Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  Could the slamming of the door be a re-enactment of these frequent nervous expeditions up the stairs? Could the opening and closing of the entrance door be a fearful examination of the door to see if the lock was secure, or if there was anyone strange lurking about outside?

  The very day after our visit to this haunted house, a young painter friend of Molly’s named Helen Charleton, of Bronxville, New York, was alone in the studio that Molly let her use occasionally to do some painting of her own. She was quite alone in the big house when she clearly heard the front door open. Calling out, she received no answer. Thinking that the gardener might have a key, and that she might be in danger, she took hold of what heavy objects she could put her hands on and waited anxiously for the steps that were sure to resound any moment. No steps came. An hour later, the doorbell rang and she finally dashed down to the entrance door. The door was tightly shut, and no one was about. Yet she had heard the characteristic noise of the opening of the old-fashioned door!

  The mailman’s truck was just pulling away, so she assumed it was he who had rung the bell. Just then Molly returned.

  “I’ve heard the door slam many times,” Helen Charleton said to me, “and it always sounds so far away. I think it’s on the first floor, but I can’t be sure.”

  Was Mrs. Wainwright still walking the Victorian corridors of “The Cedars,” guarding her treasures upstairs?

  When Catherine and I returned from Europe in the fall of 1964, Molly Guion had news for us. All was far from quiet in Rye. In the upstairs room where Molly’s physically challenged mother was bedridden, a knob had flown off a table while Mrs. Guion stood next to it. In the presence of a nurse, the bathroom lights had gone on and off by themselves. More sinister, a heavy ashtray had taken off on its own to sail clear across the room. A door had opened by itself, and footsteps had been heard again.

  A new nurse had come, and the number of witnesses who had heard or seen uncanny goings-on was now eight.

  I decided it was time for a séance, and on January 6, 1965, medium Ethel Meyers, Mary Melikian, Catherine and I took a New Haven train for Rye, where John Smythe picked us up in his station wagon.

  While Ethel Meyers waited in the large sitting room downstairs, I checked on the house and got the latest word on the hauntings. Molly Guion took me to the kitchen to show me the spot where one of the most frightening incidents had taken place.

  “Last Christmas, my mother, my husband, and I were here in the kitchen having lunch, and right near us on a small table next to the wall was a great big bread knife. Suddenly, to our amazement, the knife took off into the air, performed an arc in the air and landed about a yard away from the table. This was about noon, in good light.”

  “Was that the only time something like this happened?”

  “The other day the same thing happened. We were down in the kitchen again at nighttime. My husband and I heard a terrific crash upstairs. It was in the area of the servants’ quarters on the second floor, which is in the area where that door keeps slamming. I went up to investigate and found a heavy ashtray lying on the floor about a yard away from the table in my husband’s den.”

  “And there was no one upstairs—flesh-and-blood, that is?”

  “No. The object could not have just slipped off the table. It landed some distance away.”

  “Amazing,” I conceded. “Was there more?”

  “Last week I was standing in the upstairs sitting room with one of the nurses, when a piece of a chair that was lying in the center of a table took off and landed in the middle of the floor.”

  “Before your eyes?”

  “Before our eyes.”

  “What would you say is the most frequent phenomenon here?” I asked.

  “The opening of the front door downstairs. We and others have heard this characteristic noise any number of times, and there is never anyone there.”

  I turned to Mrs. Witty, the nurse currently on duty with Molly Guion’s mother.

  “How long have you been in this house?”

  “Since October, 1964.”

  “Have you noticed anything unusual in these four months?”

  “Well, Mrs. Smythe and I were in the patient’s bedroom upstairs, when we heard the front door downstairs open. I remarked to Mrs. Smythe that she had a visitor, and went down to the front door, and looked. The heavy chain was swinging loose, and the front door was slightly ajar!”

  “Did you see any visitor?”

  “No. I opened the door, looked all around, but there was no one there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened. I was alone in the house with the patient, and the door was locked securely. An hour after I had myself locked it, I heard the door shut tightly, but the chain was again swinging by itself.”

  I next turned to Mr. Smythe to check up on his own experiences since we had last talked. Mr. Smythe was a naval architect and very cautious in his appraisal of the uncanny. He was still hearing the “measured steps” in the attic room where he sometimes slept, even when he was all alone in the house.

  I returned to Ethel Meyers, the medium, who had seated herself in a large chair in the front sitting room downstairs.

  “Anything happening?” I asked, for I noticed a peculiar expression on Ethel’s face, as if she were observing something or someone.

  “I picture a woman clairvoyantly,” Ethel said. “She looks at me with a great deal of defiance.”

  “Why are you pointing across the room at that sofa?” I asked my wife.

  “I saw a light from the corner of my eye and I thought it was a car, but no car has passed by,” Catherine said.

  If a car had passed by, no reflection could have been seen at that spot, since no window faced in that direction.

  While Ethel prepared for the trance sitting, I went outside the room to talk to Georgia Anne Warren, a young dancer who had modeled for some of Molly Guion’s paintings. Her full-length nude study graced the studio upstairs, and there amid the Churchill portraits and faces of the famous or near-famous, it was like a shining beacon of beauty. But Miss Warren wasn’t only posing for a painter, we discovered—she was also modeling for a ghost.

