Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  During the ensuing years, bits and pieces from a previous lifetime seemed to want to come through to the surface, but Mrs. Smith repressed them. Years passed, and Mrs. Smith became interested in the occult, reincarnation, and especially astrology. She began to study astrology and is now erecting horoscopes professionally.

  “At my very first astrology lesson,” Mrs. Smith explained, “I met another student whose name was Pat Webbe, a very attractive blonde woman. There was an almost instant rapport between us. Hers was the face I had seen in my vision many years before, and I decided to tell her of it. However, I didn’t inform her of the fact that the name Mary had also been attached to her face, assuming that it had referred to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom I was very devoted at all times.”

  About a year before she met Marilyn Smith, Pat Webbe had a strange dream. In the dream she was dressed in a period gown of several centuries ago. She was in what seemed to be a castle and was waiting to escape.

  “It was a large castle and cold, and I remember going into one room, and there were men in it with long halberds who were jabbing at each other. I saw two headgears crushed, and then I was back in the other room and there seemed to be fire everywhere in front of the castle. I hear myself tell a servant to hurry and get the children and make sure they have their coats on, because we have to go out into the snow. I can see the light coming down from where the servant is getting the children, and we go out through a little trap door and there is a large dog out there, but I am not afraid of the dog for some reason, although in my present life I am very much afraid of dogs. The dream ends, but I know at the very end that I am concerned about my oldest daughter not being there.”

  “Did you see yourself in this dream?” I asked.

  “Yes, but it was really just a form; I couldn’t distinguish a face or anything.”

  “What other details do you recall?”

  “I recall the period costume and the hooped dresses, but everything was sort of gray, except for the snow and the fire, which was red, and the swords, which were black. I heard thunder, but I can’t explain it. But ever since I was a child I have had a recurrent dream. My mother and I were in a boat, and it looked as though we were glad we were in that boat, escaping.”

  Mrs. Webbe has no strong feeling of having lived before. She has never been to Europe, and she does not have a strong desire to visit Scotland or England, though she does feel she would like to go to France.

  “When you met Marilyn Smith for the first time, did you have any peculiar feelings about her, as if you had known her before?” I asked.

  “No, but we took up with each other immediately. We were like sisters within six months, almost as if we had been friends all our lives.”

  Some time after meeting Marilyn Smith, Pat had another unusual dream. In it, she saw herself in bed, and a woman who was supposed to take care of her. Somehow Mrs. Webbe got the name Merrick.

  “I remember she had to leave, but I didn’t want her to. I begged her to stay, but she had to go anyway. I remember I was sitting at a child-sized piano and playing it beautifully. I could see a great massive door, and a man came in wearing a period costume. It was gray and had some kind of chain belt around it; he had blond hair, and I remember throwing myself at his feet and saying. ‘Help her, help her,’ and adding, ‘She’s leaving in a boat, help her,’ but he swore and said something about ‘Goddamn insurrectionists,’ and that was the end of the dream.”

  “Pat and I often discussed our dreams with each other,” Marilyn Smith said. “One day she called me very excitedly about a dream she had just had.”

  “Well, I thought it was rather silly,” Mrs. Webbe explained, “but in the dream my husband and I were at some sort of banquet and we were walking through a long corridor which was very ornately decorated in the French style. There was a couch in one corner with two swords on it. One was very large and ornate, the other small and made of silver, and I handed the latter to my husband. As I handed him the sword, I pricked my finger, and I went to a little room to clean the blood from my hand, and the blood disappeared. When I looked into a mirror in this room, I saw myself dressed as a French boy. Then I said to myself, ‘I am Mary Queen of Scots,’ and I ran back into the other room and told my husband, ‘I am Mary Queen of Scots.’ Shortly afterwards I awoke from my dream, singing a song with the words, ‘I am Mary Queen of Scots!”’

