Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  John has not smoked since that time. It has now been over three months since we left the house, and John does the normal things about the house except cook. She is again at my rubber stamp shop and seems to enjoy it.

  * * *

  In retrospect, as I read over these words, I realized how difficult it must have been for Mr. Beaird to report on his experiences, especially to a stranger. What had appeared completely impossible to him would, of course, have been even more unbelievable to someone who was not present when it happened, and he doubted his own sanity at times, which was not surprising.

  Having met Howard Beaird I am sure that he is completely sane, in fact, so sane he could not even be called neurotic. Had I not heard of parallel cases before, perhaps I too would have wondered about it. None of the phenomena reported by Mr. Beaird are, however, impossible in the light of parapsychological research. We are dealing here with forces that seem to be in contradiction of ordinary or orthodox physical laws, but the more we learn of the nature of matter and the structure of the atom, the more it seems likely that poltergeist activities connect with physics in such a way as to make seeming de-materialization and re-materialization of solid objects possible practically without time loss. But the case was a question of studying not so much the techniques involved in the phenomena as the reasons behind them and those causing them.

  I informed Mr. Beaird that I was eager to enter the case, especially as I wanted to make sure that the poltergeist activities had really ceased once and for all and would never recur at his new location. In cases of this kind there is always the possibility that the phenomena are attached to one or the other person in the household rather than to a location. Moving to another house seems to have stopped the activities, but as there had been pauses before that culminated in renewed and even stronger physical activities, I wanted to be sure that this would not be the case in this new location. I explained that I would have to interview all those concerned, even the police detectives who had come to the house on that fateful night. Mr. Beaird assured me that he would make all the necessary arrangements, and, after discussing my plans with his wife and son, they too agreed to talk to me. Mack, her sister-in-law, who had been hostess to Mrs. Beaird while most of the phenomena took place at the house, was unable to meet me in Tyler, but I was assured that Mrs. Beaird had never left her care during all that time. For a while Howard Beaird had thought that his wife had returned without his knowledge and done some of the things about the house that had startled him. This, of course, turned out to be a false impression. At no time did Mrs. Beaird leave her sister-in-law’s house in Daingerfield, 75 miles away. Whether or not her astral self visited the home is another matter and would be subject to my investigation and verification as far as possible.

  Mr. Beaird also went back to his former home to talk to the present owners. Somewhat suspicious of him, for no apparent reason, they were willing to see me if I came to Tyler. Mr. M. works for a local bakery and returns home at 5:30 P.M., and since his wife would not entertain strange visitors in the absence of her husband, my visit would have to be at such an hour as was convenient to the M.s. Perhaps the somewhat battered condition of the house when the M.s had bought it from Mr. Beaird might be the reason for their reluctance to discuss my visit. At any rate it was agreed that I could call briefly on them and talk to them about the matter at hand. Howard Beaird’s daughter, who is now Mrs. Howard Wilson, lives in Austin, Texas. She has had some interest in the occult and mind development and had suggested that someone from the Silva Mind Center in Laredo should come up to Tyler to investigate the case. That was prior to my entering the situation, however, and now Mrs. Wilson wanted very much to come up to Tyler herself and be present during my investigation. Unfortunately it turned out later that she was unable to keep the date due to prior commitments. Thorough man that he is, Howard Beaird also talked to Detective Weaver at the police station to make sure I could see him and question him about his own investigation of the house. I was assured of the welcome mat at the police station, so I decided to set the time when I could go down to Tyler and look for myself into what appeared to be one of the most unusual cases of psychic phenomena.

  On February 5, 1969, I arrived at the Tyler airport. It was 5:42 in the afternoon and Howard Beaird was there to welcome me. We had made exact plans beforehand so he whisked me away to the Blackstone Hotel, allowed me to check in quickly, then went with me to see Detective Weaver at the police situation.

  As we passed through town I had the opportunity to observe what Tyler, Texas, was all about. Clean shops, quiet streets, a few tree-lined avenues, small houses, many of them very old—well, old anyway in terms of the United States—and people quietly going about their business seem to be characteristic of this small town. We passed by Howard Beaird’s shop, a neat, tidy shop, the company name Trumark plainly written on the window pane. As in many small towns, the telephone wires were all above ground, strung in a lazy haphazard fashion from street to street. The police station turned out to be a modern concrete building set back a little from the street. Detective Weaver readily agreed to talk to me. Howard Beaird left us for the moment in a fine sense of propriety just in case the detective wanted to say something not destined for his ears. As it turned out, there wasn’t anything he could not have said in front of him. Was there anything in the detective’s opinion indicating participation by either the boy or Mrs. Beaird in the strange phenomena? The detective shrugged. There was nothing he could pinpoint along those lines. He then went to the files and extricated a manila envelope inscribed “pictures and letter, reference mysterious call at——Elizabeth, February 19, 1968, 11:00 P.M., case number 67273. Officer B. Rosenstein and officer M. Garrett.” Inside the envelope there were two pictures, photographs taken at the time by a police photographer named George Bain. One picture was of the door, clearly showing the extreme violence with which a hole had been punched into it. The entire rim of the hole was splintered as if extremely strong methods had been employed to punch this hole through the door.

