Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  “His crime? He had borrowed (?) a boat. Hardly a hanging offense. He was found guilty and condemned. He was unprepared to die and thought it was a joke up to the minute they pulled the wagon out from under him. The scaffold wasn’t high enough and the fall didn’t break his neck. Instead, he slowly strangled for more than fifteen minutes before he died. I think I’d haunt under the same circumstances myself.

  “Two other points: another of the guides heard a voice directly in front of her as she walked down the hall. It said, ‘Hello, hello.’ There was no one else in the house at the time. A dog fitting the description of one of the Whaley dogs has been seen to run into the house, but it can never be found.”

  Usually, ghosts of different periods do not “run into” one another, unless they are tied together by a mutual problem or common tragedy. The executed man, the proud owner, the little girl, the lady of the house—they form a lively ghost population even for so roomy a house as the Whaley House is.

  Mrs. Reading doesn’t mind. Except that it does get confusing now and again when you see someone walking about the house and aren’t sure if he has bought an admission ticket.

  Surely, Thomas Whaley wouldn’t dream of buying one. And he is not likely to leave unless and until some action is taken publicly to rectify the ancient wrong. If the County were to reopen the matter and acknowledge the mistake made way back, I am sure the ghostly Mr. Whaley would be pleased and let matters rest. The little girl ghost has been told by Sybil Leek what has happened to her, and the lady goes where Mr. Whaley goes. Which brings us down to Jim, who would have to be tried again and found innocent of stealing the boat.

  There is that splendid courtroom there at the house to do it in. Maybe some ghost-conscious county administration will see fit to do just that.

  I’ll be glad to serve as counsel for the accused, at no charge.

  * 51 The Ghost at the Altar

  I HAD HEARD RUMORS for some time of a ghost parson in a church near Pittsburgh, and when I appeared on the John Reed King show on station KDKA-TV in the spring of 1963, one of the crew came up to me after the telecast and told me how much he enjoyed hearing about ghosts.

  “Have you ever visited that haunted church in M——?” he asked, and my natural curiosity was aroused. A ghost here in Pittsburgh, and I haven’t met him? Can’t allow that. But my stay was over and I had to return to New York.

  Still, the ghostly person of M——was very much on my mind. When I returned to Pittsburgh in September of 1963, I was determined to have a go at that case.

  With the help of Jim Sieger and his roving reporter, John Stewart, at station KDKA, we got together a car, a first-class portable tape recorder, and photographer Jim Stark. Immediately following my telecast, we set out for Milvale.

  Fate must have wanted us to get results, for the attendant of the first gasoline station we stopped at directed us to the Haunted Church. Both the name of the church and its current pastor must remain hidden at their own request, but the story is nevertheless true.

  The Haunted Church is an imposing Romanesque building of stone, erected at the turn of the century on a bluff overlooking the Pittsburgh River. It is attached to a school and rectory and gives a clean and efficient impression, nothing haunted or mysterious about it.

  When I rang the doorbell of the rectory, a portly, imposing man in sweater and slacks opened the door. I asked to talk to him about the history of the church. Evidently he had more than a share of the sixth sense, for he knew immediately what I was after.

  “I am priest,” he said firmly, with a strong Slavic accent. I was somewhat taken aback because of his casual clothes, but he explained that even priests are allowed to relax now and then. Father X., as we shall call him, was a well-educated, soft-spoken man of about forty-five or fifty, and he readily admitted he had heard the rumors about “spirits,” but there was, of course, nothing to it. Actually, he said, the man to talk to was his superior, Father H.

  A few moments later, Father H. was summoned and introduced to me as “the authority” on the subject. When the good Father heard I was a parapsychologist and interested in his ghost, he became agitated. “I have nothing to say,” he emphasized, and politely showed us the door. I chose to ignore his move.

