Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  They are firmly convinced that the practical nurse slipped her erstwhile benefactor some poison and that perhaps the boy with the lollipop stick stuck in his throat might have done her bidding and administered it to the old gent. This is a pretty sticky argument, of course, and hard to prove, especially as no autopsy was ever performed on Mr. C. But it is conceivable that Madeline made a discovery about her friend that could have induced her to speed his failure to recover and do so by any means at her command. She knew her way around the hospital and had ready access to his room. She also had equally ready access to his office and thereby hangs a strange tale.

  * * *

  On one of the infrequent occasions when Mr. C. slept at home, his estranged wife was making up the bed. This was five months before his demise. As she lifted the mattress, she discovered underneath it a heavy envelope, about six by ten inches in size, crammed full with papers. She looked at it and found written on it in Mr. C.’s large lettering, the words:

  “This is not to be opened until I am dead. I mean good and dead, Daddy.”

  She showed the envelope to her daughter, Agnes, but put it back since she did not wish to enter into any kind of controversy with her husband. Evidently the envelope must have been taken by him to his office sometime later, for when she again made his bed two weeks before his passing, when he was still walking around, she found it gone. But there was a second, smaller envelope there, this one not particularly marked or inscribed. She left it there. A short time later Mr. C. was taken to the hospital. When Mrs. C. made the bed she found that the small envelope had also disappeared.

  While the C.’s house in Columbus was not exactly a public place, neither was it an impregnable fortress, and anyone wishing to do so could have walked in at various times and quickly removed the envelope. As far as the office was concerned, that was even easier to enter and the family had no doubt whatever that Madeline took both envelopes for reasons best known to herself, although they could not actually prove any of it. At no time did the old gent say an unkind word about his Madeline, at least not to his children, preferring perhaps to take his troubles with him into the great beyond.

  * * *

  After his death, which came rather suddenly, the family found a proper will, but as Mr. C. had generously built homes for most of his children during his lifetime, in the 1950s, there was only a modest amount of cash in the bank accounts, and no great inheritance for anyone.

  The will named Mrs. C. as executor, and as there was nothing to contest, it was duly probated. But the family did search the office and the late Mr. C.’s effects at the house for these two envelopes that were still missing. Only the wife and daughter Agnes knew of them, even though “nobody and everybody” had access to the house. The servants would not have taken them, and the safe was empty. As the old gent had occasionally slept in his office on a couch, the family looked high and low in his office but with negative results. The only thing that turned up in addition to the will itself was the neatly typed manuscript of a book of Biblical quotations. Mr. C. had been a serious Bible scholar, despite his uneducated status, and the quotes arranged by subject matter and source represented many thousands of hours of work. When his daughter Marie had seen him working on this project in 1962, she had suggested he have the scribbled notes typed up and she had prevailed upon her Aunt Catherine to undertake the job, which the latter did. Somewhat forlornly, Marie picked up the manuscript and wondered whether someone might not buy it and put a little cash into the estate that way.

  The mystery of the disappearing envelopes was never solved. Even greater than the puzzle of their disappearance was the question about their content: what was in them that was so important that the old gent had to hide them under the mattress? So important that someone took them secretly and kept them from being turned over to the family, as they should have been?

  Although there is no evidence whatever for this contention, Marie thinks there might have been some valuables left to Grover C.’s love child, the one he had with the lady from Alabama early in his romantic life.

  At any rate, after several months of fruitless searches, the family let the matter rest and turned to other things. Grover C. would have gone on to his just reward, especially in the minds of his family, if it weren’t for the matter of some peculiar, unfinished business.

  About a year after Grover’s death, Lewis C., one of the sons of the deceased, as they say in the police records, was busy building a brick flower planter in his home in Columbus. This was one of the houses his father had erected for his children, and Mr. C., the son, had been living in it happily without the slightest disturbance. Lewis was thirty years old and the mystery of his father’s disappearing envelopes did not concern him very much at this point. Here he was, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, on a brisk March day in 1967, working on his planter. Giving him a hand with it, and handing him one brick after another, was a professional bricklayer by the name of Fred, with whom he had worked before. They were in the living room and Lewis was facing the back door, Fred the front door.

