by Hans Holzer
She started her job by taking inventory of the late Gertrude Tredwell’s wardrobe once again. This time the job had to be done properly, for the visitors to the museum were entitled to see a good display of period costumes. As she picked up Gertrude’s vast wardrobe one article at a time, she had the uncanny feeling of being followed step-for-step. The house was surrounded by slums and the danger of real break-ins very great, but this was different: no flesh and blood intruders followed her around on her rounds from the third floor down to the basement and back again for more clothes.
Often a chilly feeling touched her as she walked through the halls, but she attributed that to the moist atmosphere in the old house.
One day when she entered the front bedroom that used to be Gertrude’s from the hall bedroom, she had the distinct impression of another presence close to her. Something was brushing by her to reach the other door that opened into the front bedroom before she did!
When this happened again sometime later, she began to wonder if the stories about the house being haunted, that circulated freely in the neighborhood, did not have some basis of fact. Certainly there was a presence, and the sound of another person brushing past her was quite unmistakable.
While she was still deliberating whether or not to discuss this with any of her friends, an event took place that brought home even more the suspicion that she was never quite alone in the house.
It was on a morning several months after her arrival, that she walked into the kitchen carrying some things to be put into the display cases ranged along the wall opposite the fireplace. Out of the side of her eye she caught sight of what looked like the figure of a small, elegant woman standing in front of this huge fireplace. While Mrs. R. was able to observe the brown taffeta gown she was wearing, her head was turned away, so she could not see her features. But there were masses of brown hair. The whole thing was in very soft focus, rather misty without being insubstantial. Her hands, however, holding a cup and saucer, were very beautiful and quite sharply defined against her dark gown.
Mrs. R. was paralyzed, afraid to turn her head to look directly at her. Suddenly, however, without any conscious volition, she spun around and quickly walked out of the room into the hall. By the time she got to the stairs she was covered with cold perspiration and her hands were shaking so violently she had to put down the things she was carrying.
Now she knew that Gertrude Tredwell was still around, but not the way she looked when she died. Rather, she had turned back her memory clock to that period of her life when she was gayest and her young man had not yet been sent away by a cruel and unyielding father.
When the realization came to Mrs. R. as to who her ghostly friend was, her fears went away. After all, who would have a better right to be in this house than the one who had sacrificed her love and youth to it and what it stood for in her father’s view. This change of her attitude must have somehow gotten through to the ghostly lady as well, by some as yet undefinable telegraph connecting all things, living and dead.
Sometime thereafter, Mrs. R. was arranging flowers for the table in the front parlor. The door was open to the hallway and she was quite alone in the house. Mrs. R. was so preoccupied with the flower arrangement, she failed to notice that she was no longer alone.
Finally, a strange sound caught her attention and she looked up from the table. The sound was that of a taffeta gown swishing by in rapid movement. As her eyes followed the sound, she saw a woman going up the stairs. It was the same, petite figure she had originally seen at the fireplace sometime before. Again she wore the brown taffeta gown. As she rounded the stairs and disappeared from view, the sound of the gown persisted for a moment or two after the figure herself had gotten out of sight.
This time Mrs. R. did not experience any paralysis or fear. Instead, a warm feeling of friendship between her and the ghost sprang up within her, and contentedly, as if nothing had happened, she continued with her flower arrangement.
All this time the actual curator of the Old Merchant’s House was a professional antiquarian named Janet Hutchinson who shared the appointments with her friend Emeline Paige, editor of The Villager, a neighborhood newspaper, and Mrs. Hutchinson’s son, Jefferson, aged fourteen. In addition, there was a cat named Eloise who turned out to be a real “fraiddicat” for probably good and valid reasons.
Although Mrs. Hutchinson did not encounter anything ghostly during her tenure, the lady editor did feel very uneasy in the back bedroom, where much of the tragedy had taken place.
Another person who felt the oppressive atmosphere of the place, without being able to rationalize it away for any good reasons, was Elizabeth Byrd, the novelist and her friend, whom I must call Mrs. B., for she shies away from the uncanny in public. Mrs. B. visited the house one evening in 1964. As she stood in what was once Gertrude’s bedroom, she noticed that the bedspread of Gertrude’s bed was indented as if someone had just gotten up from it. Clearly, the rough outline of a body could be made out.
As she stared in disbelief at the bed, she noticed a strange perfume in the air. Those with her remarked on the scent, but before anyone could look for its source, it had evaporated. None of the ladies with Mrs. B. had on any such perfume and the house had been sterile and quiet for days.
Since that time, no further reports of any unusual experiences have come to light. On one occasion in 1965, photographs of the fireplace near which Mrs. R. had seen the ghost of Gertrude Tredwell were taken simultaneously by two noted photographers with equipment previously tested for proper performance. This was done to look into the popular legend that this fireplace could not be photographed and that whenever anyone so attempted, that person would have a blank film as a result. Perhaps the legend was started by a bad photographer, or it was just that, a legend, for both gentlemen produced almost identical images of the renowned fireplace with their cameras. However, Gertrude Tredwell was not standing in front of it.