  Instead, I persisted in requesting either confirmation or denial of the rumors of hauntings in his church. Evidently, Father H. was afraid of the unusual. Many priests are not and discuss freely that which they know exists. But Father H. had once met with another writer, Louis Adamic, and apparently this had soured him on all other writers, like myself.

  It seems that Adamic, a fellow Croatian, had mentioned in one of his books the story about the ghost at the altar—and seriously at that—quite a feat for a nonbeliever as Adamic was said to have been. Father H. had nothing to say for publication.

  “No, no, no—nothing. I bless you. Good-bye.” He bowed ceremoniously and waited for us to depart. Instead, I turned and smiled at Father X., the assistant pastor.

  “May we see the church?” I said and waited. They couldn’t very well refuse. Father H. realized we weren’t going to leave at once and resigned himself to the fact that his assistant pastor would talk to us.

  “Very well. But without me!” he finally said, and withdrew. That was all Father X. had needed. The field was clear now. Slowly he lit a cigarette and said, “You know, I’ve studied parapsychology myself for two years in my native Croatia.”

  After his initial appearance, nothing about Father X. surprised me. As we walked across the yard to the church, we entered into an animated discussion about the merits of psychic research. Father X. took us in through the altar door, and we saw the gleaming white and gold altar emerging from the semidarkness like a vision in one of Raphael’s Renaissance paintings.

  There was definitely something very unusual about this church. For one thing, it was a typically European, Slavonically tinged edifice and one had the immediate feel of being among an ethnic group of different origin from one’s own. The large nave culminated in a balcony on which an old-fashioned—that is, nonelectric, nonautomatic—organ was placed in prominent position. No doubt services at this church were imposing and emotionally satisfying experiences.

  We stepped closer to the altar, which was flanked on either side by a large, heavy vigil light, the kind Europeans call Eternal Light. “See this painting,” Father X. said and pointed at the curving fresco covering the entire inner cupola behind the altar, both behind it and above it. The painting showed natives of Croatia in their costumes, and a group of Croatians presenting a model of their church.

  These traditional scenes were depicted with vivid colors and a charming, primitive style not found elsewhere. I inquired about the painter. “Maxim Hvatka,” the priest said, and at once I recognized the name as that of a celebrated Yugoslav artist who had passed on a few years ago. The frescos were done in the early part of the century.

  As we admired the altar, standing on its steps and getting impressions, Father X. must again have read my mind, for he said without further ado, “Yes, it is this spot where the ‘spirits were seen.”’

  There was no doubt in my mind that our assistant pastor was quite convinced of the truth of the phenomena.

  The haunted church at M——, Pennsylvania

  “What exactly happened?” I asked.

  “Well, not so long ago, Father H. and this painter Hvatka, they were here near the altar. Hvatka was painting the altar picture and Father H. was here to watch him. Suddenly, Hvatka grabbed Father’s arm and said with great excitement, ‘Look, Father—this person—there is someone here in the church, in front of the altar!’

  “Father H. knew that the church was locked up tight and that only he and the painter were in the building. There couldn’t be another person. ‘Where? Who?’ he said and looked hard. He didn’t see anything. Hvatka insisted he had just seen a man walk by the altar and disappear into nothing. They stepped up to the vigil light on the left and experienced a sudden chill. Moreover, the
light was out.

  “Now to extinguish this light with anything less than a powerful blower or fan directly above it is impossible. Glass-enclosed and metal-covered, these powerful wax candles are meant to withstand the wind and certainly ordinary drafts or human breath. Only a supernormal agency could have put out that vigil light, gentlemen.”

  Father X. paused. I was impressed by his well-told story, and I knew at once why Father H. wanted no part of us. How could he ever admit having been in the presence of a spirit without having seen it? Impossible. We took some photographs and walked slowly towards the exit.

  Father X. warmed up to me now and volunteered an experience from his own youth. It seems that when he was studying theology in his native Croatia, he lived among a group or perhaps a dozen young students who did not share his enthusiasm for psychic studies—who, in fact, ridiculed them.