  “A brick, please” said Lewis, without turning around.

  No brick came. He asked again. Still no brick. He then looked up at his helper and saw him frozen to the spot, gazing at the front door.

  “What’s the matter, Fred?” he inquired. He had never seen Fred so frightened.

  Finally, as if awakening from a bad dream, Fred spoke.

  “I’ve just seen Mr. C.,” he said, “big as life.”

  “But Mr. C. has been dead for a year,” the son replied.

  Fred had worked for Grover for many years and he knew him well.

  “What did he look like?” the son inquired.

  “White...light,” Fred replied and then went on to describe the figure in white pants he had seen at the door. Although it was only the bottom half of a man, he had instantly recognized his late employer. Grover was bow-legged and the white pants facing him surely were as bow-legged as old Grover had been. There was no doubt about whose lower half it was that had appeared and then gone up in a puff again.

  Lewis shook his head and went on with his work. But a short time later he began to appreciate what Fred had experienced. In the middle of the night he found himself suddenly awake by reason of something in the atmosphere—undefinable, but still very real.

  The lights in his bedroom were off, but he could see down the hallway. And what he saw was a man wearing a white shirt, dark pants...and...with no head. The headless gentleman was tiptoeing down the hallway toward him.

  Lewis could only stare at the apparition which he instantly recognized as his late father, head or no head. When the ghost saw that Lewis recognized him, he took three leaps backward and disappeared into thin air.

  Unfortunately, Catherine, Lewis’ wife did not believe a word of it. For several months the subject of father’s headless ghost could not be mentioned in conversation. Then in December 1968 Lewis and Catherine were asleep one night, when at about 2:30 A.M. they were both roused by the sound of heavy footsteps walking down the hall from the bedrooms toward the living room. As they sat up and listened with nary a heartbeat, they could clearly hear how the steps first hit the bare floor and then the carpet, sounding more muffled as they did. Finally, they resounded louder again as they reached the kitchen floor. Lewis jumped out of bed, ready to fight what he was sure must be an intruder. Although he looked the house over from top to bottom he found no trace of a burglar, and all the doors were locked.

  * * *

  In retrospect they decided it was probably Grover paying them a visit. But why? True, he had built them the house. True, they had some of his effects, especially his old pajamas. But what would he want with his old pajamas where he now was? Surely he could not be upset by the fact that his son was wearing them. They decided then that Grover was most likely trying to get their attention because of those envelopes that were still missing or some other unfinished business, but they didn’t like it, for who would like one’s headless father popp
ing in the middle of the night?

  * * *

  But apparently Grover did not restrict his nocturnal visits to his son Lewis’ place. His granddaughter Marie, who lives in Atlanta, had come to visit at her grandfather’s house in the spring of 1968. The house had no city water but used water from its own well system. It was therefore necessary to carry water into the house from outside. On one such occasion, when she had just done this and was returning with an empty basin, Marie stepped into what looked like a puddle of water. She started to mop up the puddle only to find that the spot was actually totally dry. Moreover, the puddle was ice cold, while the water basin she had just carried was still hot. She found this most unusual but did not tell anyone about it. Within a matter of hours eight-year-old Randy reported seeing a man in a dark suit in the bathroom, when the bathroom was obviously empty.

  Apparently the old gent liked children, for little Joel was playing the piano in his Atlanta home in February of 1969, when he heard the sound of shuffling feel approach. Then there was the tinkling of glasses and all this time no one was visible. Grover had always liked a shot and a little music.

  Soon Marie began to smell carnations in her house when no one was wearing them or using any perfume. This lingered for a moment and then disappeared, as if someone wearing this scent was just passing through the house.

