Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  I thanked Mrs. Kahn for her report, and made her promise me to call me the instant there were any further disturbances.

  I woke up the following morning, sure the phone would ring and Mrs. Kahn would have more to tell me. But I was wrong. All remained quiet. All remained peaceful the next morning, too. It was not until four days later that Mrs. Kahn called again.

  I prepared myself for some more of the ghost’s shenanigans. But, to my relief, Mrs. Kahn called to tell me no further manifestations had occurred. However, she had done a bit of investigating. Since the name “Miller” was totally unknown to her and the doctor, she inquired around the neighborhood. Finally, one of the neighbors did recall a Miller. He was Harmon’s personal physician.

  “One thing I forgot to mention while you were here,” she added. “Harmon’s bed was stored away for many years. I decided one day to use it again. One night my husband discovered nails similar to carpet tacks under the pillow. We were greatly puzzled—but for lack of an explanation, we just forgot the incident. Another time I found something similar to crushed glass in the bed, and again, although greatly puzzled—forgot the incident. I don’t know whether or not these seemingly unexplainable incidents mean anything.”

  Could it be that Harmon objected to anyone else using his bed? Ghosts are known to be quite possessive of their earthly goods, and resentful of “intruders.”

  All seemed quiet at the Kahns, until I received another call from Mrs. Kahn the last days of October.

  The whistling ghost was back.

  This was quite a blow to my prestige as a ghost hunter, but on the other hand, Harmon’s wraith apparently was a happy spirit and liked being earthbound. To paraphrase a well-known expression, you can lead a ghost to the spirit world, but you can’t make him stay—if he doesn’t want to. Next morning a note came from Mrs. Kahn.

  “As I told you via phone earlier this evening, we again heard our whistler last night about 1 A.M., and it was the loudest I have ever heard. I didn’t have to strain for it. My husband heard it too, but he thought it was the wind in the chimney. Then, as it continued, he agreed that it was some sort of phenomena. I got out of bed and went toward the sound of the whistle. I reached the den, from where I could see into the living room. Light was coming through a window behind me and was reflected upon the ceiling of the living room...I saw a small white mist, floating, but motionless, in front of the table in the living room. I called to my husband. He looked, but saw nothing. He said he would put the light on and I watched him walk right through the mist—he turned the lamp on and everything returned to normal.”

  I haven’t spoken with the Kahns in several months now.

  Is the whistling ghost still around? If he is, nobody seems to mind. That’s how it is sometimes with happy ghosts. They get to be one of the family.

  * 36 The Metuchen Ghost

  ONE DAY LAST SPRING, while the snow was still on the ground and the chill in the air, my good friend Bernard Axelrod, with whom I have shared many a ghostly experience, called to say that he knew of a haunted house in New Jersey, and was I still interested.

  I was, and Bernard disclosed that in the little town of Metuchen, there were a number of structures dating back to colonial days. A few streets down from where he and his family live in a modern, up-to-date brick building, there stands one wooden house in particular which has the reputation of being haunted, Bernard explained. No particulars were known to him beyond that. Ever since the Rockland County Ghost in the late Danton Walker’s colonial house had acquainted me with the specters from George Washington’s days, I had been eager to enlarge this knowledge. So it was with great anticipation that I gathered a group of helpers to pay a visit to whoever might be haunting the house in Metuchen. Bernard, who is a very persuasive fellow, managed to get permission from the owner of the house, Mr. Kane, an advertising executive. My group included Mrs. Meyers, as medium, and two associates of hers who would operate the tape recorder and take notes, Rosemarie de Simone and Pearl Winder. Miss de Simone is a teacher and Mrs. Winder is the wife of a dentist.

  It was midafternoon of March 6, 1960, when we rolled into the sleepy town of Metuchen. Bernard Axelrod was expecting us, and took us across town to the colonial house we were to inspect.