This is as it should be. Mrs. R., the untiring spirit behind the Historical Landmarks Society that keeps the building going and out of the wreckers’ hands, feels certain that Gertrude need not make another appearance now that everything is secure. And to a Victorian lady, that matters a great deal.
* 66
The House on Fifth Street (New Jersey)
NORTH FIFTH STREET in Camden, New Jersey, was in a part of town that is best avoided, especially at night. But even in the daytime it had the unmistakable imprint of a depressed—and depressing—area, downtrodden because of economic blight. The people leaning against shabby doors, idle and grim-looking, are people out of step with progress, people who don’t work or can’t work and who hate those who do. This is what it looks like today, with the busy factories and the smelly buildings of industrial Camden all around it, the super-modern expressway cutting a swath through it all as if those on it wouldn’t want to stop even long enough to have a good look at what is on both sides of the road.
This grimy part of town wasn’t always a slum area, however. Back in the 1920s, when Prohibition was king, some pretty substantial people lived here and the houses looked spic-and-span then.
Number 522, which has since given up its struggle against progress by becoming part of a city-wide improvement program, was then a respectable private residence. Situated in the middle of a short block, it was a gray, conservative-looking stone building with three stories and a backyard. The rooms are railroad flats, that is, they run from one to the other and if one were to go to the rear of the house one would have to enter from the front and walk through several rooms to get there. It wasn’t the most inspiring way of building homes, but to the lower, or even the higher, middle classes of that time, it seemed practical and perfectly all right.
From the ground floor—with its front parlor followed by other living rooms and eventually a kitchen leading to the backyard—rose a turning staircase leading up to two more flights. This staircase was perhaps the most impressive part of the house and somehow overshadowed the simplicity of the rest of the layout. A nicely car
ved wooden banister framed it all the way up and though the house, in keeping with the custom of the times, was kept quite dark, the many years of handling the banister had given it a shine that sparkled even in so subdued an illumination. Heavy dust lay on stairs and floors and what there was of furniture was covered with tarpaulins that had grown black in time. Clearly, the house had seen better days but those times were over, the people were gone, and only a short time stood between the moment of rest and the sledge hammer of tomorrow.
Edna Martin is a bright young woman working for a local radio station in Camden, and spooks are as far removed from her way of thinking as anything could possibly be. When her parents moved into what was then a vacant house, she laughed a little at its forbidding appearance, but being quite young at the time, she was not at all frightened or impressed. Neither was her mother, who is a woman given to practical realities. There is a sister, Janet, and the two girls decided they were going to enjoy the big old house, and enjoy it they did.
Eventually, Edna began to notice some peculiar things about their home: the noise of rustling silk, the swish of a dress nearby when no one who could be causing these sounds was to be seen. On one occasion, she was having a quiet evening at home when she heard someone come up the stairs and enter the middle bedroom.
At that moment, she heard someone sigh as if in great sadness. Since she was quite sure that no one but herself was upstairs, she was puzzled by these things and entered the middle bedroom immediately. It was more out of curiosity than any sense of fear that she did so, not knowing for sure what she might find, if anything.
Before she entered the room, she heard the bedsprings squeak as if someone had lain down on the bed. She examined the bedspread—there was no indication of a visitor. Again, the rustling of clothes made her keenly aware of another presence in the room with her. Thoughtfully, she went back to her own room.
The parents and their married daughters, with their husbands and children, eventually shared the big house, and with so many people about, extraneous noises could very easily be overlooked or explained away.
And yet, there were ominous signs that the house was home to others besides themselves.
Janet woke up one night soon after the incident in the middle bedroom, and listened with a sharpened sense of hearing, the kind of super-hearing one sometimes gets in the still of night. Something very light was walking up the stairs, and it sounded like the steps of a very light person, such as a child. The steps came gradually nearer. Now they were at the top of the stairs and then down the hall, until they entered the girl’s room. She could hear every single floor board creak with the weight of an unseen person. Frozen with fright, she dared not to move or speak. Even if she had wanted them to, her lips would not have moved. Then, as she thought she could stand it no longer, the steps came to a sudden halt beside her bed. She clearly felt the presence of a person near her staring at her!
Somehow, she managed to fall asleep, and nothing happened after that for a few weeks. She had almost forgotten the incident when she came home late one night from a date in town.
It was her custom to undress in the middle bedroom, and put her clothes on the bed, which was not occupied. She did not wish to wake the others, so she undressed hurriedly in the dark. As she threw her clothes upon the bed, someone in the bed let out a sigh, and turned over, as if half-awakened from deep sleep. Janet assumed her niece had come to visit and that she had been given the room. So she gathered her clothes from the bed and placed them on the chair instead, thinking nothing further about the matter.
Next morning, she went downstairs to have breakfast and at the same time have a chat with her niece, Miki. But the girl wasn’t around. “Where is Miki, Mother?” she inquired. Her mother looked at her puzzled.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she shrugged. “She hasn’t been here for weeks.”
Janet froze in her tracks. Who had turned with a sigh in the empty bed?
The two girls had a close friend, Joanne, with whom they shared many things, including the eerie experiences in the house that somehow increased as the years went on. One evening Joanne was typing in the front bedroom on the second floor while Janet lay on the bed on her stomach.
