Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  “Was it an accident, yes or no?”

  “I fell on it.”

  “You fell on the pitchfork?”

  “Look at the blood bath...on Napoleon’s bed.”

  “What about that pitchfork?” I insisted.

  “There was a boy in the hay, and he pushed me off.”

  “Did you know this boy?”

  “Yes...give me her. She wanted to be a lady. I saw it. I wasn’t so foolish I didn’t see it.”

  “What happened when you got home?”

  “She told me I was going to die.”

  “Did you have a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t the wound bandaged?”

  “They took me out alive. I was a live man he put in the grave. I want to be free from that grave!”

  “Do you want me to set you free?”

  “God bless you!”

  “It is your hatred that keeps you here. You must forgive.”

  “She did it to me.”

  Ethel Meyers making contact

  I then pleaded with the ghost to join his own family and let go of his memories. “Do you realize how much time has gone on since? A hundred years!”

  “Hundred years!”

  The medium, still entranced, buried her head in her hands: “I’m mad!”

  “Go from this house and don’t return.”

  “Mary, Mary!”

  Mary was the name of Jumel’s daughter, a fact not known to the medium at the time.

  “Go and join Mary!” I commanded, and asked that Albert, the control, help the unhappy one find the way.

  Just as soon as Jumel’s ghost had left us, someone else slipped into the medium’s body, or so it seemed, for she sat up and peered at us with a suspicious expression: “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend, come to help,” I replied.

  “I didn’t ask for you.”

  “My name is Holzer, and I have come to seek you out. If you have a name worth mentioning, please tell us.”

  “Get out or I’ll call the police! This is my house.” There was real anger now on the medium’s entranced face.

  I kept asking for identification. Finally, the disdainful lips opened and in cold tones, the voice said, “I am the wife of the vice president of the United States! Leave my house!”

  I checked with Mrs. Campbell and found that Betsy Jumel did so identify herself frequently. On one occasion, driving through crowded New York streets long after her divorce from Aaron Burr she shouted, “Make way for the wife of the vice president of the United States!”

  “Didn’t you marry someone else before that?” I asked. “How did your husband die?”

  “Bastard!”

  “You’ve been dead a hundred years, Madam,” I said pleasantly.

  “You are made like the billow in the captain’s cabin,” she replied, somewhat cryptically. Later I checked this out. A sea captain was one of her favorite lovers while married to Jumel.

  “Did you murder your husband?” I inquired and drew back a little just in case.

  “You belong in the scullery with my maids,” she replied disdainfully, but I repeated the accusation, adding that her husband had claimed she had killed him.

  “I will call for help,” she countered.

  “There is no help. The police are on your trail!” I suggested.

  “I am the wife of the vice president of the United States!”

  “I will help you if you tell me what you did. Did you cause his death?”

  “The rats that crawl...they bit me. Where am I?”

  “You’re between two worlds. Do you wish to be helped?”

  “Where is Joseph?”

  “You must leave this house. Your husband has forgiven you.”

  “I adored him!”

  “Go away, and you will see Stephen Jumel again.”

  “Only the crest on the carriage! That’s all I did. He was a great man.”

  I had the feeling she wasn’t at all keen on Monsieur Jumel. But that happens, even to ghosts.

  I finally gave up trying to get her to go and join Jumel and tried another way.

  “Go and join the vice president of the United States. He awaits you.” To my surprise, this didn’t work either.

  “He is evil, evil,” she said.

  Perplexed, I asked, “Whom do you wish to join?”

  “Mary.”

  “Then call out her name, and she’ll join you and take you with her.”

  “No crime, no crime.”

  “You’ve been forgiven. Mary will take you away from here.”

  I asked Albert, the control, to come and help us get things moving, but evidently Madame had a change of heart: “This is my house I’ll stay here.”

  “This is no longer your house. You must go!”

  The struggle continued. She called for Christopher, but wouldn’t tell me who Christopher was.

  “He’s the only one I ever trusted,” she volunteered, finally.

  “It’s not too late,” I repeated. “You can join your loved ones.”

  “Good-bye.”

  I called for Albert, who quickly took control. “She’s no longer in the right mind,” he said, as soon as he had firm control of the medium’s vocal cords. “You may have to talk with her again.”

  “Is she guilty of Jumel’s death?”

  “Yes. It was arranged.”

  “Who was the boy who pushed him?”

  “A trusty in the house. She told him to.”

  “What about Stephen Jumel?”

  “He is in a better frame of mind.”

  “Is there anything else we did not bring out? Who is this Christopher she mentioned?”

  “A sea captain. She buried him in Providence.”

  Mrs. Campbell later confirmed the important role the sea captain played in Betsy’s life. There was also another man named Brown.

  “Did Aaron Burr help bury Jumel?”

  “That is true. Burr believed Mme. Jumel had more finances than she actually had.”

  “What about the doctor who buried him alive? Is his name known?”

  “Couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

  “Was Aaron Burr in on the crime?”

  “He is very much aware that he is guilty. He still possesses his full mental faculties.”

  I then asked the control to help keep the peace in the house and to bring the medium back to her own body.

