Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  “Perhaps the most vivid and memorable personal experience occurred to me when I was in grade school,” Cynthia explained. “I had always heard footsteps in the 1950s and ‘60s, starting in the aforementioned living room, coming into the front bedroom and stopping at my bed, both during the day and at night. My parents always attributed the noises to the creaking of old floors, but the house was only built in 1947. At times, the footfalls backed away from the bed, thus disputing the “last footsteps before going to bed” theory. I occupied a twin bed which faced the hallway when the bedroom door was open. On the left side of the bed, my side, was the wall shared by both the living room and front bedroom; Mother slept in the other twin bed adjacent to the driveway wall.

  “During one particular night, I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and upon returning to my bed, snuggled under the covers and shot a quick glance at my sleeping mother. Suddenly, the room became exceptionally cold and on looking toward the door, which I had forgotten to close, I saw four figures coming from the living room through the hallway wall and turn into our bedroom. In order to assert that I hadn’t unconsciously fallen asleep since returning to bed, I began pinching myself and looking from time to time to the familiar surrounding room and my mother. Thus I know I was fully awake and not dreaming. The first figure entering the room was dressed, as were all the others, in nineteenth century western American clothing. She was a woman in her forties of average height, very thin and dressed in a brown and white calico dress with high-button collar and long sleeves; her dark brown hair was parted in the middle and tied tightly on top of her head in a bun. There was a prim, austere air about her. She moved to the foot of the bed on my far left. Next came a very tall and lanky man, brown hair parted in the middle, wearing a brown three-piece suit, rather shabby. He took his place in the middle, at the foot of my bed. Following him was a woman whom I felt was out of place, even at the time of the vision. She was dressed in the most outlandish purple satin outfit, tucked up on one side as a barroom girl might have worn in the Old West. Her blonde hair was curled in ringlets, which were drawn up on one side of her head and cascaded down on the other. I sensed loneliness and a very gentle nature surrounding her as she took her place next to the tall gentleman to my right. Lastly came a very dapper if somewhat plump gray-haired gentleman. He carried a small three-legged stool and a black bag, telling me he was probably a medical man. Hatted and wearing a gray three-piece suit complete with gold watch chain, he seated himself on his stool on the right-hand side of my bed. They all seemed terribly concerned over my health, although I was not ill at the time. When the ‘doctor’ leaned over the bed and tried to take my hand into his, I decided I had experienced just about all I wanted to with these strangers. My voice quivered as I called out to my mother, who was a very light sleeper, and whose back was facing me, informing her of the unknowns who had invaded our bedroom. ‘Mother, there are people in the room!’ I called again and again. She reassured me sleepily and without turning over that I was only dreaming, and to go back to sleep. During these implorings on my part, the four strangers began backing away from the bed as if they were alarmed by my speaking. Whether they actually spoke or I heard them telepathically, I cannot be certain, but I did ‘hear’ them repeatedly say, ‘No, please, we only want to help you. No, no, don’t call out.’ My cries increased and with that they turned and exited the same way they had entered, through the wall into the living room.”

  The house in which this vision took place had only been built in comparatively recent times. The land had formed part of a farm in the early nineteenth century, but the costumes of the figures, Cynthia felt sure, belonged to an earlier period. She wondered whether perhaps the land had been part of a western wagon trail, and she was reliving a child’s death. On the other hand, she began to wonder whether it referred to a previous existence of her own, since she has very strong feelings about the nineteenth century West.

  Cynthia has had a number of precognitive dreams concerning events that later took place. But the dream that impressed itself more than any other upon her consciousness had to do with the past. Actually, it was preceded by what she described as “an insatiable interest in England” she developed in early high school, long before the Beatles became the rage of America. This was not a single dream, easily forgotten, but a series of recurrent dreams, all related one to the other, mounting in intensity as if something within her was trying to come to the surface, informing her of a long-forgotten memory.

  “At times I noticed myself speaking in a north country British accent and I caught myself using English spellings, drinking tea with cream, and the first time I heard the song, ‘Greensleeves,’ I felt very moved and certainly melancholy. There is another song, called ‘North Country Maid’ which has remained my great favorite. I even went so far as to compose a 200-page term paper on England for my sociology class. But long before this project took place, I began dreaming of a cloaked man mounting a horse in the moonlight and riding out of sight into the English countryside. I was in the dream also, dressed in a blue and tan peasant frock, laced up the front. I knew it was me because I remember looking down at the dress I was wearing. In other words, I was actually a participant, not a sleeping spectator of myself, nor recognizing myself as another person. At any rate, I seemed to be coming out of a stable or barn, in which I had been lying on a large pile of hay. I begin running towards the mounting horseman, as if to beg him not to leave. Then I would awaken, only to dream the same dream several nights later.

