by Hans Holzer
“Has anyone seen a ghost here?” I inquired.
Sunday nodded. “A Jaeger reported seeing a white woman here some years ago, under the Empire.” A Jaeger is a soldier belonging to a Tyrolean or other Alpine regiment. “Then there is the guard Beran,” Sunday continued, “who saw this white woman right here, by the altar of the Virgin Mary. As a matter of fact, many servants have seen her, too.”
“When did all this start—I mean, how far back has she been seen?” I asked.
“Not too far back,” Sunday answered, “about eighty years or so.”
Since the death of Rudolph and Vecera, then, I thought. Of course! This was their home, the only refuge where they could meet in secrecy. There are among historians growing voices that say the suicide of Meyerling wasn’t a suicide at all, but an execution.
Would the restless ghost of Baroness Vecera demand satisfaction or was the specter of her remorseful form praying by the shrine, seeking forgiveness for the tragedy she had caused?
Sunday now took us farther down the narrowing corridor into what must have been the oldest part of the castle. The thick walls and tiny slit windows suggested a fortress rather than a showplace of the Habsburgs.
“Not long ago,” he said, “a patient of Dr. Schaefer, who had his offices here, saw a Capuchin monk walk down the corridor.”
“What would a monk be doing here?” I demanded.
“In the early days, the Emperors kept a small number of monks here for their personal needs. There was a Capuchin monastery built into the castle at this very spot.”
We waited for a while, but no Capuchin showed up. They were probably all too busy down in the Imperial Crypt, where the Capuchin Fathers do a thriving tourist business letting visitors look at the gaudy Imperial coffins for fifty cents a head.
I looked at Kaiser, and there was a thoughtful expression on his face.
We returned to the TV studio and filmed some footage, showing me with photographs of haunted houses. Then a reporter took down my dialogue, and the following day, as is their custom, the daily newsreel commentator read the story of our ghost hunt to some seven million Austrians who had never before been told of psychic research.
The chain of events is sometimes composed of many links. A friend of a friend in New York introduced me to Herta Fisher, a medium and student of the occult, who, in turn, suggested that I contact Edith Riedl when in Vienna.
Mrs. Riedl offered to take us to the two haunted castles I wanted to visit in southern Austria. In fact, even before I arrived in Vienna, she was able to help me. The Volksblatt, a local newspaper, had published a highly distorted report of my activities two weeks before our arrival. Mrs. Riedl sent me the clipping for such action as I might see fit to take.
I picked up the phone and dialed the Volksblatt.
“The ‘responsible editor,’ please,” I said, in German. Austrian newspapers employ “responsible editors,” usually minor clerks, who must take the blame whenever the newspaper publishes anything libelous.
“Hello,” said a pleasantly soft voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello, yourself,” I replied. “Did you not publish a piece about Hans Holzer, the Ghost Hunter, recently?”
“Ja, ja,” the voice said. “We did.”
“Well,” I said in dulcet tones, “I am he, and I’m suing you for five million schillings.”
There was a gasp at the other end. “Wait!” the voice pleaded. “Let us talk this over.”
The following afternoon, Turhan Bey drove us to the editorial offices of the newspaper, awaiting our return in a nearby café. I had a 3 o’clock appointment with the publisher. At 3:15 I reminded the receptionist that time was of the essence. When nothing further had happened five minutes later, I sent in my card with a note: “Sorry can’t wait—am on my way to my lawyer, from whom you will hear further.”
Faster than you can say “S. O. B.,” the publisher came running. I repaired to his offices, where I was joined by his editor and a man named Hannes Walter, a reporter.
It was agreed that I could indeed sue for libel.
But they were willing to print another piece, far more thorough and bereft of any libelous matter. Would I agree?
