by Hans Holzer
“Yes,” the ghost replied.
“Is anyone who lives here ever in any danger?”
“Yes, people who kill babies.”
This struck the young people as particularly appropriate: a close friend, not present at the time, had just had an abortion. “Will you appear to us?”
“Cesa has,” the ghost replied, and as if to emphasize this statement, there suddenly appeared the shadow of a cross on the kitchen wall, for which there was no possible source, except, of course, from the parapsychological point of view.
The girls realized they did not have the means to go to Denver and exhume Cesa’s remains and bring it to New York, and they told the ghost as much. “Is there anything else we can do to help you?”
“Contact Holzer,” she said. By that time, of course, Toby had become familiar with my works, and decided to sit down and write me a letter, telling me of their problem. They could not continue with the Ouija board or anything else that night, they were all much too shaken up.
On Monday, Toby typed up the letter they had composed, and sent it to me. Since they were not sure the letter would reach me, they decided to do some independent checking concerning the background of the house, and if possible, try to locate some record of Cesa Rist. But they were unsuccessful, even at the Hall of Records, the events having apparently transpired at a time when records were not yet kept, or at least not properly kept.
When I received the letter, I was just about to leave for Europe and would be gone two-and-a-half months. I asked the girls to stay in touch with me and after my return I would look into the matter. After Toby had spoken to me on the telephone, she went back into the living room and sat down quietly. She then addressed Henny and told her she had contacted me, and that it would be a couple of months before I could come to the house because I had to go to Europe.
Barbara decided not to wait, however; one night she went upstairs to talk to Henny. She explained the situation to her, and asked why she was still hanging around the house; she explained that her agony was keeping her in the house, and that she must let go of it in order to go on and join her boyfriend in the great beyond. Above all, she should not be angry with them because it was their home now. Somehow Barbara felt that the ghost understood, and nothing happened, nothing frightening at all. Relieved, Barbara sat down in a chair facing the couch. She was just sitting there smoking a cigarette, wondering whether Henny really existed, or whether perhaps she was talking to thin air.
At the moment, an ethereal form entered the room and stood near the couch. It looked as if she were leaning on the arm of the couch or holding onto the side of it. She saw the outline of the head, and what looked like braids around the front of her chest. For half a minute she was there, and then she suddenly disappeared.
It looked to Barbara as if the girl had been five foot four inches, weighing perhaps one hundred twenty pounds. Stunned, Barbara sat there for another ten or fifteen minutes, trying to believe what she had seen. She smoked another five cigarettes, and then walked downstairs to try to go to asleep. But sleep would not come; she kept thinking about her experience.
At the time Sharon left, they were interviewing potential roommates to replace her. One particularly unpleasant girl had come over and fallen in love with the house. Both Barbara and Toby didn’t want her to move in, but she seemed all set to join them, so Toby decided to tell her about the ghost. She hoped it would stop the girl from moving in. As Toby delineated their experiences with Henny, the would-be roommate became more and more nervous.
All of a sudden there was a loud crash in the kitchen, and they went to check on it. The garbage can had turned itself over and all the garbage was spilled all over the kitchen, even though no one had been near it. The new girl took one look at this and ran out as fast as she could. She never came back.
But shortly afterward, Toby went on vacation to California. There she made arrangements to move and found employment in the market research department of a large department store. Under the circumstances, the girls decided not to renew the lease, which was up in July, but to move to another apartment for a short period. That September, they moved to California. Under the circumstances, they did not contact me any further, and I assumed that matters had somehow been straightened out, or that there had been a change in their plans. It was not until a year later that we somehow met in California, and I could fill in the missing details of Henny’s story.
On the last day of the women’s stay at the house on Clinton Street, with the movers going in and out of the house, Toby went back into the house for one more look and to say goodbye to Henny. She went up to the living room and said a simple goodbye, and hoped that Henny would be all right. But there was no answer, no feeling of a presence.
