by Hans Holzer
I hurried to Boston and they met me at radio station WBZ.
What about the ghostly soldier? Any clues?
Both Hofmanns nodded.
“We’ve checked in Nourse’s History of the Town of Harvard,” Mrs. Hoffman said gravely, “and there was a colonial drummer named Hill who was hanged in this area...for some misdeeds.”
I remembered her telling me of a ghost in their own house on Poor Farm Road, and Mrs. Hofmann filled me in on this far gentler wraith.
“During the summer months,” she explained, “there is what appears to be a Quaker lady that walks across our front lawn, usually during the afternoon. This person often appears many times a day.”
Her husband added that she had given him many details of the ghost’s dress, which he checked for authenticity. He found that they were indeed worn by the Quaker women of the eighteenth century.
Why a member of so gentle a persuasion as the Quakers would turn into a ghost we may never know, but perhaps someday the Quaker lady will walk again for me.
* * *
There is said to be the ghost of a pirate near the water’s edge in old Boston, where so many secret passages existed in the days when Massachusetts was British. The Black Lady of Warren Island, out in the bay, has been seen by a number of people. She was executed during the Civil War for helping her husband, a Yankee prisoner, break out of prison.
Boston’s emotional climate is fine for special activities. There may not be any medieval castles, but Beacon Hill can look pretty forbidding, too—especially on a chilly November night when the fog drifts in from the sea.
In September 1963 I appeared on WBZ-TV on Mike Douglas’ television show, discussing my ever-present interest in haunted houses. As a consequence, there was an avalanche of letters, many of which contained leads to new cases.
One came from a Mrs. Anne Valukis, of South Natick, near Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote me of an old house she lived in where the stairs creaked unaccountably at odd times, as if someone were walking up and down them; of the strange behavior her little boy showed whenever he was in a certain room of the house; and of an overall atmosphere of the uncanny prevailing throughout the house, as if an unseen force were always present.
I wrote for additional data about herself and the background of the house. Meanwhile, the public television station in Boston, Channel 2, took an interest in my work, and the station and I decided to join forces for an expedition to the haunted house in South Natick. Fred Barzyk, the director, undertook the preliminary task of additional research. My visit was scheduled for the last week of October. Mrs. Valukis wasn’t long in answering me.
“The stairs haven’t creaked for over a week, but my four-year-old woke Saturday night four times, and was really scared, so much so he would not go back upstairs to his room.... Years ago this house was kind of a speakeasy, connected to a dance hall that was on the Charles River. Probably anything could have happened here. Who knows?”
Not because of the spooky stairs, but for other reasons, the Valukis family decided to move to Anne’s parents’ house. This made our visit problematical, until Fred Barzyk discovered that the house belonging to Mrs. Valukis’ parents was even more haunted than Anne Valukis’ place.
Mrs. Rose Josselyn, Anne’s mother, was a Canadian Indian, and, like many of her people, had had psychic experiences all her life.
About 39 years before I met her, Mrs. Josselyn was living in Annapolis Royal, Canada, in what was purported to be a haunted house. Frequently she awoke in the middle of the night and found it difficult to breathe. Her arms seemed to be pinned down by an unseen force and she was unable to move even so much as finger!
“It felt as if someone were choking me,” she said to me later. “I tried to scream, but could not move my lips.”
This had gone on for about a year. Finally Rose told her mother, who was mediumistic herself, and Rose was forbidden ever to sleep again in “that room.” Twenty years alter, Mrs. Josselyn still remembered the stark terror of those nights in Canada, but nothing like it had happened to her since—nothing, that is, until she moved into this house.
The house itself was a gray-white, medium-sized early American house, built in the stately manner of early Georgian architecture and very well preserved. It was set back from the road a bit, framed by tall, shady trees, and one had the feeling of being far from the bustle of the big city. Built about 150 years before, the house had an upper story and total of eight rooms. Bordering on the lawn of the house was a cemetery, separated from the Josselyn house by an iron gate and fence.
