by Hans Holzer
A little later, Roy Emery drove me back to Baltimore and dropped me off at my hotel. Coming back into town was almost like walking into a cold shower, but twenty-four hours later I had again grown accustomed to the rough and materialistic atmosphere of big-city life. I had promised the Emerys to come back someday with a trance medium and see whether I could perhaps let the unknown man on the landing have his say. In the meantime, however, I promised to look up the de Beauregards in France, and Mr. and Mrs. Emery promised to keep me informed of any further developments at Howard Lodge should they occur.
I had hardly returned from Europe when I received an urgent note from Mrs. Emery. On October 20, 1969, she wrote of an incident that had just happened a few weeks before my return.
A friend of mine recently lost her mother and I invited her for the weekend. She was brought here by a mutual friend who also spent the weekend. I was very tired that evening, and shortly before midnight I had to excuse myself. Barbara wanted to stay up and Don stayed with her, feeling that she wanted to talk.
The following morning they told me that they had been sitting in the living room, and that Barbara had turned off the lights because she wanted to enjoy the country peace to the utmost. They then both heard footsteps coming down the steps and assumed that I’d changed my mind and had joined them. They heard the steps cross the threshold and the loveseat creaked under the weight of someone sitting there. Barbara became aware that it was not I there with them, and she could hear someone breathing very regularly. Holding her own breath, she then asked Don if he could hear anything. He had, and had also been holding his breath, to hear better. Barbara and Don both commented on how friendly they felt this presence to be. They are both absolutely convinced that there was someone with them in that room.
It is perhaps a good thing that the unknown gentleman on the second-floor landing does not have to leave his safe retreat to go out into the countryside and search for whatever it is that keeps him on the spot. He would find his beloved countryside vastly changed beyond a few miles. As it is, he can remember it the way he loved it, the way Howard Lodge still reflects it. And the Emerys, far from being upset by the additional inhabitant in their old house, consider it a good omen that someone other than flesh and blood stands guard and peers out, the way a night watchman stands guard over precious property. It assures them of one more pair of eyes and ears should there be something dangerous approaching their house. In this day and age such thoughts are not entirely without reason.
As for the child whose breathing Mrs. Emery heard time and again, we must remember that children died far more often in bygone years than they do today. Child mortality rates were very high because medicine had not yet reached the point where many diseases could be prevented or their death toll sharply reduced. A child then was a far more fragile human being than perhaps it is today. Perhaps it was one of the children belonging to a former owner, who fell ill from a fever and died.
But the gentleman on the landing is another matter. Since it was the lady of the house primarily who felt him and got his attention, I assume that it was a woman who concerned him. Was he, then, looking out from his vantage point to see whether someone were returning home? Had someone left, perhaps, and did part of the gentleman go with her?
One can only surmise such things; there is no concrete evidence whatsoever that it is a gentleman whose lady had left him. Without wishing to romanticize the story, I feel that that may very well have been the case. It is perhaps a bit distressing not to know how to address one’s unseen guest other than to call him the “presence on the second-floor landing.” But Mrs. Emery knows he is friendly, and that is good enough for her.
* 110
The Oakton Haunt
OAKTON, VIRGINIA, IS ONE OF those very quiet suburban communities nestling fairly close to Washington, D.C., that has changed slowly but inevitably from completely rural to slightly suburban during the last few years. Many people who work in Washington have bought houses in this community. The houses are fairly far apart still, and the general character is one of uncrowded, rustic environment. When one drives through Oakton, one gets a rather placid, friendly feeling. None of the houses look particularly distinguished, nor do they look sinister or in any way outstanding. It takes all of forty-five minutes to get there when you leave the center of Washington, and you pass through several other villages before reaching Oakton. Thus, the community is well buffered from the main stream of capital life, and not given to extremes of either appearance or habit.
The house we were yet to know was owned by the Ray family. Virginia Ray and her husband, Albert, had come to friends of ours, Countess Gertrude d’Amecourt and her daughter, Nicole, now Mrs. Jackson, when they heard that I was amongst their friends. They had seen me on television in Washington and knew of my interest in hauntings. What they had seemed to fit into that category, and it occurred to the Rays to ask whether I could not have a look at their “problem.” On May 11, 1968 I was finally able to do so.
* * *
Nicole Jackson drove us out to Oakton—by “us” I mean my wife Catherine and myself. As yet we were not able to bring a medium along, but then I wanted to find out firsthand what exactly had happened that had disturbed the Rays to such an extent that they needed my help. After about forty-five minutes we arrived in a pleasant-looking country lane, at the end of which the house stood. The house itself was somewhat inside the grounds, and as we drove up we noticed a large barn to the left. Later on, we were to learn how important that barn was in the goings-on at the house.
Mr. and Mrs. Ray and various children and relatives had assembled to greet us. After some hand-shaking we were led into the downstairs parlor and made comfortable with various juices. It was a warm day for May, and the refreshments were welcome. When the excitement of our arrival had died down somewhat, I asked that those who had had experiences in the house come nearer so I could question them. The others I requested to keep back, so I could get my bearings without interruptions. In a roomful of people, young and old, this is an absolute necessity.
