Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  When we entered the adjacent dining room, Ethel pointed at one of the tall windows and informed us that the lady was still standing there.

  “Dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, smallish nose, now she has pushed back the bonnet hat, dark reddish-brown hair,” Ethel intoned. I kept taking photographs, pointing the camera toward the area where Ethel said the ghost was standing. The pictures did not show anything special, but then Ethel was not a photography medium, someone who has that particular phase of mediumship. I asked Ethel to assure the woman we had come in friendship and peace, to help her resolve whatever conflict might still keep her here. I asked Ethel to try to get the woman’s name. Ethel seemed to listen, then said, “I like to call her Isabelle, Isabelle....”

  “How is she connected to the house?”

  “Lived here.”

  I suggested that Ethel inform the woman we wanted to talk to her. Earnestly, Ethel then addressed the ghost, assuring her of no harm. Instead of being comforted, Ethel reported, the woman just kept on crying.

  We asked the ghost to come with us as we continued the tour of the house; we would try and have her communicate through Ethel in trance somewhere in the house where she could be comfortable. Meanwhile Ethel gathered further psychic impressions as we went from room to room.

  “Many layers here...three layers...men fighting and dying here....” she said. “Strong Indian influence also... then there is a small child here...later period...the men have guns, bleeding...no shoes...pretty far back...Adam ...Joseph...Balthazar...war victims...house looks differ-ent...they’re lying around on the floor, in pain...some kind of skirmish has gone on here.”

  I decided to chase the lady ghost again. We returned to the living room. Ethel picked a comfortable chair and prepared herself for the trance that would follow.

  “I get the names Hattie...and Martin...not the woman at the window...early period connected with the men fighting...not in house, outside...Golay? Gosomething...it is their house. They are not disturbed but they give there energy to the other woman. Someone by the name of Luther comes around. Someone is called Marygold...Mary...someone says, the house is all different.”

  I decided to stop Ethel recounting what may well have been psychic impressions from the past rather than true ghosts, though one cannot always be sure of that distinction. But my experience has taught me that the kind of material she had picked up sounded more diffuse, more fractional than an earthbound spirit would be.

  “Abraham...,” Ethel mumbled and slowly went into deep trance as we watched. The next voice we would hear might be her guide, Albert’s, who usually introduces other entities to follow, or it might be a stranger—but it certainly would not be Ethel’s.

  “It’s a man. Abram...Ibram...,” she said, breathing heavily. I requested her guide Albert’s assistance in calming the atmosphere.

  Ethel’s normally placid face was now totally distorted as if in great pain and her hands were at her throat, indicating some sort of choking sensation; with this came unintelligible sounds of ah’s and o’s. I continued to try and calm the transition.

  I kept asking who the communicator was, but the moaning continued, at the same time the entity now controlling Ethel indicated that the neck or throat had been injured as if by hanging or strangulation. Nevertheless, I kept up my request for identification, as I always do in such cases, using a quiet, gentle vocal approach and reassurances that the pain was of the past and only a memory now.

  Finally, the entity said his name was Abraham and that he was in much pain.

  “Abraham...Eben...my tongue!” the entity said, and indeed he sounded as if he could not use his tongue properly. Clearly, his tongue had been cut out, and I kept telling him that he was using the medium’s now and therefore should be able to speak clearly. But he continued in a way that all I could make out was “my house.”

  “Is this your house?”

  “Yes...why do you want to know...who are you?”

  “I am a friend come to help you. Is this your house?”

  “I live here....”

  “How old are you?”

  No answer.

  “What year is this?”

  “Seventy-eight...going on...seventy-nine....”

  “How old are you?”

  “Old man...fifty-two....”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Massachusetts...Lowell....”

  “Who was it who hurt you?”

  Immediately he became agitated again, and the voice became unintelligible, the symptoms of a cut-out tongue returned. Once again, I calmed him down.

  “What church did you go to?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Don’t go to church much...,” he replied.

  “Where were you baptized?”

  “St. Francis...Episcopal.”

  I suggested the entity should rest now, seeing that he was getting agitated again, and I also feared for the medium.

  “I want justice...justice...,” he said.

  I assured him, in order to calm him down, that those who had done him wrong had been punished. But he would have none of it.

  “They fight every night out there....”

  Again, I began to exorcise him, but he was not quite ready.

  “My daughter...Lisa...Elizabeth....”

  “How old is she?”

  “Thirteen...she cries for me, she cries for me, she weeps...all the blood...they take her, too....”

  “Where is your wife?”

  “She left us in misery. Johanna...don’t mention her ...she left us in misery.”

  “What year was that?”

  “This year. NOW....”

  “Why did she leave you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And he added, “I will go to find her...I never see her....”

  “What about your father and mother? Are they alive?”

  “Oh no....”

  “When did they die?”

  “1776.”

  The voice showed a definite brogue now.

  “Where are they buried?”

  “Over the water...Atlantic Ocean...home....”