  The two ladies came to the conviction that they had been together in a previous life in Scotland; to be exact, as Mary Queen of Scots and Mary Beaton or Seaton, one of the four ladies in waiting. At first, the idea of having been a Scottish queen was difficult for Pat to accept, and she maintained a healthy attitude of skepticism, leaving the more enthusiastic support of this theory to her friend Marilyn. Nevertheless, the two ladies discussed the matter intelligently and even went so far as to compare horoscopes, since both of them were now immensely interested in astrology. There were a number of incidents into which they read some significance, incidents which taken individually seem to me to have no meaning whatever, but which, taken together in relation to this particular situation, are, at the very least, curious. These include such incidents as Marilyn Smith visiting a folk theater in Arkansas while on vacation and hearing a folk singer render “The Ballad of Mary Queen of Scots” the minute she arrived. Similarly, there was the time when Pat Webbe attended a floor show in Las Vegas, with one of the principal performers impersonating Mary Queen of Scots.

  “I also thought it kind of strange that I never liked the name Mary,” Pat Webbe added. “I have five daughters, and my husband had wanted to call our first daughter Mary, but I just wouldn’t have it. I wanted something different, but somehow I was compelled to add the name Mary to each one of my daughters somewhere, not because my husband suggested it, but for some unknown reason. So it happened that every one of my daughters has Mary as part of her name.”

  Since the two ladies, professional astrologers by now, tried to tie in their own rebirth with the horoscope of Mary Queen of Scots and her lady in waiting, they asked that I ascertain the birth data of Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton, if I could. With the help of my friend Elizabeth Byrd, I was able to establish that Mary Queen of Scots was born December 8, 1542, but the inquiry at the Royal Register House supplied only the rather vague information that Mary Seaton seems to have been born around 1541, and there was no reference to the birth of Mary Beaton. Marilyn Smith found it significant that the queen’s rising sign had been 29° Taurus, and Pat Webbe, supposed reincarnation of the queen, had a moon in 29° Taurus in her natal chart. She believes that astrology can supply valid information concerning reincarnation identities.

  Elizabeth Page Kidder, who lives with her parents near Washington, D.C., happened to be in Scotland at age seven.

  “We were on the bus from the airport, going to Edinburgh. Suddenly my father said, ‘Look up at the hill; that’s where Mary Queen of Scots used to live.’ At that, I went into trance, sort of a deep sleep.” Somehow her father’s reference to Mary Queen of Scots had touched off a buried memory in her. Two days after their arrival in the Scottish capital the Kidders went shopping. While they were looking at kilts, Elizabeth insisted upon getting a Stuart plaid, to the exclusion of all others. In the end, she settled for a MacDonald plaid, which fit in with her family background. A while later, the family went to visit Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. When Elizabeth got a good look at the representation of Mary Queen of Scots being beheaded, she was shattered. Although the seven-year-old girl had never heard of the queen before, she insisted that the execution had been unjust and became extremely vehement about it. None of the other exhibits in the museum affected her in the least. When the family visited Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth went straight to Mary’s grave and began to pray for her. Now eighteen years old, Elizabeth Kidder has read a number of books dealing with Mary Queen of Scots, and in particular the references to Mary Seaton have interested her.

  Her daughter’s strange behavior in Edinburgh and London m
ade Mrs. Kidder wonder about reincarnation and the validity of such incidents. Many years later, when she heard of an organization called The Fellowship of Universal Guidance in Los Angeles, specializing in life studies along the lines of Edgar Cayce’s work, she submitted the necessary data to them for a reading concerning her daughter. Did her daughter have any connection with Mary Queen of Scots, she wanted to know. Back came the answer that she had been her lady-in-waiting. Mrs. Kidder went further, accepting the so-called life reading at face value, and began to put her daughter into hypnosis, finding her a good subject. Under hypnosis Elizabeth disclosed further details of her life as lady-in-waiting to Mary Queen of Scots and claimed that her school friend Carol was, in fact, Mary Queen of Scots reincarnated. Carol Bryan William, who had come along to visit me in New York, had often dreamed that she was a richly dressed person standing in an ornately carved room with royal-blue hangings. Bent on proving the truth of these amazing claims, Mrs. Kidder contacted Ruth Montgomery and, in her own words, “was able to verify through her that her daughter Elizabeth was Mary Seaton and her friend Carol was Mary Queen of Scots.”

