by Hans Holzer
“I live! How can I get to that beyond?”
“If you leave your memories behind.”
“The silence of the pool, of the blackness.”
“I’ve helped you so far. Touch your left ear gently and I will prove it to you. You feel that there is an earring? Women wear earrings; men do not.”
“Who did this to me?”
“Nobody did it to you. It isn’t you.”
“Makes talk so radical.”
“There are things that you don’t understand about yourself, and I am here to teach you. You are free to go if you wish.”
“Free, free! May I go then—into the blackness where it is no longer memory?”
“Yes, I will send you there if you wish. But you’ve got to be calm and listen to me. It’s no use being angry and desperate.”
“Who shackles me so!”
“Nobody shackles you. This is a woman’s body, and you are speaking through her voice.”
“Woman!”
“A lady who has been kind enough to help you.”
“Who does it to me—these outrageous things?”
“You have passed into another dimension, another world, from which you are now speaking to us, by means that you do not understand. We are here to help you, not to make you unhappy. Would you like me to help you out of here? It is up to you.”
“Out of here?”
“Into a better world, if you wish.”
“Better world? That is oblivion?”
“You’ve got to ask for it. It cannot be done without your approval.”
“I ask for it. I ask for that. Give it to me, give it to me.”
“Then do you obey the laws to lead you there? There are certain laws. You have to follow them.”
“Take my Emma. Take her into the happy land.”
“All right. But in order for you to go, there is something you must do. Are you listening to me?”
“I hear. I hear.”
“You must leave behind your unhappy memories.”
“I can’t leave them. They are part of me.”
“You will give them to me, and I will take them out.”
“But Leon—he will not leave me in peace.”
“Leon is dead. He cannot touch you.”
“Dead?”
“He’s gone.”
“Like that? Gone?”
“Yes. Many years have passed.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. You’re safe. Free.”
“She will not know.”
“No.”
“I can see light again, and happiness, forgetful that he is gone?”
“He’s gone.”
“Then it will not be divulged.”
“You cannot be free from it until you divulge it to me—only to me, and to no one else.”
“When I go into oblivion, I can give nothing to anyone. Let me live my life.”
“Who is Leon? Who is he to you?”
“I must seal my lips. I must go my unhappy way.”
“Then you will never be free.”
“I must go into oblivion. You promised. You take away.”
“I don’t take away, but you promised to obey the law. The law is you must tell the story and then forget it.”
“I tell it to my own soul. You are not God. And I have no obligation to anyone but my own God!”
I decided to find another approach. Evidently the discarnate spirit was a tough nut to crack.
“What year is this?”
There was only silence to the question.
“Who rules this country?”
“Thomas Jefferson.”
“No, Jefferson is dead. This isn’t Jefferson’s day.”
“Then I am dead.”
“You are!”
“Let me go in peace. Good day!”
“You’re dead, and yet you’re alive. They all are alive, too, over there.”
“Good day, my good friend. I cannot longer speak. We do not exist on the same plane.”
“No, but we speak to each other through this lady. A hundred and seventy years have gone by, my friend, a hundred and seventy years. Do you understand? It is a hundred seventy years later. It’s very difficult for you to understand this. You have been staying in this house for a long time for no reason, except to suffer. What happened to you, happened a long time ago. And it is all in the past. You are completely free. You needn’t go into oblivion. You needn’t go any place if you don’t wish. You’re a free person.”
“Ahh—and Emma?”
“She’s just as free as you are. You have nothing to fear.”
“My hands are free. My mind is free. Let me go with my own.”
“Not until you tell me who you are. This is part of our deal, remember? If you’re a man of honor you must obey the law.”
“Until I find myself a man of honor—”
“You are.”
“If there is a heaven above, if there is a golden light, and I am alive—these hundred and seventy years—man, are you mad? You do not speak the truth. I cannot trust you.”
“It is the truth. You’ll find out for yourself.”
“Let me go. I have been always free.”
“Very well then, tell the one who has brought you what you want to be kept a secret, that he may take you away from here.”
“Emma—where is she?”
“She’s over there waiting for you. They’re all over there. Leon is over there, too.”
“God, no! Then I can’t go! He will talk!”
“Then why don’t you tell me? I can arrange it.”
“No, you cannot. If I go into my grave with the secret, and my soul—”
“You are in your grave. You’ve been through the grave. You’re out of it now. The secret is known.”
“Then it is on my soul and it remains there.”
“You can’t be free with it. You must get rid of it.”
“I have been told by those who have spoken to me from pulpits that if I take my great burden to Him beyond, I will never—”
“You will not succeed unless you wish to.”
Again, I changed my approach, since the personality seemed unyielding.
“Is your name Lewis?”
