by Hans Holzer
“Passing between the Geraldine Castle (begun by Maurice Fitzgerald in 1176) and the Protestant church with its pre-Reformation tower, the avenue skirts Silken Thomas’s Tree (sixteenth century) and affords a fine view of the original college. In the center is the two-hundred-year-old mansion of John Stoyte, where the first students and professors labored, and behind it the buildings erected for them in 1797–99.
“Spacious cloisters are a feature of the Pugin part of Maynooth, and the cloister beginning at the College Chapel leads through a long array of episcopal portraits and groups of past students to the Library and St. Mary’s Oratory.
“The Junior House buildings (1832–34) contain the ‘Ghost Room’ which has been enshrined in a maze of gory legends since its conversion into an oratory (1860). They are flanked by a very pleasant rock garden. Beyond, one glimpses the towering trees of the College Park, stretching to the farm buildings in the distance. Nearby a simple yew glade leads to the Cemetery, where so many of the great Maynooth figures of the past now rest, undisturbed by the throbbing life around them as a new generation of Maynooth students prepares to carry on their work.”
My appetite was aroused. The following day we started out by car towards Maynooth, which is a little west of Dublin and easily reached within an hour’s driving time. Our driver immediately knew what we were looking for, having been with us before, so when we reached the broad gates of the College, he pulled up at the gatekeeper’s lodge and suggested I have a chat with him. Unfortunately, it started to rain and the chat was brief, but the man really did not know any more than second- or third-hand information. We decided to see for ourselves and drove past the ruined tower of the old Fitzgerald castle into the College grounds. Walking around just like ordinary tourists, we eventually made our way past the imposing main buildings into the courtyard where, according to the gatekeeper, the haunted dormitory was situated.
It was about four in the afternoon, and very few students were in evidence, perhaps because it was vacation time. The building called Rhetoric House was easy to spot, and we entered without asking permission from anyone—mainly because there was nobody around to ask. We realized, of course, that women were somewhat of an oddity here, but then this was a College and not a Trappist Monastery, and mothers must have visited here now and then, so I felt we were doing nothing sacrilegious by proceeding up the iron stairs of the rather drab-looking dormitory. When we reached the second story—always I first and Catherine and Sybil trailing me, in case they had to beat a hasty retreat—we finally found a human being at Maynooth. A young priest stood in one of the corridors in conversation with another priest, and when he saw me, he abruptly terminated it and came towards me, his curiosity aroused as to what I was doing here. As he later explained to me, some not-so-honest people had on occasion walked in and walked out with various items, so naturally he had learned to be careful about strangers. I dispelled his fears, however, by introducing myself properly, but I must have been slipshod in introducing my wife Catherine and Sybil Leek, for the good father thought Sybil was Cathy’s mother—not that Cathy was not honored!
When I asked for his own name, he smiled and said with the humor so often found in Irish priests: “My name is that of a character in one of James Joyce’s novels.”
“Bloom,” I said, smilingly.
“Of course not.”
“Well then,” I said thoughtfully, “it must be Finnegan.”
“You get ‘A’ for that. Finnegan it is.”
And it was thus that I became friendly with a charming gentleman of the cloth, Father Thomas A. Finnegan, a teacher at Maynooth.
I cautiously explained about our interest in the occult, but he did not seem to mind. To the contrary. Leading the way up the stairs, he brought us into the so-called haunted room.
The wall where the mysterious window had been was now boarded up and a statue of St. Joseph stood before the window. The rest of the room was quite empty, the floor shining; there was nothing sinister about it, at least not on first acquaintance.
I took some pictures and filmed the area as Sybil “poked around” in the room and adjacent corridor. Father Finnegan smiled. It was obvious he did not exactly believe in ghosts, nor was he afraid of them if they existed. He was genuinely fond of Maynooth and respected my historical interest along with the psychic.
“‘You’ve heard of the tradition about this room, of course,” he said, “but I’m sorry I can’t supply you with any firsthand experiences here.”
“Do you know of anyone who has had any uncanny feelings in this room?” I asked.
“Well, now, the room was closed in 1860, as you know,” the priest replied, “and the people who slept in it prior to that date would not be around now. Otherwise no one has reported anything recently—the room is rarely used, to begin with.”
Sybil seemed to sense something unpleasant at this point and hurried out of the room, down the corridor.
“There are two good sources on this room,” Father Finnegan said, as if he had read my thoughts. “There is Denis Meehan’s book, Window on Maynooth, published in 1949, and a somewhat longer account of the same story also can be found in Hostage to Fortune by Joseph O’Connor. I’ll send you one or both books, as soon as I can get hold of them.”
With that, Father Finnegan led us down the stairs and gave us the grand tour of Maynooth College, along the library corridors, the beautiful and truly impressive church of St. Patrick, the garden, and finally the museum, opened only about twenty years ago.