  One young man, however, who was his roommate, took the subject seriously, so seriously in fact that they made a pact—whoever died first would let the other know. A short time later, Father X., asleep on a warm afternoon, suddenly woke up. He knew his friend had died that instant, for he saw him sitting on a chair near his bed, laughing and waving at him. It was more than a mere dream, a vividly powerful impression. Father X. was no longer asleep at that moment; the impression had actually awakened him.

  He looked at his watch; it was just three in the afternoon. Quickly, he made inquiries about is friend. Within a few hours he knew what he had already suspected—his friend had died in an accident at precisely the moment he had seen him in his room, back at the seminary!

  “You’re psychic then,” I said.

  Father X. shrugged. “I know many psychic cases,” he said obliquely. “There was that nun in Italy, who left her hand prints on the church door to let her superiors know she was now in purgatory.”

  Father X. spoke softly and with the assurance of a man who knows his subject well. “There are these things, but what can we do? We cannot very well admit them.”

  A sudden thought came to my mind. Did he have any idea who the ghost at the altar was? Father X. shook his head.

  “Tell me,” I continued, “did anyone die violently in the church?”

  Again, a negative answer.

  “That’s strange,” I said. “Was there another building on this spot before the present church?”

  “No,” Father X. said nonchalantly.

  “That’s even stranger,” I countered, “for my research indicates there was a priest here in the nineteenth century, and it is his ghost that has been seen.”

  Father X. swallowed hard.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said now, “you’re right. There was an earlier wooden church here on this very spot. The present stone building only dates back to about 1901. Father Ranzinger built the wooden church.”

  “Was that around 1885,” I inquired. That is how I had it in my notes.

  “Probably correct,” the priest said, and no longer marveled at my information.

  “What happened to the wooden church, Father?” I asked, and here I had a blank, for my research told me nothing further.

  “Oh, it burned down. Completely. No, nobody got hurt, but the church, it was a total loss.”

  Father Ranzinger’s beloved wooden church went up in flames, it appeared, and the fifteen years he had spent with his flock must have accumulated an emotional backlog of great strength and attachment. Was it not conceivable that Father Ranzinger’s attachment to the building was transferred to the stone edifice as soon as it was finished?

  Was it his ghost the two men had seen in front of the altar? Until he puts in another appearance, we won’t know, but Pittsburgh’s Haunted Church is a lovely place in which to rest and pray—ghost or no ghost.

  * 52 A Ghost’s Last Refuge

  NEAR CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, stands a farmhouse built during Revolutionary days, now owned by Mary W., a lady in her early fifties, who, some years ago, had a fleeting interest in the work of Professor Rhine at Duke University.

  Her own psychic talents are acknowledged, but she insists she has not done any automatic writing lately and isn’t really very much interested anymore. Later I realized that her waning interest must have some connection with the events at the house which we shall call Wickham, since the real name must at present remain veiled in deference to the owner’s request.

  Virginia Cloud had come along to serve as a combination guide and clairvoyant, and writer Booton Herndon also came along to observe what he had always found a fascinating subject. Thus a caravan of two cars made its way to Wickham one bright May morning when nature’s brilliance belied the sober subject of our goal.

  On arrival, my wife, Catherine, and I sat down with Mary W. to hear her tell of her own experiences in the haunted house. Only after she had done so did Virginia Cloud enter the house.

  The oldest part of the house, rather skilfully connected to the rest, consists of a hall or main room and a small bedroom reached by a narrow winding staircase.

  This portion, dating back to 1781, has been the location of some uncanny happenings beginning at the time when Mrs. W. acquired the house and acreage in 1951. Whether previous owners had had any experiences couldn’t be ascertained.

  Emotionally keyed at the time, Mrs. W. recalls, she was in a small adjoining room downstairs, which has been turned into a small home bar, when she clearly heard footsteps in the main room, and a noise like that made by riding clothes, swishing sounds; she called out, but she knew it was not her husband; the steps continued; someone was walking up and down in the room. Mrs. W. took a look through the window and saw her entire family outside near the barn, some twenty yards away.