“I will take that with me, too. I have pride, have soul, and a sense of being, and it is coming back to me. I thank you friend, for opening the ropes that bound me. I am free. I feel it.”
“Then go. Go in peace.”
“Emma—I can look on you now.”
“Albert, help him across.”
“I can go with you now, Emma. I give you thanks, my friend. But I still maintain my freedom of soul.”
“Albert, take him. Albert, please.”
Immediately, Albert’s crisp voice returned. “Yes, yes.”
“Have you learned anything further?”
“I think he’s right, my good friend. Confessions are not the best fate, and this is true.”
“How did he die, and why?”
“He did it himself.”
“It was suicide?”
“Yes it was.”
“Why?”
“To keep from revealing the truth.”
“What was so terrible about the truth?”
“That is his secret.”
“What period was this?”
“It was the turn of the century I believe.”
“Did he do anything wrong?”
“He has a guilt complex, that is quite certain.”
“Did he tie his own arms and hang himself?”
“He put a rope around his neck—he put a rope around his hands in back of himself...”
“Who is this Leon he keeps yelling about?”
“An individual, I believe, he harmed. I would say that it was a ghost that taunted him.”
“You mean the man died before him?”
“That is right.”
“And Emma?”
“Emma saw the swaying body.”
“Emma was his wife.”
>
“That is right. There were three offspring.”
“Is the girl one of them—the teen-age girl that the instrument saw?”
“I believe the granddaughter.”
“Are any of them still here?”
“I do not see them. Emma is also listening, has gone with him.”
“Is anything buried in the garden?”
“Leon.”
“Did he kill Leon?”
“I would say so.”
“Oh, he killed him? For some reason?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t got any idea what this is?”
“That would not divulge what had happened in their youth.”
“What was this man’s background?”
“I think he was a man of considerable wealth.”
“He built this house?”
“That is right. Earlier. It could have belonged to Leon; that is, the property.”
“Was he in any official position or just a businessman?”
“Man of fortune; let’s put it this way. A gentleman.”
“He’s a bit insane, isn’t he?”
“Well—when one lives for a hundred and seventy years with a memory of guilt, plus your throat being crushed by rope and your arms torn by the ropes that are on the hands...”
“Yes, it must be uncomfortable. Well, be sure the instrument is protected, and I suggest we bring her back.”
“I will release the instrument.”
“Thank you for coming.”
A moment later, Ethel was back as “herself,” remembering nothing of the previous hour. I handed her the ring that had so mysteriously appeared in the house and asked her to psychometrize it.
“I would say that this belongs to an older woman. It would be mother to the younger woman.”
“Do you get any additional information about this?”
“I would say an E. She’s the mother of a younger woman, also with an E.”
“That younger woman—what about her? How does she fit in?”
“The younger woman I think is the one I hear screaming. I feel this woman may be sometimes even seen. I want to rock, I want to rock. She says nothing, or does nothing but just rock. The younger woman, the thin woman, they seem concerned about each other.”
* * *
I turned to Mrs. Dickey to check out some of the material. “Mrs. Dickey, to refresh my memory, who built the house?”
“This structure was built in 1865 by Homer Leroy Salisbury.”
“But before that?”
“The records for those years are destroyed; the books are not in existence. But the basement foundation is very much older. Revolutionary, perhaps. There are windows down there, and doorways. It may have been originally the first place that people lived in.”
“Is there any record of the owner of the land before the turn of the eighteenth century?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have you ever seen a person in the area in which Mrs. Meyers felt the main disturbance?”
“I have not, but a friend has.”
“Who was the friend?”
“Pat Hughes.”
“What did she see or feel in that area?”
“She heard noises and footsteps, and saw a woman walking into this room, right by this wall. Walked right in and stood in the room.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“She had dark hair, fairly young, tall and slender, with a red robe or long red dress on, and she had her hand up at her throat.”
“What about the man Mrs. Meyers described?”
“Adam comes here, and we think he’s harmful. He frightens us. Since I’ve seen you last, we’ve had something happen that we never had before. Joyce and Patty and I walked in here. It was a quiet day and we sat down on these two couches. It was evening. We were just talking quietly and had our minds on Joyce’s forthcoming wedding when we heard the most enormous noise—just like the whole house was crashing down. This wall over here almost vibrated. We all jumped up and we couldn’t figure it out.”
“There was nothing to cause it?”
“No. Again, during the night, a shattering noise woke up everybody.”
Mrs. Jean Vanderhoff, who had formerly owned the house, was among those present. Long after she had left this house, she found herself working a Ouija board. To her surprise, a personality contacted her through the board—and not too gently, either.
“He said he had been hunting for me,” Mrs. Vanderboff began.
“Now this is a character that came through your Ouija board?”
