by Hans Holzer
It was just before Christmas when they got their first inkling that something was not as it should be with their house. Mrs. E. was sitting up late one night, busy with last-minute preparations for the holiday. All of a sudden the front door, which was secured and locked, flew open with a violent force, and immediately shut itself again, with the handle turning by itself and the latch falling into place. Since Mrs. E. didn’t expect any visitors, she was naturally surprised. Quickly walking over to the door to find out what had happened, she discovered that the door was locked. It is the kind of lock that can only be unlocked by turning a knob. Shaking her head in disbelief, she returned to her chair, but before she could sit down again and resume her chores, the door to the utility room began to rattle as though a wind were blowing. Yet there were no open windows that could have caused it. Suddenly, as she was staring at it, the knob turned and the door opened. Somehow nonplussed, Mrs. E. thought, rather sarcastically, “While you’re at it, why don’t you shake the Christmas tree too?” Before she had completed the thought, the tree began to shake. For a moment, Mrs. E. stood still and thought all of this over in her mind. Then she decided that she was just overtired and had contracted a case of the holiday jitters. It was probably all due to imagination. She went to bed and didn’t say anything about the incident.
Two weeks later, her fourteen-year-old daughter and Mrs. E. were up late talking, when all of a sudden every cupboard in the kitchen opened by itself, one by one. Mrs. E.’s daughter stared at the phenomenon in disbelief. But Mrs. E. simply said, “Now close them.” Sure enough, one by one, they shut with a hard slam by themselves, almost like a little child whose prank had not succeeded. At this point Mrs. E. thought it best to tell her daughter of her first encounter with the unseen, and implored her not to be scared of it, or tell the younger children or anyone else outside the house. She didn’t want to be known as a weird individual in the neighborhood into which they had just moved. However, she decided to inform her husband about what had happened. He didn’t say much, but it was clear that he was not convinced. However, as with so many cases of this kind where the man in the house takes a lot longer to be convinced than a woman, Mr. E.’s time came about two weeks later.
He was watching television when one of the stereo speakers began to tilt back all of a sudden, rocking back and forth without falling over, on its own, as if held by unseen hands. Being of a practical bent, Mr. E. got up to find an explanation, but there was no wind that would have been strong enough to tilt a 20-pound speaker. At this point, Mr. E. agreed that there was something peculiar about the house. This was the more likely as their dog, an otherwise calm and peaceful animal, went absolutely wild at the moment the speakers tilted, and ran about the house for half an hour afterwards, barking, sniffing, and generally raising Cain.
However, the ghost was out of the bag, so to speak. The two younger children, then nine and ten years old, noticed him—it was assumed to be a man all along. A house guest remarked how strange it was that the door was opening seemingly by itself. Mrs. E. explained this with a remark that the latch was not working properly. “But how did the knob turn, then?” the house guest wanted to know.
Under the circumstances, Mrs. E. owned up to their guest. The ghost doesn’t scare Mrs. E., but he makes it somewhat unpleasant for her at times, such as when she is taking a shower and the doors fly open. After all, one doesn’t want to be watched by a man while showering, even if he is a ghost. The stay-behind isn’t noticeable all the time, to be sure, but frequently enough to count as an extra inhabitant of the house. Whenever she feels him near, there is a chill in the hall and an echo. This happens at various times of day or night, early or late. To the children he is a source of some concern, and they will not stay home alone.
But to Mrs. E. he is merely an unfortunate human being, caught up in the entanglement of his own emotions from the past, desperately trying to break through the time barrier to communicate with her, but unable to do so because conditions aren’t just right. Sometimes she wishes she were more psychic than she is, but in the meantime she has settled down to share the her home with someone she cannot see, but who, it appears, considers himself part of the family.