Joanne’s back was turned towards Janet at the time and the two girls were both spending the evening in their own way. Suddenly, Janet felt a strange sensation on the sole of her shoe. It felt as if someone had hit her in that spot, and hit her hard. The noise was so strong Joanne turned around and asked what had happened. Janet, who had jumped up and moved to the window, could only shrug. Was someone trying to communicate with her in this strange way?
Then there was the time the three girls were sitting on the bed and their attention was drawn to the foot of the bed, somehow. There, wriggling about five inches into the night air, was a greenish “thing” that had materialized out of nowhere. Letting out a shriek, Janet stared at it. Evidently she was the only one who could see it. As she looked through horror-stricken eyes, she could vaguely make out a small head nearby. Memories of the ghostly footsteps she had taken for a child some time ago came back to haunt her. Was there not a connection? Then the “thing” vanished.
The girls did not talk about these things if they could help it, for by now they knew there was something very peculiar about the house. But as yet they were not willing to believe in such things as ghosts of the departed. It all seemed terribly unreal to them.
When Edna was not yet married, the man she later married was an airman stationed at a base near Trenton, New Jersey. After one visit to her in Camden, he happened to miss the midnight bus back to camp, and there was nothing to be done but wait up for the next one, which was at 2:20 A.M. Since Edna had to get up early the next day, she went upstairs to get ready for bed. She left her fiancée downstairs where there was a couch he could use, to rest up before going out to catch his bus. The young airman settled back with a smoke and relaxed.
Suddenly he heard the front door open. The door is a very heavy, old-fashioned one, with a lock that is hard to open unless you have the key. The airman was puzzled because he himself had seen Edna set the lock a few moments ago. Before he could try to figure this out, he heard the vestibule door open and suddenly there was an icy atmosphere in the room. True, it was winter, but until then he had not been cold. He immediately assumed a burglar had entered the house and rolled up his sleeves to receive him properly.
But then he experienced an eerie feeling quite different from anything he had ever felt before. His hair stood up as if electric current were going through it, and yet he was not the least bit frightened. Then a bell started to ring. The bell was inside a closed case, standing quietly in the corner. He suddenly realized that a bell could not clang unless someone first lifted it. When he came to that conclusion and saw no flesh-and-blood invader, he decided he’d rather wait for his bus outside. He spent the next hour or so at a drafty corner, waiting for his bus. Somehow it seemed to him a lot cozier.
That same night, Edna was awakened from light sleep by the sound of a disturbance downstairs. As her senses returned she heard someone clanging against the pipes downstairs. She immediately assumed it was her fiance playing a trick on her, for he had a talent for practical jokes. She hurriedly put on her robe and went downstairs. Immediately the noise stopped. When she reached the vestibule, her fiancée was not there.
When she told him about this later and he reported the incident of the bell, she thought that he was now sufficiently impressed to accept the reality of ghosts in the house. But the young airman did not take the psychic occurrences too seriously despite his own encounter. He thought the whole thing extremely funny and one night he decided to make the ghosts work overtime. By then he and Edna were married. That night, he tied a string to the door of their bedroom, a door leading out into the hall. The other end of the string he concealed so that he could pull it and open the door, once they were in bed.
As soon as the lights were out, but sufficient light coming in through th
e windows remained, he started to stare at the door so as to attract his wife’s attention to that spot. While she looked, he pointed at the door and said in a frightened voice, “Look, it’s opening by itself!”
And so it was. He pulled off the trick so well, Edna did not notice it and in near-panic sprinkled the door with holy water all over. This made him laugh and he confessed his joke.
“Don’t ever do such a thing,” she warned him, when she realized she had been made a fool of. But he shrugged. She returned to bed and admonished him never to tempt the unseen forces lest they “pay him back” in their own kind.
She had hardly finished, when the door to the middle room began to open slowly, ever so slowly, by its own volition. As her husband stared in amazement, and eventually with mounting terror, the door kept swinging open until it had reached the back wall, then stopped. For a moment, neither of them moved. There was nothing else, at least not for the moment, so they jumped out of bed and the airman tried the door to see if he could explain “by natural means” what had just taken place before their eyes. But they both knew that this particular door had been taken off its hinges sometime before and had been propped into a closed position. In addition, in order to open it at all, it would have had to be lifted over two rugs on the floor. For several hours they tried to make this door swing open, one way or another. It would not move. Edna held the door by the hinges to keep it from falling forward while her husband tried to open it. It was impossible. Then they managed to get it to stay on the hinges, finally, and started to open it. It swung out about an inch before the rugs on the floor stopped it. What superior force had lifted the door over the rugs and pushed it against the back wall?
Still, he argued, there had to be some logical explanation. They let the matter rest and for a while nothing unusual happened in the house. Then, Edna and her husband had moved to the Middle West and were no longer aware of day-to-day goings-on in Camden. When they came to visit the family in Camden, after some time, they naturally wondered about the house but preferred not to bring up the subject of ghosts. Actually, Edna prayed that nothing should mar their homecoming.