Albert Bartow Ray is retired now, and gives the impression of a man well set in his ways, happy to live in the country, and not particularly disturbed by unusual goings-on. His pleasant tone of voice, his slow way of moving about, seemed to me indicative of an average person, not in any way an occult buff or an hysterical individual likely to manufacture phenomena that did not really exist.
Virginia Ray also gave a very solid impression, and neither of the Rays was in any way frightened by what they had experienced. It was simply a matter of knowing what one had in one’s house, and if possible getting rid of it. But if I had not come, they would have lived on in the house—at least, in May they felt that way.
They had been in this house for about six years at the time of our visit. They liked it; they considered it a comfortable old house. They knew nothing about its history or background, except that the timbers holding up the house were old logs, and they had wooden pegs in them. Even the rafters of the roof were made of logs. This indicated that the house must have been built at least a hundred years ago.
* * *
When I inspected the building I found it pleasant and in no way eerie. The stairs leading to the upper story were wide and the bedrooms upstairs friendly and inviting. The land upon which the house stood was fairly substantial—perhaps two or three acres or more. About the most unusual thing outside the house was the large old barn, somewhat to the left of the house, and a stone in front of the house that looked not quite natural. Upon close inspection, I wondered whether perhaps it wasn’t an Indian tombstone, or perhaps an Indian altar of sorts. It looked far too regular to be completely shaped by nature. The Rays had no idea as to how it got into their garden, nor did they know anything particular about the history of the barn. All they knew was that both barn and house were old and that a long time before this the property had indeed been Indian territory. But so was most of the land around this area, so the fact that Indians lived there b
efore is not terribly surprising.
The Rays had bought the house in June 1962 from a family named Staton. The Statons stayed on until October of that year before the Rays could move in. After the series of events that had caused them to seek my help had happened, the Rays quite naturally made some inquiries about their house. Mrs. Ray tried to talk to neighbors about it, but it was difficult to get any concrete information. The former owner’s daughter, however, allowed that certain things did happen at the house, but she would not go into details.
Even before the Rays moved into the place, however, their experiences with the uncanny began.
* * *
“I came up one day,” Mr. Ray explained, “and the house was open. I locked the house up, and because the house was still vacant I would come by here two or three times a week and check it. Frank Pannell, a friend of mine who works for the county and sells real estate on the side called me one day and he says, would I meet him someplace, he had a contract he’d like for me to read over. I told him I would be here by 4:30, so he met me here. That was in the first part of November. We walked down to the lake—there’s a lake back here—we walked around and got in the house just about dark. There were two lights over this mantel that worked from a switch, and we had that light on. I was reading the contract, and he was standing here with me, when we heard something start to walk around upstairs. It sounded like a person. So I looked at Frank and said, ‘Frank, what is that?’ He said, ‘It’s somebody up there.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t be, the house is locked.’ He said, ‘Just the same, there’s someone up there.’ We went upstairs, but didn’t see anyone and came back down again. I started to read the contract when we heard something walking around again. We went halfway up the steps, when something seemed to walk right by our heads there. We came down here, and Frank said he could hear voices.
“The next thing that occurred was that my son Albert, Jr., and I came by here on a Friday after that following Thanksgiving. We had had some vandalism, kids had shot some windows out with a .22-rifle. So we had decided we’d spend the night here. We brought out some camping equipment and slept in the dining room. About 8:30, he said, ‘Dad, wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee or something?’ He took the car and drove up to Camp Washington. Well, while he was gone, I was lying here reading, with a reading light on. All of a sudden I heard something in the kitchen that sounded like somebody suffering—making all kinds of noises. I got up and walked in, turned the light on, and it stopped. We had a little fox terrier who’d bark at any noise. When the noise started again I called her and she came directly to me, but she never barked or growled as if she were afraid. I stood it is long as I could, then I got up and went into the kitchen again, but I didn’t see anything. I went down to the basement. I went all over the house. I went all over the yard. I went every place. There was no one there.”
“Did it sound human?” I interjected.
“Well, sir, it sounded like somebody moaning. I felt the hair standing up on the back of my neck.”
“And when your son came back?”
“We ate and went to sleep. I didn’t tell him about the noise I’d heard. He woke me about 3 o’clock in the morning telling me that he had been hearing noises. He had heard something moaning—the same noise, apparently, that I had heard.”
“Any other experiences prior to your actually moving in?” I asked. Evidently these phenomena were not dependent on human power source to manifest.
“My married daughter, Martha, then still in college, came here one night with me to check the house. She went upstairs, while I went in this room to check the thermostat. It was extremely cold, and I wanted to make sure the furnace would cut on and cut off. Suddenly she screamed and ran down the stairs, and said, ‘Daddy, something bumped into me!’ We went up, and every time I’d take a step, she’d take a step right behind me, almost stepping on me the whole time. So we went all over the house and didn’t find anything.
