Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  She went to seek the advice of a physician.

  After a careful checkup, he found her physically sound but suggested a psychiatric examination and possibly an EEG—an electroencephalogram to determine brain damage, if any. None of these tests showed anything abnormal. After a while, she concluded that medicine men could not help her even if they should believe her story.

  Meanwhile, the attacks became worse.

  “You will always hear my voice,” he promised her night and day, “You won’t be able to get rid of me now.”

  She tried all sorts of things. Grabbing whatever books on the subject of possession she could find, she tried to learn whether others had suffered similar attacks. She tried her skill at automatic writing hoping that it might give the accursed ghost a chance to express himself and perhaps she might reason with him that way. But though she became a proficient automatist, it did not do any good.

  The handwriting she wrote in was not hers. What she wrote down made no sense to her, but it was he who was using her in still one more way and so she stopped it.

  That night, she felt him closer than ever. It was as if part of his body were entering hers, and suddenly she felt her heart being squeezed and she gasped for breath. For a few moments of agonizing fear, she felt herself dying of a heart attack. The next day she went to see her doctor again. Her heart was sound as could be. But she knew then that she had just relived the very moment of his death. He had died of just such a heart failure!

  Clearly John W. was a disturbed personality in the in-between world in which he now existed after a fashion. He could not distinguish right from wrong, nor indeed recognize his true status.

  His hatred and love at once kept him glued to her body, and her environment, it would appear, unwilling and unable to break what must have been his strongest desire at the time of death.

  During their courtship, he had appeared as a good person, unselfish and kind. Now he seemed bitter and full of selfish desire to own her, unwilling to let her go or do anything she asked him to.

  She enlisted the help of a local amateur hypnotist, but he failed to put her under hypnosis. Discouraged, she lost all desire to live if it meant living on with this monstrous person inside her.

  One day she saw a television program on which hypnotic treatment in parapsychological cases was the subject of discussion. Again encouraged, she asked for help and went to New York for an attempt to dislodge the unwanted entity from her body and soul.

  This time she did go under, although not very deeply. But it was enough for the personality of John W. to emerge and carry on a conversation of sorts with the hypnotist.

  “I want her to go with me, she is all I have now,” he said, speaking through Mrs. G.’s mouth in trance.

  Later she confirmed that she had been on the brink of suicide recently, and this had not been in a moment of panic but as if someone had actually made her attempt it. Luckily, she had managed to pull out of it just in time.

  “Do you believe in a God?” the hypnotist asked.

  “No,” the entity replied and brushed the question aside. “I told her, she made life hell for me, now I’ll make her life hell for her.”

  “But why do that?”

  “No one wants me—I want to cry—you don’t know what this is like—over here—nothing but darkness—”

  Tears came down Mrs. G.’s cheeks now.

  “It’s me crying, not her,” the voice of John W. said, and then, somewhat quieter, “No one wanted me as a child.... I came from an orphanage...my grandparents never wanted me...she could have made me happy but she didn’t want to. She’s the only woman who would have made me happy, only her, but she doesn’t want me.”

  “Then why force yourself on her? What is the point?”

  “I force myself on her because I can make her miserable.”

  “You can’t force love.”

  “I have no pride.”

  “Renounce her”.

  “I don’t want to listen to you. She hates me now anyway. I’m going to take her with me.... I’ll get her, one way or another, I’ll get her all right.”

  The hypnotist, patiently, explained about the freedom of the other side and how to get there by wishing oneself with one’s loved ones who have preceded one.

  “This is all new to me,” the confused entity replied, but seemed for a moment to be thinking it over.

  But it was only a brief squint at the light, then darkness took over once again.

  “I’ve made her cry...miserable...she made me miserable. I don’t like the way she’s lived her life...

  Suddenly, the personality seemed to squirm as if from guilt.

  Was this his own private hell he was in?

  “I’m not really that person...;. I’ve been lying to her...just so I can be around her, I tell her one thing and then another...”

  “Then why not leave her and go on to the other side?”

  “I want to but don’t know how—I can’t go without her.”

  The hypnotist tried again, explaining that other souls had been equally confused and been helped “across” the great divide.

  The voice of the possessing entity hesitated. He was willing to go, but could he see Mrs. G. now and again? Visiting privileges, the hypnotist thought, with a bitter sense of humor.

  “Will I be able to come back and see her?” the voice asked again.

  But then the demented mind emerged triumphant.

  “She hates me for what I’ve done to her. I’m not going to leave. I can do anything with her. Never could do it when living.”

  Now the hypnotist dropped the polite approach.

  “You are to leave this woman,” he intoned, “on pain of eternal damnation.”

  “I won’t go.”

  “You will be in hell.”

  “She will be with me then.”

  “I send you away, the psychic door is closed. You cannot return.”

  “I will.”

  A moment later, Mrs. G. awoke, somewhat dumbfounded and tired, but otherwise no worse off than she had been when she had been put under by the hypnotist.