When the Josselyns moved in with their family, Mrs. Josselyn had no thoughts of anything psychic or uncanny. She soon learned differently.
Upstairs, there were two bedrooms separated only by a thin wall. The larger one belonged to Mrs. Josselyn; the smaller one, to the rear of the house, to her husband Roy. It was in her bedroom that Mrs. Josselyn had another attack of the terrible feeling she had experienced in her Canadian youth. Pinned down on her bed, it was as if someone were upon her, holding her.
“Whose bedroom was this before you took it?” I inquired.
“Well, my daughter-in-law slept here for a while,” Mrs. Josselyn confided, “that is, before she died.”
I asked further questions about this girl. At the age of 21, she had fallen ill and suffered her last agonies in this very room, before being taken off to a hospital, never to return. Her only child, to whom she was naturally very attached, was reared by Mrs. Josselyn and Mrs. Valukis.
I walked across the floor to a small room belonging to David Josselyn, 17, the brother of Mrs. Valukis. Here I was shown a hand-made wooden chair that was said to creak at odd moments, as if someone were sitting in it. David himself had been awakened many times by this unearthly behavior of his chair, and Anne had also observed the noise. I tried the chair. It was sturdy enough, and only strong efforts on my part produced any kind of noise. It could not have creaked by itself.
“Who gave you this chair?” I asked.
“The same man who made our clock downstairs,” David said. I recalled seeing a beautiful wooden grandfather clock in the corner of the downstairs room. The odd thing about that clock was it sometimes ticked and the hands moved, even though it no longer had any works or pendulum!
The clock, chair, and a desk in David’s room were the work of a skilled craftsman named Thomas Council, who was a well-liked house guest of the Josselyns and gave them these things to show his gratitude for their hospitality. He was a lonely bachelor and the Josselyns were his only close friends. David in particular was the apple of his eye. Thomas Council’s body rested comfortably, it is hoped, across the way in the cemetery, and the Josselyns made sure there were always fresh flowers on his grave.
I decided to return to Mrs. Josselyn’s room.
“Outside of your nightmarish experiences here and in Canada,” I said, “have you had any other psychic incidents?”
Mrs. Josselyn, a serious, quiet woman of about 59, thought for a moment.
“Yes, frequently. Whenever my children are in some sort of trouble, I just know it. No matter how trifling. You might say we have telepathic contact.”
“Did you also hear those stairs creak at your daughter’s house across the road?”
“Yes, many times.”
“Was that after or before your daughter-in-law passed away?”
“After.”
“I clearly heard those steps upstairs, and there wasn’t anyone but me and the baby in the house,” added Anne Valukis for corroboration.
They all had been visited, it seemed to me, except the father, Roy Josselyn. It was time I turned my attention in his direction.
Mr. Josselyn sat on the bed in his room, quietly smoking a pipe. I had been warned by Fred Barzyk that the man of the house was no particular believer in the supernatural. To my relief, I discovered Mr. Josselyn at least had an open mind. I also discovered that a great-aunt of his in Vermont had been a spiritualistic medium.
; I asked if he had seen or heard anything unusual.
“Well,” he said, “about a year ago I started to hear some moans and groans around here...,” he pointed toward the wall adjoining the bedroom occupied by his wife. “At first I thought it was my wife, but there was no one in her room at the time. I looked.”
“This moaning...was it a human voice?”
“Oh yes, very human. Couldn’t sleep a wink while it lasted.”
“When did you last hear it?”
“Yesterday,” he said laconically.
“How did you and your daughter-in-law get along?” I suddenly felt compelled to ask.
“Very well,” he said. “As a matter of fact, she took more to me than to anyone else. You know how women are—a bit jealous. She was a little on the possessive side as far her baby was concerned. I mean, she was very much worried abut the child.”
“But she wasn’t jealous of you?”
“No, not of me. We were very close.”
I thought of the 21-year-old girl taken by death without being ready for it, and the thoughts of fear for her child that must have gone through her mind those dreadful last hours when her moaning filled the air of the room next to Roy Josselyn’s.
