by Hans Holzer
“Any other incidents?” I asked with expectation. Obviously, Major Blackwell was gifted with the sixth sense.
“The only other one was here when I dug up the tomb of Dermot MacGrania.” Grania is Irish for grace, incidentally, and it is pronounced more like “gronia.”
“I’ve seen the monolith outside the house, down towards the back end of the estate,” I said. “What’s the story of that tomb?”
“I started to dig, because I am terribly interested in archaeology. One night I dreamt that I was working on it, as usual, when the stone moved and out from under the stone came this extraordinary figure who was dressed in a kilt and leggings around his feet, and he advanced towards me and I was never so frightened in my life. I couldn’t get to sleep at all, and the next morning I went down to the pier, because the two men who had been working on the diggings with me lived across the water and came over by boat.
“Before they landed, they told me immediately, ‘We’re very, very sorry, but we will not do any more work on the tomb of Dermot MacGrania!’
“Evidently, they too had been frightened off. I have not touched it since then, and that was thirty years ago. I won’t permit any digging at the tomb, unless it is for the good of it—for I feel that at the time I was not looking into it for that reason, but rather in the hope of finding treasure, and that is why I was stopped.”
“This tomb is a pre-Christian relic, is it not?” I asked after a moment of pensive contemplation. Suddenly the twentieth century was gone and the very dawn of history was upon us.
“Similar graves exist up in County Sligo. According to the legend told about this particular grave, when Dermot escaped with Grania, they were caught here and killed and buried here by his enemies. That was about 1500 B.C. This is, of course, the very beginning of Irish history.”
“Has anyone else had any unusual experience at this tomb?”
“None that I know of. But there have been psychic experiences in the house itself.”
I settled back in the comfortable leather chair in the Major’s study and listened as Major Blackwell calmly unfolded the record of ghosts at beautiful Ross House.
“Miss Linda Carvel, a cousin of mine, has seen the old maid walking up and down and my wife and I have heard someone walking up and down where the original stairs used to be.”
The Major showed me the spot where the wall now covered the stair landing. Only the main staircase exists today.
The former staircase was at the front of the house but structural changes had made it unnecessary.
“My wife has heard it at least four or five times a week. She has also heard the door knocked on.”
“Almost like a maidservant,” I observed. “Did anyone see the maid?”
“Yes, Linda Carvel actually saw her walking into that front room. This was only two years ago. Everybody had gone to church, and there was nobody in the house at the time except my wife, myself, my daughter, and Linda. Linda suddenly came into the room to us, white as a sheet. ‘I just saw a woman walk into Granny’s room,’ she said. ‘She was dressed in a white and blue uniform—a starched uniform.’ I discussed this with Tommy Moran and he confirmed that that was the uniform the maids wore in my grandmother’s time!”
“What do you make of it, Major?”
Ross House—County Mayo
“I think it is the same one, Annie, who came to see me. She died a normal death, but she was fantastically attached to the family and the house. She spent her whole life here. She married a man named John O’Flynn, a tailor, but she adored it here and even after she left she came back all the time bringing us gifts.”
“Have any other phenomena been observed here?”
“In the drawing room, downstairs, Tommy Moran and all his sons have seen two people sitting in front of the fireplace. I know nothing about them firsthand, however. My cousin, Peter O’Malley, also has seen them. He is the one also who had a shocking experience. He saw the most terrible face appear in the window of the drawing room.”
“What exactly did he see?” I was all ears now. The whole atmosphere seemed loaded with electricity.
“I wasn’t here at the time, but he just says it was a most terrible face. That was ten years ago.”
“What about Inishdaff Island, Major?” I asked.
“There is an old monastery there I hope to restore. We’ve got the records back to 1400 and there it says ‘church in ruins.’ The peninsula we are on now, where the house stands, also turns into an island at high tide, incidentally, and the path of the pilgrims going over to that ruined church can still be traced. The road would not have been built for any other reason.”
“You didn’t see anything unusual on the island, though?”
“No, I didn’t, but Tommy Moran, and some other relatives of mine—actually four people altogether—did. The island has always been considered...that there is something wrong with it.”
We got to talking about the other members of the family now; Mrs. Blackwell had been unable to join us at lunch since she was staying at Castlebar with their fourteen-year-old daughter, who was in the hospital there because of a broken leg. It appeared, however, that there was more to that accident than a casual mishap.
“The extraordinary thing about it is this. The night before it happened, she dreamt that an ambulance drove up to the front of the house. Now the front of the house is blocked off to cars, as you saw. So every car must come through the back. She saw the ambulance come to the front entrance, however, pick someone up and drive off. Also, the ambulance did not have a red cross or other familiar sign on it, but a circular thing in Irish writing! That was exactly the ambulance that came up the next evening and picked her up; it was a Volkswagen ambulance with an Irish inscription on the side in a circle just as she had described it to us! Edie is definitely psychic also.”
“So it seems,” I said. “Anything else about her I might want to know?”
“One time she dreamt she saw Grandmother—my mother—and described her perfectly in every detail. Being terrified of ghosts, Edie, in her dream, pleaded with my mother’s apparition not ever to have to see a ghost again. Granny promised her she wouldn’t, but she would always know.”