“That came through the Ouija board.”
“Long after you moved out of here.”
“Yes, several months ago; this year. He said he had been hunting for me for a long time because I had to take him back—to bring him back to this house—and that I was the only one that could do it.”
“What was his name?”
“Nat. And he said he was the master’s servant, and that he and his daughter were buried out behind the barn. I asked him various and sundry questions, but mainly he wanted to come back because his daughter was still here, and I said, ‘Well, why are you causing these people all of this trouble? You never caused us any.’ He replied, ‘Well, you have never lain at the top and tasted the unhappiness.’ I said, ‘Are you telling me your room was in the tower?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and he had to get back, because his daughter was still here. I said, ‘I wouldn’t consider taking you back as long as you misbehave.’ He replied, ‘I will misbehave because I will drive them out.”
“While you were living here, did you have any experiences?”
“Only when we remodeled. We put in this bay window across here.”
“What happened when you remodeled?”
“At night there were the most tremendous noises, and it sounded as though they were throwing the furniture around, and every morning at 2 o’clock the garage doors banged up and down. We had a friend sleeping in the back room, and one morning I said, ‘What were you doing with a girl in your room?’ And he said, ‘I had no girl in my room.”‘
“Do you remember who it was who slept in that room—this friend?”
“Colonel Powell.”
“Did he know about anything unusual about the house beforehand?”
“No, he said he had no one in his room. Then the next night he heard all this racket out there and rushed out to catch whatever it was, and the table had been moved in the kitchen. He fell over this table and hurt his leg.”
“Interestingly,” commented Mrs. Dickey now, “we got a communicator named Emma, that came through on the board.”
“When? This is important.”
“Since you were here the last time. We never had Emma before, but we don’t play with the board much anymore because you said, leave it alone.”
“When was the first time the name Emma came to you?”
“After your first visit. But we got no messages, we just kept getting this name.”
“Prior to our visit today, has anybody discussed with you the name Emma?”
“No.”
“Therefore, the Emma you got on the Ouija board is separate from what we got here today.”
“There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Dickey resumed talking about the past of the house.
“Indians were around here a long time ago as this was part of the Indian trail. Also, the foundations of the older house are underneath the fireplace.”
“I see a door, where the man was,” Ethel said and scowled. “He was standing about here, when I first saw him, and he went through right about there. I think there were two rooms here.”
“Is this correct?” I asked Mrs. Dickey.
“Correct,” she replied. “It was divided.”
Ethel suddenly seemed to be listening to something or someone. “I don’t think you’ll get this disturbance, but I keep hearing a sound like moaning, high moaning—ooh—ooh.”
With Ethel leading us, we ascended th
e narrow stairs to the top room.
“What do you think of this room?” I asked the medium.
“I get a different person up here altogether. Male. High forehead, hair parted, longish face, fairly good-sized nose. Looks like an Irishman. Seems to have a beard on, and then takes it off.”
“Is he connected with the other situation?”
“No, he’s dressed differently, I get the name Pat. I think he went out with a heart condition.”
Ethel stopped at the desk in the corner.
“Somebody sat here and wrote.”
“Is a writer connected with this house?” I asked Mrs. Dickey.
“I think you’re talking about Salisbury, the man who built this house. He was tall, and lean, and very erudite. He wrote a diary of his Civil War experiences.”
“The noise that came when you changed things about the house, I think came from the Irishman, Pat.”
* * *
It was getting late in the day and I wanted to get Ethel Meyers home in time for dinner, so we said good-by and just caught the New York flight. Once in the air, I had a chance to think over some of the things that had happened this eventful afternoon. For one thing, a whole array of characters from the past had been identified, more or less, by my medium. Most outstanding, in an evidential sense, was the fact that the name Emma had been received by those in the house prior to Ethel’s coming and the trance session with her in which the name Emma was disclosed. Despite my misgivings about the use of the Ouija board, I have always held that on occasion true psychic material can come in this manner. Later, I was to learn that Lucy Dickey was indeed a budding medium, and that it was her presence in the house that made the Ouija board work. It is possible that the young people living with her might have added some psychic power to it, but the essential catalyst was Mrs. Dickey herself.
It is not remarkable but rather pleasing in a scientific way that Ethel Meyers pinpointed immediately upon arrival the area of the main disturbances. The staircase and the door leading to an area that had been rearranged structurally was indeed where the figure of the man had appeared and where most of the noises had originated. We had inspected the premises from the cellar to the top, especially around the area of the chimney, which roughly took up the center of the house. There had been no rational explanation for any loud noises in the area. Nothing was loose, nothing could have caused a loud noise, rattling, movement of objects, or anything of the kind, so eloquently and distinctively described by several witnesses.