Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  The rumbling of psychic disturbances did not escape the women’s attention even though Kerr and his wife, Mrs. Jessamyn Kerr, took great pains not to alarm them by drawing their attention to these phenomena.

  Although they once had a woman work for them who claimed to be a full-fledged witch, this woman did not have any uncanny experiences at the place, or perhaps to her they were not noteworthy. She was eighteen, from Hamilton, and named Lizerina, and she fit right in with the decor of the club.

  After her departure for greener, or at least, better lit pastures, it was Joy Nicholls who became one of the hardest workers at the Mynah Bird. She arrived in 1967 fresh from the far northern portion of Canada, the daughter of a construction foreman. Perhaps she expressed more openly what every woman dreams of and perhaps she went about it in a rather unorthodox way, but Joy honestly believed in her work and liked her surroundings and to her the Mynah Bird was the most wonderful place in the world.

  One month after her arrival, she found herself resting up at the end of one night. It was about 2:30 in the morning and time to quit. Upstairs, all was quiet, since the last customer had gone home. Just then she clearly heard chairs move overhead as if someone were rearranging them. She knew for a fact that there was no one else about but forgetting all fear for the moment, she ran up the stairs to see who the intruder was.

  As she opened the door of the “theater,” she found that the chairs which she had left a little earlier neatly arranged in rows for next evening’s show, were now in dis-array and strewn all over the place. She put them in order once more and left.

  Many times after this initial exposure to unseen forces, the same phenomenon happened. Always after the stag films had been shown, it seemed as if someone threw the chairs about in great anger.

  Then Joy realized that the place used as a theater now was originally the artist’s studio. Perhaps his sensitive artistic taste recoiled at the kind of movies shown here, so delicately advertised by Kerr as “Only for those who will not be offended.”

  A short time after the initial incident with the moving chairs, Joy was downstairs when she heard someone walk overhead and then continue down the stairs. But nobody appeared. Yet, within a fraction of a moment, she strongly felt that someone was standing close to her, staring at her, coldly and with piercing eyes. Now she did not see this but felt it with an inner awareness that had always been acute in her. She knew at once it was a man and she knew he was angry. Or perhaps sad. Being a generous person she wondered how she could help the stranger. Perhaps her thoughts somehow pierced the veil of silence.

  Shortly after, she found herself alone again in the hall when she heard her name being called.

  “Joy,” a soft, almost hoarse voice seemed to say, and more urgently repeated, “Joy!”

  She turned around to see who was calling out to her, but of course she was quite alone.

  About the same time, Nancy Murray, another one of the women, complained about someone whom she could not see staring at her. Joy was a gay, life-loving blonde with a spectacular figure, while Nancy was more the slim, sultry type, quiet and introverted—despite her occupation—but both had a psychic awareness in common, it would appear.

  Despite her bad eyes, Nancy saw someone when she was alone in the downstairs room. The continual stares of someone she could not see made Nancy far more apprehensive than the very visual stares of the men in the audience when she was being painted. After all, she knew what went through men’s minds, but what do ghosts think?

  With the women adding to the number of psychic incidents almost daily, Kerr finally concluded there was something the matter with his place. He decided to hold a séance and, if possible, find out.

  It so happened that one of his featured girls, a folk-singer named Tony Stone, had often served as a clairvoyant medium at séances and she readily agreed to try. The first of what became later an almost daily séance, was held entirely privately, after the customers had left. Only the Kerrs and the women attended. Upon instruction from Tony Stone, one candle was placed on the table, which was covered by an ordinary tablecloth.

  After holding hands and generally relaxing their thoughts for a while, the group looked about. The room was quite dark in its further recesses and the flicker of the candle gave the entire procedure an even eerier glow.

  Suddenly and without warning, the tablecloth was yanked off the table, almost toppling the candle. With a scream, Nancy rose. Some unknown force had managed to get the tablecloth off the table and threw it with great violence some distance from them on the floor.

  Horror in her eyes, Nancy left the room and has refused to attend any séances ever since. But Mr. Kerr was so impressed with the performance he decided to add the seance to his regular program: each night, after the show, and after the stag films, the customers were invited to stay on for an impromptu séance. Sometimes, when the spirit moved them, they put the séance on even before the stag movies.

  Soon the Mynah Bird “family” discovered that these séances—the only public séances of their kind in Canada—brought on additional disturbances in the house. Dishes in the kitchen in the rear downstairs would suddenly start to rattle. Once when Kerr and his wife ran back to see what was happening, they found the kitchen empty. But as they looked with amazement into the well-lit kitchen, they saw a big kitchen knife balance itself as if held by unseen hands. Kerr grabbed it and examined it. While he was trying to see if he could balance it by natural means—ever the skeptic—another stack of dishes came tumbling down on them. There was no earthly reason for this. Since that first time, dish rattling follows almost all séances. It is as if their sittings release some power within the women that creates the phenomena. Or perhaps someone up there on the second floor is not entirely happy with the whole thing.