I always believe in giving felons a second chance. When I read the piece a few weeks later, I realized I should have sued instead. Mainly the brain child of Herr Walter, it was still full of innuendoes, although it did report my activities with some degree of accuracy. Austrian TV is only ten years old and its press goes back several hundred years—yet the only fair treatment I received in public was on the home screens. As is the case in many countries, newspapermen frequently underestimate the intelligence of their readers. That is why so many TV sets are sold.
Mrs. Riedl turned out to be a cultured lady in her late fifties or early sixties, capable of speaking several languages, and full of intellectual curiosity. Of noble Hungarian ancestry, she is married to one of the owners of the Manners chocolate factory, and lives in a sprawling villa in the suburb of Dornbach.
At first, she was to drive us to the Burgenland Province in her car, but, when Turhan Bey offered to come along, we switched to his larger car. The four of us made a marvelous team as we discovered mutual bonds in many areas. I wanted to know more about Edith Riedl’s mediumship, and asked her to tell me all about herself.
We were rolling towards the south, that part of Austria annexed in 1919 which had been a Hungarian province for many centuries, although the people of the area always spoke both German and Hungarian. Soon we left the sprawling metropolis of Vienna behind us and streaked down the southern highway towards the mountains around Wiener Neustadt, an industrial city of some importance. Here we veered off onto a less-traveled road and began our descent into the Burgenland, or Land of Castles.
“Tell me, Mrs. Riedl,” I asked, “when did you first notice anything unusual about yourself—I mean, being psychic?”
Speaking in good English interlarded with an occasional German or French word, the lively little lady talked freely about herself. “I was only three years old when I had my first experience,” she replied. “I was in my room when I saw, outside my window smoke billowing, as if from a fire. This, of course, was only an impression—there was no smoke.”
“‘We’ll get a war!’ I cried, and ran to my mother. Imagine a small child talking about war. I certainly did not know the meaning of the word I was using!”
“Amazing,” Turhan Bey said, and I agreed. I had never before heard of psychic experiences at such an early age.
“Thirty years later, the house was hit by a bomb, and smoke rose indeed at the spot where I had seen it as a child, and the house burned down.”
“When was the next time you experienced anything unusual along psychic lines?” I asked. The countryside was getting more and more rustic and we encountered fewer cars now.
“I was seventeen years old. A cousin of mine served with the Hungarian Hussar Regiments, and we were engaged to be married. The First World War was already on, but he did not serve at the front. He was stationed deep inside the country, near Heidenschaft.”
“‘I don’t mind fighting at the front,’ he often told me. ‘I’m not afraid of the enemy. The only thing I’m afraid of, somehow, is fog.”‘
“Fog?” I said. “Strange for a Hussar officer in Hungary to worry about fog. You don’t have much fog down here, do you?”
“No, I couldn’t understand why fog could be something for him to fear. Well, Christmas came, and I sent him a card, showing an angel. Without thinking much about it, I wrote the word ‘Peace’ into the halo of the angel, and sent the card off to my fiancé.”
“Later, I regretted this—after all, one should wish a soldier victory, not peace—I wanted the card back, because the whole idea bothered me. I got the card back all right—with a notation by a strange hand across it, reading, ̵Died in service, December 22nd.”‘
“I couldn’t understand how he could have died in the war at Heidenschaft, where there
was no enemy within many hundred miles. I felt terrible. I wanted to die, too. I went to my room and put out the lights; I wanted to go to bed early. I was not yet asleep—in fact, still wide awake—when I saw a kind of light near me, and within this luminous disc I recognized a rock, a tree, and at the bottom of the tree, a crumbled mass of something I did not have the courage to look at closely. I knew at this moment that I could either join him in death, or live on. Being very young, my life force triumphed. As I decided to stick to the world of the living, the vision slowly lost color and faded away. But I still wondered how he could have died where he was stationed. The vision immediately returned, but my power of observation was weakening; perhaps the excitement was too much for me. At any rate, I could not make it out clearly.