  Any mention of the history or background of the house was studiously avoided en route. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Kane, had a guest, a Mr. David, and the eight of us sat down in a circle in the downstairs living room of the beautifully preserved old house. It is a jewel of a colonial country house, with an upper story, a staircase and very few structural changes. No doubt about it, the Kanes had good taste, and their house reflected it. The furniture was all in the style of the period, which I took to be about the turn of the eighteenth century, perhaps earlier. There were several cats smoothly moving about, which helped me greatly to relax, for I have always felt that no house is wholly bad where there are cats, and conversely, where there are several cats, a house is bound to be wonderfully charming. For the occasion, however, the entire feline menagerie was put out of reach into the kitchen, and the tape recorder turned on as we took our seats in a semicircle around the fireplace. The light was the subdued light of a late winter afternoon, and the quiet was that of a country house far away from the bustling city. It was a perfect setting for a ghost to have his say.

  As Mrs. Meyers eased herself into her comfortable chair, she remarked that certain clairvoyant impressions had come to her almost the instant she set foot into the house.

  “I met a woman upstairs—in spirit, that is—with a long face, thick cheeks, perhaps forty years old or more, with ash-brown hair that may once have been blonde. Somehow I get the name Mathilda. She wears a dress of striped material down to her knees, then wide plain material to her ankles. She puts out a hand, and I see a heavy wedding band on her finger, but it has a cut in it, and she insists on calling my attention to the cut. Then there is a man, with a prominent nose, tan coat, and black trousers, standing in the back of the room looking as if he were sorry about something...he has very piercing eyes...I think she’d like to find something she has lost, and he blames her for it.”

  We were listening attentively. No one spoke, for that would perhaps give Mrs. Meyers an unconscious lead, something a good researcher will avoid.

  “That sounds very interesting,” I heard Bernard say, in his usual noncommittal way. “Do you see anything else?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Meyers nodded, “quite a bit—for one thing, there are other people here who don’t belong to them at all...they come with the place, but in a different period...funny, halfway between upstairs and downstairs, I see one or two people hanging.”

  At this remark, the Kanes exchanged quick glances. Evidently my medium had hit pay dirt. Later, Mr. Kane told us a man committed suicide in the house around 1850 or 1860. He confirmed also that there was once a floor in between the two floors, but that this later addition had since been removed, when the house was restored to its original colonial condition.

  Built in 1740, the house had replaced an earlier structure, for objects inscribed “1738” have been unearthed here.

  “Legend has always had it that a revolutionary soldier haunts the house,” Mr. Kane explained after the séance. “The previous owners told us they did hear peculiar noises from time to time, and that they had been told of such goings-on also by the owner who preceded them. Perhaps this story has been handed down from owner to owner, but we have never spoken to anyone in our generation who has heard or seen anything unusual about the place.”

  “What about you and your wife?” I inquired.

  “Oh, we were a bit luckier—or unluckier—depending on how you look at it. One day back in 1956, the front door knocker banged away very loudly. My wife, who was all alone in the house at the time, went to see who it was. There was nobody there. It was winter, and deep snow surrounded the house. There were no tracks in the snow.”

  “How interesting,” Bernard said. All this was new to him, too, despite his
friendship with the family.

  Mr. Kane slowly lit a pipe, blew the smoke toward the low ceiling of the room, and continued.

  “The previous owners had a dog. Big, strapping fellow. Just the same, now and again he would hear some strange noises and absolutely panic. In the middle of the night he would jump into bed with them, crazed with fear. But it wasn’t just the dog who heard things. They, too, heard the walking—steps of someone walking around the second floor, and in their bedroom, on the south side of the house—at times of the day when they knew for sure there was nobody there.”

  “And after you moved in, did you actually see anything?” I asked. Did they have any idea what the ghost looked like?

  “Well, yes,” Mr. Kane said. “About a year ago, Mrs. Kane was sleeping in the Green Room upstairs. Three nights in a row, she was awakened in the middle of the night, at the same time, by the feeling of a presence. Looking up, she noticed a white form standing beside her bed. Thinking it was me, at first, she was not frightened. But when she spoke to it, it just disappeared into air. She is sure it was a man.”