  The first time an audience stayed behind for a séance, Nancy almost went into deep trance. She had sworn she would not attend another séance, but her presence was required in the room as part of her job and she kept a distance from the medium. Nevertheless, she felt herself sink into trance and fought it. After that, she spoke to Kerr and was given permission to stay away from all further séances.

  To Nancy, the world of ghosts was scarcely unknown. It was precisely because of prior experiences that she had to beg off. Not long ago, while on a visit to a friend in downtown Toronto, she came upon an old house on nearby Gloucester Street. That was on the last day of February 1968 and she will never forget the date.

  The old house had been closed down, but she was curious, and opened the front door to peek in. As she did so, she perceived coming down the broad staircase, a strange looking man. He was a soldier in a very unusual uniform, not one she was familiar with, and he looked quite as real as any man walking down a staircase. She even heard his canteen rattle and the steps of his boots as he came closer toward where she was standing. But as he came close she could see his face, such a sad face, and it looked straight at her. But where his neck should have been, there was a gaping hole. The wallpaper could be seen right through it and as she realized this she fled in terror. The uniform was of World War I vintage, she later learned.

  The first public séance had other results, though, than to frighten Nancy. With her head bowed, medium Tony Stone spoke of a resident ghost she felt close by.

  Superimposed on the face of a lady customer sitting across the table from her, she described the figure of an old man with gray hair and a beard, but she could not get his name that time.

  Then, somewhat later, at another séance, she excitedly described the man again.

  “He’s behind me now,” she exclaimed and her lips started to tremble as if the ghost was trying to take her over.

  “Lawrence...Oliver...Kendall...” she finally managed to say, slowly, while fighting off the unseen force.

  “He’s a very sad person,” she added, but she could not find out why he was here in the club. As more and more of the public attended the séances, less and less happened at them which is not at all su
rprising. They degenerated into just another number on the bill and no one took them seriously anymore. Especially not the resident specters. They resolutely refused to put on appearances, unpaid, by command, to amuse the out-of-town visitors.

  Even the introduction of an ouija board did not help. It did establish that Tony Stone was a good clairvoyant but little else.

  She managed to predict accurately the names of several people who would be in the audience the next night. But the Mynah Bird scarcely needs to know who its customers are. There are so many of them.

  As to Mr. Kendall, he has not yet been identified from among the many tenants of the old house.

  On separate occasions, Nancy and Joy smelled strong perfume in the downstairs area when neither of them was wearing any. It was a sudden wafting in of a woman’s perfume, somehow reminiscent of a bygone era.

  When Joy also heard the swishing sound of taffeta skirts whisking by her one night, she knew that the sad old man upstairs was not the only spectral boarder at the club. Somehow it did not frighten the women as much as the fury of the man moving those chairs. Was the woman responsible for the throwing about of the dishes in the kitchen perhaps?

  Late at night, when the customers have gone, nothing in the world could induce the girls to go up the narrow corridors and stairwells to find out if one of the denizens of the nether world is still lurking about in anger. So far Mr. Kerr does not consider their presence dangerous or even undesirable. After all, who else offers his clientele bare-breasted women and ectoplastic presences for the same ticket?

  * 70

  The Terror on the Farm (Connecticut)

  NORTH WOODSTOCK, CONNECTICUT, is New England at its best and quietest: rolling farmland seldom interrupted by the incursions of factories and modern city life.

  The village itself seems to have weathered the passage of time rather well and with a minimum of change. Except for the inevitable store signs and other expressions of contemporary American bad taste, the village is as quiet today as it must have been, say, two hundred years ago, when America was young.

  On Brickyard Road, going toward the outer edges of the village, and standing somewhat apart from the inhabited areas, was an old farm house. It had obviously seen better days, but now it was totally dilapidated and practically beyond repair. Still, it was a house of some size and quite obviously different from the ordinary small farmhouse of the surrounding countryside.

  There were sixteen rooms in the house, and for the past fifty years it had been the property of the Duprey family. The house itself was built in pre-Revolutionary times by the Lyons family, who used it as a tavern. The place was a busy spot on the Boston-Hartford road and a tavern here did well indeed in the days when railroads had not yet come into existence.

  After the Lyons Tavern changed hands, it belonged successfully to the Potters, Redheads, Ides, and then the Dupreys, but it was now a private dwelling, the center of the surrounding farm, and no longer a public house.

  Very little is known about its early history beyond that, at least that is what Mrs. Florence Viner discovered when she considered buying the house. She did discover, however, that Mrs. Emery Duprey, the previous owner, had suffered great tragedy in the house. One morning she had taken a group of neighbors’ children to school. The school was in a one-room house, less than a mile distant. Her fourteen-year-old daughter Laura was left behind at the house because she had not been feeling well that day.

  When Mrs. Duprey returned home a short time later, she found the girl gone. Despite every effort made, the girl was never found again nor was any trace found of her disappearance.

  Mr. and Mrs. Charles Viner decided to buy the house in 1951 despite its deplorable condition. They wanted a large country house and did not mind putting it in good condition; in fact, they rather looked forward to the challenge and task.