“A cousin named Martin was then stationed at Fort Belvoir, and he would come up over the weekend. He was having dinner with us, and we got to talking about it. He laughed and said, ‘Oh I don’t believe in anything like that.’ So he said to my son, ‘How about you and I spending the night out there? We’ll show your dad he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ So they came out. About 3 o’clock in the morning they called me from Camp Washington up here, and they were both talking over the phone at the same time. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and finally I quieted them down. Martin kept saying, ‘I believe it, I believe it!’ I said, ‘You believe what?’ And he said, ‘There’s something in that house.’ They could hear ‘things’ walking around, and different noises. I was living down in Sleepy Hollow then, and so I said, ‘I’ll meet you there.’ They said, ‘We won’t meet you at the house. We’ll meet you at the driveway.’ I locked the house up. Two weeks later, a group of boys—high school boys and my son—decided to come by and spend the night. But about 3 o’clock in the morning, there was a pounding on the door, and when I opened the door, in burst these five boys, all excited, all of them talking at the same time. They had meant to stay overnight, but left about 2:30 in the morning. They heard a lot of noise; they heard things walking around. There was snow on the ground at the time. But when they raised the blinds to the bay window, there was a man—a big man—with a straw hat on, standing outside looking in at them. They loosened the cord and the blind fell down. In a little while they got nerve enough to look out again. They could see a man standing out at the barn. They saw the white doors of that barn, and right in front they could see the outline of a man standing. That was too much. They ran out, got in the car, and drove away just as fast as they could. I had to come out here and lock the house up and turn all the lights out.
“That spring, 1964, there’d been termites in the house. I had a man working for me by the name of Omar Herrington. Mr. Herrington dug a trench all around the house and worked here for about four or five days. And we put chlordane around the foundation, the house, the barn, and garage. We removed the shrubs. I came out on a Friday to pay him, just about 11:30. As I drove up, he said, ‘Mr. Ray, weren’t you out here a little earlier? I heard you come in. I heard you walking around.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t me.’ ‘That’s funny,’ he replied. ‘The other day I heard something moaning like somebody in misery.”
“Did you ever see anything?” I asked Ray.
“Yes, on two occasions. One night in 1965 I stayed in this room, in the downstairs part of the house, and after watching television I went to sleep on the couch. My wife went upstairs. About 2 o’clock in the morning, something woke me up. I could hear some tingling noise. It sounded like glass wind chimes. I sat up on the couch, and I could see in the corner a bunch of little lights, floating in the air. It looked like they were trying to take on the shape of something. That’s the first time I really got scared. I turned the light on, and it just faded away.”
“And what was the second occasion that you saw something unusual?”
“That was in the bedroom upstairs, where my wife and I sleep, two or three months later. I woke up, and I thought it was my son standing by my bed. I said, ‘Bartow, what are you doing here?’ There was no answer. I said it again; I could see the outline and face of a person! I turned the light on, and there wasn’t anyone there. Then I got up and went to my son’s room, and there he was, sound asleep.”
“Did your wife see the apparition?”
“I don’t think so, but she kept telling me that there was something out in the barn. The barn is about a hundred and fifty feet away. I’m in the construction business, and one day I was drawing up a set of plans for a private school, working on the porch.
“All of a sudden, I heard a noise like tools being handled, out in the barn, as if they were being thrown all over the place! I went out and opened the door, but everything was in place. I came back three times that afternoon. I heard noise, went out, and everything was in place. I have three pigs, and I put them i
nto the lower part of the barn. Mr. Herrington would come by and feed the pigs every morning. One morning he said, ‘If you don’t stop following me around and standing back in the shadows and not saying anything, I’m going to stop feeding those pigs.’ I said, ‘Well, Mr. Herrington, I have not been standing out here.’ He said, ‘I know better, you were there!”’
“In digging around the house, have you ever found anything unusual in the soil?” I asked.
Mr. Ray nodded. “Yes, I found some things—broken old pottery, and in the garden I have found something that I think may be a tombstone. It’s a black rock; weather-beaten, but it was covered over with grass and the grass kept dying at that spot.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I dug down to see what it was, but I left it there. I pulled the grass off, and there’s a stone there, a square, cut stone.”
“Did the phenomena begin after you found this stone, or was it before?”
“Oh no, it started before that. It was two or three years later that I found that stone.”
“Did it make any difference, after you found the stone?”
“No, it didn’t seem to. Then, when my aunt, Alberta Barber, was visiting us, she broke her ankle. I had to sleep down here on a pallet beside her couch so that if she had to go to the bathroom, I could help her. One night, about 1 o’clock, there was a knocking on the wall, and it woke me up. She said, ‘What is it?’ I got up and turned the lights on, and didn’t see a thing. On two occasions my wife and I were dressing to go out for the evening, when there was a loud knock on the porch door. Virginia said to me, ‘Go down and see who it is.’ I went down, and there wasn’t a soul. One time, not too long ago, I was sleeping in the front left bedroom upstairs, and I felt something was in there; I could hear someone breathing. I got up and turned the light on and I didn’t see anybody. This was about 3 o’clock. I had some papers in the car. I went out, got the papers, and slammed the car door. At that moment something went up the side of the storage shed. I don’t know what it was.”