by Hans Holzer
4. The next appearance was in the fall. I was pregnant at the time. I lost the baby on the first of November, and this happened around the first of October. Becky Sue, my youngest daughter, was 3 at the time. She was asleep in her crib as it was around midnight or later. I was asleep in my bedroom across the hall. I woke up and heard her saying, “Mommy, what are you doing in my bedroom?” She kept saying that until I thought I had better answer her or she would begin to be frightened. I started to say “I’m not in your room,” and as I did I started to turn over and I saw what seemed to be a woman in a long white nightgown in front of my bedroom door. In a flash it was gone out into the hall. At this time Becky had been saying, “Mommy, what are you doing in my room?” As the image disappeared out in the hall, Becky changed her question to, “Mommy, what were you doing in my bedroom?” Then I thought that if I told her I wasn’t in her room that she would really be scared. All this time I thought that it was Kimberly, my older daughter, getting up, and I kept waiting for her to speak to me. Becky was still sounding like a broken record with her questions. Finally I heard “It” take two steps down, turn a corner, and take three steps more. Then I went into Becky’s room and told her that I had forgotten what I had gone into her room for and to lie down and go to sleep, which she did. All this time Kim had not moved. The next morning I was telling Seth (who was living with us now) about it, and I remembered about the footsteps going downstairs. I wondered if Becky had heard them too, so I called her out into the kitchen and asked her where I went after I left her room. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind and said, “Downstairs!”
5. This was in the winter, around 2. Seth was helping me make the beds upstairs as they had been skipped for some reason. We heard footsteps coming in from the playroom across the kitchen and a short way into the hall. We both thought it was Becky Sue who was playing outdoors. She comes in quite frequently for little odds and ends. Still no one spoke. We waited for a while expecting her to call to me. Finally, when she did not call, I went downstairs to see what she wanted, and there was no one there. I thought that maybe she had gone back out, but there was no snow on the floor or tracks of any kind. This was also on a very sunny day.
6. This was also late at night in 1965, around 11. I was putting my husband’s lunch up when there was a step right behind me. That scared me, although I do not know why; up until that time I had never had any fear. Maybe it was because it was right behind my back and the others had always been at a distance or at least in front of me.
I cannot remember anything happening since then. Lately there have been noises as if someone was in the kitchen or dining room while I was in the living room, but I cannot be sure of that. It sounds as if something was swishing, but I cannot definitely say that it is not the sounds of an old house.
History of House and Background of Previous Owners
The history of the house and its previous owners is very hard to get. We bought the house from Mrs. Ora Jacques. Her husband had bought it from their son who had moved to Florida. The husband was going to do quite a bit of remodeling and then sell it. When he died, Mrs. Jacques rented it for a year and then sold it.
Mr. Jacques’ son bought it from a man who used to have a doughnut shop and did his cooking in a back room, so I have been told. There was a fire in the back that was supposedly started from the fat. They bought the house from Mrs. Emma Thompson, who, with her husband, had received the house for caring for a Mr. Woodbury Langdon, and by also giving him a small sum of money. Mrs. Thompson always gave people the impression that she was really a countess and that she had a sister in Pennsylvania who would not have anything to do with her because of her odd ways.
Mrs. Thompson moved to Rumney where she contracted pneumonia about six months later and died.
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson moved in to take care of Mr. Woodbury Langdon after he kicked out Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore. (Mr. Cushing gave me the following information. He lives next door, and has lived there since 1914 or 1918).
He was awakened by a bright flash very early in the morning. Soon he could see that the top room (tower room) was all fire. He got dressed, called the firemen, and ran over to help. He looked in the window of what is now our dining room but was then Mr. Langdon’s bedroom. (Mr. Langdon was not able to go up and down stairs because of his age.) He pounded on the window trying to wake Mr. Langdon up. Through the window he could see Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom. They were laughing and Mr. Dinsmore had an oil can in his hand. All this time Mr. Langdon was sound asleep. Mr. Cushing got angry and began pounding harder and harder. Just as he began to open the window Mr. Langdon woke up and Mr. Cushing helped him out the window. He said that no one would believe his story, even the insurance company. Evidently Mr. Langdon did because soon after he kicked the Dins-mores out and that was when Mr. and Mrs. Thompson came to take care of him. Around 1927 he came down with pneumonia. He had that for two days and then he went outdoors without putting on any jacket or sweater. Mrs. Thompson ran out and brought him back in. She put him back in bed and warmed him up with coffee and wrapped him in wool blankets. He seemed better until around midnight. Then he began moaning. He kept it up until around 3, when he died.
Mr. Langdon was married twice. His first wife and his eighteen-year-old son died [of] typhoid fever. He had the wells examined and found that it came from them. He convinced his father to invest his money in putting in the first water works for the town of Plymouth. At that time he lived across town on Russell Street.