  A few minutes later, Ethel Meyers was herself again, remembering nothing of the ordeal she had gone through the past hour, and none the worse for it.

  Jumel died in 1832 and, as far as I could find, the first ghostly reports date back to 1865. The question was: Could his remains disclose any clues as to the manner in which he died? If he suffocated in his coffin, would not the position of his bones so indicate?

  I queried two physicians who disagreed in the matter. One thought that nothing would be left by now; the other thought it was worth looking into.

  I thought so, too. However, my application to reopen the grave of Stephen Jumel, down in the old Catholic cemetery on Mott Street, got the official run-around. The District Attorney’s office sent me to Dr. Halpern, the chief medical examiner, who told me it would be of no use to check. When I insisted, I was referred to the church offices of old St. Patrick’s, which has nominal jurisdiction over the plot.

  Have you ever tried to reopen a grave in the City of New York? It’s easier to dig a new one, believe me!

  As the years passed, I often returned to the mansion. I made several television documentaries there with the helpful support of the curator, who now is the affable and knowledgeable Patrick Broom. The famous blue gown is no longer on display, alas, having disintegrated shortly after I first published the story. But the legend persists, and the footfalls are still heard on lonely nights when the security guard locks up. Whether the Jumels, the remorseful Betsy and the victimized Stephen, have since made up on the other side, is a moot question, and I doubt that Aaron Burr will want anyth
ing further to do with the, ah, lady, either.

  Bernstein Castle, Austria, now a fine hotel, once was the site of a tragic misunderstanding and murder. The countess was innocent of having betrayed her husband, so he killed her in a fit of jealousy.

  A small shrine marks the spot where the countess was murdered—and also where her ghost was frequently seen.

  Bernstein Castle exterior, Austria—The wealth of the area comes from the mining of semiprecious stone called “Smaragdt.” It was in the noble Almássy family until recently.

  Castle Pflindsberg, now a total ruin, high up in the Alps near Bad Aussee, Austria is the site of a medieval rape and abduction, avenged by the family of the perpetrator. His wild ghost is sometimes seen on horseback on a stormy night.

  In the Gothic Cathedral of Basle, Switzerland, a curious, luminous skeleton has been captured by Hans Holzer on film. During the strict Calvinistic era, people accused of “sins” were sometimes walled up alive in the church walls.

  Castle Altenburg, Syria, now a romantic hotel, was the home of the unhappy ghost of a servant who betrayed his master in 1920. This happened when rebellious peasants wanted to kill the master. He did not die, but it is the servant who can’t leave the place.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Haunted Places

  IT STANDS TO REASON THAT, if ghosts—people who have passed on from this life but who have not yet been able to enter the next stage—appear in people’s houses, such earthbound spirits can also be found outside houses, in the open. And so they are.

  In legends dark forests are often haunted, and in the Caribbean, crossroads are often considered ghostly places. In fact, in Haitian Voodoo, the gods of the crossroads are invoked for protection.

  Legends abound about haunted ships, from the wraith of slain pirates who died in combat aboard their ship to the case of the worker killed in an accident aboard the Queen Mary, now a floating museum, who keeps appearing to tourists (without being prompted to do so by management) to the belief in “the Flying Dutchman,” which inspired Richard Wagner to dramatize the Dutchman’s fate in his opera of the same name. Was there a flying Dutchman? To begin with, he did not really “fly.” Flying may refer here to the “racing across the seas” of his clipper ship, or it may be a description of the way ghosts move about—gliding, rather than walking, some of the time. Very likely, he was simply a captain who went down with his ship and never wanted to leave her even in death.

  That there are ghosts reported on airplanes is hardly news. The most famous of these in recent years is the ghost of Flight 401, which crashed in the Florida Everglades, causing the loss of 101 lives. John Fuller wrote of this case in 1976, and if it were not for the stinginess of the airlines, we would never know about it. But it so happened that some sections of the crashed airliner were salvaged and used again (!) on another airliner; the ghost of the dead flight engineer appeared to a stewardess on this recycled plane, complaining that the airplane—both the one that had crashed and the one he appeared in now—was not safe to fly.

  Ghosts, after all, are people. They are emotional beings. If they cannot let go of their particular tragedy, they will end up bound to the place where the event occurred and they will either appear or make themselves heard from time to time, when conditions are conducive—anniversaries of the event, for example, or the presence of a medium who makes contact possible. An emotional tie, therefore, is required to keep someone from going across to “the other side,” free and clear. Here are some of those places I have personally investigated, and verified.

  * 117

  The Case of the Lost Head

  ONE OF THE most famous ghosts of the South is railroad conductor Joe Baldwin. The story of Joe and his lantern was known to me, of course, and a few years ago Life magazine even dignified it with a photograph of the railroad track near Wilmington, North Carolina, very atmospherically adorned by a greenish lantern, presumably swinging in ghostly hands.

  Then one fine day in early 1964, the legend became reality when a letter arrived from Bill Mitcham, Executive Secretary of the South Eastern North Carolina Beach Association, a public-relations office set up by the leading resort hotels in the area centering around Wilmington. Mr. Mitcham proposed that I have a look at the ghost of Joe Baldwin, and try to explain once and for all—scientifically—what the famous “Maco Light” was or is.