I also thought about Mrs. Roy Josselyn’s background—the fact that she was Princess of the Micmac Indian tribe. I remembered how frequent psychic experiences were among Indians, who are so much closer to nature than we city-dwellers.
Perhaps the restless spirit of the 21-year-old girl wanted some attention. Perhaps her final moments had only impressed themselves on the atmosphere of the upstairs room and were relived by the psychically sensitive members of the family. Perhaps, too, Thomas Council, the family friend, roamed the house now and then to make sure everything was all right with his favorite family.
When we drove back to Boston late that night, I felt sure I had met a haunted family, for better or worse.
* 142
Alabama Stay-Behinds
WARREN F. GODFREY is an educated man who works for the nasa Center in Houston. He and his wife Gwen had no particular interest in the occult and were always careful not to let their imagination run away with them. They lived in a house in Huntsville, Alabama, which was, at the time they moved into it, only three years old. At first they had only a feeling that the house didn’t want them. There was nothing definite about this, but as time went on they would look over their shoulders to see if they were being followed, and felt silly doing so. Then, gradually, peculiar noises started. Ordinarily such noises would not disturb them, and they tried very hard to blame the settling of the house. There were cracks in the ceiling, the popping and cracking of corners, then the walls would join in, and after a while there would be silence again. Faucets would start to drip for no apparent reason. Doors would swing open and/or shut by themselves, and a dish would shift in the cupboard. All these things could perhaps have been caused by a house’s settling, but the noises seemed to become organized. Warren noticed that the house had a definite atmosphere. There seemed to be a feeling that the house objected to the young couple’s happiness. It seemed to want to disturb their togetherness in whatever way it could, and it managed to depress them.
Then there were knockings. At first these were regularly spaced single sharp raps proceeding from one part of the house to another. Warren ran out and checked the outside of the house, under it, and everywhere and could discover no reason for the knocks. As all this continued, they became even more depressed and neither liked to stay alone in the house. About Thanskgiving 1968 they went to visit Warren’s mother in Illinois for a few days. After they returned to the empty house it seemed quieter, even happier. Shortly before Christmas, Warren had to go to Houston on business. While he was gone Gwen took a photograph of their daughter Leah. When the picture was developed there was an additional head on the film, with the face in profile and wearing some sort of hat. Warren, a scientist, made sure that there was no natural reason for this extra face on the film. Using a Kodak Instamatic camera with a mechanism that excludes any double exposure, he duplicated the picture and also made sure that a reflection could not have caused the second image. Satisfied that he had obtained sufficient proof to preclude a natural origin for the second face on the film, he accepted the psychic origin of the picture.
About that time they began hearing voices. One night Warren woke up to hear two men arguing in a nearby room. At first he dismissed it as bad dream and went back to sleep, but several nights later the same thing happened. After listening to them for a while he shrugged his shoulders and went back to sleep. He could not understand a word they were saying but was sure that there were two men arguing. After several weeks of this his wife also heard the voices. To Warren this was gratifying, since he was no longer alone in hearing them. The time when both of them heard the voices was generally around 1 A.M. In addition to the two men arguing, Gwen has also heard a woman crying and Warren has heard people laughing. The noises are not particularly directed toward them, nor do they feel that there is anything evil about them. Gradually they have learned to ignore them. As a trained scientist, Warren tried a rational approach to explain the phenomena but could not find any cause. Turning on the lights did not help either. The phenomena occurred only in the master bedroom. There are no television stations on the air at that time of the morning, and there is no house close enough for human voices to carry that far. In trying to reach for a natural explanation, Warren considered the fact that caves extended underneath the area, but what they were hearing was not the noise of rushing waters. Those were human voices and they were right there in the room with them. They decided to learn to live with their unseen boarders and perhaps the ghosts might eventually let them in on their “problem.” Not that Warren and Gwen could do much about them, but it is always nice to know what your friends are talking about, especially when you share your bedroom with them.