  “One night when I was particularly tired, I managed to continue my dream state after the wench’s running, but not for long. In the dream, I uttered between sobs, the name of Dick, and then awoke. The dream continued in this pattern until I, now exasperatedly curious, forced myself to remain sleeping. Finally, one night, I was able to hear the whole phrase—’Dick Turpin, my love, wait! Don’t go!’ Its mission now seemingly fulfilled by giving me a name I had never heard before, the dream never returned again.”

  At that time, Cynthia had never heard of Dick Turpin. But the dreams had roused her curiosity and she started to research it. Her Encyclopedia Britannica was of very little help, nor did any of the high school encyclopedias contain the name. But in her parents’ library she located a 1940 edition of Nelson’s Encyclopedia. In it, she found a brief listing of one Richard Turpin, an English highwayman and associate of Tom King, who lived from 1706 to 1739, when he was executed by hanging.

  About a year after the dreams had subsided, she was riding with a girlfriend, when she suddenly felt a strong urge to return home immediately. Still under a kind of compulsion, she immediately turned on the television set and picked a Walt Disney show, very much to her parents’ surprise, since they knew her to dislike the program. At that moment, flashed on the screen were the words, “The Legend of Dick Turpin”. Cynthia then proceeded to watch the program, her eyes glued to the set, interrupting the proceedings on screen with comments of her own. “No, that wasn’t what happened,” she would say and proceeded to correct it. What was remarkable was her ability to relate what was about to happen on-screen and to mention characters’ names before this information became available to the viewers. Afterwards, she felt dazed and remembered little of what she had said during the program.

  I suggested that Cynthia meet me in Los Angeles so that I could attempt to regress her hypnotically and determine whether her reincarnation memory was factual or merely a romantic fantasy. We met just before Christmas, 1973, at my Hollywood hotel, the Continental Hyatt House. We discussed Cynthia’s psychic experiences and I discovered that she had had an accident in 1969 resulting in a brain concussion. Did the accident influence her psychic perceptions in any way? No, she replied, she had had them for years prior to the accident, and they continued after the accident. Had she ever been to England or was she of English background? Both questions she answered in the negative. Her interest in English history and literature at college came after the recurrent dream had occurred to her. Having esta
blished that neither Cynthia nor her family had any English background nor leanings, I proceeded to regress her hypnotically in the usual manner. It took only a short time before she was under, ready to answer my questions while hypnotized.

  After describing life as a Victorian gentleman in New York, and giving the name of John Wainscott, and the year 1872 or 1892, she proceeded back into the eighteenth century and the year 1703, to a man who had something to do with a Delaware Street. The man’s name was Dick, and evidently we had gotten to the subject of her recurrent dreams.

  “He is mounting a horse, and he’s throwing his cape back so he can take hold of the reins. He’s got a hat on with a plume on it, I am standing by the barn.”

  “What is your relationship with this man? What is your name?” I asked.

  “A wench...my name is Sally.”

  “What year is this?”

  “1732.”

  “What happens then?”

  “He rides away like he always does.”

  “What happens to you?”

  “I cry.”

  And that was all I could get out of her through hypnotic regression. But somehow it must have settled this recurrent dream and the urgency connected with it within Cynthia, for I heard nothing further from her since then.

  Z 135

  The Restless Dead

  NOT ONLY HOUSES can be haunted, but people as well. There are literally thousands of cases where people have seen or heard the ghost of a dead person, usually a person with unfinished business on his/her mind at the time death overtook him/her.

  Let me set down my criteria for such experience, so that we understand what we are dealing with. When a person dreams of a dead relative this may or may not have significance. When the dream includes specific details unknown to the dreamer at the time and later found correct, then the dreamer is getting a psychic message in the dream state when his unconscious is free from the conscious mind and thus easier to reach.

  I have examined hundreds upon hundreds of recent cases and carefully eliminated the doubtful or hallucinatory. What remains is hardcore evidence.

  California, land of sunshine and pleasant living, has a great many such incidents, perhaps because death here is something alien, something that does not quite fit with the warmth and serenity of climate and outlook.

  Take the case of Mrs. G. A., in Santa Susana, for instance. Mrs. A. is not a person given to belief in the supernatural. In fact, her total disbelief that the events that shook her up in 1958 were in any way psychic caused her to contact me. Somehow the “rational” explanation—grief over the passing of her husband—did not satisfy her eager mind and ultimately she wanted to know.

  Her husband and Mrs. A. were working on their boat in the backyard on a warm California day. Suddenly, she heard him cry out “Honey,” as if in pain. He had been working with an electric sander at the time. Alarmed, Mrs. A. turned around in time to see him clutching the sander to his chest. He had been accidentally electrocuted. Quickly she pulled the electric plug out and tried to hold him up, all the while screaming for help; but it was too late.

  The ironical part was that A. had had nightmares and waking fears about just such an accident—death from electrocution.