  “Where did your people come from?”

  “Wales...Greenough....”

  Further questioning brought out he was a captain in the 5th regiment.

  “Did you serve the king or the government of the colonies?” I asked. Proudly the answer came.

  “The king.”

  When I asked him for the name of the commanding officer of the regiment he served in, he became agitated and hissed at me...“I am an American citizen...I’ll have you know!”

  “Are you a patriot or a Tory?”

  “I will not have you use that word,” he replied, meaning he was not a Tory.

  I went on to explain that time had passed, but he called me mad; then I suggested I had come as a friend, which elicited a bitter reply.

  “What are friends in time of war?”

  I explained that the war had long been over.

  “The war is not over...I am an American...don’t tempt me again....”

  Once again I pressed him for the name of his commanding officer and this time we received a clear reply: Broderick. He was not infantry, but horse. We were finally getting some answers. I then asked him for the names of some of his fellow officers in the 5th regiment.

  “All dead..,” he intoned, and when I insisted on some names, he added, “Anthony...Murdoch...Surgeon ...my head hurts!”

  “Any officers you can remember?”

  “Matthew....”

  I asked, what battles was he involved in.

  “Champlain...Saint Lawrence...it’s bad, it’s bad....”

  He was showing signs of getting agitated again, and time was fleeting.

  I decided to release the poor tortured soul, asking him whether he was ready to join his loved ones now. Once again he relived the wars.

  “He won’t come home
again...Hatteras...fire...I’m weary.”

  I began to exorcise him, suggesting he leave the house where he had suffered so much.

  “My house...my tongue...Indians,” he kept repeating.

  But finally with the help of Ethel’s spirit guide (and first husband) Albert, I was able to help him across. Albert, in his crisp voice, explained that one of the female presences in the house, a daughter of the spirit we had just released, might be able to communicate now. But what I was wondering was whether a disturbed earthbound spirit was in the house also, not necessarily a relative of this man. Albert understood, and withdrew, and after a while, a faint, definitely female voice began to come from the medium’s still entranced lips.

  “Ella...” the voice said, faintly at first.

  Then she added that she was very happy and had a baby with her. The baby’s name was Lily. She was Ella, she repeated. When I asked as to who she was in relation to the house, she said, “He always came...every day... William...my house....”

  “Where is he? You know where he went?”

  There was anxiety in her voice now. She said he left St. Valentine’s Day, this year...and she had no idea what year that was.

  Who was William? Was he her husband?

  This caused her to panic.

  “Don’t tell them!”

  she implored me. The story began to look ominous. Willie, Ella, the baby...and not her husband?

  She began to cry uncontrollably now. “Willie isn’t coming anymore...where is he?”

  What was she doing in the house?

  “Wait for Willie...by the window...always by the window. I wait for him and take care of Lily, she is so sweet. What I can do to find Willie?”

  I began to exorcise her, seeing she could not tell me anything further about herself. Her memory was evidently limited by the ancient grief. As I did so, she began to notice spirits. “There is my Papa...he will be very angry ...don’t tell anyone...take me now...my Papa thinks we are married...but we have no marriage...Willie must marry me....”

  She cried even harder now.

  “Andrew...my husband....”

  Once again I asked Albert, the guide, to lead her outside, from the house. It wasn’t easy. It was noisy. But it worked.

  “She is out,” Albert reported immediately following this emotional outburst, “but her father did find out.”

  “What period are we in now?”

  “The eighteen-something.”

  “Is there anything in the way of a disturbance from the more recent past?

  “Yes, that is true. An older lady...she does not want to give up the home.”

  Albert then went on to explain that the woman at the window who had been seen had actually been used in her lifetime by the earlier entitles to manifest through, which created confusion in her own mind as to who she was. Albert regretted that he could not have her speak to us directly. Andrew, he explained, was that more recent woman’s father. Both women died in this house, and since the earlier woman would not let go, the later woman could not go on either, Albert explained.

  “We have them both on our side, but they are closer to you because their thoughts are on the earth plane, you can reach them, as you are doing.”

  After assuring us and the owners of the house that all was peaceful now and that the disturbed entities had been released, Albert withdrew, and Ethel returned to herself as usual, blissfully ignorant of what had come through her mediumship.

  Two of the ladies mentioned earlier, who had been connected with the house and the phenomena therein, had meanwhile joined us. Mrs. Anthony Brooks, a lady who had been sleeping in one of the bedrooms with her husband two years prior to our visit had this to say.

  “I had been asleep, when I was awakened by ruffling at the back of my head. I first thought it was my husband and turned over. But next thing I felt was pressure on my stomach, very annoying, and I turned and realized that my husband had been sound asleep. Next, my cover was being pulled from the bed, and there was a light, a very pale light for which there was no source. I was very frightened. I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and as I was on the stairs I felt I was being pushed and held on tightly to the banister.”