  Although nothing unusual had occurred since, the uncanny feeling persisted, and when Bernard Axelrod mentioned his interest in ghosts, and offered to have me come to the house with a qualified medium, the offer was gladly accepted. So there we were, with Mrs. Meyers slowly gliding into trance. Gradually, her description of what she saw or heard blended into the personalities themselves, as her own personality vanished temporarily. It was a very gradual transition, and well controlled.

  “She is being blamed by him,” Mrs. Meyers mumbled. “Now I see a table, she took four mugs, four large mugs, and one small one. Does she mean to say, four older people and a small one? I get a name, Jake, John, no, Jonathan! Then there are four Indians, and they want to make peace. They’ve done something they should not have, and they want to make peace.” Her visions continued.

  “Now instead of the four mugs on the table, there’s a whole line of them, fifteen altogether, but I don’t see the small mug now. There are many individuals standing around the table, with their backs toward me—then someone is calling and screaming, and someone says ‘Off above the knees.”

  I later established through research that during the Revolutionary War the house was right in the middle of many small skirmishes; the injured may well have been brought here for treatment.

  Mrs. Meyers continued her narrative with increasing excitement in her voice.

  “Now there are other men, all standing there with long-tailed coats, white stockings, and talking. Someone says ‘Dan Dayridge’ or ‘Bainbridge,’ I can’t make it out clearly; he’s someone with one of these three-cornered hats, a white wig, tied black hair, a very thin man with a high, small nose, not particularly young, with a fluffy collar and large eyes. Something took place here in which he was a participant. He is one of the men standing there with those fifteen mugs. It is night, and there are two candles on either side of the table, food on the table—smells like chicken—and then there is a paper with red seals and gold ribbon. But something goes wrong with this, and now there are only four mugs on the table...I think it means, only four men return. Not the small one. This man is one of the four, and somehow the little mug is pushed aside, I see it put away on the shelf. I see now a small boy, he has disappeared, he is gone...but always trying to come back. The name Allen...he followed the man, but the Indians got him and he never came back. They’re looking for him, trying to find him....”

  Mrs. Meyers now seemed totally entranced. Her features assumed the face of a woman in great mental anguish, and her voice quivered; the words came haltingly and with much prodding from me. For all practical purposes, the medium had now been taken over by a troubled spirit. We listened quietly, as the story unfolded.

  “Allen’s coming back one day...call him back...my son, do you hear him? They put those Indians in the tree, do you hear them as they moan?”

  “Who took your boy?” I asked gently.

  “They did...he went with them, with the men. With his father, Jon.”

  “What Indians took him?”

  “Look there in the tree. They didn’t do it. I know they didn’t do it.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “To the river. My boy, did you hear him?”

  Mrs. Meyers could not have possibly known that there was a river not far from the house. I wanted to fix the period of our story, as I always do in such cases, so I interrupted the narrative and asked what day this was. There was a brief pause, as if she were collecting her thoughts. Then the faltering voice was heard again.

  “December one....”

  December one! The old-fashioned way of saying December first.

  “What year is this?” I continued.

  This time the voice seemed puzzled as to why I would ask such an obvious thing, but she obliged.

  “Seventeen...seventy...six.”

  “What does your husband do?”

  “Jonathan...?”

  “Does he own property?”

  “The field....”

  But then the memory of her son returned. “Allen, my son Allen. He is calling me....”

  “Where was he born?”

  “Here.”

  “What is the name of this town?”

  “Bayridge.”

  Subsequently, I found that the section of Metuchen we were in had been known in colonial times as Woodbridge, although it is not inconceivable that there also was a Bayridge.

  The woman wanted to pour her heart out now. “Oh, look,” she continued, “they didn’t do it, they’re in the tree...those Indians, dead ones. They didn’t do it, I can see their souls and they were innocent of this...in the cherry tree.”