  In addition, Mr. Mitcham arranged for a lecture on the subject to be held at the end of my investigation and sponsored jointly by the Beach Association and Wilmington College. He promised to roll out the red carpet for Catherine and me, and roll it out he did.

  Seldom in the history of ghost hunting has a parapsychologist been received so royally and so fully covered by press, television and radio, and if the ghost of Joe Baldwin is basking in the reflected glory of all this attention directed towards his personal ghost hunter, he is most welcome to it.

  If it were not for Joe Baldwin, the bend in the railroad track which is known as Maco Station (a few miles outside of Wilmington) would be a most unattractive and ordinary trestle. By the time I had investigated it and left, in May of 1964, the spot had almost risen to the prominence of a national shrine and sight-seeing groups arrived at all times, especially at night, to look for Joe Baldwin’s ghostly light.

  Bill Mitcham had seen to it that the world knew about Joe Baldwin’s headless ghost and Hans Holzer seeking same, and not less than seventy-eight separate news stories of one kind or another appeared in print during the week we spent in Wilmington.

  Before I even started to make plans for the Wilmington expedition, I received a friendly letter from a local student of psychic phenomena, William Edward Cox, Jr., and a manuscript entitled “The Maco Ghost Light.” Mr. Cox had spent considerable time observing the strange light, and I quote:

  A favorite “ghost story” in the vicinity of Wilmington, N.C., is that of “Joe Baldwin’s Ghost Light,” which is alleged to appear at night near Maco, N.C., 12 miles west of Wilmington on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

  On June 30-July 1, 1949, this writer spent considerable time investigating the phenomenon. The purpose was to make an accurate check on the behavior of the light under test conditions, with a view toward ascertaining its exact nature.

  This light has been observed since shortly after the legend of the Joe Baldwin ghost light “was born in 1867.” It is officially reported in a pamphlet entitled “The Story of the Coast Line, 1830–1948.” In its general description it resembles a 25-watt electric light slowly moving along the tracks toward the observer, whose best point of observation is on the track itself at the point where the tracks, double at that point, are crossed by a branch of a connecting roadway between U.S. Highway 74-76 and U.S. Highway 19.

  The popular explanation is that Conductor Baldwin, decapitated in an accident, is taking the nocturnal walks in search of his head….

  After testing the various “natural” theories put forward for the origin of the nocturnal light, Mr. Cox admits:

  Although the general consensus of opinion is that the lights stem from some relatively rare cause, such as the paranormal, “ignis fatuus,” etc., the opinions of residents of the Maco vicinity were found by this observer to be more divided. The proprietor of the Mobilgas Service Station was noncommittal, and a local customer said he had “never seen the light.” A farmer in the area was quite certain that it is caused by automobile headlights, but would not express an opinion upon such lights as were customarily seen there before the advent of the automobile.

  The proprietress of the Willet Service Station, Mrs. C. L. Benton, was firmly convinced that it was of “supernatural origin,” and that the peculiar visibility of automobile headlights to observers at Maco must be more or less a subsequent coincidence.

  She said that her father “often saw it as he loaded the wood burners near there over 60 years ago.”

  The basic question of the origin and nature of the “Maco Light,” or the original light, remains incompletely answered. The findings he
re reported, due as they are to entirely normal causes, cannot accurately be construed as disproving the existence of a light of paranormal origin at any time in the distant past (or, for that matter, at the present time).

  The unquestionable singularity of the phenomenon’s being in a locale where it is so easily possible for automobiles to produce an identical phenomenon seems but to relegate it to the enigmatic “realm of forgotten mysteries.”

  So much for Mr. Cox’s painstaking experiment conducted at the site in 1949.

  The coming of the Ghost Hunter (and Mrs. Ghost Hunter) was amply heralded in the newspapers of the area. Typical of the veritable avalanche of features was the story in The Charlotte Observer:

  Can Spook Hunter De-Ghost Old Joe?

  The South Eastern N. C. Beach Association invited a leading parapsychologist Saturday to study the ghost of Old Joe Baldwin.

  Bill Mitcham, executive director of the association, said he has arranged for Hans Holzer of New York to either prove or disprove the ghostly tales relating to Old Joe.

  Holzer will begin his study May 1.

  Tales of Joe Baldwin flagging down trains with false signals, waving his lantern on dark summer nights have been repeated since his death in 1867.

  Baldwin, a conductor on the Wilmington, Manchester and Augusta Railroad, was riding the rear coach of a train the night of his death. The coach became uncoupled and Baldwin seized a lantern in an effort to signal a passenger train following.

  But the engineer failed to see the signal. In the resulting crash, Baldwin was decapitated.

  A witness to the wreck later recalled that the signal lantern was flung some distance from the tracks, but it burned brightly thereafter for some time.

  Soon after the accident, there were reports of a mysterious light along the railroad tracks at Maco Station in Brunswick County.

  Two lanterns, one green and one red, have been used by trainmen at Maco Station so that engineers would not be confused or deceived by Joe Baldwin’s light.