the Traitors Within
FIVE YEARS AFTER the assassination of President John F. Kennedy we are still not sure of his murderer or murderers, even though the deed was done in the cold glare of a public parade, under the watchful eyes of numerous police and security guards, not to mention admirers in the streets.
While we are still arguing the merits of various theories concerning President Kennedy’s assassination, we sometimes forget that an earlier crime of a similar natur
e is equally unresolved. In fact, there are so many startling parallels between the two events that one cannot help but marvel.
One of the people who marveled at them in a particularly impressive way recently is a New York psychiatrist named Stanley Krippner, attached to Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, who has set down his findings in the learned Journal of Parapsychology. Among the facts unearthed by Dr. Krippner is the remarkable “death circle” of presidential deaths: Harrison, elected in 1840, died in 1841; Lincoln, elected twenty years later, in 1860, died in 1865; Garfield, elected in 1880, was assassinated in 1881; McKinley, elected in 1900, died by a murderer’s hand in 1901; Harding, elected just twenty years after him, died in office in 1923; Roosevelt, re-elected in 1940, did likewise in 1945; and finally, Kennedy, elected to office in 1960, was murdered in 1963. Since 1840, every President voted into office in a year ending with a zero has died or been injured in office.
Dr. Krippner speculates that this cycle is so far out of the realm of coincidence that some other reason must be found. Applying the principle of synchronicity or meaningful coincidence established first by the late Professor Carl G. Jung, Dr. Krippner wonders if perhaps this principle might not hold an answer to these astounding facts. But the most obvious and simplest explanation of all should not be expected from a medical doctor: fate. Is there an overriding destiny at work that makes these tragedies occur at certain times, whether or not those involved in them try to avoid them? And if so, who directs this destiny—who, in short, is in charge of the store?
Dr. Krippner also calls attention to some amazing parallels between the two most noted deaths among U.S. Presidents, Kennedy’s and Lincoln’s. Both names have seven letters each, the wives of both lost a son while their husbands were in office, and both Presidents were shot in the head from behind on a Friday and in the presence of their wives. Moreover, Lincoln’s killer was John Wilkes Booth, the letters of whose name, all told, add up to fifteen; Lee Harvey Oswald’s name, likewise, had fifteen letters. Booth’s birth year was 1829; Oswald’s, 1939. Both murderers were shot down deliberately in full view of their captors, and both died two hours after being shot. Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1847 and Kennedy in 1947; Lincoln became President in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960. Both were involved in the question of civil rights for African-Americans. Finally, Lincoln’s secretary, named Kennedy, advised him not to go to the theater on the fateful day he was shot, and Kennedy’s secretary, named Lincoln, urged him not to go to Dallas. Lincoln had a premonitory dream seeing himself killed and Kennedy’s assassination was predicted by Jeane Dixon as early as 1952, by Al Morrison in 1957, and several other seers in 1957 and 1960, not to forget President Kennedy’s own expressed feelings of imminent doom.