  Suddenly she interrupted herself and said—“Where am I? Why am I so sad?”

  It isn’t uncommon for a newly liberated or newly contacted ghost to be confused about his or her own status. Only an emotionally disturbed personality becomes an earthbound ghost.

  I continued the questioning.

  Between sobs and cries for her son, Allen, she let the name “Mary Dugan” slip from her lips, or rather the lips of the entranced medium, who now was fully under the unhappy one’s control.

  “Who is Mary Dugan?” I immediately interrupted.

  “He married her, Jonathan.”

  “Second wife?”

  “Yes...I am under the tree.”

  “Where were you born? What was your maiden name?”

  “Bayridge...Swift...my heart is so hurt, so cold, so cold.”

  “Do you have any other children?”

  “Allen...Mary Anne...Gorgia. They’re calling me, do you hear them? Allen, he knows I am alone waiting here. He thought he was a man!”

  “How old was your boy at the time?” I said. The disappearance of her son was the one thing foremost in her mind.

  “My boy...elevan...December one, 1776, is his birthday. That was his birthday all right.”

  I asked her if Allen had another name, and she said, Peter. Her own maiden name? She could not remember.

  “Why don’t I know? They threw me out...it was Mary took the house.”

  “What did your husband do?”

  “He was a potter. He also was paid for harness. His shop...the road to the south. Bayridge. In the tree orchard we took from two neighbors.”

  The neighborhood is known for its clay deposits and potters, but this was as unknown to the medium as it was to me until after the séance, when Bernard told us about it.

  In Boyhood Days in Old Metuchen, a rare work, Dr. David Marshall says: “Just south of Metuchen there are extensive clay banks.”

  But our visitor had enough of the questioning. Her sorrow returned and suddenly she burst into tears, the medium’s tears, to be sure, crying—“I want Allen! Why is it I look for him? I hear him calling me, I hear his step...I know he is here...why am I searching for him?”

  I then explained that Allen was on “her side of the veil” too, that she would be reunited
with her boy by merely “standing still” and letting him find her; it was her frantic activity that made it impossible for them to be reunited, but if she were to calm herself, all would be well.

  After a quiet moment of reflection, her sobs became weaker and her voice firmer.

  “Can you see your son now?”

  “Yes, I see him.” And with that, she slipped away quietly.

  A moment later, the medium returned to her own body, as it were, and rubbed her sleepy eyes. Fully awakened a moment later, she remembered nothing of the trance. Now for the first time did we talk about the house and its ghostly visitors.

  “How much of this can be proved?” I asked impatiently.

  Mr. Kane lit another pipe, and then answered me slowly.

  “Well, there is quite a lot,” he finally said. “For one thing, this house used to be a tavern during revolutionary days, known as the Allen House!”

  Bernard Axelrod, a few weeks later, discovered an 1870 history of the town of Metuchen. In it, there was a remark anent the house, which an early map showed at its present site in 1799:

  “In the house...lived a Mrs. Allen, and on it was a sign ‘Allentown Cake and Beer Sold Here.’ Between the long Prayer Meetings which according to New England custom were held mornings and afternoons, with half hour or an hour intermission, it was not unusual for the young men to get ginger cake and a glass of beer at this famous restaurant....”

  “What about all those Indians she mentioned?” I asked Mr. Kane.

  “There were Indians in this region all right,” he confirmed.

  “Indian arrowheads have been found right here, near the pond in back of the house. Many Indian battles were fought around here, and incidentally, during the War for Independence, both sides came to this house and had their ale in the evening. This was a kind of no-man’s land between the Americans and the British. During the day, they would kill each other, but at night, they ignored each other over a beer at Mrs. Allen’s tavern!”

  “How did you get this information?” I asked Mr. Kane.

  “There was a local historian, a Mr. Welsh, who owned this house for some thirty years. He also talked of a revolutionary soldier whose ghost was seen plainly ‘walking’ through the house about a foot off the ground.”