He later married a woman by the name of Donna. He worshipped her and did everything he could to please her. He remodeled the house. That was when he added on the bathroom and bedroom (dining room). He also built the tower room so that his wife could look out over the town. He also had a big estate over to Squam Lake that he poured out money on. All this time she was running around with anyone she could find. Mr. Cushing believes that he knew it deep down but refused to let himself believe it. She died, Mr. Cushing said, from the things she got from the thing she did! He insists that it was called leprosy. In the medical encyclopedia it reads, under leprosy, “differential diag: tuberculosis and esp. syphilis are the two diseases most likely to be considered.”
She died either in this house or at the estate on the lake. She was buried in the family plot in Trinity Cemetery in Holderness. She has a small headstone with just one name on it, Donna. There is a large spire-shaped monument in the center of the lot, with the family’s names on it and their relationship. The name of Woodbury Langdon’s second wife is completely eliminated from the stone. There is nothing there to tell who she was or why she is buried there. This has puzzled me up to now, because, as she died around 1911, and he did not die until around 1927, he had plenty of time to have her name and relationship added to the family stone. Mr. Cushing thinks that, after her death, Mr. Langdon began to realize more and more what she was really like. He has the impression that Mr. Langdon was quite broke at the time of his death.
I cannot trace any more of the previous owners, as I cannot trace the house back any farther than around 1860. Mr. Langdon evidently bought and sold houses like other men bought and sold horses. If this is the house I believe it to be, it was on the road to Rumney and had to be moved in a backward position to where it is now. They had something like six months later to move the barn back. Then they had to put in a street going from the house up to the main road. They also had to put a fence up around the house. This property did have a barn, and there was a fence here. There is a small piece of it left. The deeds from there just go around in circles.
The man who I think the ghost is, is Mr. Woodbury Langdon. I have asked people around here what Mr. Langdon looked like and they describe him VERY MUCH as the man I saw in the bathroom. The man in the bicentennial book was his father. There is something in his face that was in the face of the “ghost.”
I have two children. They are: Kimberly Starr, age 9 years and Rebecca Sue, age 6 years. Kim’s birthd
ay is on April 2 and Becky’s is on August 10.
I was born and brought up on a farm 4½ miles out in the country in the town of Plymouth. My father believes in spirits, sort of, but not really. My mother absolutely does not.
I carried the business course and the college preparatory course through my four years of high school. I had one year of nurses’ training. I was married when I was 20, in June, and Kim was born the next April.
P.S. We have a black cat who has acted queer at times in the past.
1. He would go bounding up the stairs only to come to an abrupt halt at the head of the stairs. He would sit there staring at presumably empty space, and then take off as if he had never stopped.
2. Sometimes he stood at the bathroom door and absolutely refused to go in.
3. He had spells of sitting in the hallway and staring up the stairs, not moving a muscle. Then suddenly he would relax and go on his way.
* * *
We finally settled on August 12, a Saturday, 1967, to have a go at Mr. Langdon or whoever it was that haunted the house, because Miss Elliot was getting married in July and Mrs. Fuller wanted very much to be present.
Eleanor Fuller greeted us as we arrived, and led us into the house. As usual Ethel began to sniff around, and I just followed her, tape recorder running and camera at the ready. We followed her up the stairs to the upper floor, where Ethel stopped at the bedroom on the right, which happened to be decorated in pink.
“I get an older woman wearing glasses,” Ethel said cautiously as she was beginning to pick up psychic leads, “and a man wearing a funny hat.”
I pressed Ethel to be more specific about the “funny hat” and what period hat. The man seemed to her to belong to the early 1800s. She assured me it was not this century. She then complained about a cold spot, and when I stepped into it I too felt it. Since neither doors nor windows could be held responsible for the strong cold draft we felt, we knew that its origin was of a psychic nature, as it often is when there are entities present.
I asked Ethel to describe the woman she felt present. “She is lying down...and I get a pain in the chest,” she said, picking up the spirit’s condition. “The eyes are closed!”
We left the room and went farther on. Ethel grabbed her left shoulder as if in pain.
“She is here with me, looking at me,” Ethel said. “She’s been here.”
“Why is she still here?” I asked.
“I get a sudden chill when you asked that,” Ethel replied.
“She tells me to go left...I am having difficulty walking...I think this woman had that difficulty.”
We were walking down the stairs, when Ethel suddenly became a crone and had difficulty managing them. The real Ethel was as spry and fast as the chipmunks that used to roam around her house in Connecticut.
“I think she fell down these stairs,” Ethel said and began to cough. Obviously, she was being impressed by a very sick person.
We had barely got Ethel to a chair when she slipped into full trance and the transition took place. Her face became distorted as in suffering, and a feeble voice tried to manifest through her, prodded by me to be clearer.
“Lander...or something...” she mumbled.
What followed was an absolutely frightening realization by an alien entity inside Ethel’s body that the illness she was familiar with no longer existed now. At the same time, the excitement of this discovery made it difficult for the spirit to speak clearly, and we were confronted with a series of grunts and sighs.
Finally, I managed to calm the entity down by insisting she needed to relax in order to be heard.