For a while the house stood empty, then it was purchased by the father of an acquaintance of the girls. Through Alan, they heard of the new people who had moved in after the house was sold. One day when they had just been in the house for a few days, they returned to what they assumed to be an empty house.
They found their kitchen flooded with water: there were two inches of water throughout the kitchen, yet they knew they had not left the water taps on. Why had Henny turned the water on and let it run? Perhaps Henny didn’t like the new tenants after all. But she had little choice, really. Being a ghost, she was tied to the house.
Following her friends to San Francisco was simply impossible, the way ghosts operate. And unless or until the new tenants on Clinton Street call for my services, there is really nothing I can do to help Henny.
* 76
Longleat’s Ghosts
LONGLEAT IN SOMERSET must be the most publicized haunted house in all of England. If it isn’t, at the very least its owner, Lord Bath, is the most publicity-conscious man among British nobility I have ever met: a genial, clever, very businesslike Aquarian who happens to share my birth-date, although a few years my senior. Longleat and its ghosts were first extensively publicized by Tom Corbett, the British society seer, who went there in the company of a British journalist, Diana Norman, who then wrote a book on Corbett’s experiences in various British houses called The Stately Ghosts of England. Mr. Corbett goes to great pains to explain that he is not a medium but a clairvoyant. He most certainly is not a trance medium, and it takes a good deep-trance medium to really get to the bottom of any haunting. All a clairvoyant can do is pick up vibrations from the past and possibly come into communication with a resident ghost or spirit entity, while it remains for a trance medium to allow the spirit or ghost to speak directly to the investigator.
I began to correspond with Lord Bath in the spring of 1964, but before I could fix a date for my first visit to Longleat, NBC television decided to include the magnificent palace in its itinerary of allegedly haunted houses which its documentary unit wanted to film.
The Psychic News of May 23, 1964, headlined, FAMOUS ACTRESS AND MEDIUM TO STAR IN PSYCHIC FILM—WILL CAMERA RECORD SPIRIT FORMS? The newspaper was, of course, referring to Margaret Rutherford, the grand old lady of the British theater, who happened to be interested in ESP phenomena, although by no means a medium herself.
The idea of filming at Longleat and elsewhere was the brainchild of producer-director Frank De Fellitta, who had read the Tom Corbett-Diana Norman tome on Britain’s haunted mansions. The NBC team went to Longleat, and immediately after they had set up for the filming all sorts of difficulties arose. Cameras would be out of place, tools would disappear; it seemed as if the resident ghosts were not altogether happy at the invasion taking place. But it is hard to tell how much of the reported difficulty was factual and how much of it a product of the NBC publicity department. One fact, however, was blissfully ignored in its implications by both NBC and the producer. They had set up a time-lapse exposure camera in the haunted corridor at Longleat, a camera which records one frame of film at a time over a long period of time. Such a recording was made during the night when no one was around. On developing the film, a whitish flash of light was
discovered for which there was no easy explanation. The flash of light could not be explained as faulty film, faulty laboratory work, or any other logical source. What the camera had recorded was nothing less than the formation of a spirit form. Had Mr. De Fellitta any basic knowledge of parapsychology or had he been in the company of an expert in the field, he might have made better use of this unexpected bonus.
The choice of Margaret Rutherford as hostess of the program was not dictated by psychic ability or her integrity as an investigator, but simply because she looked the part, and in television that is the most important consideration. And she had played the magnificently written comedy role of the medium in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit. Even the austere New York Times, which has generally ignored any serious treatment of parapsychology, managed to give the project and Margaret Rutherford quite a bit of space. “Miss Rutherford and company will visit allegedly spirit-ridden mansions. She will give her personal impressions of the hauntings—how they occur, when they occur and, maybe, why they don’t occur,” wrote Paul Gardner. Nothing of the sort was either intended or delivered, of course, but it read well in the publicity releases.