  The other picture showed a heavy chest of drawers of dark wood sitting squarely upon a bed. Quite clearly the description given to me by Howard Beaird had been correct. What exactly did the two police officers find when they arrived at the house on Elizabeth Street? The house was in disorder, the detective explained, and furniture in places where it wasn’t supposed to be. On the whole he bore out the description of events given by Howard Beaird.

  Somehow he made me understand that the police did not accept the supernatural origin of the phenomena even though they could not come up with anything better in the way of a solution. Almost reluctantly, the officer wondered whether perhaps Andy wasn’t in some way responsible for the phenomena although he did not say so in direct words. I decided to discuss the practical theories concerning poltergeists with him and found him amazingly interested. “Would you like to have the photographs?” the detective asked and handed me the folder. Surprised by his generosity, I took the folder and I still have it in my files. It isn’t very often that a researcher such as I is given the original folder from the files of a police department. But then the mystery on Elizabeth Street is no longer on active situation—or is it?

  After we had thanked Detective Weaver for his courtesies we decided to pay a visit to the house itself. After a moment of hesitation, the officer suggested that he come along since it might make things easier for us. How right he was. When we arrived at the house on Elizabeth Street and cautiously approached the entrance, with me staying behind at first, there was something less than a cordial reception awaiting us. Mr. M. was fully aware of my purpose, of course, so that we were hardly surprising him with all this.

  After a moment of low-key discussion at the door between Howard Beaird and Detective Weaver on one hand and Mr. M. on the other, I was permitted to enter the house and look around for myself. The M. family had come to see me, if not to greet me, and looked at me with curious eyes. I explained politely and briefly that I wanted to take
some photographs for the record and I was permitted to do so. I took black and white pictures with a high sensitivity film in various areas of the house, especially the kitchen area where it connects with the garage and the living room, both places where many of the phenomena have been reported in Mr. Beaird’s testimony.

  On developing these, under laboratory conditions, we found there was nothing unusual except perhaps certain bright light formations in the kitchen area where there should be none since no reflective surfaces existed. Then I returned to the living room to talk briefly with Mr. M. and his family.

  Was there anything unusual about the house that he had noticed since he had moved in? Almost too fast he replied, “Nothing whatsoever. Everything was just fine.” When Mr. M. explained how splendid things were with the house he shot an anxious look at his wife, and I had the distinct impression they were trying to be as pleasant and superficial as possible and to get rid of me as fast as possible. Did they have any interest in occult phenomena such as ghosts? I finally asked. Mr. M. shook his head. Their religion did not allow them such considerations, he explained somewhat sternly. Then I knew the time had come to make my departure.

  I made inquiries with real estate people in the area and discovered a few things about the house neither Mr. Beard nor Mr. M. had told me. The house was thirteen years old and had been built by a certain Terry Graham. There had been two tenants before the Beairds. Prior to 1835 the area had been Indian territory and was used as a cow pasture by the Cherokee Indians.

  I also discovered that Mrs. M. had complained to the authorities about footsteps in the house when there was no one walking, of doors opening by themselves, and the uncanny feeling of being watched by someone she could not see. That was shortly after the M.s had moved into the house. The M.s also have young children. It is conceivable that the entities who caused such problems to the Beaird family might have been able to manifest through them also. Be that as it may, the matter was not followed up. Perhaps their religious upbringing and beliefs did not permit them to discuss such matters and they preferred to ignore them, or perhaps the activities died of their own volition. At any rate, it seemed pretty certain to me that the poltergeist activities did not entirely cease with the removal of the Beairds from the house. But did these activities continue in the new house the Beairds had chosen for their own? That was a far more important question.

  I asked Howard Beaird to send me a report of further activities if and when they occurred at the new house. On February 23 he communicated with me by letter. I had asked him to send me samples of John’s and Andy’s handwriting so that I could compare them with the notes he had let me have for further study. In order to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena it was, of course, necessary to consider all ordinary sources for them. Amongst the explanations one would have to take into account was the possibility of either conscious or unconscious fraud, that is to say, the writing of the notes by either John or Andy and their somehow manipulating them so that they would seem to appear out of nowhere in front of Mr. Beaird. For that purpose I needed examples of the two handwritings to compare them with some of the handwritings on the notes.

  There were a number of noises in the new home that could be attributed to natural causes. But there were two separate incidents which, in the opinion of Howard Beaird, could not be so explained. Shortly before I arrived in Tyler a minor incident occurred which makes Howard wonder whether the entities from beyond the veil are still with him in the new house. One evening he had peeled two hardboiled eggs in order to have them for lunch the following day. He had placed them in the refrigerator on a paper towel. The following morning he discovered that both eggs were frozen solid even though they were still on the lower shelf of the refrigerator. This could only have been accomplished if they had spent considerable time in the freezer compartment during the night. Questioning his wife and son as to whether they had put the eggs in the freezer, he discovered that neither of them had done so. He decided to test the occurrence by repeating the process. He found that the two new eggs which he had placed in the refrigerator that night were still only chilled but not frozen the next day. What had made the first pair of eggs as hard as stone he is unable to understand, but he is satisfied that the occurrence may be of non-psychic origin.

