by Hans Holzer
* * *
Nothing further was heard from either the Rays or anyone else concerning the house until April 20, 1969.
Mrs. Ray wrote us from her new address in McLean, Virginia. “I feel like we have gone off and left the ‘presence.’ Mr. Ray is much less tense, as we all are to a degree.” But that same day at 4 o’clock in the morning she woke up with a start. Suddenly she knew what the troubled entity wanted. Even though they had left the house, the unfortunate one was able to reach out to her at the same hour at which most of the audible phenomena had taken place. Perhaps this was a last message from the haunt of Oakton. Mrs. Ray hoped that it would indeed be the final message, and that she would be troubled no more.
When she understood what the entity wanted, she immediately set about to fulfill his wish. Quietly and without fanfare she made arrangements with an Episcopal priest to have the house exorcised. This, of course, was done through prayer, in a very ancient ritual going back to the early days of the Church. Sometimes it is effective, sometimes it is not. It depends upon the one who is being exorcised, whether or not he accepts the teachings of the Church, and whether or not he is a believer in a Deity.
* * *
The Rays did not keep in touch any longer with the new owners of their property, but once in a while word came back to them about their former home. A friend who hadn’t heard of their removal to McLean tried to visit them. When the gentleman drove up to the gate, he realized that something was different. The gates had always been wide open, as had the hospitality and heart of the Rays. Now, however, he found the gate was closed. A somber, almost forbidding air hung around the Oakton house. Sadly, the gentleman turned around and left. He knew then without asking that the Rays had moved on.
A tombstone unmarked in the garden, a haunted barn, and a scrawled message written by a desperate hand from beyond the grave—do they indicate someone’s unavenged death? So often I have heard “pray for me” when a soul has passed over in anguish and, clinging steadfastly to the beliefs of the Church, wants the final benediction, even postmortem. Could it not be that the Oakton haunt was resolved not by a parapsychologist and his medium prying further into the tangled affairs of someone long dead, but by the simple prayer of an Episcopal priest doing so at a distance? If and when the house is again for sale, we will know for sure.
* 111
The Restless Ghost of the Sea Captain
WHEN A NEW ENGLAND SALT has a grievance, he can sometimes take it to his grave. That is, if he were in his grave. In this case the sea captain in question never really passed away completely. He is still in what used to be his house, pushing people around and generally frightening one and all.
Spending time in this house is not easy. But I did, and somehow survived the night.
Some of the best leads regarding a good ghost story come to me as the result of my having appeared on one of many television or radio programs, usually discussing a book dealing with the subject of psychic phenomena. So it happened that one of my many appearances on the Bob Kennedy television show in Boston drew unusually heavy mail from places as far away as other New England states and even New York.
Now if there is one thing ghosts don’t really care much about it is time—to them everything is suspended in a timeless dimension where the intensity of their suffering or problem remains forever instant and alive. After all, they are unable to let go of what it is that ties them to a specific location, otherwise they would not be that we so commonly (and perhaps a little callously) call ghosts. I am mentioning this as a way of explaining why, sometimes, I cannot respond as quickly as I would like to when someone among the living reports a case of a haunting that needs to be looked into. Reasons were and are now mainly lack of time but more likely lack of funds to organize a team and go after the case. Still, by and large, I do manage to show up in time and usually manage to resolve the situation.
Thus it happened that I received a letter dated August 4, 1966 sent to me via station WBZ-TV in Boston, from the owner of Cap’n Grey’s Smorgasbord, an inn located in Barnstable on Cape Cod. The owner, Lennart Svensson, had seen me on the show.
“We have experienced many unusual happenings here. The building in which our restaurant and guest house is located was built in 1716 and was formerly a sea captain’s residence,” Svensson wrote.
I’m a sucker for sea captains haunting their old houses so I wrote back asking for details. Svensson replied a few weeks later, pleased to have aroused my interest. Both he and his wife had seen the apparition of a young woman, and their eldest son had also felt an unseen presence; guests in their rooms also mentioned unusual happenings. It appeared that when the house was first built the foundation had been meant as a fortification against Indian attacks. Rumor has it, Svensson informed me, that the late sea captain had been a slave trader and sold slaves on the premises.
Svensson and his wife, both of Swedish origin, had lived on the Cape in the early 1930s, later moved back to Sweden, to return in 1947. After a stint working in various restaurants in New York, they acquired the inn on Cape Cod.
I decided a trip to the Cape was in order. I asked Sybil Leek to accompany me as the medium. Svensson explained that the inn would close in October for the winter, but he, and perhaps other witnesses to the phenomena, could be seen even after that date, should I wish to come up then. But it was not until June 1967, the following year, that I finally contacted Svensson to set a date for our visit. Unfortunately, he had since sold the inn and, as he put it, the new owner was not as interested in the ghost as he was, so there was no way for him to arrange for our visit now.