* * *
My first visit to Longleat took place in September, 1964, long after the hullabaloo and the departure of Margaret Rutherford and the film crew. However, the usual large number of tourists was still milling around, so we had arranged with Lord Bath to come at a time when the grounds were closed to them.
Longleat is in the west of England, about three hours from London by car, and truly a palace, rivaling some of the royal residences in both size and appointments. Lord Bath himself had long ago moved into more modest quarters at nearby Warminster, where he and his wife lived in a charming old mill. Longleat itself is named after a river which runs through the grounds. It has been the home of the Thynne family for four hundred years. Sometime before 1580 Sir John Thynne, direct ancestor of the current Marquess of Bath, began to build Longleat. His successors enlarged the mansion until it assumed the proportions of a palace. To describe the art treasures that fill the palace from top to bottom would take volumes. Suffice it to say that some very important paintings hang at Longleat and among them, perhaps a peculiarity of the present Lord Bath, art work by both Sir Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler. The latter are in the private portion of the house, however, on one of the upper floors.
The first person Lord Bath wanted us to meet was the old nurse, a certain Miss Marks, who was then in her seventies. At the time when she took care of little Caroline, she had several encounters with a ghost.
“I saw a tall, scholarly looking man,” the nurse explained. “He was walking along and looked as if he might be reading something; I only saw his back, but he had a high collar, the wings of it distinctly standing out. I would say, ‘I think perhaps that is Grandpa. Shall we hurry up and speak to him?” We would follow him across the room, but when we got to the door at the end, which was shut, he just wasn’t there. I didn’t think anything of it, because I saw him lots and lots of times, and in the end I thought, It isn’t person at all. I didn’t discuss it with anyone, but I knew it was friendly to me. I loved seeing this person, even after I discovered it was only a ghost.”
Longleat’s ghosts are strictly family—with one exception
From the nurse’s description and that given by Tom Corbett it was clear to historians that the ghost was none other than the builder of Longleat, Sir John Thynne. Thynne had been a banker in the time of Henry VIII and was known for his sharp business sense. The grounds upon which Longleat stands were a result of his business acumen, and he was very much attached to it in his day. His haunting ground, so to speak, is the Red Library on the ground floor, where he usually appears between 7 and 8 o’clock at night.
Lord Bath then took us up to the haunted corridor, which is now completely bare and gives a rather depressing feeling, ghost or no ghost. This long, narrow passage runs parallel to the sleeping quarters of some of the Thynne family, and it was here that Tom Corbett felt a ghostly presence.
“This is the corridor,” Lord Bath explained in a voice that betrayed the fact that he had said it many times before, “where a duel was fought by one of my ancestors, the second Viscount Weymouth, because he found that his wife, Louisa Carteret, had been unfaithful to him. He discovered her in a state, unfortunately, in which he thought a duel ought to be fought with the man she was with. He fought this duel with the intruder and killed the man, after which he buried him in the cellar. His skeleton was accidentally found when the boiler was put in downstairs six years ago.”
One would assume the unfortunate lover to be roaming the corridors at Longleat, seeking revenge, or at least, to frighten the survivors. But apparently he took his fate like a man and remained a spirit rather than a ghost. Not so with Lady Louisa: “People have seen what is assumed to be the ghost of Louisa Carteret,” Lord Bath explained. “I haven’t seen her myself, because I don’t have that power. My mother has seen the ghost in the Red Library downstairs, but not this one.” I asked about visitors. Lord Bath explained that visitors were never taken to the part of the house where we were, so there was no way of telling whether they had experienced anything. I took a good look at the portrait of Lady Louisa. She was indeed worth fighting over: lovely face, beautiful eyes, slim figure in a green dress.
Shortly afterwards we left Longleat with the firm promise to return someday with a trance medium so that we could have a go at contacting the resident ghosts. But it wasn’t until two years later that the opportunity came along.
