Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  * * *

  Seventeen-year-old Debbie Gaurlay, a high school student who also works at training horses, has had ESP experiences for several years. Two days prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy she remarked to a friend by the name of Debbie Corso that the Senator would be shot very shortly. At that time there was no logical reason to assume an attempt upon the Senator’s life.

  * * *

  John Londren is a machine fitter, twenty-eight years old, who lives with his family in Hartford, Connecticut. Frequently he has had dreams of events that have later transpired. In March 1968 he had a vivid dream in which he saw Senator Robert Kennedy shot while giving his Inaugural Address. Immediately he told his wife and father about the dream, and even wrote a letter to the Senator in April but decided not to send it until after the election. Even the correct names of the assassin and of two people present occurred in his dream. But Mr. Londren dismissed the dream since he knew that Roosevelt Grier and Rafe Johnson were sports figures. He felt they would be out of place in a drama involving the assassination of a political candidate. Nevertheless, those were the two men who actually subdued the killer.

  In a subsequent dream he saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York during Senator Kennedy’s funeral. People were running about in a state of panic, and he had the feeling that a bombing or shooting had taken place. So upset was Mr. Londren by his second dream that he asked his father, who had a friend in Washington, to make some inquiries. Eventually the information was given to a Secret Service man who respected extrasensory perception. The New York City bomb squad was called in and the security around the Cathedral was doubled. A man with an unloaded gun was caught fifteen minutes before the President arrived for the funeral at the Cathedral. Mr. Londren’s second dream thus proved to be not only evidential but of value in preventing what might have been another crime.

  * * *

  Another amateur prophet is Elaine Morganelli, a Los Angeles housewife. In May 1967 she predicted in writing that President Johnson would be assassinated on June 4, and sent this prediction along with others to her brother, Lewis Olson. What she actually had heard was “President assassination June 4.” Well, President Johnson was not assassinated, but on June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a presidential candidate, was shot to death.

  A sixteen-year-old teen-ager from Tennessee named John Humphreys experienced a vision late in 1963. This happened while he was in bed but not yet fully asleep. As he looked at the floor of his room he saw several disembodied heads. One of the heads was that of President Kennedy, who had just been assassinated. The others, he did not recognize at the time. Later, he realized who they had been. One was the head of Robert Kennedy; the other of Martin Luther King. He had the feeling at the time of the vision that all three men would be shot in the head. He also remembered two other heads—that of a Frenchman and of a very large Englishman—but no names.

  * * *

  On April 16, 1968, a Canadian by the name of Mrs. Joan Holt wrote to the Evening Standard premonition bureau conducted by Peter Fairley, their science editor, “Robert Kennedy to follow in his brother’s footsteps and face similar danger.”

  “There is going to be a tragic passing in the Kennedy family very soon,” said British medium Minie Bridges at a public sitting the last week of May 1968.

  * * *

  It seems clear to me that even the death of Senator Kennedy was part of a predestined master plan, whether we like it or not. Frequently, those who are already on the other side of life know what will happen on earth, and if they are not able to prevent it, they are at least ready to help those who are coming across make the transition as painlessly as possible under the circumstances.

  To many people of Ireland, the Kennedys are great heroes. Both these thoughts should be kept in mind as I report still another psychic experience concerning the death of Robert Kennedy.

  * * *

  A fifty-three-year-old secretary by the name of Margaret M. Smith of Chicago, Illinois, was watching the Robert Kennedy funeral on television. As his casket was being carried out of the church to the hearse, she noticed a row of men standing at either side of the casket with their backs to it. They were dressed in gray business suits, very plain, and wore gray hats. These men looked very solemn and kept their eyes cast down. To her they looked like natives of Ireland. In fact, the suits looked homespun. As the casket went past, one of the men in the line turned his head and looked at the casket. Miss Smith thought that a person in a guard of honor should not do that, for she had taken the man in the gray suit as part of an honor guard. Then it occurred to her that the two lines of men were a little hazy, in a lighter gray. But she took this to be due to the television set, although other figures were quite clear. Later she discussed the funeral with a friend of hers in another city who had also seen the same broadcast. She asked her friend if she knew who the men in gray had been. Her friend had not seen the men in gray, nor had any of the others she then asked about them. Soon it became clear to Miss Smith that she alone had seen the spirit forms of what she takes to be the Kennedys’ Irish ancestors, who had come to pay their last respects in a fitting manner.

  * * *

  An Indiana amateur prognosticator with a long record of predictions, some of which have already come true while others are yet in the future, has also contributed to the material about the Kennedys. On August 7, 1968, D. McClintic stated that Jackie Kennedy would be married. At the time no such event was in the offing. On September 21, 1968, Mr. McClintic stated that there would be an attempted kidnapping of one of the Kennedy boys. At the same time he also predicted that the heads of the FBI and the draft would be replaced within a short time. “J. E. Hoover is near the end of being director. Also the director of the draft, Hershey, is on the way out.”