But Svensson did not realize how stubborn I can be when I want to do something. I never gave up on this case, and decided to wait a little and then approach the new owners. Before I could do so, however, the new owner saw fit to get in touch with me instead. He referred to the correspondence between Svensson and myself, and explained that at the time I had wanted to come up, he had been in the process of redoing the inn for its opening. That having taken place several weeks ago, it would appear that “we have experienced evidence of the spirit on several occasions, and I now feel we should look into this matter as soon as possible.” He invited us to come on up whenever it was convenient, preferably yesterday.
The new owner turned out to be a very personable attorney named Jack Furman of Hyannis. When I wrote we would indeed be pleased to meet him, and the ghost or ghosts as the case might be, he sent us all sorts of information regarding flights and offered to pick us up at the airport. Furman was not shy in reporting his own experiences since he had taken over the house.
“There has been on one occasion an umbrella mysteriously stuck into the stairwell in an open position. This was observed by my employee, Thaddeus B. Ozimek. On another occasion when the inn was closed in the early evening, my manager returned to find the front door bolted from the inside, which appeared strange since no one was in the building. At another time, my chef observed that the heating plant went off at 2:30 A.M., and the serviceman, whom I called the next day, found that a fuse was removed from the fuse box. At 2:30 in the morning, obviously, no one that we know of was up and around to do this. In addition, noises during the night have been heard by occupants of the inn.”
I suggested in my reply that our team, consisting of Sybil Leek, Catherine (my wife at the time), and myself, should spend the night at the inn as good ghost hunters do. I also requested that the former owner, Svensson, be present for further questioning, as well as any direct witnesses to phenomena. On the other hand, I delicately suggested that no one not concerned with the case should be present, keeping in mind some occasions where my investigations had been turned into entertainment by my hosts to amuse and astound neighbors and friends.
The date for our visit was scheduled for August 17, 1967—a car and two weeks after the case first came to my attention. But much of a time lag, the way it is with ghosts.
When we arrived at the inn, after a long and dusty journey by car, the si
ght that greeted us was well worth the trip. There, set back from a quiet country road amid tall, aged trees, sat an impeccable white colonial house, two stories high with an attic, nicely surrounded by a picket fence, and an old bronze and iron lamp at the corner. The windows all had their wooden shutters opened to the outside and the place presented such a picture of peace that it was difficult to realize we had come here to confront a disturbance. The house was empty, as we soon realized, because the new owner had not yet allowed guests to return—considering what the problems were!
Soon after we arrived at the house, Sybil Leek let go of her conscious self in order to immerse herself in the atmosphere and potential presences of the place.
“There is something in the bedroom...in the attic,” Sybil said immediately as we climbed the winding stairs. “I thought just now someone was pushing my hair up from the back,” she then added.
Mr. Furman had, of course, come along for the investigation. At this point we all saw a flash of light in the middle of the room. None of us was frightened by it, not even the lawyer who by now had taken the presence of the supernatural in his house in stride.
We then proceeded downstairs again, with Sybil Leek assuring us that whatever it was that perturbed her up in the attic did not seem to be present downstairs. With that we came to a locked door, a door that Mr. Furman assured us had not been opened in a long time. When we managed to get it open, it led us to the downstairs office or the room now used as such. Catherine, ever the alert artist and designer that she was, noticed that a door had been barred from the inside, almost as if someone had once been kept in that little room. Where did this particular door lead to, I asked Mr. Furman. It led to a narrow corridor and finally came out into the fireplace in the large main room.
“Someone told me if I ever dug up the fireplace,” Furman intoned significantly, “I might find something.”
What that something would be, was left to our imagination. Furman added that his informant had hinted at some sort of valuables, but Sybil immediately added, “bodies...you may find bodies.”
She described, psychically, many people suffering in the house, and a secret way out of the house—possibly from the captain’s slave trading days?
Like a doctor examining a patient, I then examined the walls both in the little room and the main room and found many hollow spots. A bookcase turned out to be a false front. Hidden passages seemed to suggest themselves. Quite obviously, Furman was not about to tear open the walls to find them. But Mrs. Leek was right: the house was honeycombed with areas not visible to the casual observer.
Sybil insisted we seat ourselves around the fireplace, and I insisted that the ghost, if any, should contact us there rather than our trying to chase the elusive phantom from room to room. “A way out of the house is very important,” Mrs. Leek said, and I couldn’t help visualizing the unfortunate slaves the good (or not so good) captain had held captive in this place way back.
But when nothing much happened, we went back to the office, where I discovered that the front portion of the wall seemed to block off another room beyond it, not accounted for when measuring the outside walls. When we managed to pry it open, we found a stairwell, narrow though it was, where apparently a flight of stairs had once been. Catherine shone a flashlight up the shaft, and we found ourselves below a toilet in an upstairs bathroom! No ghost here.
We sat down again, and I invited the presence, whomever it was, to manifest. Immediately Mrs. Leek remarked she felt a young boy around the place, one hundred fifty years ago. As she went more and more into a trance state, she mentioned the name Chet...someone who wanted to be safe from an enemy...Carson...