  “I heard a thumping noise, as if someone were going upstairs. I was in the kitchen. The steps sounded as if they were coming from the dining room. There was no one coming in. The only people in the house at the time were Molly Guion and myself. No doubt about it.”

  I thanked the redheaded model and followed Ethel Meyers up the stairs, to which she seemed propelled by a sudden impulse. There, on the winding Victorian steps, Ethel made her first contact with the ghost.

  “Make the body very cold. Don’t put it in the ground when it’s warm. Let it get very cold!” she mumbled, as if not quite herself.

  “Let her speak through you,” I suggested.

  “She is,” Ethel replied, and continued in a somewhat strange voice. “Ring around the rosies, a pocketful of posies....”

  I turned toward the stairwell and asked the ghost to communicate with us, tell her tale, and find help through us. There was no further answer.

  I led Mrs. Meyers back to her chair, and asked Molly Guion to dim the lights a little so we could all relax. Meanwhile, other witnesses had arrived. They included New York Times reporter N. Berkowitz, Benton & Bowles vice-president Gordon Webber, publicist Bill Ryan, and book critic John K. Hutchins. We formed a long oval around Ethel Meyers and waited for the ghost to make her appearance.

  We did not have to wait long. With a sudden shriek, Ethel, deep in trance, leapt to her feet, and in the awkward posture of an old crone, walked toward the front door. Nothing I could do would hold her back. I followed her quickly, as the medium, now possessed by the ghost, made her way through the long room to the door.

  As if a strong wind had swept into the sitting room, the rest of the guests were thrown back by the sheer drive of Ethel’s advance. She flung herself against the heavy wooden door and started to altern
ately gnaw at it and pound against it in an unmistakable desire to open it and go through. Then she seized the brass chain—the one Mrs. Witty had twice seen swinging by itself—and pulled it with astonishing force. I had all I could do to keep the medium from falling as she threw her body against the door.

  In one hand I held a microphone, which I pressed close to her lips to catch as much of the dialogue as possible. I kept the other hand ready to prevent Ethel’s fall to the floor.

  “Rotten,” the entranced medium now mumbled, still clutching the chain.

  I tried to coax her back to the chair, but the ghost evidently would have none of it.

  “It stinks...Where is it?”

  “Is this your house?” I asked.

  Heavy breathing.

  “Yes. Get out!”

  “I’ve come to help you. What is your name?”

  “Get out!” the microphone picked up.

  “What is it that you want?” I asked.

  “My body.”

  “You’ve passed on, don’t you understand?”

  “No...I want my body. Where is it?”

  I explained again that this was no longer her house, but she kept calling for the return of “her body” in such anger and despair that I began to wonder if it had not been buried on the premises.

  “They took it, my body. I saw them, I saw them!”

  “You must let go of this house. It is no longer yours,” I said.

  “No, my house, my house. They took it. My body. I have nothing. Get it. I feel I have one.”

  I explained that we had lent her a body to speak through for the moment.

  “Who are you?” It sounded quieter.

  “A friend,” I replied, “come to help you.”

  Instead of replying, the entranced medium grabbed the door again.

  “Why do you want to open the door?” I asked. It took a moment for the answer to come through trembling lips.

  “Go out,” she finally said. “I don’t know you. Let me go, let me go.”

  I continued to question the ghost.

  “Who are you? Did you live in this house?”

  “My house. They took it out. My body is out there!”

  I explained about the passage of time.

  “You were not well. You’ve died.”

  “No, no...I wasn’t cold.”

  “You are free to go from this door. Your loved ones, your family, await you outside.”

  “They hate me.”

  “No, they have made up with you. Why should they hate you?”

  “They took me out the door.”

  Then, suddenly the medium’s expression changed. Had someone come to fetch her?

  “Oh, Baba, darling...Oh, he loved me.”

  There was hysterical crying now.

  “He’s gone...My beloved....”

  “What is his name?”

  “Wain...Where is he...Let me go!”

  The crying was now almost uncontrollable, so I sent the ghost on her way. At the same time I asked that Albert, Ethel’s control on the etheric side of the veil, take over her physical body for the moment to speak to us.

  It took a moment or two until Albert was in command. The medium’s body visibly straightened out and all traces of a bent old crone vanished. Albert’s crisp voice was heard.

  “She’s a former tenant here, who has not been too well beloved. She also seems to have been carried out before complete death. This has brought her back to try and rectify it and make contact with the physical body. But here is always unhappiness. I believe there was no love toward her as she was older.”

  “Can you get a name?” I asked.

  “If she refused, I cannot.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “During the Nineties. Between 1890 and 1900.”

  “Is this a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything peculiar about her appearance?”

  “Large eyes, and almost a harelip.”

  “Why is she concerned about her body?”

  “There was no great funeral for her. She was put in a box and a few words were said over her grave. That is part of her problem, that she was thus rejected and neglected.”