  It was on Good Friday of that year that they moved in. Immediately they started the restoration, but they stayed at the house and made do, like the pioneers they felt they had now become.

  The farm itself was still a working farm and they retained a number of farm workers from the surrounding area to work it for them. The only people staying at the house at all times were the Viners, their daughter Sandra, and the help.

  Two months had gone by after their arrival when one evening Mrs. Viner and her daughter, then eleven years old, were alone in the house, sitting in the kitchen downstairs, reading.

  “Who is upstairs?” the girl suddenly inquired.

  Mrs. Viner had heard furtive footsteps also, but had decided to ignore them. Surely, the old house was settling or the weather was causing all sorts of strange noises.

  But the footsteps became clearer. This was no house settling. This was someone walking around upstairs. For several minutes, they sat in the kitchen, listening as the steps walked all over the upper floor. Then Mrs. Viner rose resolutely, went to her bedroom on the same floor and returned with a 22-revolver she had in the drawer of her night table just in case prowlers would show up. The moment she re-entered the kitchen, she clearly heard two heavy thumps upstairs. It sounded as if a couple of heavy objects had fallen suddenly and hit the floor. Abruptly, the walking ceased as if the thumps were the end of a scene being re-enacted upstairs.

  Too frightened to go up and look into what she knew to be an empty room, Mrs. Viner went to bed. When her husband returned a little later, however, they investigated upstairs together. There was nothing out of place nor indeed any sign that anyone had been up there.

  But a few days later, the same phenomenon recurred. First, there were the footsteps of someone walking up and down upstairs, as if in great agitation. Then two heavy thumps and the sound of a falling object and abrupt silence. The whole thing was so exactly the same each time it almost became part of the house routine and the Viners heard it so many times they no longer became panicky because of it. When the house regained its former splendor, they began to have overnight guests. But whenever anyone stayed at the house, inevitably, the next morning they would complain about the constant walking about in the corridor upstairs.

  Mrs. Ida Benoit, Mrs. Viner’s mother, came downstairs the morning after her first night in the house.

  “I’ll never sleep in this house again,” she assured her daughter. “Why, it’s haunted. Someone kept walking through my bedroom.”

  Her daughter could only shrug and smile wanly. She knew very well what her mother meant. Naturally, the number of unhappy guests grew, but she never discussed the phenomena with anyone beforehand. After all, it was just possible that nothing would happen. But in ten years of occupancy, there wasn’t a single instance where a person using a bedroom upstairs was not disturbed.

  A year after they had moved in, Mrs. Viner decided to begin to renovate a large upstairs bedroom. It was one of those often used as a guest room. This was on a very warm day in September, and despite the great heat, Mrs. Viner liked her work and felt in good spirits. She was painting the window sash and singing to herself with nothing particular on her mind. She was quite alone upstairs at the time and for the moment the ghostly phenomena of the past were far from her thoughts.

  Suddenly, she felt the room grow ice cold. The chill became so intense she began to shudder and pulled her arms around herself as if she were in mid-winter on an icy road. She stopped singing abruptly and at the same time she felt the strong presence of another person in the room with her.

  “Someone’s resenting very much what I’m doing,” she heard herself think.

  Such a strong wave of hatred came over her she could not continue. Terrified, she nevertheless knew she had to turn around and see who was in the room with her. It seemed to take her an eternity to muster sufficient strength to move a single muscle.

  Suddenly, she felt a cold hand at her shoulder. Someone was standing behind her and evidently trying to get her attention. She literally froze with fear. When she finally moved to see who it was the hand just melted away.

  With a final effort, she jerked
herself around and stared back into the room. There was no one there. She ran to the door, screaming, “I don’t know who you are or what you are, but you won’t drive me out of this house.”

  Still screaming, she ran down the stairs and onto the porch. There she caught her breath and quieted down. When her daughter came home from school, she felt relieved. The evil in that room had been overpowering, and she avoided going up there as much as possible after that experience.

  “I’ll never forget that hand, as long as I live,” she explained to her husband.

  In the years that followed, they came to terms with the unseen forces in the house. Perhaps her determined effort not to be driven out of their home had somehow gotten through to the specter, but at any rate, they were staying and making the house as livable as they could. Mrs. Viner gave birth to two more children, both sons, and as Sandra grew up, the phenomena seemed to subside. In 1958 a second daughter was born and Sandra left for college. But three weeks later the trouble started anew.

  One night in September she was sitting in the downstairs living room watching television with James Latham, their farm worker. The two boys and the baby had been in bed for hours. Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion in the general direction of the baby’s room. She ran into the room and found it ice cold—as if it had been an icebox. From the baby’s room, another door leads out into the hall, and it is usually closed for obvious reasons. But now it stood wide open, and evidently it had been thrust open with considerable force. The lock was badly bent from the impact and the radiator, which the door had hit in opening, was still reverberating from it. The baby was not harmed in any way, but Mrs. Viner wondered if perhaps the oil burner had blown up.