Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  The ghost at the Adobe: always watching

  Somehow Mrs. Leimbach did not feel up to going it alone, so she just sat there and waited. For a full ten minutes, the racket went on upstairs. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had begun. About half an hour later, her sister-in-law Doris and her son’s fiancée, Marion, arrived at the house. Reinforced by her relatives, Mrs. Leimbach finally dared go upstairs. From the sound of the commotion she was sure to find various drawers open and doors jammed. But when she entered the rooms upstairs, she found everything completely untouched by human hands.

  All windows were closed tightly so one could not blame drafts of air for the disturbances. All doors stood wide open, yet she had distinctly heard the sound of doors being violently slammed shut.

  There is no house within earshot of theirs, and no noises in the area that could possibly mimic such sounds.

  “I wonder what he is looking for,” she mumbled, more to herself than for anyone’s benefit. To her, the heavy footfalls were those of a man.

  She did not discuss any of this with her girls, of course, and somehow managed to keep it from them although she felt disturbed herself by all this. Surely there was something wrong with the house, but what? She need not have worried about her girls since they already had a pretty good idea what it was that caused the trouble.

  The previous July, Mrs. Leimbach and her husband were having coffee in the kitchen downstairs. It was a clear, sunny afternoon and all seemed peaceful and quiet. Denise, the elder daughter, was upstairs, sitting at her window seat and reading a book. For a moment, she took her eyes off the book, for it had seemed to her that a slight breeze had disturbed the atmosphere of the room. She was right, for she saw a large man walk across the room and enter the large walk-in closet at the other end of it. She assumed it was her father, of course, and asked what he was looking for. When she received no reply, she got up and went to the closet herself. It struck her funny that the closet door was closed. She opened it, wondering if her father was perhaps playing games with her. The closet was empty. Terrified, she rushed downstairs.

  “What are you doing? What are you doing?” she demanded to know, sobbing, as her father tried to calm her.

  Only after he had assured her that he wasn’t playing tricks on her, did she relent. But if not her father, who had been upstairs in her room? The Leimbachs tried to explain the matter lightly, trying everything from “tired eyes” due to too much reading, to “shadows from the trees” outside. But the girl never believed any of it.

  There was now an uneasy truce around the house and the subject of the phenomena was not discussed for the moment. The truce did not last very long, however.

  Soon afterward, the two girls woke up in the middle of the morning even though they were usually very sound sleepers. The time was 2 A.M. and there was sufficient light in the room for them to distinguish the figure of a large man in black standing by their beds! He seemed to stare down at them without moving. They let out a scream almost in unison, bringing their parents up the stairs. By that time, the apparition had dissolved.

  The war of nerves continued, however. A few nights later, the girls’ screams attracted the parents and when they raced upstairs they found the girls barricaded inside the room, holding the door as if someone were trying to force it open.

  For a moment, the parents could clearly see that some unseen force was balancing the door against the weight of the two young girls on the other side of it—then it slacked and fell shut. Almost hysterical with panic now, the girls explained, between sobs, that someone had tried to enter their room, that they had wakened and sensed it and pushed against the door—only to find the force outside getting stronger momentarily. Had the parents not arrived on the scene at this moment, the door would have been pushed open and whatever it was that did this, would have entered the bedroom.

  But the door did not stop the black, shadowy intruder from entering that room. On several occasions, the girls saw him standing by their bedside and when they fully woke and jumped out of bed, he disappeared.

  The Leimbachs and their girls were, however, not the only ones who had encountered the stranger. Even more sensitive to the invisible vibrations of a haunted house, Mrs. Nuñez had already had her initial experience with the man upstairs. But as yet she had not laid eyes on him and surely did not want to. But it so happened that in the summer of that year the family decided to go on vacation, and asked Mrs. Nuñez to look after their mail, water the plants and clean up the house, even though it would be empty. In addition, the local police were told of the possibility of prowlers and asked to keep an eye on the house while the family was away on vacation. The police gladly obliged and the house was put under surveillance.

  Mrs. Nuñez accepted the assignment with mixed emotions. She wasn’t a superstitious woman, but she always felt watched in that house, never alone, and somehow she had the impression that the force in the house was far from friendly. But she had decided to brave it out and try to get her job done as quickly as possible, and definitely only in the daylight.

  As she approached the house this morning, it seemed strangely quiet and peaceful. The air was warm, as the California air usually is, and the humming of bees indicated that summer at its fullest was upon them.

  She parked her car in front of the house and went toward the entrance door. Lumber for the structural changes the Leimbachs were making was still lying about all over the front yard. She put the key into the lock and opened the front door.

  Carefully closing it behind her, she then turned and to her horror saw a figure turn into the hallway and head for the stairs! At the same time, she heard the heavy footsteps of a man scurrying out of earshot, then going up the stairs, and she clearly heard the floor boards squeaking overhead as the weight of a person was placed upon them—or so it seemed.

  Despite her abject fear and the pearls of sweat that now stood on her forehead, she rallied and went after the intruder up the stairs. The footfalls had stopped by now and there was no one upstairs. She searched in every nook and cranny, opened every closet door and even looked down the stairs and in the cellar. Nothing. The house was as empty as it should be.