  “Why does she run up to the attic?”

  “This was her house, and it was denied to her later in life.”

  “By whom?”

  “By those living here. Relatives to her.”

  “Her heirs?”

  “Those who took it over when she could no longer function. She was still alive.”

  “Anything else we should know?”

  “There is a great deal of hate for anyone in this house. Her last days were full of hate. Should she return, if she is spoken to kindly, she will leave. We will help her.”

  “Why is she so full of hate?”

  “Her grief, her oppressions. She never left her tongue quiet when she was disrupted in her desire to go from her quarters to the rest of the house.”

  “What was her character?”

  “As a young person she was indeed a lady. Later in life, a strong personality, going slightly toward dual personality. She was an autocrat. At the very end, not beloved.”

  “And her relationship with the servants?”

  “Not too friendly. Tyrannical.”

  “What troubled her about her servants?”

  “They knew too much.”

  “Of what?”

  “Her downfall. Her pride was hurt.”

  “Before that, how was she?”

  “A suspicious woman. She could not help but take things from others which she believed were hers by right.”

  “What did she think her servants were doing?”

  “They pried on her secret life. She trusted no one toward the end of life.”

  “Before she was prevented, as you say, from freely going about the house—did she have any belongings in the attic?”

  “Yes, hidden. She trusted no one.”

  I then suggested that the “instrument” be brought back to herself. A very surprised Ethel Meyers awakened to find herself leaning against the entrance door.

  “What’s the matter with my lip?” she asked when she was able to speak. After a moment, Ethel Meyers was her old self, and the excursion into Mrs. Wainwright’s world had come to an end.

  The following morning Molly Smythe called me on the phone. “Remember about Albert’s remarks that Mrs. Wainwright was restrained within her own rooms?”

  Of course I remembered.

  “Well,” Molly continued, “we’ve just made a thorough investigation of all the doors upstairs in the servants’ quarters where she spent her last years. They all show evidence of locks having been on them, later removed. Someone was locked up there for sure.”

  Ironically, death had not released Mrs. Wainwright from confinement. To her, freedom still lay beyond the heavy wooden door with its brass chain.

  Now that her spirit self had been taken in hand, perhaps she would find her way out of the maze of her delusions to rejoin her first husband, for whom she had called.

  The next time Molly Smythe hears the front door opening, it’ll be just her husband coming home from the office. Or so I thought.

  But the last week of April 1965, Molly called me again. Footsteps had been heard upstairs this time, and the sound of a door somewhere being opened and closed, and of course, on inspection, there was no one visible about.

  Before I could make arrangements to come out to Rye once again, something else happened. Mr. Smythe was in the bathtub, when a large tube of toothpaste, safely resting well back on a shelf, flew off the shelf by its own volition. No vibration or other natural cause could account for it. Also, a hypodermic needle belonging to one of the nurses attending Molly’s mother had somehow disappeared.

  I promised to bring Sybil Leek to the house. The British medium knew nothing whatever of the earlier history of the case, and I was curious to see if she would make contact with the same or different conditions, as sometimes ha
ppens when two mediums are used in the same house. It’s like tuning in on different radio wavelengths.

  It was a cool, wet day in May when we seated ourselves in a circle upstairs in the “haunted room.” Present in addition to the hosts, Sybil Leek, and myself, were Mrs. Betty Salter (Molly’s sister); David Ellingson, a reporter from the Port Chester, N.Y., Item; Mr. And Mrs. Robert Bendick, neighbors and friends of the Smythes; and Mary Melikian. Mr. Bendick was a television producer specializing in news programs.

  Sybil went into hypnotic trance. It took several minutes before anything audible could be recorded.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  A feeble voice answered: “Marion...Marion Gernt....”

  Before going into trance, Sybil had volunteered the information that the name “Grant,” or something like it, had been on her mind ever since she set foot into the house.

  “What year is this?” I asked.

  “1706.”

  “Who built the house?”

  “My father...Walden.”

  She then complained that people in the house were disturbing her, and that therefore she was pulling it down.

  “My face is swollen,” she added. “I’m sick...Blood.”

  Suddenly, something went wrong with my reliable tape recorder. In all my previous investigations it had worked perfectly. Now it wouldn’t, and some parts of the conversation were not recorded. The wheels would turn and then stop, and then start again, as if someone were sticking their fingers into them at will!

  I tried my camera, and to my amazement, I couldn’t take any pictures. All of a sudden, the mechanism wouldn’t function properly, and the shutter could not be uncocked. I did not get any photographs. Bob Bendick, after the séance, took a good look at the camera. In a moment it was working fine again. After the séance, too, we tried to make the tape recorder work. It started and then stopped completely.

  “The batteries have run out,” I explained, confident that there was nothing more than that to it. So we put the machine on house current. Nothing happened. It wasn’t the batteries. It was something else.

  After we left the “haunted room” and went downstairs, I put the tape recorder into my traveling case. About ten minutes later, I heard a ghostly voice coming from my case. My voice. The tape recorder that I had left in a secure turn-off position had started up by itself...or...so it seemed.