  In 1967, her Aunt Mary came to visit her in Atlanta and the conversation turned to the mysterious scent. “I’m glad you mentioned this,” the aunt exclaimed, and reported a similar problem: both she and her husband would smell the same scent repeatedly in their own house, sometimes so strongly they had to leave the house and go out for some fresh air. But the scent followed them, and on one occasion “sat” with them in their car on the way to church on Sunday morning!

  They weren’t too sure whether it was more like carnations or just a funeral smell, but it surely was a smell that had no rational explanation. Then in 1968, Mary informed her niece that a new perfume had suddenly been added to their list of phenomena: this one was a spicy scent, like a man’s after-shave lotion.

  Not long after this report, Marie smelled the same sharp, men’s perfume in her own house in Atlanta, in her den. This was particularly upsetting, because they had shut off that room for the winter and no perfume or anyone wearing it had been in it for months.

  In 1969, she had occasion to visit her grandfather’s house in Columbus once again. She found herself wandering into her late grandfather’s old bedroom. She stopped at his dresser and opened the drawer. There she found her spicy scent: a bottle of Avon hair lotion he had used. None of her husband’s eau de cologne bottles had a similar smell. This was it. But how had it traveled all the way to Atlanta? Unless, of course, Grover was wearing it.

  Marie is a thirty-year-old housewife, has worked for years as a secretary to various business firms, and is married to a postal clerk.

  She was upset by her grandfather’s insistence on continuing to visit his kinfolk and not staying in the cemetery as respectable folk are supposed to do, at least according to the traditional view of the dead.

  Evidently Grover was far from finished with this life, and judging from the lively existence he had led prior to his unexpected departure from this vale of tears, he had a lot of energy left over.

  That, combined with a genuine grievance over unfinished business—especially the missing two envelopes—must have been the cause for his peripatetic visits. Marie decided not to wait for the next one, and went to see a card reader in Columbus. The card reader could tell her only that she had a restless grandfather who wished her well.

  Unfortunately, even if the cause for Grover’s continued presence could be ascertained, there was no way in which the missing envelopes could be legally recovered.

  Marie tried, in vain, to get a local psychic to make contact with her grandfather. Finally, she turned her attention to the manuscript of Bible quotes. Perhaps it was the book he wanted to see published.

  Whatever it was, she must have done the right thing, or perhaps all that talk about the headless grandfather had pleased the old gent’s ego enough to pry him loose from the earth plane. At any rate, no further appearances have been reported and it may well be that he has forgotten about those envelopes by now, what with the attractions of his new world absorbing his interest.

  Unless, of course, he is merely resting and gathering strength!

  * 65

  The Old Merchant’s House Ghost (New York City)

  WHEN NEW YORK was still young and growing, that which is now a neighborhood given over to derelicts and slums was an elegant, quiet area of homes and gardens, and the world was right and peaceful in the young republic circa 1820.

  Gradually, however, the “in” people, as we call them nowadays, moved further uptown, for such is the nature of the city confined to a small island that it can only move up, never down or out. Greenwich Village was still pretty far uptown, although the city had already spread beyond its limits and the center of New York was somewhere around the city hall district, nowadays considered way downtown.

  Real state developers envisioned the east side of Fifth Avenue as the place to put up elegant homes for the well-to-do. One of the more fashionable architects of that time was John McComb, who had plans for a kind of terrace of houses extending from Lafayette Street to the Bowery, with the back windows of the houses opening upon John Jacob Astor’s property nearby. Now Mr. Astor was considered somewhat uncouth socially by some of his contemporaries—on one occasion he mistook a lady’s voluminous sleeve for a dinner napkin—but nobody had any second thoughts about his prosperity or position in the commercial world. Thus, any house looking out upon such a desirable neighborhood would naturally attract a buyer, the builders reasoned, and they proved to be right.