  * * *

  D. McClintic predicted on January 18, 1969, that Edward Kennedy would not run for President in 1972 because he might still be worried about his nephews. Mr. McClintic didn’t spell out why Senator Kennedy should be concerned about his nephews.

  * * *

  Another amateur psychic, Robert E., however, did. On March 10, 1970, the psychic schoolteacher stated, “I mentioned before that around Easter another Kennedy, one of Senator Robert Kennedy’s boys, will drown in a boating accident off the coast of Virginia, and the body will be found between April 1st and April 5th in a muddy shallow near a place with the word ‘mile’ in it. However, within a month or so it will come out that Senator Ted Kennedy covered for his nephew, who was actually the one who was in the car with the girl at Chappaquiddick Island. The Senator was not involved, and when this evidence becomes known Kennedy’s popularity will soar.” Naturally, the two psychics do not know of each other, nor did they ever have any contact with each other.

  One cannot dismiss Mr. McClintic too lightly when one considers that on January 18, 1969, he predicted that at the next election in England, Labor would be kicked out of office; that Joseph Kennedy would die—which he did shortly afterward; that the war in Vietnam would go on and some American troops would be withdrawn, but not too many; that there would be more attacks on Israeli airplanes carrying passengers; and that Jordan’s throne would be shaky again.

  * * *

  A different kind of prognosticator is Fredric Stoessel. A college graduate and former combat Naval officer, he heads his own business firm in New York, specializing in market analysis and financing. Mr. Stoessel is a student of Christian Science and has had psychic experiences all his life. I have written of his predictions concerning the future of the world in a book entitled The Prophets Speak. However, his involvement with the Kennedy family, especially the future of Ted Kennedy, is somewhat more elaborate than his predictions pertaining to other events. In May 1967 he wrote an article entitled, “Why Was President Kennedy Shot?” In Mr. Stoessel’s opinion a Communist plot was involved. Mr. Stoessel bases his views on a mixture of logical deduction, evaluations of existing political realities, and a good measure of intuition and personal insight ranging all th
e way to sixth sense and psychic impressions.

  “There is some growing evidence to indicate Senator Ted Kennedy may have been set up for this incident. By whom is not certain, but we suspect the fine hand of organized crime.” Thus stated Fredric Stoessel in February of 1970. I discussed this matter with him on April 3 of the same year at my home. Some of the things he told me were off the record and I must honor his request. Other details may be told here. Considering Fredric Stoessel’s background and his very cautious approach when making statements of importance at a time the Chappaquiddick incident was still in the news, I felt that perhaps he might come up with angles not covered by anyone else before.

  “What then is your intuitive feeling about Kennedy and the girl? Was it an accident?” I asked. I decided to use the term “intuitive” rather than “psychic,” although that is what I really meant.

  Mr. Stoessel thought this over for a moment. “I don’t think it was an accident. I think it was staged, shall we say.”

  “What was meant to happen?”

  “What was meant to happen was political embarrassment for Teddy Kennedy. They were just trying to knock him out as a political figure.”

  “Do you think that he was aware of what had happened—that the girl had drowned?”

  “No, I do not. I think he was telling the truth when he said that he was in a state of shock.”

  “How did ‘they’ engineer the accident?”

  “I assume that he may have been drinking, but frankly it’s an assumption. I think they would just wait until they had the right setup. I’m sure a man like that was watched very carefully.”

  “Have you any feelings about Kennedy’s future?”

  “I think Ted Kennedy will make a very strong bid for the presidency in 1972. I do not think he will be elected.”

  “Do you have any instinctive feelings about any attack upon him?”

  “I have had an instinctive feeling that there would be an attack on Ted Kennedy from the civil rights elements. In other words, I think he would be attacked so that there would be a commotion over civil rights. Undoubtedly Ted Kennedy will be the civil rights candidate.”

  “When you say ‘attack,’ can you be more specific?”

  “I think it will be an assassination attempt; specific, shot.”

  “Successful or not?”

  “No, unsuccessful. This is instinctive.”

  “How much into the future will this happen?”

  “I think it will happen by 1972. I’m not too sure exactly when, but I think when he is being built up for a candidate.”

  “As far as the other Kennedys were concerned, did you at any time have any visions, impressions, dreams, or other feelings concerning either the President or Bobby Kennedy?”

  “Well, I had a very strong sensation—in fact I wrote several people—that he would not be on the ticket in 1964. I had a strong impression that John F. Kennedy would not be around for some reason or another.”

  “When did you write this?”