There were two more points of psychic interest, I discovered. The unexplained putting on of lights and opening of doors in the nursery, and something else that I only learned towards the end of our most enjoyable stay. But in a way it made a perfect finale.
Right now everybody was handed heavy clothing and overshoes, for we would be sailing—well, motorboating—to the island across the bay and it was wet and chilly, the Major assured us. Cathy looked like a real outdoor girl in the Major’s fur jacket, and Sybil was so heavily bundled up she scarcely made the entrance to the cabin of the little boat. The assorted cousins of both sexes also came along in a second boat, and within minutes we were out in the open bay crossing over to the island of Inishdaff, all of which belonged to the Major’s estate.
We landed on the island ten minutes later. The sandy beach was most inviting to a swim and Major Blackwell admitted he was working on just such a project. What with the absence of sharks, I felt this to be about the most ideal place to swim in any ocean.
We next scaled the heights of the hill, taking the center of the island, upon which stood the ruined abbey. It was at once clear to me that we were standing close to the roof of that church and that the lower part had simply filled in with soil over the centuries. In one corner of the “elevated floor” was the simple grave of one of Tommy Moran’s sons, a Celtic cross watching over him. Otherwise the island was empty.
While the others stood around the ruined abbey, Major Blackwell, Tommy, and I mounted the other side of the wall and then descended onto the wet ground. We then proceeded to the top of the island whence we had a magnificent view of all the other islands around us, all the way out to the farthest, which indeed was Ireland’s outpost to the sea, beyond which lay America. It was among these many islands and inlets that the pirates of
old hid, safe from prosecution by the law.
We fetched some heavy stones from the enclosure of the church and sat down so that Tommy Moran could talk to me about his experiences.
I first questioned him about the frightening face seen here and in the house.
“Mike Sheils told it to me, sir.” Tommy Moran began with a heavy brogue. “He worked the glass house with me for years. He was a man not easily frightened. At the time there were blackthorn trees in the burial ground. He was passing through when he heard some noise. He looked over his shoulder and what he saw was a sheep’s head with a human body.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” Tommy nodded, “it was a head covered with wool the same as sheep. There were three boys in front of Mike. He knocked them down and ran.”
“Did you yourself ever have any such experiences here, Tommy?” I reflected that a disheveled human face might very well look like a sheep’s head to a simple, imaginative islander used to lots of sheep.
“During me own time, sir,” he began, “they were bringing torf to Ross House by boat, that was Mrs. O’Malley’s husband, who was gettin’ the torf, and they were rowing, two of them, but they had no sail. They wanted to keep as close to the shore as they could. They were brother and sister, Pat Stanton and his sister Bridget. Suddenly a man came down from the burial ground trying to grasp his oar and take it out of the water. Pat rowed like mad to get away; he recalls the man was stark naked, had no clothes on at all. Finally, they got away.”
“There was no one living here at the time?”
“No one, no,” Tommy assured me, and the Major nodded assent.
I was fascinated by the old man’s tales. Surely, Tommy could not have made them up, for what he had said did make some sense when matched with the horrible face looking into the dining room window. Somewhere along the line a human being living like an animal must have found shelter on the desolate island, and, perhaps brought up by animals, this man was taken for a monster. I did not feel that this was a ghost in the sense I use the term.
Tommy told us other tales, some bordering just barely on the supernormal, and then we rejoined the others and went back to the house. It was time for me to question Sybil Leek about her impressions of the church and burial ground.
“There were impressions, but not a presence as we understand it, Hans,” Sybil explained, “but I strongly urge that the place be excavated, for there might be some works of art underneath. There is also a passage, which we discovered this afternoon, on the right hand side. The high altar connecting with the first monastic cell.”
We had returned now to the house, and took off the heavy clothing the Major had lent us for the journey. While tea was being prepared, we grouped ourselves around the fireplace, waiting.
It was then that I recalled a chance remark Sybil had made to me earlier about a man she had met when we first came to the house, prior to lunch. Perhaps we could sort this out now, before Tommy Moran left for his chores.
“I left the main party in the house for a while, because I wanted to be on my own,” Sybil explained, “so I walked through the path leading to the wrought-iron gate which led into a garden. I walked right down as far as I could go, until I came to an open space which was on the other side of the garden to where I had started. I reached the tomb. I stayed by the tomb for a little while, then I went toward the gate, ready to climb over the gate, and I was in deep thought. So I wasn’t surprised to see a man there. To me he looked rather small, but of course I was on higher ground than he was. He wore no hat, but he had peculiar hair, gray hair.”
“What did he do when he saw you?”
“He smiled at me, and appeared to come towards me. I was continuing to walk towards him. He said, ‘So you have come back again?’ and I replied, ‘But I haven’t been here. I don’t know this place.’ He turned and walked towards the sea and I turned away and went back.”
“Did he look like a ghost to you?”
“You know I never know what a ghost looks like. To me, everything seems the same. I have this difficulty of distinguishing between flesh-and-blood and ghosts.”