  Only then did she remember how strangely icy the hallway had been when she had entered the house. In the excitement of seeing the human figure disappear around the corner she had completely overlooked this fact. But now, as she sat quietly on the upstairs bed, she recalled it and shuddered even though it was no longer cold.

  Her chores done, she left the house and went home. When her next day to visit came, she tried hard not to go, but her sense of propriety forced her to do what was expected of her.

  This time she took her son Richard along for the ride. She quickly parked the car, opened the door, and looked inside. Again, the icy, clammy atmosphere began to envelop her. Quickly she threw the mail she had collected from the box onto the table in the entrance hall and slammed the door shut. She could not go further today.

  When the Leimbachs returned, she resumed her visits, but whenever she approached the house after that, she almost “saw” the figure of a man standing by the entrance door staring out at her with hostile, cold eyes.

  The Leimbachs finally received an answer to their problem.

  A famous psychic lady walked through their house and immediately felt its hostile atmosphere.

  “Something threatens this house,” she mumbled, “and it has to do with both houses and the land, not just this house.”

  Suddenly it occurred to the Leimbachs that their troubles had started only when they had decided to make major structural changes in the house.

  “Aha,” the psychic said, “there is your problem.”

  While the main house, the Casa Alvarado, had remained untouched by any change, except for that unfortunate addition inflicted upon it in the last century, the barn, once part of the estate, had been remodeled. But until the arrival of the Leimbachs, no wall had yet been removed nor had the basic construction undergone changes. This was t
heir intent, however, to correspond with their needs for a modern home.

  Had this activity awakened the ire of the guardian wraith?

  Then, too, there was the presence in the house of two sub-teenage girls, natural sources for poltergeist activities.

  The man in black staring out at a hostile world, which had done so much to his erstwhile domain, was he the restless spirit of Señor Alvarado himself?

  There seemed no need for his watchfulness in the main house, where the statue of St. Joseph looked out for dangers. But here, in the barn, there seemed need for a watchful eye.

  After this, the Leimbachs proceeded with greater caution in their plans to change the house. Perhaps the question of their justified improvements having been openly discussed somehow reassured the unseen ears of the guardian.

  It has been quiet at the house of late, but of course one can never tell. The early Spanish settlers knew how to take care of themselves, and of their own. And the old barn is still part of the Alvarado ranch, television aerial and garage notwithstanding.

  * 69

  The Mynah Bird (Canada)

  “COME ON, BOY! Come on, boy!” the shrill voice of a mynah bird called out from its perch on the wall. The corridor of the old house was deliberately kept dimly lit to go with the atmosphere of the place. After all, this was and is Toronto’s first and only topless nightclub. Since it is also nonalcoholic, due to the absence of a beverage license, it has to rely heavily on other attractions. The other attractions are such that nobody very much misses the lack of spirits in the bottle, especially as there are other spirits—the real kind—lingering about the place. Of that, anon. As for the black, yellow-beaked mynah bird, he was brought back from Bombay by the current owner of the club, Colin Kerr, from one of his many journeys to India.

  Mr. Kerr is not only the owner of a bird, but also a professional golfer whose activities have taken him all over the world. He got into the nightclub business when his eye was caught by an attractive, almost romantic looking old house in Toronto’s Yorkville district, an area roughly equivalent to New York’s Greenwich Village or London’s Soho. He installed his father-in-law on the third floor of the dark, brick and wood townhouse, with the task of keeping the building clean and in good shape. That was in 1963 and for two years he ran the place as any other club in the area was run; dancing, an occasional singer, and lots of romance. Still no liquor, but the Victorian atmosphere of the place more than made up for it and for a while it was an off-beat club for young couples to hold hands in. To make the feeling of remoteness from the outside world even stronger, Mr. Kerr dimmed his overhead lights, added heavy red drapes and Victorian furniture to the place and put in as many antiques of the period as he could garner in the local antique shops and flea markets.

  Mr. Kerr is a slightly built man in his thirties and soft spoken. He is scarcely the image of the typical nightclub manager and being in this strange house provided him in a way with self-expression.

  The place itself had been an antique shop prior to his arrival and before that an artist had had his studio upstairs where Mr. Kerr built a little stage. All kinds of people congregated in the area and there was an atmosphere of adventure and a certain wildness all around the house that somehow blended well with its insides.

  Two years after his arrival on the scene, he decided to buy the house which he had at first only rented. This was not without good reason. Mr. Kerr had become aware of a new, exciting trend in the nightclub business and felt Toronto was about ready for the innovations first brought about in the pioneering domain of San Francisco’s North Beach.

  The topless dancers would be a far better attraction than his dance bands had been. But Mr. Kerr’s artistic ambitions reached even further into the possibilities of creative expression: why not let the customers get in on the show? It was all well and good to sit there and watch a naked young woman shake and wriggle under the fluorescent lights. That had its good points and Mr. Kerr knew the attractions he offered brought in the crowds. But a more intimate touch was needed and he provided it.