  Two months went by and Mrs. A tried to adjust to her widowhood. One night she was roused from deep sleep by “something” in the room. As soon as she was fully awake she perceived an apparition of her late husband, suspended in the air of their room!

  He did not make any sound or say anything. Strangely enough, the apparition wore no shirt; he was bare-chested, as he would not have been in life.

  In a moment he was gone, and Mrs. A. went back to sleep. In the morning she convinced herself that it was just a case of nerves. The day wore on. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and Mrs. A. was seated on her living room couch, relaxing and waiting for a telephone call from her mother. All of a sudden, she heard her car drive up to the door. She realized at once that this could not be the case, since she was not driving it, but it struck her also that this was the precise time her husband always drove up to the door, every afternoon!

  Before she could fully gather her wits, he was there in the room with her. He looked as he had always looked, not transparent or anything as ethereal as that. Mrs. A. was literally frozen with fear. Her late husband knelt before her seemingly in great emotion, exclaiming, “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  At this point, Mrs. A. found her tongue again and quietly, as quietly as she was able to, told her late husband what had happened to him.

  “There has been an accident, and you were killed.”

  When she had said those words, he uttered the same sound he did at the time of the accident—“Honey!”—as if remembering it—and instantly he vanished.

  Mrs. A. has never felt him around her again since. Evidently, her husband has adjusted to his new state.

  Sometimes the ghostly denizens drive the living out—only to find themselves without a home in the end. Such was the strange case recently of a house in Paso Robles owned by the Adams family. I heard about their predicament when I appeared on the Art Linkletter Show.

  Mrs. Adams has three children, aged eleven, ten, and nine. Their problem: the house they bought used to be a “red light house,” as she put it. Before they bought it, two young women lived there with an old man as a kind of chaperone. After the police forced the women out of business, the old man remained behind until his death.

  Shortly after moving in, the Adams family noticed that all was not well with their home. The husband worked nights, and at the time he went to work between the hours of midnight and 3 A.M., strange noises were heard outside the house, such as banging on the wall—only nobody human was doing it. This was in December of 1957. Gradually, the noises changed from a slight rattle to a big, loud bang on the walls. Occasionally it sounded as if someone were ripping the window screens off the house.

  Mrs. Adams called the police repeatedly, but they could not find anything or anyone causing the disturbances. Her husband, who worked in a bakery, also heard the noises one night when he stayed home. Always at the same time, in the early morning hours.

  Soon Mrs. Adams also distinguished footsteps and human voices when nobody was walking or talking. On one occasion she could clearly hear two men talking, one saying he would try to get into the house. Then there were knocks on the walls as if someone were trying to communicate.

  It got so bad that the Adamses started to make inquiries about the past of their property, and it was then, two years after they had moved in, that they finally learned the truth about the house and its former use.

  They decided to let the ghosts have the house and moved out, to another house which has always been free from any disturbances. The haunted red light house they rented out to people not particular about ghosts. But they did not do too well at that. Nobody liked to stay in the house for long.

  That was in 1964. When I checked up on Mrs. Adams in 1966, things had changed quite a lot.

  “They tore it up repeatedly,” Mrs. Adams explained, and since it was an old house, the owners did not feel like putting a lot of money into it to fix the damage done by the nightly “party.”

  It got to be sub-standard and the city council stepped in. Thus it was that the ghost house of Paso Robles was torn down by official order. The Adams family now owns an empty lot on which they can’t afford to build a new house. And the ghosts? They have no place to go to, either. Serves them right!

  k k k

  Ralph Madison is a man who lives life and has enjoyed every moment of it. He is a great-grandfather four times over and not a young man, but he was still working in 1965, when I heard his strange story, as a part-time security guard in the museum at Stanford University.

  He makes his home in Palo Alto, and has been married to the same woman since 1916. Not boasting much formal education, Madison considers himself a self-made man. Perhaps the only thing unusual about him is a penchant to send people tape recordings instead of letters. But pe
rhaps Madison is only being practical. In another ten years’ time we may all correspond in that way.

  I would not be interested in Mr. Madison if it weren’t for one particular incident in his life, an incident that made him wonder about his sanity—and, after having reassured himself about it—about the meaning of such psychic experiences.

  It happened in 1928 in Palo Alto, on Emerson Street. Ralph Madison was minding his own business, walking in the vicinity of the five-hundred block, when he noticed a man he knew slightly, by the name of Knight. Mr. Knight operated a cleaning establishment nearby. The two men stopped to talk and Madison shook hands with his acquaintance.

  It struck him as peculiar, however, that the man’s voice seemed unusually wispy. Moreover, Knight’s hands were clammy and cold!

  They exchanged some words of no particular significance, and then they parted. Madison started out again and then quickly glanced around at his friend. The man he had just shaken hands with had disappeared into thin air. At this moment it came to him with shocking suddenness that Mr. Knight had been dead and buried for five years.