“The next morning, I reported the incident to my parents. Mother and father looked at each other. ‘It is better to tell her,’ mother said, but my father shook, his head. A year passed by, but I had never forgotten my fiancé.
“One day I helped my father sort some papers in his study. As I helped him go through his desk, my eyes fell on a letter with a black border. I had the feeling it had to do with Francis, my fiancé. I asked my father if I could take it, and my father, preoccupied with his own affairs, nodded in affirmation.
“I immediately went to my own room and opened the black-bordered letter. It was from one of Francis’ friends, and he told the family how my fiancé had died. He was flying a small plane on a reconnaissance mission towards the Italian front, but he was stopped short by sudden fog. In the dense fog, he underestimated his altitude and hit a rock. The plane broke into pieces and his body was later found at the foot of a tree. Just as I had seen in my vision!”
“I believe you mentioned to me some startling experiences with premonitions—your ability to warn of impending disaster,” I said.
“It happens quite often,” Mrs. Riedl replied. “During the last war, for instance, on one occasion when my children were away at Laa on Theyer, in school, I went to visit them by school bus along with many children and a few mothers. I was seated behind the driver, when there was one of those sudden thunderstorms we have in the area. Suddenly, I heard myself shout to the driver, ‘Stop, stop at once!’
“He stopped and turned around. ‘Are you out of your mind? What is it?’ he demanded. Before he had finished talking, a huge tree fell onto the road hitting the spot where the bus would have been if I hadn’t stopped it.
“On another occasion, after the last war, my daughter and I were invited to go to Mistelbach, out in the country, to a wedding. At that time it was not possible to use your own car, trains weren’t running yet, and transportation was quite primitive.
“There were two groups of people: one was our wedding party, the other was a funeral party also going in that direction. Transportation was by bus. Our numbers were called, and we were about to board the bus, when I cried out to my daughter, ‘Come back, this isn’t our bus.’
“Our entire group turned back and I was asked why I had recalled them, when our numbers had obviously been called.
“I could not tell them. I never know why I do these things. All I know is I must do it.
“Meanwhile the other party, those going to that funeral, boarded the bus, taking our place. I said, ‘The bus is supposed to return to take us next.”‘
“Did it?” I asked.
“The bus was supposed to come back in half an hour. Three hours went by and no bus. Then the news came—there had been an accident. We were saved by my warning, but the funeral party were badly hurt.”
“How often have you had these warning flashes?”
“Maybe twenty times during the last five years.”
“You also have the ability to sense where objects might be safe, as well as people, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Riedl nodded. “As you know my husband has a valuable collection of rare books. When war broke out, he decided to send the most valuable ones to a safe place in the country. But as soon as the books had been unloaded there, I had to order the driver to take them back again. I felt the place was far from safe. We went to a parish house and tried to hide them there, but again something warned me against the location. Finally, we did unload the books at another parish house. The priest had already received some books belonging to a Vienna book seller and invited me to add ours to this pile. But I politely refused. Instead, I went around until I found what my inner voice told me was the only safe place in the house: the washroom!”
“How did the priest take that?”
“Well, he didn’t like it. He remonstrated with me, but to no avail. As it turned out, the house was consumed by fire, except the washroom, and our books were safe at the end of the war!”
“Have you accepted this gift of yours as something that is part of you?”
“Certainly. Just think how much good it has brought me already.”
By now we had reached the border country where Hungary met Austria, and we had to be careful not to pierce the Iron Curtain accidentally by taking the wrong road. The land was green and fertile and the road ran between pleasant-looking hills sometimes crowned by ancient castles or fortresses, a striking demonstration of how the country got its name—Land of Castles.
Our destination was Forchtenstein, a yellow-colored compound of imposing buildings sitting atop a massive hill that rises straight out of the surrounding landscape. As we wound our way up the hill we could see its towers beckoning to us.