  Carol, who is a little older than Elizabeth, said that when she was little she always thought that she was from England. Her father is of English descent, but since she is an adopted child, that would have little meaning in this instance. She does have recurrent dreams involving a castle and a certain room in it, as well as a countryside she likes to identify as English.

  I had previously put Elizabeth under hypnosis, but without significant results. I next tried my hand with Carol. She turned out to be a better subject, sliding down to the third level easily. I asked her to identify the place she was now in.

  “I think it is the sixteenth century. I see lots of townspeople. They are dressed in burlap, loose-fitting cloth gathered in by a rope around the waist. I see myself standing there, but it is not me. I am a boy. He is small, has fair hair, and is kind of dirty.”

  On further prodding, it turned out that the boy’s name was John, that his mother was a seamstress and his father a carpenter, working for the king. The king’s name was James. He had dark hair and a beard and was on the tall side.

  “Do you know anyone else in the city?” I asked.

  “I know a woman. People don’t like her very much because she is not Catholic. She is Episcopal.”

  “What are you?”

  “Catholic.”

  “Is everybody Catholic in your town?”

  “Some people aren’t, but if you are not, you are in trouble. It is the law.”

  “Who is the man who leads the ones who are not Catholic?”

  “Henry VIII.”

  “Does he like King James?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What happened to King James?”

  “He is killed. He died a violent death.”

  “Did Henry VIII have anything to do with it?”

  “There was a discrepancy over the religions. Henry VIII did not want to be Catholic, and the only way he could abolish Catholic rule was to get rid of James.”

  “Who wins?”

  “I think Henry VIII does, but he does and he doesn’t. Everybody does not follow Henry VIII. There are still people who are faithful to the Catholic religion.”

  After I returned Carol to the conscious state, I questioned her about her studies. It turned out she was taking an English course at college and had had one year of English history thus far. She had no particular interest in Scottish history, but she seemed unusually attached to the subject of the Catholic religion. She can’t understand why, because she is an Episcopalian.

  Mrs. Kidder wasn’t too pleased that her protégé, Carol, remembered only having been a boy in sixteenth-century England, and not the eminent Mary Queen of Scots. But then where would that leave Pat Webbe of St. Louis? It was all just as well.

  * * *

  Linda Wise is a young lady living in the Midwest whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. She is part Scottish, part English and part German, and just about her only link with Scotland is a family legend from her grandmother’s side that several members of the family were forced to leave Scotland in the 1700s on very short notice. These cousins, if they were that, were named Ewing, but Miss Wise hasn’t researched it further. She has never had any particular interest in Scotland or Great Britain, hasn’t studied the history of the British Isles, and, living in the Midwest, has very little contact with English or Scottish people. Nevertheless, she has had periodic feelings of wanting to go back to Scotland, as if she had been there before. In 1971 she became acquainted with a Scottish couple and they became pen pals. As a result, she went to visit them in August, 1972. As soon as she arrived in Scotland, she had a strange experience.

  “When I first got there, we took a bus from Aberdeen to Elgin, where my friends live. I could see the mountains in a certain area and suddenly I had goose bumps. I just felt as if I had come home, as if I had known the area from before.”

  Later she went to visit England, but all the time she was in England she felt extremely uneasy, wanting to return to Scotland as soon as possible. “For some reason, I felt much safer once the train crossed the border at Berwick-on-Tweed.”

  But the most haunting experience of her journey took place at the battleground of Culloden, where Bonnie Prince Charlie led the Scottish clans against King George in the Uprising of 1745. This battlefield, situated several miles east of Inverness, is now a historical site. Miss Wise had a vague knowledge that an important battle had taken place at Culloden, and that it had been extremely bloody. The forest at Culloden contains many grave markers, and people go there to observe and sometimes pray.

  “Suddenly I felt as if I were being pulled in two directions—to continue and yet to get back to the main road as fast as I could,” Linda Wise explained to me. “At a certain point I could not take it any longer, so I left to rejoin the friends I had come with. They too commented on the eerie sensations they were having.”

  “What exactly did you feel at Culloden?”