We thanked him and went back to our car. I then told the driver to stop just outside the College gates on a quiet spot in the road. Sybil was still under the sway of what we had just seen and heard and I wanted to get her psychic impressions while they were fresh.
“Where exactly were we?” Sybil asked. Despite the priest’s tour she was somewhat vague about the place.
“We’re at Maynooth, in County Kildare,” I replied, and added, “You’ve been in a haunted room on the third floor of a certain dormitory.”
“It’s a strange place, Hans,” Sybil said. “The downstairs is typical of any religious place, peaceful—but when we went upstairs I had a great desire to run. It was not fear, and yet—I felt I had to run. I had a strange feeling of an animal.”
“An animal?” I repeated.
“A four-legged animal. I had the feeling an animal had followed us down to what is now an oratory.”
“What did you feel in the room itself?”
“Fear.”
“Any part of the room in particular?”
“Yes, I went straight to the statue.”
“Where the window used to be?”
“I felt I wanted to run. I had the feeling of an animal presence. No human.”
“Anything else?”
“I developed a tremendous headache—which I generally do when I am where there has been a tragedy. It is gone now. But I had it all the time when I was on that floor.”
“Did you feel anyone went out that window?”
“Yes, for at that moment I was integrated into whatever had happened there and I could have gone out the window! I was surprised that there was a wall there.”
“Did you feel that something unresolved was still present?”
“Yes, I did. But to me it was a case of going back in time. It was a fear of something following you, chasing you.”
I thought of the account of the haunting, given by one of the students—the only one who got away with his life—who had seen “a black shape” in the room. Shades of the Hounds of the Baskervilles!
Had someone brought a large dog to the room and had the dog died there? We will never know for sure. Animal ghosts exist and to the novice such an image could indeed be so frightening as to induce him to jump out a window. Then, too, the College was built on old ground where in the Middle Ages a castle had stood, replete with keep, hunters—and dogs. Had something from that period been incorporated into the later edifice?
When we returned
to Dublin, I had the pictures taken developed but nothing unusual showed on them.
The following week, Father Finnegan sent me a copy of Window on Maynooth by Denis Meehan, a sometime professor at the College who is now a Benedictine monk in the United States, according to Patrick Byrne.
Here then, under the subtitle of “The Buildings of Junior House,” is Father Meehan’s account of the ghost room at Maynooth.
For the curious, however, the most interesting feature of Rhetoric House will certainly be the ghost room. The two upper floors are altogether residential, and the ghost room is, or rather was, Room No. 2 on the top corridor. It is now an oratory of St. Joseph. Legend, of course, is rife concerning the history of this room; but unfortunately everything happened so long ago that one cannot now guarantee anything like accuracy. The incident, whatever it may have been, is at least dated to some extent by a Trustee’s resolution of October 23rd, 1860. “That the President be authorised to convert room No. 2 on the top corridor of Rhetoric House into an Oratory of St. Joseph, and to fit up an oratory of St. Aloysius in the prayer hall of the Junior Students.”
The story, as it is commonly now detailed, for the edification of susceptible Freshmen, begins with a suicide. The student resident in this room killed himself one night. According to some he used a razor; but tellers are not too careful about such details. The next inhabitant, it is alleged, felt irresistibly impelled to follow suit, and again, according to some, he did. A third, or it may have been the second, to avoid a similar impulse, and when actually about to use his razor, jumped through the window into Rhetoric yard. He broke some bones, but saved his life. Subsequently no student could be induced to use the room; but a priest volunteered to sleep or keep vigil there for one night. In the morning his hair was white, though no one dares to relate what his harrowing experiences can have been. Afterwards the front wall of the room was removed and a small altar of St. Joseph was erected.
The basic details of the story have doubtless some foundation in fact, and it is safe to assume that something very unpleasant did occur. The suicide (or suicides), in so far as one can deduce from the oral traditions that remain, seems to have taken place in the period 1842–48. A few colorful adjuncts that used to form part of the stock in trade of the story teller are passing out of memory now. Modern students for instance do not point out the footprint burned in the wood, or the bloodmarks on the walls.
92
The Ghostly Sailor of Alameda
ONE NIGHT IN THE early spring of 1965, the telephone rang and a pleasant voice said, “I think I’ve got a case for you, Mr. Holzer. I’m calling from Alameda, California.”
Before the young lady could run up an impressive telephone bill, I stopped her and asked her to jot down the main points of her story for my records. She promised this, but it took several months to comply. Evidently the ghost was not so unpleasant as she thought it was the night she had to call me long-distance, or perhaps she had learned to live with the unseen visitor.
It had all started four years before when Gertrude Frost’s grandmother bought a house in Alameda, an island in San Francisco Bay connected with the mainland by a causeway and mainly covered by small homes—many of which belong to people connected with the nearby naval installations. The house itself was built around 1917.