  I next talked to Mrs. Mildred Haynes Noyes, who had been able to identify the ghostly lady at the window as being the former resident, Mrs. Bell. Everything she had told the Brighams was being reiterated. Then Ken Brigham himself spoke, and we went over his experiences once more in greater detail.

  “I was standing in front of the fireplace, painting, and at that time there was a door to that bedroom over there which has since been closed up. It was a bright morning, about 11 o’clock, the doors were open, windows were open, my wife Doris was upstairs at the time, I was alone, and as I stood there painting. I glanced out and there, standing in the doorway, was a woman. As I was glancing at her I thought it peculiar that the neighbors would simply walk through my house without knocking.

  “She stood there simply looking at me, with her arms folded, a woman who was rather short, not too heavy, dressed in a flower-print housedress, cotton, she had on glasses and wore flat-heel Oxford shoes, all of this in plain daylight. I did not know what to say to this woman who had walked into my house. I was about to say to her, What can I do for you? thinking of nothing more to say than that, and with that—she was gone. I raced back to the hall, thinking this little old lady had moved awfully fast, but needless to say, there was no one there. I said nothing to anyone, but several weeks later, during the summer, both my wife and I were awakened several times during the night by a very chilly breeze coming into the bedroom. That was one of the bedrooms upstairs. Neither of us said anything but we both sat up in bed and as we did so, we watched a little light dance across the wall! We are very isolated here, and there is no light from the outside whatsoever. This continued for the next year.”

  At this point it was decided that Mrs. Brigham would tell her part of the story.

  “The first summer that we had the house,” Mrs. Doris Brigham began, “I was sitting here, about five in the afternoon, my husband was upstairs, and my son was outside somewhere. I was alone and I was aware that someone was here, and on this white doorway there was a solid black shadow. It was the profile of a woman from top to bottom, I could see the sharp features, the outline of the glasses, the pug in the back of her head, the long dress and shoes—all of a sudden, the shadow disappeared, and a cold breeze came toward me, and it came around and stood in back of my chair, and all of a sudden I had this feeling of peace and contentment, and all was right with the world. Then, all of a sudden, the cold air around my chair, I could feel it moving off. Then, practically every night in the room upstairs, I was awakened for several years in the middle of the night, by a feeling of someone coming into the room. But many times there would be the dancing lights. We moved into another bedroom, but even there we would be awakened by someone running their fingers up my hair! Someone was pressing against me, and the same night, a neighbor was in the house, and she told us the same story. Footsteps of someone coming up the stairs. A feeling of movement of air. A black shadow on the ceiling, and then it disappeared. Often when the children were sick, we felt her around. It was always strong when there were children in the house.

  I wondered whether she ever felt another presence in the house, apart from this woman.

  Mrs. Brigham replied that one time, when she did not feel the woman around, she came into the house and felt very angry. That was someone else, she felt.

  I decided it was time to verify, if possible, some of the material that had come through Mrs. Meyers in trance, and I turned to Ken Brigham for his comments.

  “It has been one of the most astounding experiences I have ever had,” he began. “There are several points which no one could know but my wife and myself. We did a considerable amount of research back through the deeds of the house. This only transpired a few weeks ago. I had been excavating up out front, preparing some drains, when I came across some foreign bricks, i
ndicating that there had been an extension to the house. This is not the original house, the room we are in; there was a cottage here built for Continental soldiers, at the end of the Revolutionary War.

  These cottages were given to Massachusetts soldiers, in lieu of pay, and they got some acres up here. This house has been remodeled many times, the most recent around 1870. The town here was formed around 1775; the deeds we have are around 1800. Several things about the house are lost in legend. For example, down there is a brook called Mutiny Brook. There was a mutiny here, and there was bloodshed. There were Indians, yes, this was definitely Indian territory. At one time this was a very well settled area; as recently as 1900 there were houses around here.”

  I realized, of course, that this was no longer the case: the house we were in was totally isolated within the countryside now.

  “The original town was built on this hill, but it has disappeared,” Mr. Brigham continued, and then disclosed a strange coincidence (if there be such a thing!) of an actual ancestor of his having lived here generations ago, and then moving on to Canada.

  “We only just discovered that at one time two brothers with their families decided to share the house and remodel it,” Brigham continued his account. “But one of them died before they could move in. Much of what Mrs. Meyers spoke of in trance is known only locally.

  “What about the two women Mrs. Meyers described?” I asked. “She mentioned a short, dark-haired woman.”

  “She was short, but had gray hair when I saw her,” Mr. Brigham said. “A perfectly solid human being—I did nor see her as something elusive. We only told our son about this recently, and he told us that he had heard footsteps of a man and a woman on the third floor.”

  “Anything else you care to comment on?”

  “Well, we have the names of some of the owners over a period of time. There were many, and some of the names in the record match those given by Ethel Meyers, like Eben.”

  “When Mrs. Meyers mentioned the name Isabelle,” Mrs. Brigham interjected, “I thought she meant to say Alice Bell, which of course was the former owner’s name—the woman at the window.”