* * *
It was in September, 1966, when I brought the London medium and former nurse, Trixie Allingham, to Longleat, introduced her to Lord Bath, and proceeded to enter the palace in the hope of really coming to grips with the phantoms that had never been dislodged, nor indeed fully contacted before. For the next two hours, Lord Bath, my friends and I went through one of the most fascinating and gripping sessions we’d ever experienced.
All along, Trixie, a frail lady, had been unhappy in the car, partly because it was a rough ride and partly because she sensed some great tragedy ahead which would shortly involve her personally. As we were rounding the last long curve of the driveway leading to the palace, Trixie turned to me and said, “I saw the painting of a fair young woman. I thought she had something to do with my visit here, and she showed me an opened window as if she were telling me that there had been a tragedy connected with that window. Either she was pushed out, or somebody she loved had flung himself out, and then the vision faded. Then another woman came to me, rather charming and of the same period. She was older and looked rather haughty for a moment. Then she faded.”
I had not replied, for I did not wish to give her any clues. A few minutes later we arrived it the main gate to Longleat and got out of the car. I gave Trixie time to “get to herself” and to get the shaky ride out of her system. Then we entered the Red Library, and I asked Trixie to sit down in one of the large antique chairs at the head of the room.
Immediately she said in a quivering, excited voice, “A long time ago something very evil happened here, or someone had a devilish temptation in this room, looking out of that window.” She pointed at one of the several large windows on the far side of the room. “I have a feeling that there is a French link here, that either the wife or the daughter was of French ancestry,” Trixie continued. “There is some connection with the French Revolution, for I see a guillotine...good heavens!”
“Do you sense a ghost here, Trixie?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes, I get a woman. She has a dress with long sleeves, and she walks as if her hip were bent. There is a crucifix around her neck and she’s saying, ‘Help me, help me, help me!’ This is going back more than a hundred years; her gown is sort of whitish with a mulberry shade. From way back.” Trixie paused for a moment as if getting her bearings. Lord Bath, not exactly a believer, was watching her seriously now.
“Now I see a horse and a man galloping away, and I see the wom
an in tears and I wonder what it means. She sees the man galloping away, and she thinks life is over, and now I see her dead. I feel there is a church nearby, where her effigy is in stone on top of some sort of a sarcophagus. She showed it to me.”
I asked Trixie if the woman was the same one she had seen in the car driving tip, but she couldn’t be sure, for she hadn’t yet seen the woman’s face. Were there any other presences in the room?
“Yes,” Trixie replied. “Very dimly over there by the door and holding the handle, there is a man with a big hat on, and he wears a collar around the neck. He goes back a long time, I think.”
I glanced at Lord Bath: nobody had told Trixie about the apparition seen by the nurse—Sir John Thynne, a man wearing a strange old-fashioned collar! While Trixie was resting for a moment, I walked around the library. I noticed that the shelves were filled with French books and that some of the furniture was obviously of eighteenth-century French origin. Had Trixie simply picked up the atmosphere of the room?
Trixie suddenly said in a rather challenging tone of voice: “Henry—is there a Henry here?” Almost like an obedient schoolboy, Lord Bath stepped forward. Trixie eyed him suspiciously. “You’re Henry?”
“I’m the only one.”
“Well, they said, ‘Go talk to Henry.”’
“Who told you to talk to Henry?” Lord Bath inquired.
“I don’t know. It is a man, a very unhappy man. He passed over a long time ago. He killed three people, and I don’t mean in battle.”
The story was getting more interesting. “How did he kill them?” I demanded to know.
“I look at his hands, and there are brown stains on them which he can’t seem to wipe off. The letter H seems to be connected with him, and I have the feeling he did it in vengeance. I see a friar come up to him, and him trying to get absolved and being unable to. The friar is haughty, arrogant, and then the prior comes in and I see this unhappy man on his knees, and yet he does not get absolution, and that is why he comes back here.”