  “That was written to Perkins Bass, who was a Congressman in New Hampshire, in 1962.”

  “Did you have any impressions concerning the true murderer of John F. Kennedy and the entire plot, if any?”

  “As soon as the assassination occurred, in those three days when we were all glued to the television sets, I was inwardly convinced that Oswald did not kill him. My impression of that was immediately reinforced, because Oswald was asking for an attorney named John Abt, who was a lawyer for the Communist Party. My instinctive feeling was that Castro had a lot to do with it.”

  “Prior to the killing of Robert Kennedy, did you have any inkling that this was going to happen?”

  “My wife reminded me that I had always said Bobby would be assassinated. I said that for several months after John died.”

  “Do you believe there is a Kennedy curse in operation?”

  “Yes. I think there are forces surrounding the Kennedy family that will bring tragedy to most every one of them.”

  “Will we have another Kennedy President?”

  “I don’t think so. Although I think Teddy will make a strong bid for it this next time.”

  * * *

  Certainly if a direct pipeline could be established to one of the Kennedys—those on the other side of life, that is—even more interesting material could be obtained. But to make such an attempt at communication requires two very definite things: one, a channel of communication—that is to say, a medium of the highest professional and ethical reputation—and two, the kind of questions that could establish, at least to the point of reasonable doubt, that communication really did occur between the investigator and the deceased.

  * 13

  Michie Tavern, Jefferson, and the Boys

  “THIS TYPICAL PRE-REVOLUTIONARY tavern was a favorite stopping place for travelers,” the official guide to Charlottesville says. “With its colonial furniture and china, its beamed and paneled rooms, it appears much the way it did in the days when Jefferson and Monroe were visitors. Monroe writes of entertaining Lafayette as his guest at dinner here, and General Andrew Jackson, fresh from his victory at New Orleans, stopped over on his way to Washington.”

  The guide, however, does not mention that the tavern was moved a considerable distance from its original place to a much more accessible location where the tourist trade could benefit from it more. Regardless of this comparatively recent change of position, the tavern is exactly as it was, with everything inside, including its ghosts, intact. At the original site, it was surrounded by trees which framed it and sometimes towered over it. At the new site, facing the road, it looks out into the Virginia countryside almost like a manor house. One walks up to the wooden structure over a number of steps and enters the old tavern to the left or, if one prefers, the pub to the right, which is nowadays a coffee shop. Taverns in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not simply bars or inns; they were meeting places where people could talk freely, sometimes about political subjects. They were used as headquarters for Revolutionary movements or for invading military forces. Most taverns of any size had ballrooms in which the social functions of the area could be held. Only a few private individuals were wealthy enough to have their own ballrooms built into their manor houses.

  What is fortunate about Michie Tavern is the fact that everything is pretty much as it was in the eighteenth century, and whatever restorations have been undertaken are completely authentic. The furniture and cooking utensils, the tools of the innkeeper, the porcelain, the china, the metal objects are all of the period, whether they had been in the house or not. As is customary with historical restorations or preservations, whatever is missing in the house is supplied by painstaking historical research, and objects of the same period and the same area are substituted for those presumably lost during the intervening period.

  The tavern has three floors and a large number of rooms, so we would need the two hours we had allowed ourselves for the visit. After looking at the downstairs part of the tavern, with its “common” kitchen and the over-long wooden table where two dozen people could be fed, we mounted the stairs to the second floor.

  Ingrid, the medium, kept looking into various rooms, sniffing out the psychic presences, as it were, while I followed close behind. Horace Burr and Virginia Cloud kept a respectable distance, as if trying not to “frighten” the ghosts away. That was all right with me, because I did not want Ingrid to tap the unconscious of either one of these very knowledgeable people.

  Finally we arrived in the third-floor ballroom of the old tavern. I asked Ingrid what she had felt in the various rooms below. “In the pink room on the second floor I felt an argument or some sort of strife but nothing special in any of the other rooms.”

  “What about this big ballroom?”

  “I can see a lot of people around here. There is a gay atmosphere, and I think important people came here; it is rather exclusive, this room. I think it was used just on special occasions.”

  By
now I had waved Horace and Virginia to come closer, since it had become obvious to me that they wanted very much to hear what Ingrid was saying. Possibly new material might come to light, unknown to both of these historians, in which case they might verify it later on or comment upon it on the spot.

  “I’m impressed with an argument over a woman here,” Ingrid continued. “It has to do with one of the dignitaries, and it is about one of their wives.”

  “How does the argument end?”

  “I think they just had a quick argument here, about her infidelity.”

  “Who are the people involved?”

  “I think Hamilton. I don’t know the woman’s name.”

  “Who is the other man?”

  “I think Jefferson was here.”