* * *
Mary Carol Henry is in her early thirties, lives in Montgomery and is married to a medical technician in the USAF. She is the mother of seven children and has had psychic experiences from early childhood. When Mary was twelve years old one of her older brothers moved to Pittsburgh. She lent a helping hand with the furniture and other belongings and decided to stay overnight so she could help them finish up the work early in the morning. The house was an old four-story one in the Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh. Mary and the children slept up on the third floor, but she felt very uneasy about staying. Somehow the house bothered her. Since she had promised to stay overnight, however, she went to bed around 10 P.M. and lay in bed for a while thinking about why the house had troubled her. Her brother’s baby slept in the same room with her and after a while her brother came up to check on the child. She then heard him go back downstairs. Mary wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed when she thought she heard him come up again. There was the rustling of newspapers or something that sounded like it, and she assumed it was her brother, since he was in the habit of taking a newspaper with him when he went to the bathroom. She turned over, and instead of her brother, to her amazement she saw a young girl come out of a closet. Immediately she recognized her as her little sister Patsy who had been killed in a gas explosion in August 1945 at the age of five. The ghost wore the same gown she had been buried in and she looked exactly as she had when she was alive but somehow larger in build. Her apparition was enveloped by a green light. As Mary stared in disbelief the ghost came over to the bed and sat on the side of it. Mary saw the bed actually sink in where Patsy sat on it. Her sister than put her hands on Mary’s and kissed her on the cheek. Mary felt the kiss as if it were the kiss of a living person. Then the apparition vanished. Still dazed with fear, Mary sprang out of bed and spent the rest of the night on the stairs. When she told her experience to her mother later, her mother assured her that her late sister had only come back to comfort her in what must have been unfamiliar surroundings, for if Mary was to see a ghost that night it might just as well be someone in the family, not a stranger.
* 143
Arkansas Stay-Behinds
HOLLYGROVE IS ONLY a small town in eastern Arkansas, but to Sharon Inebnit it is the center of her world. She lives there with her farmer husband in quiet, rural Arkansas far from metropolitan centers. Little Rock is a long way off and not a place one is likely to visit often. Her mother lives in Helena close to the Mississippi state line. Traveling east on Highway 86 and then on 49 Sharon has gone back and forth a few times in her young life. She knows the area well. It is not an area of particular merit but it has one advantage; it’s very quiet. About halfway between Holly-grove and Helena stands an old house that attracted Sharon every time she passed it. There was no reason for it, and yet whenever she passed the old house something within her wondered what the house’s secret was.
Sharon is now in her early twenties. She lived with an extraordinary gift of ESP since infancy. That is a subject one doesn’t discuss freely in her part of the world. People either ridicule you or, worse, think you’re in league with the devil. So Sharon managed to keep her powers to herself even though at times she couldn’t help surprising people. She would often hear voices of people who weren’t even within sight. If she wanted someone to call her, all she had to do was visualize the person and, presto, the person would ring her. Whenever the telephone rings she knows exactly who is calling. Frequently she has heard her neighbors talking 500 yards from her house, yet she is so sensitive she cannot stand the television when it is turned on too loud.
Her husband, a farmer of Swiss extraction, is somewhat skeptical of her powers. He is less skeptical now than he was when he first met her. Back in the summer of 1963 when she and her present husband first kept company, she was already somewhat of a puzzle to him. One day, the fifteen-year-old girl insisted they drive into Helena, which was about five miles from where they were then. Her boyfriend wanted to know why. She insisted that there was a baseball game going on and that a private swimming party was in progress at the municipal pool. She had no reason to make this statement, however, nor any proof that it was correct, but they were both very much interested in baseball games, so her boyfriend humored her and decided to drive on to Helena. When they arrived at Helena they found that a baseball game was indeed going on and that a private swimming party was in progress at the municipal pool just as Sharon had said. Helena has a population of over 10,000 people. Sharon lives 25 miles away. How could she have known this?