  Then there was the matter of a clock playing a certain tune as part of its alarm clock device. Through no apparent reason this clock went off several times, even though no one had been near it. Even though it had not been wound for a long time and had only a 24-hour movement, it played this tune several times from deep inside a chest of drawers. Eventually the clock was removed, and in retrospect Mr. Beaird does not think that a supernatural situation could have been responsible for it. But the two separate incidents did frighten the Beairds somewhat. They were afraid that the change of address had not been sufficient to free them from the influences of the past. As it turned out, the move was successful and the separation complete.

  I had to work with two kind of evidence. There was, first of all, the massive evidence of mysterious notes which had fallen out of the sky and which showed handwriting of various kinds. Perhaps I could make something out of that by comparing them with the handwritings of living people. Then there was the question of talking personally and in depth with the main participants, the Beairds, and, finally, to see what others who knew them had to say about them. Howard Beaird’s daughter, Amy, now Mrs. Howard C. Wilson, thought that the real victim of what she thought “a circus of horrors” was her brother Andy. “If you had known Andy when he was small, up to the time mother began to show real signs of her illness, it would be impossible for you to recognize him as the same person now. He was typically, for a little boy, simply brimming over with mischievous humor. He would do anything to make people laugh and would run simply hooting with joy through the house when he had done something devilish.” That was not the Andy I met when I came to Tyler. The boy I talked to was quiet, withdrawn, painfully shy, and showed definite signs of being disturbed.

  The following morning I went to see the Beairds at their new home. The home itself is pleasant and small and stands in a quiet, tree-lined street. As prearranged, Mr. Beaird left me alone with each of the two other members of his family so that I could speak to them in complete confidence. Andy, a lanky boy, seemed ill at ease at first when we sat down. In order to gain his confidence, I talked about songs and the records popular at the time, since I had seen a number of record albums in his room. Somehow this helped open him up; he spoke more freely after that. Now sixteen, he was studying at a local barber college. When I wondered how a young man, in this day and age, would choose this somewhat unusual profession, he assured me that the money was good in this line of work and that he really liked it. He felt he could put his heart and soul into it. After some discussion of the future as far as Andy was concerned, I brought the conversation around the matter at hand.

  “When these peculiar events took place you and your father lived alone in the other house. Did you ever see anyone?” “Well, I had seen a vision of my mother this one time. It looked like her but nobody was there really...kind of like a shadow, or a form.” “Have you seen the notes?” “Yes.” “Did you ever actually see anyone writing them?” “No.” “Did you ever hear any voices?” “Yeh. I talked to them.” “How did they sound?” “Well, the women that were here all sounded alike...real high voices. The men were dead, you know...the spirits, or whatever you want to call them. They had real deep voices. They were hard to understand.” “Did they talk to you in the room?” “From out of nowhere. No matter where I might be.” “You didn’t see them anywhere?” “Never saw them.” “Was your father with you at the time you heard the voices or were you alone?” “He was with me at times and not at others.” “These voices...are they mostly in the daytime or are the at night?” “At night...mostly at night, or afternoon, when I’d get home from school.” “Did it start right after you moved in?” “No...it was two or three months after....” “D
id you see the insects?” “Oh yes.” “Where did they come from?” “It seemed like just out of the ceiling.” “Could they have come in any other way?” “They couldn’t have come in...not that many.” “Whose voices did you hear?” “First of all my mother’s.” “The time she was away at Daingerfield?” “Yes.” “What did the voice sound like?” “The same high voice. It sounded a little like her.” “What did she say?” “She started to talk about my grandfather’s funeral and about someone being mean to her.”

  Clearly the boy was not at his best. Whether it was my presence and the pressure the questioning was putting on him or whether he genuinely did not remember, he was somewhat uncertain about a lot of the things his father had told me about. But he was quite sure that he had heard his mother’s voice at a time when she was away at Daingerfield. He was equally sure that none of the insects could have gotten into the house by ordinary means and that the notes came down, somehow of their own volition, from the ceiling. I did not wish to frighten him and thanked him for his testimony, short though it was. I then asked that John, Mrs. Beaird that is, be asked to join me in the front room so we could talk quietly. Mrs. Beaird seemed quite at ease with me and belied the rather turbulent history I knew she had had. Evidently the stay at her sister-in-law’s house and the prior psychiatric treatment had done some good. Her behavior was not at all unusual; in fact, it was deceivingly normal. Having seen one of her earlier photographs I realized that she had aged tremendously. Of course I realized that her husband would have discussed many of the things with her so that she would have gained secondhand knowledge of the phenomena. Nevertheless, I felt it important to probe into them because sometimes a person thinks she is covering up while, in fact, she is giving evidence.