“Let him speak,” I said.
“Carson...1858..., “Sybil replied, now almost totally entranced as I listened carefully for words coming from her in halting fashion.
“I will fight...Charles...the child is missing....”
“Whom will you fight? Who took the child?” I asked in return.
“Chicopee...child is dead.”
“Whose house is this?”
“Fort...
“Whose is it?”
“Carson....”
“Are you Carson?”
“Captain Carson.”
“What regiment?”
“Belvedere...cavalry...9th...
“Where is the regiment stationed?”
There was no reply.
“Who commanded the regiment?” I insisted.
“Wainwright...Edward Wainwright...commander.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four years.”
“Where were you born?”
“Montgomery...Massachusetts.”
“How old are you now?”
There was no reply.
“Are you married?”
“My son...Tom...ten
“What year was he born in?”
“Forty...seven...”
“Your wife’s name?”
“Gina...”
“What church do you go to?”
“I don’t go.”
“What church do you belong to?”
“She is...of Scottish background...Scottish kirk.”
“Where is the kirk located?”
“Six miles...”
“What is the name of this village we are in now?”
“Chicopee...”
Further questioning provided more information. We learned that “the enemy” had taken his boy, and the enemy were the Iroquois. This was his fort and he was to defend it. I then began, as I usually do, when exorcism is called for, to speak of the passage of time and the need to realize that the entity communicating through the medium was aware of the true situation in this respect. Did Captain Carson realize that time had passed since the boy had disappeared?
“Oh yes,” he replied. “Four years.”
“No, a hundred and seven years,” I replied.
Once again I established that he was Captain Carson, and there was a river nearby and Iroquois were the enemy. Was he aware that there were “others” here besides himself.
He did not understand this. Would he want me to help him find his son since they had both passed over and should be able to find each other there?
“I need permission...from Wainwright....”
As I often do in such cases, I pretended to speak for Wainwright and granted him the permission. A ghost, after all, is not a rational human being but an entity existing in a delusion where only emotions count.
“Are you now ready to look for your son?”
“I am ready.”
“Then I will send a messenger to help you find him,” I said, “but you must call out to your son...in a loud voice.”
The need to reach out to a loved one is of cardinal importance in the release of a trapped spirit.
“John Carson is dead...but not dead forever,” he said in a faint voice.
“You lived here in 1858, but this is 1967,” I reminded him.
“You are mad!”
“No, I’m not mad. Touch your forehead...you will see this is not the body you are accustomed to. We have lent you a body to communicate with us. But it is not yours.”
Evidently touching a woman’s head did jolt the entity from his beliefs. I decided to press on.
“Go from this house and join your loved ones who await you outside....”
A moment later Captain Carson had slipped away and a sleepy Leek opened her eyes.
I now turned to Furman, who had watched the proceedings with mounting fascination. Could he corroborate any of the information that had come to us through the entranced medium?
“This house was built on the foundations of an Indian fort,” he confirmed, “to defend the settlers against the Indians.”
“Were there any Indians here in 1858?”
“There are Indians here even now,” Furman replied. “We have an Indian reservation at Mashpee, near here, and on Martha’s Vineyard there is a tribal chief and quite a large Indian
population.”
We later learned that Chicopee Indians were indeed in this area. Also there was an Indian uprising in Massachusetts as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, giving more credence to the date, 1858, that had come through Mrs. Leek.
He also confirmed having once seen a sign in the western part of Massachusetts that read “Montgomery”—the place Captain Carson had claimed as his birthplace. Also that a Wainwright family was known to have lived in an area not far from where we were now.
However, Furman had no idea of any military personnel by that name.
“Sybil mentioned a river in connection with this house,” I noted. Furman said, “And, yes, there is a river running through the house, it is still here.”
Earlier Sybil had drawn a rough map of the house as it was in the past, from her psychic viewpoint, a house surrounded by a high fence. Furman pronounced the drawing amazingly accurate—especially as Leek had not set foot on the property or known about it until our actual arrival.
“My former secretary, Carole E. Howes, and her family occupied this house,” Furman explained when I turned my attention to the manifestations themselves. “They operated this house as an inn twenty years ago, and often had unusual things happen here as she grew up, but it did not seem to bother them. Then the house passed into the hands of a Mrs. Nielson; then Svensson took over. But he did not speak of the phenomena until about a year and a half ago. The winter of 1965 he was shingling the roof, and he was just coming in from the roof on the second floor balcony on a cold day—he had left the window ajar and secured—when suddenly he heard the window sash come down. He turned around on the second floor platform and he saw the young girl, her hair windswept behind her. She was wearing white. He could not see anything below the waist, and he confronted her for a short period, but could not bring himself to talk—and she went away. His wife was in the kitchen sometime later, in the afternoon, when she felt the presence of someone in the room. She turned around and saw an older man dressed in black at the other end of the kitchen. She ran out of the kitchen and never went back in again.