  Called brownstones because of the dark brick material of their facades, the houses were well-appointed and solid. Only one of them is still left in that area, while garages, factories and ugly modern structures have replaced all the others from the distant past.

  The house in question was completed in 1830 and attracted the eagle eye of a merchant named Seabury Tredwell, who was looking for a proper home commensurate with his increasing financial status in the city. He bought it and moved in with his family.

  Mr. Tredwell’s business was hardware, and he was one of the proud partners in Kissam & Tredwell, with offices on nearby Dey Street. A portly man of fifty, Mr. Tredwell was what we would today call a conservative. One of his direct ancestors had been the first Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York, and though a merchant, Tredwell evinced all the outward signs of an emerging mercantile aristocracy. The house he had just acquired certainly looked the part: seven levels, consisting of three stories, an attic and two cellars, large, Federal-style windows facing Fourth Street, a lovely garden around the house, and an imposing columned entrance door that one reached after ascending a flight of six marble stairs flanked by wrought-iron gate lanterns—altogether the nearest a merchant prince could come to a real nobleman in his choice of domicile.

  Inside, too, the appointments were lavish and in keeping with the traditions of the times: a Duncan Phyfe banister ensconcing a fine staircase leading to the three upper stories, and originating in an elegant hall worthy of any caller.

  As one stepped into this hall, one would first notice a huge, high-ceilinged parlor to the left. At the end of this parlor were mahogany double doors separating the room from the dining room, equally as large and impressive as the front room. The Duncan Phyfe table was set with Haviland china and Waterford crystal, underlining the Tredwell family’s European heritage. Each room had a large fireplace and long mirrors adding to the cavernous appearance of the two rooms. Large, floor-to-ceiling windows on each end shed light into the rooms and when the mahogany doors were opened, the entire area looked like a ballroom in one of those manor houses Mr. Tredwell’s forebears lived in in Europe.

  The furniture—all of which is still in the house—was carefully chosen. Prominent in
a corner of the parlor was a large, rectangular piano. Without a piano, no Victorian drawing room was worth its salt. A music box was placed upon it for the delight of those unable to tinkle the ivories yet desirous of musical charms. The box would play “Home Sweet Home,” and a sweet home it was indeed.

  Further back along the corrider one came upon a small “family room,” and a dark, ugly kitchen, almost L-shaped and utterly without charm or practical arrangements, as these things are nowadays understood. But in Victorian New York, this was a proper place to cook. Maidservants and cooks were not to be made cheerful, after all, theirs was to cook and serve, and not to enjoy.

  On the first floor—or second floor, if you prefer, in today’s usage—two large bedrooms are separated from each other by a kind of storage area, or perhaps a dressing room, full of drawers and cabinets. Off the front bedroom there is a small bedroom in which a four-poster bed took up almost all the available space. The bed came over from England with one of Mrs. Tredwell’s ancestors.

  Leading to the third floor, the stairs narrow and one is well-advised to hold on to the banister lest he fall and break his neck. The third floor nowadays serves as the curator’s apartment, for the Old Merchant’s House is kept up as a private museum and is no longer at the mercy of the greedy wrecker.

  But when Seabury Tredwell lived in the house, the servants’ rooms were on the third floor. Beyond that, a low-ceilinged attic provided additional space, and still another apartment fills part of the basement, also suitable for servants’ usage.

  Three views of the Old Merchant’s House—Lower Manhattan

  All in all, it was the kind of house that inspired confidence in its owner and Mr. Tredwell proceeded to establish himself in New York society as a force to be reckoned with, for that, too, was good for his expanding business.

  He was eminently aided in this quest by the fact that his wife Eliza, whom he had married while still on his way up, had given him six daughters. Three of the girls made good marriages and left the parental homestead and apparently made out very well, for not much was heard about them one way or another. Of the remaining three girls, however, plenty is recorded, and lots more is not, though it’s undoubtedly true.