* * *
One of the most amazing stories of recent origin concerns a family of farmers in central Connecticut. Some people have a ghost in the house, a stay-behind who likes the place so much he or she doesn’t want to leave. But this family had entire groups of ghosts staying on, simply because they liked the sprawling farmhouse, and simply because it happened to be their home too. The fact that they had passed across the threshold of death did not deter them in the least. To the contrary, it seemed a natural thing to stay behind and watch what the young ones were doing with the house, to possibly help them here and there, and, at the very least, to have some fun with them by causing so-called “inexplicable” phenomena to happen.
After all, life can be pretty dull in central Connecticut, especially in the winter. It isn’t any more fun being a ghost in central Connecticut, so one cannot really hold it against these stay-behinds if they amuse themselves as best they can in the afterlife. Today the house shows its age; it isn’t in good condition, and needs lots of repairs. The family isn’t as large as it was before some of the younger generation moved out to start lives of their own, but it’s still a busy house and a friendly one, ghosts or no ghosts. It stands on a quiet country road off the main route, and on a clear day you can see the Massachusetts border in the distance; that is, if you are looking for it. It is hardly noticeable, for in this part of the country, all New England looks the same.
Because of the incredible nature of the many incidents, the family wants no publicity, no curious tourists, no reporters. To defer to their wishes, I changed the family name to help them retain that anonymity, and the peace and quiet of their country house. The house in question was already old when a map of the town, drawn in 1761, showed it. The present owners, the Harveys, have lived in it all their lives, with interruption. Mrs. Harvey’s great-great-grandparents bought it from the original builder, and when her great-great-grandfather died in 1858, it happened at the old homestead. Likewise, her great-great-grandmother passed on in 1871, at the age of eighty, and again it happened at home. One of their children died in 1921, at age ninety-one, also at home.
This is important, you see, because it accounts for the events that transpired later in the lives of their descendants. A daughter named Julia married an outsider and moved to another state, but considers herself part of the family just the same, so much so that her second home was still the old homestead in central Connecticut. Another daughter, Martha, was Mrs. Harvey’s great-grandmother. Great-grandmother Martha died at age ninety-one, also in the house. Then there was an aunt, a sister of her great-great-grandfather’s by the name of Nancy, who came to live with them when she was a widow; she lived to be ninety and died in the house. They still have some of her furniture there. Mrs. Harvey’s grandparents had only one child, Viola, who became her mother, but they took in boarders, mostly men working in the nearby sawmills. One of these boarders died in the house too, but his name is unknown. Possibly several others died there too.
Of course the house doesn’t look today the way it originally did; additions were built onto the main part, stairs were moved, a well in the cellar was filled in because members of the family going down for cider used to fall into it, and many of the rooms that later became bedrooms originally had other purposes. For instance, daughter Marjorie’s bedroom was once called the harness room because horses’ harnesses were once made in it, and the room of one of the sons used to be called the cheese room for obvious reasons. What became a sewing room was originally used as a pantry, with shelves running across the south wall.
The fact that stairs were changed throughout the house is important, because in the mind of those who lived in the past, the original stairs would naturally take precedence over later additions or changes. Thus phantoms may appear out of the wall, seemingly wit
hout reason, except that they would be walking up staircases that no longer exist.
Mrs. Harvey was born in the house, but at age four her parents moved away from it, and did not return until much later. But even then, Mrs. Harvey recalls an incident which she was never to forget. When she was only four years old, she remembers very clearly an old lady she had never seen before appear at her crib. She cried, but when she told her parents about it, they assured her it was just a dream. But Mrs. Harvey knew she had not dreamt the incident; she remembered every detail of the old lady’s dress.
When she was twelve years old, at a time when the family had returned to live in the house, she was in one of the upstairs bedrooms and again the old lady appeared to her. But when she talked about it to their parents, the matter was immediately dropped. As Frances Harvey grew up in the house, she couldn’t help but notice some strange goings-on. A lamp moved by itself, without anyone being near it. Many times she could feel a presence walking close behind her in the upstairs part of the house, but when she turned around, she was alone. Nor was she the only one to notice the strange goings-on. Her brothers heard footsteps around their beds, and complained about someone bending over them, yet no one was to be seen. The doors to the bedrooms would open by themselves at night, so much so that the boys tied the door latches together so that they could not open by themselves. Just the same, when morning came, the doors were wide open with the knot still in place.