“Calm...calm...” she said and cried, “good...he knows...he did that...for fifty years...the woman!”
She had seized Mr. Fuller’s hand so forcefully I felt embarrassed for her, and tried to persuade the spirit within Ethel to let go, at the same time explaining her true condition to her, gently, but firmly.
After I had explained how she was able to communicate with us and that the body of the medium was merely a temporary arrangement, the entity calmed down, asking only if he loved her, meaning the other spirit in the house. I assured her that this was so, and then called on Albert, Ethel’s spirit guide, to help me ease the troubled one from Ethel’s body and thus free her at the same time from the house.
And then the man came into Ethel’s body, very emotionally, calling out for Sylvia.
Again I explained how he was able to communicate.
“You see me, don’t you,” he finally said as he calmed down. “I loved everyone...I’ll go, I won’t bother you...”
I called again for Albert, and in a moment his crisp voice replaced the spirit’s outcries.
“The man is a Henry MacLellan...there stood in this vicinity another house...around 1810, 1812...to 1820...a woman connected with this house lies buried here somewhere, and he is looking for her. His daughter...Macy?...Maisie? About 1798...16 or 18 years old...has been done wrong...had to do with a feud of two families...McDern...”
Albert then suggested letting the man speak to us directly, and so he did a little while. I offered my help.
“It is futile,” he said. “My problem is my own.”
“Who are you?”
“Henry. I lived right here. I was born here.”
“What year? What year are we in now as I speak with you?”
“I speak to you in the year 1813.”
“Are you a gentleman of some age?”
“I would have forty-seven years.”
“Did you serve in any governmental force or agency?”
“My son...John Stuart Mc...”
“McDermont? Your son was John Stuart McDermont?”
“You have it from my own lips.”
“Where did he serve?”
“Ticonderoga.”
And then he added, “My daughter, missing, but I found the bones, buried not too far from here. I am satisfied. I have her with me.”
He admitted he knew he was no longer “on the earth plane,” but was drawn to the place from time to time.
“But if you ask me as a gentleman to go, I shall go,” he added. Under these circumstances—rare ones, indeed, when dealing with hauntings—I suggested he not disturb those in the present house, especially the children. Also, would he not be happier in the world into which he had long passed.
“I shall consider that,” he acknowledged, “You speak well, sir. I have no intention for frightening.”
“Are you aware that much time has passed...that this is not 1813 any more?” I said.
“I am not aware of this, sir...it is always the same time here.”
Again I asked if he served in any regiment, but he replied his leg was no good. Was it his land and house? Yes, he replied, he owned it and built the house. But when I pressed him as to where he might be buried, he balked.
“My bones are here with me...I am sufficient unto myself.”
I then asked about his church affiliation, and he informed me his church was “northeast of here, on Beacon Road.” The minister’s name was Rooney, but he could not tell me the denomination. His head was not all it used to be.
“A hundred any fifty years have passed,” I said, and began the ritual of exorcism.” Go from this house in peace, and with our love.”
And so he did.
Albert, Ethel’s guide, returned briefly to assure us that all was as it should be and Mr. McDermot was gone from the house; also, that he was being reunited with his mother, Sarah Ann McDermot. And then Albert too withdrew and Ethel returned to her own self again.
I turned to Mrs. Fuller and her cousin, Miss Elliott, for possible comments and corroboration of the information received through Mrs. Meyers in trance.
* * *
It appears the house that the Fullers were able to trace back as far as about 1860 was moved to make room for a road, and then set down again not far from that road. Unfortunately going further back proved difficult. I heard again from Mrs. Fuller in December of that y
ear. The footsteps were continuing, it seemed, and her seven-year-old daughter Becky was being frightened by them. She had not yet been able to find any record of Mr. McDermot, but vowed to continue her search.
That was twenty years ago, and nothing further turned up, and I really do not know if the footsteps continued or Mr. McDermot finally gave up his restless quest for a world of which he no longer was a part.
As for Mr. Langdon, whom Ethel Meyers had also identified by name as a presence in the house, he must by now be reunited with his wife Donna, and I hope he has forgiven her trespasses, as a good Christian might: over there, even her sins do not matter any longer.
* 116
The Ghosts at the Morris-Jumel Mansion
WE HAD HARDLY RETURNED to our home in New York, when my friend Elizabeth Byrd telephoned to inquire if I had gotten that grave opened yet. I hadn’t, but I should really let you in at the beginning.
You see, it all started with an article in the New York Journal-American on January 11, 1964, by Joan Hanauer, in which the ghostly goings-on at Jumel Mansion in New York City were brought to public attention. Youngsters on a field trip from P.S. 164, Edgecombe Avenue and 164th Street, said a tall, gray-haired, elderly woman stepped out onto the balcony and told them to be quiet.
The description fit Mme. Jumel.
Could it have happened?
Mrs. Emma Bingay Campbell, curator of the Mansion at 160th Street and Edgecombe, said no.