  This alarmed her even more and she stepped into the main room. There was no one there. But the eerie thing was that even in her presence the steps continued, reached the doorway and then went back across the room to the stairway where they stopped abruptly at the landing leading to old room above.

  The door that kept coming open by itself

  The previous owner, by the name of Deauwell, had told Mary W. that when his predecessor at the house, Mrs. Early, had died, there had been a strange noise as if someone were falling down stairs.

  Two years later, in 1953, Mrs. W.’s two girls, aged twelve and nine at the time, were playing in the upstairs room while the parents were entertaining some guests in the nearby cottage apart from the main house. It was 10

  P.M. when the girls distinctly heard someone walk around downstairs in the empty house. They called out, but got no answer. They thought it was a friend of their parents, but later checking revealed nobody had left the party to return to the main house even for a moment.

  The fireplace—center of psychic phenomena

  Around 1960–61, Mrs. W. again heard the by-now-familiar footsteps in the same spot. They started, then stopped, then started up again. Although Mrs. W. admitted some psychic talent, her automatic writing had yielded no one claiming to be connected with the house except perhaps a slave girl named Rebecca, who claimed to have been captured by Indians who cut out her tongue; she was found by the Early sons, and became their servant since; Mrs. W. also claimed a guide or control named Robert.

  The place had been in litigation for many years, and there are no less than three family cemeteries on the grounds. The house itself was built by one Richard Durrette in 1781. When the fireplace was rebuilt prior to 1938, before Mrs. W. owned the place, an inscription turned up explaining that Hessian-soldier prisoners from a nearby barracks had helped build the chimney in 1781. Three thousand prisoners were kept in barracks nearby. Some stayed afterwards and married local girls.

  This was not discussed in the presence of Virginia Cloud, who soon went into semi-trance in the presence of Mary W. and myself. She “saw” an Albert or Alfred, in white shirt, boots, trousers, but not a uniform, dragging himself into the house; perhaps he was an injured Hessian entering an empty house, chased here by Redcoats. “The British are farther away.... Something was burned ne
ar here.” At this point, both Mary W. and I smelled smoke.

  Independent of Virginia Cloud’s testimony, both of us also heard a faint knock at the entrance door, two short raps.

  Virginia, in her chair near the stairway, started to shiver. “The ghost remembers his mother and calls her, but she is not here any more...only a memory; he may have died here, since I don’t see him leave again. His arm is hurt by metal, perhaps a shell.”

  Mary W. had lived through tragedy in her own life. Her husband, Kenneth, had committed suicide in the very house we were visiting. I had the feeling that Mary’s interest in the occult coincided with this event, and that perhaps she thought the ghostly footsteps were actually her late husband’s restless movements in the room he had called his own.

  But the noises and disturbances go back farther than Mary’s tenancy of the house. Premeditated suicide seldom yields ghosts. I am convinced that the ghost at Wickham is not Mary’s husband, but the Hessian deserter who wanted to find refuge from the pursuing British.

  * 53 The Octagon Ghosts

  COLONEL JOHN TAYLOE, in 1800, built his mansion, the magnificent building now known as the Octagon because of its shape. It stood in a fashionable part of Washington, but now houses the offices and exhibit of the American Institute of Architects.

  In the early 1800s the Colonel’s daughter ran away with a stranger and later returned home, asking forgiveness. This she did not get from her stern father and in despair she threw herself from the third-floor landing of the winding staircase that still graces the mansion. She landed on a spot near the base of the stairs, and this started a series of eerie events recorded in the mansion over the years.

  Life magazine reported in an article in 1962 on haunted mansions that some visitors claim to have seen a shadow on the spot where the girl fell, while others refuse to cross the spot for reasons unknown; still others have heard the shriek of the falling girl.