It was at that time that her father got into the habit of taking an after-dinner walk around the house before retiring. Many times he told the family of seeing a strange light going through the upstairs rooms, a glowing luminosity for which there was no rational explanation. Whenever Frances Harvey had to be alone upstairs she felt uncomfortable, but when she mentioned this to her parents she was told that all old houses made one feel like that and to nevermind. One evening, Frances was playing a game with her grandfather when both of them clearly heard footsteps coming up the back stairs. But her grandfather didn’t budge. When Frances asked him who this could possibly be, he merely shrugged and said there was plenty of room for everyone.
As the years passed, the Harveys would come back to the house from time to time to visit. On these occasions, Frances would wake up in the night because someone was bending over her. At other times there was a heavy depression on the bed as if someone were sitting there! Too terrified to tell anyone about it, she kept her experiences to herself for the time being.
Then, in the early 1940s, Frances married, and with her husband and two children, eventually returned to the house to live there permanently with her grandparents. No sooner had they moved in when the awful feeling came back in the night. Finally she told her husband, who of course scoffed at the idea of ghosts.
The most active area in the house seemed to be upstairs, roughly from her son Don’s closet, through her daughter Lolita’s room, and especially the front hall and stairs. It felt as if someone were standing on the landing of the front stairs, just watching.
This goes back a long time. Mrs. Harvey’s mother frequently complained, when working in the attic, that all of a sudden she would feel someone standing next to her, someone she could not see.
One day Mrs. Harvey and her youngest daughter went grocery shopping. After putting the groceries away, Mrs. Harvey reclined on the living room couch while the girl sat in the dining room reading. Suddenly they heard a noise like thunder, even though the sky outside was clear. It came again, only this time it sounded closer, as if it were upstairs! When it happened the third time, it was accompanied by a sound as if someone were making up the bed in Mrs. Harvey’s son’s room upstairs.
Now, they had left the bed in disorder because they had been in a hurry to go shopping. No one else could have gone upstairs, and yet when they entered the son’s room, the bed was made up as smoothly as possible. As yet, part of the family still scoffed at the idea of having ghosts in the house, and considered the mother’s ideas as dreams or hallucinations. They were soon to change their minds, however, when it happened to them as well.
The oldest daughter felt very brave and called up the stairs, “Little ghosties, where are you?” Her mother told her she had better not challenge them, but the others found it amusing. That night she came downstairs a short time after she had gone to bed, complaining that she felt funny in her room, but thought it was just her imagination. The following night, she awoke to the feeling that someone was bending over her. One side of her pillow was pulled away from her head as though a hand had pushed it down. She called out and heard footsteps receding from her room, followed by heavy rumblings in the attic above. Quickly she ran into her sister’s room, where both of them lay awake the rest of the night listening to the rumbling and footsteps walking around overhead. The next day she noticed a dusty black footprint on the light-colored scatter rug next to her bed. It was in the exact location where she had felt someone standing and bending over her. Nobody’s footprint in the house matched the black footprint, for it was long and very narrow. At this point the girls purchased special night lights and left them on in the hope of sleeping peacefully.
One day Mrs. Harvey felt brave, and started up the stairs in response to footsteps coming from her mother’s bedroom. She stopped, and as the footsteps approached the top of the stairs, a loud ticking noise came with them, like a huge pocket watch. Quickly she ran down the stairs and outside to get her son to be a witness to it. Sure enough, he too could hear the ticking noise. This was followed by doors opening and closing by themselves. Finally, they dared go upstairs, and when they entered the front bedroom, they noticed a very strong, sweet smell of perfume. When two of the daughters came home from work that evening, the family compared notes and it was discovered that they, too, had smelled the strange perfume and heard the ticking noise upstairs. They concluded that one of their ghosts, at least, was a man.