  “Paint our bare-breasted girl!” the Mynah Bird club advertised in all the Toronto papers. For a two-dollar fee, any customer could dip his brush in paint thoughtfully provided by management, and paint a design upon the naked torso of a young woman. It wasn’t as good as finger painting, but it was the next best thing to it and the customers were given free rein to express their various artistic viewpoints. The club can hold about seventy people downstairs, in what must have been a parlor once, and another forty in the “theater” on the second floor. The third floor was used for living quarters.

  The innovation caught on like wildfire. The Mynah Bird remained Canada’s only place of this kind, and soon people from other cities came to do the painting bit. Strangely, there was nothing particularly shocking about all this. The women, to be sure, were young and pretty and wore only tiny panties which provided the anchor for whatever artistic motifs the amateur painters wished to paint upon the girls’ skin. The paint used was fluorescent and with the lights low, this made a pretty picture indeed. When there was no more empty space left on a woman’s bare skin, the painting session ended, the customers returned to their seats, and the painted girl began to dance.

  The haunted Mynah Bird Cafe—Toronto

  All this happened two or three times a night, six days a week. Mr. Kerr, despite his sexy attractions, found it unnecessary to hire a body guard or bouncer for his emporium. Perhaps Canadians do not mash so readily as Americans, or more likely the absence of intoxicating beverages kept the men at a distance. At any rate, the predominantly male audience kept their distance when not painting women’s breasts. But the proceedings did do something to the men’s eyes. They became hard and narrow as if they were watching an arena fight somewhere in ancient Rome. And the young women, mostly from the outlying provinces, became hard and cold looking, too, whenever they caught those glances.

  Still, it was a successful operation and still is. Who is to say that painting designs on bare-breasted women is not some sort of artistic expression? The women themselves love it and it isn’t just the touch of the wet brush that fascinates them, but the thought behind it all. They are in the center of the ring and love the male attention. But, like the stripper on stage, they also hate being stared at in that way at the same time. Colin Kerr watches over his seven girls and makes sure they are not molested, and the women consider their club a kind of home where they are appreciated for their contribution. The latter are not merely being painted in the nude. There is the girl in the fish tank, for instance, a trick done with mirrors, since the tank is only the two gallon kind. (It is similar to another tank in which Mr. Kerr keeps a live piranha, though he is not part of the show. So far, anyway.) The woman in the fish tank is completely nude but she is only inches high to the viewer. Sometimes the viewers do not believe they are looking at a live girl, but the girl waves at them and convinces them pretty fast.

  In a club serving soft drinks and even sandwiches there is bound to be some dishwashing and other nonglamorous jobs. Everybody takes turns here at doing everything, from the painting bit, the fish tank, the topless dancing, to checking of customers’ coats, seeing them to their tables and serving them. The girls like being one thing today and another tomorrow for it gives them a sense of variety and Mr. Kerr has no complaints from disgruntled waitresses or tired dishwashers that way.

  The girls range from eighteen to twenty-one years in age and come mostly from lower-middle-class homes, usually outside the cities. Whenever Kerr needs a replacement, there is a long line of applicants, which proves—if nothing else—that some women do like their breasts painted with fluorescent paint.

  But something strange happened when Kerr changed the club’s policy from straight dancing to the topless business. Whether it was his daring approach to night life or the sudden influx of a group of very young females that caused the disturbances is a moot question. Perhaps it was both. Shortly after the club had changed its policy,
Mr. Kerr found that he could not keep the lights turned off at times.

  It was almost as if someone were trying to annoy him, or perhaps only signal him for some reason, but the light switches kept turning themselves on regularly. Since they had not done anything of the kind during the first two years of his occupancy, this naturally caused some concern. But there seemed to be no natural explanation for this behavior. Then some musical instruments—leftovers from the band days—moved by themselves, very much to the consternation of Mr. Kerr who discovered that none of the girls had even been near them. He began to wonder whether perhaps some psychic force was at work here, although he had never been particularly interested in such things.

  About that time, his father-in-law reported being addressed by some unseen person on several occasions. Since Kerr had also added movies to his attractions—the latter being stag films from Europe shown in the second floor “theater” after the downstairs show closed—he thought that perhaps one of the customers had sneaked up to the third floor and talked to his in-law. But Mr. Alfred Lawrence, the custodian, assured his son-in-law that he could tell a flesh-and-blood stag movie patron from an invisible ghost.

  Things were going well with the Mynah Bird: the club was having sellouts six nights a week, and Raj, the bird himself, was being sought for TV appearances left and right. This led to a record album and Mr. Kerr found that his bird was making more money than he was. This did not trouble him, however, since he was, after all, paying the bird in seeds and the bird was happy and learned a lot of new words from the customers ogling the bare-breasted women.

  Under the circumstances Mr. Kerr felt it wise to insure his twelve-year-old mynah with Lloyds of London. Raj was the first and only feathered insurance policy holder in the history of that austere company. Ever watchful to inform his doting public, Mr. Kerr let the newspapers know about this and the crowds that came to see the mynah bird in the cage became even larger. Of course, they all stayed for the show.