  After she returned to Kansas City, she had some hopes that the power of John W. had been broken. But the molesting continued unabated. True, there had been conversation and the entity now knew at least that he was committing a moral offense. But evidently it did not matter to him, for the attacks continued.

  After a while, Mrs. G. realized that her anxiety and abject fear were contributing factors to John W.’s unholy powers. She learned that negative emotions can create energies that become usable by entities such as John W. and when she realized this fact, her attitude began to undergo a change.

  Where she had been waiting for his attacks to occur and counting the moments when she was totally free from his possession, she now deliberately disregarded all he did and treated his presence with utter indifference. She could still feel the rage within him when he wanted to possess her, but the rage was slowly cooling. Gradually, her compassion for the bedeviled soul returned and as it did, his hold upon her weakened. He had made his point, after all, and now the point no longer mattered. When last heard from, Mrs. G. was living quietly in Kansas City.

  Z 137

  The Case of the Buried Miners

  IN THE SECOND HALF OF August 1963, every newspaper in the United States was filled with the day-to-day accounts of a mining cave-in at Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Two men, David Fellin and Henry Throne, survived fourteen days at the bottom of a caved-in mine shaft and were finally rescued through a specially drilled funnel.

  On August 28, Fellin gave the Associated Press an interview, in which he said:

  Now they’re trying to tell me those things were hallucinations, that we imagined it all.

  We didn’t. Our minds weren’t playing tricks on us. I’ve been a practical, hardheaded coal miner all my life. My mind was clear down there in the mine. It’s still clear.

  We saw what we say. These things happened. I can’t explain them. I’m alm
ost afraid to think what might be the explanation.

  For example, on the fourth or fifth day, we saw this door, although we had no light from above or from our helmets. The door was covered in bright blue light. It was very clear, better than sunlight.

  Two men, ordinary-looking men, not miners, opened the door. We could see beautiful marble steps on the other side. We saw this for some time and then we didn’t see it. We saw other things I can’t explain.

  One thing I was always sure of. I was convinced we’d get out even if I had to dig us out myself.

  A funny thing occurred on that very first day. We [Henry Throne and Louis Bova] hadn’t been down in the mine five minutes that morning when my stomach started feeling a little out of whack.

  I said, “Let’s go out for an hour or so.”

  But the boys persuaded me to stay and get some work done first.

  So we stayed, down at the tunnel’s bottom, more than 300 feet down. Louis was on one side and me and Hank on the other.

  Louis reached up to press the buzzer for the buggy [a small wagon which carries coal on tracks up to the surface]. He pressed the buzzer and stepped back. Then it happened.

  Suddenly everything was coming down—timber, coal, rocks. The stuff was rushing down between us and Louis. Then it was quiet for maybe half a minute. Then the rush started again. It went on like this, starting and stopping for some time.

  We sat there, listening as hard as we could for more rushes in the dark. We sat there against the wall that way 14 to 16 hours in a place about 6 feet long, 5 feet wide and about 3 feet high.

  Now, you asked me about the strange things Hank saw. I actually saw more of them than he did. But I find it hard to talk about that.

  I’m positive we saw what we saw. We weren’t imagining them. Even before we heard from the men on the top, we had some light now and then. How else can you explain all the work we did down there? We couldn’t have done it entirely in darkness.

  The only time I was really scared was when we saw two men dressed like power linemen. Don’t ask me what men like that were doing down on the bottom. But I saw them.

  Hank asked me two or three times to ask the men for some light. This idea scared me down to my toes. I had the feeling this was something outside of our reach, that we shouldn’t talk or do anything.

  But Hank did not. Hank said to the men. “Hey, buddy, how about showing us some light?”

  They didn’t answer, and after a while we didn’t see them any more.

  Well, similar descriptions have been given from time to time by people close to death; Arthur Ford was once in that position in a hospital, and described vividly the door and the men operating it, before he was able to return to this side of the veil once more.

  Did David Fellin have a glimpse of the other side of life, the unseen world, the world of the psychic? Perhaps he did. Perhaps, too, he was being helped by these forces to return to the surface. In a television interview Fellin also claimed to have been given a message by the men, but he could not discuss it.

  About the same time this happened, a millworker named Guy de Maggio had a vision of Fellin and his visitors from beyond, and actually heard the words spoken by Fellin. So vivid was the impression that he took pains to tell people about it. This was many miles away from the scene and could be confirmed only later, after Fellin was rescued. Did both men tune in on the same supernormal wave length?

  The local psychiatrists have done their best to convince Fellin that he had a hallucination. But Fellin is convinced of his experience. And so am I.

  I tried to coax the two miners to come on Pittsburgh television with me. They refused. They were afraid of being laughed at. Then a reporter from the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin went to interview them on the anniversary of the event.

  Yes, it was true that David Fellin had seen a door with beautiful marble steps, but there were also the people, apparently human, walking up and down the stairs. Yet somehow he and Hank Throne feared to go through the door.

  “Did you see what was on the other side of the door?” the reporter asked.

  “A beautiful garden, just as far as you can see. The flowers were more beautiful, the grass greener, than here on earth. I knew that was some special place.”