After the old lady died, Miss Frost’s mother had the house. Noises in the night when no one was about kept Miss Frost and her mother and aunt, who shared the house with her, from ever getting a good night’s sleep. It did not sound like a very exciting case and I was frankly skeptical since there are many instances where people think they hear unnatural noises when in fact they merely ascribe supernormal character to what is actually natural in origin. But I was going to be in the area, and decided to drop in.
I asked Claude Mann, a news reporter from Oakland’s Channel 2, to accompany us—my wife Catherine and my good friend Sybil Leek, who did not have the faintest idea where Alameda was or that we were going there. Not that Sybil cared—it was merely another assignment and she was willing. The date was July 1, 1965, and it was pleasantly warm—in fact, a most unghostly type of day.
As soon as we approached the little house, we quickly unloaded the camera equipment and went inside where two of the ladies were already expecting us. I promptly put Sybil into one of the easy chairs and began my work—or rather Sybil began hers.
Although the house was in the middle of the island and no indication of the ocean could be seen anywhere near it, Sybil at once remarked that she felt the sea was connected with the house in some way; she felt a presence in the house but not associated with it directly.
As soon as Sybil was in deep trance, someone took over her vocal cords.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Dominic....”
“Do you live in this house?”
“No house...water...fort...tower....”
“What are you doing here?”
“Have to wait...Tiana....”
“What does Tiana mean?”
“Tiana...boat....”
“Where does the boat go?”
“Hokeite...Hokeite....”
“What year is this?”
“1902.”
“What is your rank?”
“Mid–ship–man.” He had difficulty in enunciating. The voice had a strangely unreal quality, not at all like Sybil’s normal speaking voice but more like the thin voice of a young man.
I continued to question the ghostly visitor.
“Are you serving on this boat?”
“Left here,” he replied. “I’m going to break...everything up.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Those things...got to go...because they are untidy ...I shall break them up...they say I’m mad...I’m not mad...”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-one....”
“Where were you born?”
“I was born...Hakeipe....”
I was not sure whether he said “Hakeipe” or “Hakeite,” but it sounded something like that.
“What state?” I had never heard of such a place.
“No state,” the ghost said, somewhat indignant because I did not know better.
“Then where is it?” I demanded.
“In Japan,” the ghost informed me. I began to wonder if he didn’t mean Hakodate, a harbor of some importance. It had a fair number of foreign people at all times, being one of the principal seaports for the trade with America and Europe. It would be pronounced “Hak-odeit,” not too different from what I had heard through Sybil’s mediumship.
“Break them up, break them up,” the ghost continued to mumble menacingly, “throw those little things... into...faces...I don’t like faces...people....”
“Do you realize time has gone on?”
“Time goes on,” the voice said sadly.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What are they doing here?” the ghost shot back angrily.
It was his land, he asserted. I asked if he had built anything on it.
“The tower is here,” he said cryptically, “to watch the ships. I stay here.”
“Are you American?”
“No, I’m Italian.”
“Are you a merchant sailor or Navy?”
“Navy...why don’t you go away?”
“What do you want here?”
“Nothing....”
I explained about his death and this evoked cold anger.
“Smash everything....”
I decided to change the subject before the snarling became completely unintelligible.
Claude Mann’s cameras were busily humming meanwhile.
“Did you serve in the American Navy?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your serial number!”
“Serial...one...eight...eight...four...three.”
“Where did you enlist?”
“Hakkaite.”
It did not make sense to me, so I repeate
d the question. This time the answer was different. Perhaps he had not understood the first time.
“In ’meda,” he said.
Sailors call Alameda by this abbreviation. How could Sybil, newly arrived here, have known this? She could not, and I did not.
“Who’s your commanding officer?”
“Oswald Gregory.”
“What rank?”
“Captain.”
“The name of your ship.”
“Triana.”
“How large a ship?”
“I don’t know....”
I asked about his family. Did he have a wife, was he well? He became more and more reluctant. Finally he said:
“I’m not answering questions....”
“Your father’s name?” I continued.
“Guiseppe.”
“Mother?”
“Matilone....”
“Sister or brothers?”
“Four....”
“They live in Hokkaipe,” he added.
“Where did you go to school?”
“Hokkaipe Mission....”
He came to this place in 1902, he asserted, and was left behind because he was sick.
“I wait for next trip...but they never came back. I had bad headache. I was lying here. Not a house. Water.”
I then asked what he was doing to let people know about his presence.
“I can walk—as well as anyone,” he boasted. “I play with water, I drop things....”
I reasoned with him. His father and mother were waiting for him to join them. Didn’t he want to be with them? I received a flat “No.” He wasn’t interested in a family reunion. I tried to explain about real estate. I explained that the house was fully paid for and he was trespassing. He could not have cared less.
I questioned his honesty and he did not like that. It made him waver in his determination to break everything up.
I spoke to him of the “other side” of life. He asked that I take him there.
He now recalled his sisters’ names, Matild’ and Alissi, or something that sounded like it.
“We’ve come to fetch you, Dominic.” I said, suggesting he “go across.”
“You’re late,” he snarled.