  “I felt that something or someone was after me, that I wasn’t alone,” Miss Wise explained. “I really didn’t feel as if I were by myself.” When Miss Wise rejoined her friends, she took with her some small stones from the area. On returning to the Midwest, she handed a small stone from Culloden to her mother to use in an attempt at psychometry. Immediately Mrs. Wise picked up the impression of a group of men, wearing predominantly red and yellow uniforms, coming over a hill. This experiment was part of a regular session undertaken by a home development circle among people interested in psychic research.

  “We asked my mother to describe the uniform she was impressed with,” Miss Wise continued. “She said Scottish; she did not see any kilts or straight-legged pants, however. She physically felt her own eyes becoming very heavy as if they were being pushed in. Since my mother knew that there was nothing wrong with her own eyes, she mentally asked what was the cause of it and in her mind’s eye saw a form, or rather the etheric image of a large man who said he wanted his eyeballs back! He explained that he had been hanging around for a long time for that reason and did not know what to do.”

  “You mean, he had lost his eyes?”

  “Yes,” Linda confirmed. “My mother realized that this was an emotional situation, so she calmed his fears and told him his eyes were well again and to go on, sending him love, energy, and assurance at the same time.”

  Some time after her return to the United States, Miss Wise bought a record on which the famous Black Watch Regiment was playing. It upset her greatly, but her emotional involvement became even stronger when she went to a midwestern festival where various ethnic groups participated. “It was the first pipe band I had seen since I had been to Scotland, and I got tears in my eyes and felt like being back in Scotland.”

  The battle of Culloden, and the fate of Bonnie Prince Charlie, at one time King Charles III of Scotland and England, has also affected my own life for many years, because of some as yet
indistinct memories of having lived during that time. People have given me objects from Culloden, or concerning Prince Charles; books, sometimes of very obscure origin, have found their way into my hands. Moreover, I own a silver touch piece with the name of Charles III, a great rarity as medals go, acquired under strange circumstances. At the time I saw it listed in the catalogue of a well-known London art dealer, the catalogue had been on its way to me for some time, having been sent by sea mail. Nevertheless, undaunted, I sent away for the piece but had very little hope that the modestly priced touch piece would still be there. Picture my surprise when I was nevertheless able to acquire it. How the many Scottish collectors of such items passed over this most desirable medal, so that it could await my letter, seems to me beyond pure chance or logic. It was almost as if the medal were meant to be mine.

  * 24

  A Visit with Robert Louis Stevenson

  HELEN LILLIE MARWICK is a newspaperwoman and writer who lives with her science-writer husband Charles in a delightful old house in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. It was on her insistence that I decided to pay a visit to the house once owned by Robert Louis Stevenson in Heriot Row, Edinburgh.

  “A delightful Irish girl, Mrs. John Macfie, has bought the old Robert Louis Stevenson house and reports that the friendly ghost of R. L. S. himself has been around, and she hopes to keep him,” Helen wrote.

  I arranged for a visit during my stay in Edinburgh, and on May 4, 1973, I arrived at the Stevenson House barely in time for tea. We had been asked for 5 o’clock, but our adventures in the countryside had caused us to be an hour late. It wasn’t so much the countryside as the enormous downpour which had accompanied this particular ghost hunt, and though it gave it a certain aura, it created havoc with our schedule. But Kathleen Macfie shook hands with us as if we were old friends and led us into the high-ceilinged drawing room, one flight up. The large French windows allowed us to look out on what is probably one of the finest streets in Edinburgh, and I could see at a glance that Mrs. Macfie had refurbished the Stevenson House in a manner that would have made Stevenson feel right at home: a gentle blend of Victorian and earlier furniture pieces and casual displays of artwork in the manner of a home rather than a museum. Her own strong vibrations, as the owner, filled the place with an electrifying atmosphere of the kind that is so very conducive to psychic occurrences. Our hostess had blue eyes, red hair, and a direct practical approach to everything, including ghosts. After we had had a glass of sherry, she gave us the grand tour of the house. It had been the home of Robert Louis Stevenson from 1857 to 1880.