Shortly after, we drove up at the imposing castle and Turhan parked the car. This is one of the biggest of Esterhazy castles, of which there are many, since that family was wealthy and powerful in Hungary and southeastern Austria for many centuries, and though the Communists have taken the Esterhazy lands in Hungary, the family still controls huge estates in Austria, and is likely to continue to do so. Today, Forchtenstein is run as a museum. Its fortifications, long, vaulted galleries and rooms, its magnificent collection of paintings, and enough medieval and seventeenth-century arms to equip a small army make it a major tourist attraction in this part of Central Europe. Although it was started in the fourteenth century, it really reached importance only in the time of the Turkish wars, when the Crescent and Star were very near indeed.
During that time also the Court of Justice for the entire land was held here and executions took place in the courtyard.
We passed over the front ditch, over a wooden bridge, into the outer courtyard.
“There are noises and all sorts of goings on in this castle,” Mrs. Riedl explained.
“There is a well, four hundred and twenty feet deep, dug out by Turkish prisoners of war. When the well was completed, the prisoners were thrown into it. I am sure some of them are still around.”
“How do you know?”
“Many people have heard sighing in the vicinity of the well.”
Turhan Bey, who is half Turkish, half Austrian, smiled. “I am here as an ambassador of peace,” he said.
“Also chain rattling,” Mrs. Riedl continued.
“Did you ever feel anything unusual here?”
“I was here once before,” Mrs. Riedl replied, “and whenever I could be by myself, away from the others in the group being shown around, I felt a presence. Someone wanted to tell me something, perhaps to plead with me for help. But the guide drove us on, and I could not find out who it was.”
If there is one thing I dislike intensely, it is guided tours of anything. I went to the local guide and asked him for a private tour. He insisted I buy a dozen tickets, which is the smallest number of people he could take around. We started out at once, four humans, and eight ghosts. At least I paid for eight ghosts.
We walked into the inner courtyard now, where a stuffed crocodile hung high under the entrance arch, which reminded us of the days when the Esterhazys were huntsmen all over the world.
“This is supposed to scare away evil spirits,” Mrs. Riedl remarked.
“They must have had a bad conscience, I guess,” I
said grimly. The Hungarians certainly equaled the Turks in brutality in those days.
We walked past the monument to Paul Esterhazy, ornamented with bas-reliefs showing Turkish prisoners of war in chains, and into the castle itself. Our guide led us up the stairs onto the roof which is now overgrown with shrubbery and grass.
Suddenly, Mrs. Riedl grabbed my arm. “Over there, I feel I am drawn to that spot. Somebody suffered terribly here.”
We retraced our steps and followed to where she pointed. The ground was broken here, and showed a small opening, leading down into the castle.
“What is underneath?” I asked our guide.
“The dungeon,” he replied. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Only in tourists.
Quickly we went down into the tower. At the gate leading into the deep dungeon itself, we halted our steps. Mrs. Riedl was trembling with deep emotion now.
“Somebody grabbed my skirts up there,” she said, and pointed to the roof we had just left, “as if trying to call attention to itself.”
I looked down into the dimly lit dungeon. A clammy feeling befell all of us. It was here that the lord of the castle threw his enemies to die of starvation. One time he was absent from the castle, leaving its administration to his wife, Rosalie. She mistreated some of his guests and on his return he had her thrown into this dungeon to die herself.
Her ghost is said to haunt the castle, although her husband, taken with either remorse or fear of the ghost, built a chapel dedicated to Rosalie, on a nearby hill.
“What do you feel here?” I asked Mrs. Riedl.
“A woman plunged down here from a very high place. I feel her very strongly.”
“What does she want?”
Mrs. Riedl kept still for a moment, then answered in a trembling voice, “I think she wants us to pray for her.”
With the guide pointing the way, we walked up another flight of stairs into the private chapel of the Esterhazys. To a man with twelve tickets there were no closed doors.
Mrs. Riedl quickly grabbed the railing of the gallery and started to pray fervently. Underneath, in the chapel itself, the lights of many candles flickered.