When I informed Major Blackwell of Sybil’s encounter, he was taken aback and said: “My God, she’s seen the other one—she’s seen the Sea Captain!”
It turned out that there was another ghost he had not told us about when we talked about the house. Sybil, he felt, had not made contact with the ghostly maidservant—perhaps she had found a more permanent niche by now—but somehow had picked up the scent of the ghostly seaman.
I questioned Tommy Moran, who at seventy-five knew the place better than any other person, what this sea captain business was all about.
“I don’t know his name, sir,” Tommy said, “but he was in the house about a hundred years ago. He bought this place and he thought so much about it, he went out to England to bring back his wife and family. He said when he was gone that he would come back, dead or alive!
“He died at sea, and he has since been seen by many, always in daylight, always smoking a cigar; Mike Sheils saw him sittin’ in the drawing room once. Several people saw him on the stairway and he always just disappeared. One of my sons saw him and it frightened him. He had no hat, but always this cigar. Very black hair, as tall as you are, sir, according to Mike Sheils.”
There you have it, a sea captain without his cap but with a cigar! On recollection, Sybil was not sure whether she heard him say, “So you’ve come back again” or “See, I’ve come back again.”
* 85
The Ghost at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
MAISON-LAFITTE IS A RUSTIC, elegant suburb of metropolitan Paris, reached easily by car within half an hour. Near the race course there is a cluster of townhouses within a park setting, aristocratic reminders of a disappearing elegance. More and more high-rise, high-price apartment houses have replaced the old residences.
On the corner of rue Racine and avenue Montaigne there stands a three-story residence within about an acre of landscaped grounds. When I visited the house it was exactly as it had been since it was built during the Second Empire, in the 1860s. A glass-enclosed conservatory faced toward the garden and a tower reached up beyond the roof in the romantic Victorian manner of the period. The only new addition was a low-ceilinged projection room on the other end of the garden: the last tenant had been motion picture personality Robert Lamoureux.
Inside the house, the appearance of an elegant town-house in the country was further maintained by the presence of high ceilings, white walls, gold appliances, and wrought-iron staircases in the front and rear.
No. 3 avenue Montaigne was built by Emperor Napoleon III for his own account. Ostensibly a hunting lodge (Maison-Lafitte was then still rural), in reality it housed a favorite mistress, whose portrait the Emperor had had painted and placed on the outside wall.
With the advent of the Republic, the house became state property and was maintained as a “Residence of State” until World War II. Important visitors—but not those important enough to be housed in the Elysée Palace—were lodged there. During World War II German soldiers occupied the house and, in the process, looted it of anything that was not nailed down. When Allied troops took over the property, they completed the job. Subsequently it was purchased by M. DuPrès, a gentleman interested in real estate. When Mme. DuPrès saw the house, she had him take it off the market and moved in with their family.
* * *
In the fall of 1949, Mr. and Mrs. D. rented it for their own use. Mr. D. was a high-ranking diplomat at the American Embassy in Paris. Mrs. D., Pennsylvania-born, was of English, Welsh, and Irish descent and was born with a caul, a fact some people regard as a sign of psychic talents. She and Mr. D. have four children and now live near Washington, D.C., where Mr. D. practices law.
When the D.s rented the house, they also took over the services of Paulette, the “bonne-à-tout-faire” who had been with the DuPrès family for many years. The house had meanwhile been tastefully refurnished and the appointme
nts included a fine grand piano in the “salon,” the large downstairs reception room where the lady in Napoleon’s life presumably met her illustrious lover whenever he visited her.
Mrs. D. liked the house from the start; but she could not help wondering about the oval portrait of the lovely lady attached to the wall of the tower.
Shortly after moving to the house, Mr. D. had to travel for three weeks on government business. Mrs. D. was left with her children, Paulette the maid, and a nurse-maid—neither of whom spoke a word of English. Mrs. D.’s French was then almost nonexistent, so she looked forward to a somewhat unusual relationship with her servants.
Several nights after her husband’s departure, Mrs. D. was awakened at 3 A.M. by the sound of music. It was a rambling but lovely piano piece being played somewhere nearby. Her first reaction was how inconsiderate the neighbors were to make music at such an hour, until she realized that she had no neighbors near enough to hear anything. It then struck her that the music came from inside her house, or, to be specific, from the salon downstairs. She rushed to the bathroom and sat down on an ice-cold bathtub to make sure she was awake. An hour later the playing stopped. During that hour she was much too scared to go down and see who was playing her piano. The music had not been particularly macabre, but rather more on the pleasant side and somewhat rambling.
Who was she to discuss her experience with? The Embassy staff would hardly react favorably to such matters and her French did not permit her to question the servants.
The haunted villa at La Tour Malakoff, Paris
The views from La Tour Malakoff
The next night, the ghostly piano music came on again, promptly at 3 A.M., and stopped just as promptly at 4 A.M. Night after night, she was being treated to a concert by unseen hands. Mrs. D. still would not venture downstairs at the time of the spooky goings-on, but prior to retiring she tried to set traps for her unknown visitor, such as closing the piano lid or leaving sheet music open at certain pages. But the ghost did not respond: everything was exactly as she had left it, and the music was as clear as ever.