  “Did the man hold the door open?”

  “No, Hank shouted for him to hold it, but the door slammed.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Hank got mad. He said: ‘Give me that hammer. I’ll open that door.’ The hammer was lying next to me, and I just handed it to him. He took it and ran at the door, then swung the hammer at it. That’s when he broke a bone in his hand. And he bruished himself on the right cheek.”

  “What happened to the door?”

  “It disappeared, and the light went out.”

  “What light? What did it look like?”

  “It was a bluish light, not like daylight.”

  “Both you and Hank saw this door and the light?”

  “Yes. Also Pope John. But Hank didn’t know it was Pope John, not until we got to the hospital and the priest brought me a book with a picture of Pope John on the cover.” (Pope John XXIII died June 3, 1963.)

  “Let’s start at the beginning.”

  “I was sitting here, and Hank was sitting like where you are [facing him]. He kept looking up over my shoulder. I looked up one time and saw Pope John there. He had his arms crossed and was just looking down at us. He didn’t say anything.”

  “Did you and Hank speak to him?”

  “I would say, ‘Is our friend still there?’ or ‘How’s our friend today?’ Hank would grin and say he was still there.”

  “Didn’t you tell him this was Pope John?”

  “I figured Hank was a Protestant, and wouldn’t know who he was anyway.”

  “How did he find out then?”

  “When they took us to the hospital, my priest brought me a book with a picture of the Pope on it. And Hank points to the book and said, ‘Hey, there’s that guy we saw, Dave.’”

  “Did you and Hank discuss these things while you saw them?”

  “No, not too much. When we saw those people on the steps I told him we stumbled onto something. I had nicknamed the mine where we were trapped ‘The Graveyard of Souls.’ And I told him that we stumbled onto the graveyard of souls.”

  The reporter later talked to Throne, who said that he saw the door, stairway, and Pope John.

  Pope John XXIII was, of course, on the spiritual side of the veil at the time the two buried miners saw his apparition.

  The London Psychic News also picked up the story and featured it. They headlined it:

  ENTOMBED MINER

  IS NOT AFRAID

  TO DIE ANY MORE

  Not after they saw where they’d be going.

  Z 138

  The Ghostly Lover

  PERHAPS THE MOST FANTASTIC case of recent vintage is a case involving Betty Ritter and the well-known psychoanalyst Dr. Nandor Fodor. Dr. Fodor had been treating a certain Edith Berger, in Long Island, for what seemed at first disturbing symptoms of split personality. But Dr. Fodor is a trained parapsychologist as well, and he did not fail to recognize the case for what it was, possession!

  He suggested that the Bergers call in a good medium, and recommended Betty Ritter.

  Half in tears, Edith Berger’s mother told Betty on the telephone how a possessive spirit personality had been annoying her and her daughter for the past four months. It seemed that Edith, the daughter, had a gentleman friend, a medical doctor, who had died in the tropics not long before.

  The very day after his death, the young woman found that her erstwhile suitor had attached himself to her, and was forcing himself on her—physically! The attacks were so violent, the mother said, that she had to sleep in the same bed with her daughter for protection, but to no avail. The mother also felt the physical contact experienced by her daughter!

  Betty concentrated her psychic powers immediately on what can only be called a form of exorc
ism. Although there was some relief, the ghostly boyfriend was still around.

  To Betty’s horror, she woke up that same night to find the restless one standing before her bed, stark naked, in a menacing mood. Betty’s contacts on “the other side,” however, protected her and took the erring one away.

  Telling Edith Berger of her experience the next day, she accurately described the visitor. Her efforts seemed to weaken the attacks somewhat, and several days later she saw him again, this time, however, fully clothed! He wore riding boots and carried a whip. The Bergers confirmed that the man had been a lover of horses. On April 20, 1961, Betty Ritter telephoned the Bergers to find out how things were going. The moment Edith answered the telephone, the ghost started to pull her hair in a most painful fashion, as if to prove he was still very much in evidence!

  But the violent mind of the young doctor would not accept the separation from his physical body and its pleasures. The haunting continued; thus Betty Ritter asked me to accompany her to the Berger home for another go at the case.

  The Bergers turned out to be very level-headed middle-class people, and completely ignorant of anything psychic. Edith seemed to be a highly nervous, but quite “normal” human being. Almost immediately, the entity got hold of the medium and yelled through her—“I shall not be pulled away from you. I won’t go.”

  I learned that the father had at first been highly skeptical of all this, but his daughter’s behavior changed so much, and became so different from her previous character, that he had to admit to himself that something uncanny was happening in his house. Edith, who had wanted to be a singer, and was far from tidy, suddenly became the very model of tidyness, started to clean up things, and behaved like a nurse—the profession her late boyfriend had wanted her to follow. At times, she assumed his ailments and “passing symptoms.” At times, she would suffer from genuine malaria—just as he had done. Since Edith was mediumistic, it was easy for the dead doctor to have his will. The message he wanted her to deliver most was to tell his mother that he was “still alive.” But how could she do that, and not reveal her agony?