About that time, the youngest daughter reported seeing an old woman in her room, standing at a bureau with something shiny in her hand. The ghost handed it to her but she was too frightened to receive it. Since her description of the woman had been very detailed, Mrs. Harvey took out the family album and asked her daughter to look through it in the hope that she might identify the ghostly visitor. When they came to one particular picture, the girl let out a small cry: that was the woman she had seen! It turned out to be Julia, a great-great-aunt of Mrs. Harvey’s, the same woman whom Mrs. Harvey herself had seen when she was twelve years old. Evidently, the lady was staying around.
Mrs. Harvey’s attention was deflected from the phenomena in the house by her mother’s illness. Like a dutiful daughter, she attended her to the very last, but in March of that year her mother passed away. Whether there is any connection with her mother’s death or not, the phenomena started to increase greatly, both in volume and intensity, in July of that same year. To be exact, the date was July 20. Mrs. Harvey was hurrying one morning to get ready to take her daughter Lolita to the center of town so she could get a ride to work. Her mind was preoccupied with domestic chores, when a car came down the road, with brakes squealing. Out of habit, she hurried to the living room window to make sure that none of their cats had been hit by the car. This had been a habit of her mother’s and hers, whenever there was the sound of sudden brakes outside.
As she did so, for just a fleeting glance, she saw her late mother looking out of her favorite window. It didn’t register at first, then Mrs. Harvey realized her mother couldn’t possibly have been there. However, since time was of the essence, Mrs. Harvey and her daughter Lolita left for town without saying anything to any of the others in the house. When they returned, her daughter Marjorie was standing outside waiting for them. She complained of hearing someone moving around in the living room just after they had left, and it sounded just like Grandma when she straightened out the couch and chair covers.
It frightened her, so she decided to wait in the dining room for her mother’s return. But while there, she heard footsteps coming from the living r
oom and going into the den, then the sound of clothes being folded. This was something Mrs. Harvey’s mother was also in the habit of doing there. It was enough for Marjorie to run outside the house and wait there. Together with her sister and mother, she returned to the living room, only to find the chair cover straightened. The sight of the straightened cover made the blood freeze in Mrs. Harvey’s veins; she recalled vividly how she had asked her late mother not to bother straightening the chair covers during her illness, because it hurt her back. In reply, her mother had said, “Too bad I can’t come back and do it after I die.”
Daughter Jane was married to a Navy man, who used to spend his leaves at the old house. Even during his courtship days, he and Mrs. Harvey’s mother got along real fine, and they used to do crossword puzzles together. He was sleeping at the house sometime after the old lady’s death, when he awoke to see her standing by his bed with her puzzle book and pencil in hand. It was clear to Mrs. Harvey by now that her late mother had joined the circle of dead relatives to keep a watch on her and the family. Even while she was ill, Mrs. Harvey’s mother wanted to help in the house. One day after her death, Mrs. Harvey was baking a custard pie and lay down on the couch for a few minutes while it was baking.
She must have fallen asleep, for she awoke to the voice of her mother saying, “Your pie won’t burn, will it?” Mrs. Harvey hurriedly got up and checked; the pie was just right and would have burned if it had been left in any longer. That very evening, something else happened. Mrs. Harvey wanted to watch a certain program that came on television at 7:30 P.M., but she was tired and fell asleep on the couch in the late afternoon. Suddenly she heard her mother’s voice say to her, “It’s time for your program, dear.” Mrs. Harvey looked at the clock, and it was exactly 7:30 P.M. Of course, her mother did exactly the same type of thing when she was living, so it wasn’t too surprising that she should continue with her concerned habits after she passed on into the next dimension.