Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  But one can’t be sure in haunted houses. Item reporter David Ellingson and Mary Melikian were standing next to me when it happened. John Smythe was wondering if someone had turned on the radio or TV. So much for the instruments that didn’t work—temporarily.

  But, let us get back to Sybil and the ghost speaking through her. She claimed to have been burned all over in a fire. John Smythe confirmed later that there were traces of a fire in the house that have never been satisfactorily explained.

  The ghost seemed confused about it. She was burned, on this spot, in what was then a little house. The place was called Rocher. Her named was spelled M-a-r-i-o-n G-e-r-n-t. She was born at Rodey, eight miles distant. She was not sure about her age. At first she said 29, then it was 57. The house was built by one Dion, of Rocher.

  I then tried to explain, as I always do, that the house belonged to someone else and that she must not stay.

  “Go away,” the ghost mumbled, not at all pleased with the idea of moving. But I insisted. I told her of her husband who wanted her to join him “over there.”

  “I hate him!” she volunteered, then added—“I start moving things...I break things up...I want my chair.”

  “You must not stay here,” I pleaded. “You’re not wanted here.”

  “He said that,” she replied in a sullen voice. “Alfred did. My husband.”

  “You must join him and your children.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  I repeated the incantation for her to leave.

  “I can’t go. I’m burned. I can’t move,” she countered.

  I explained that these were only memories.

  Finally she relented, and said—“I’ll need a lot of rags...to cover myself.”

  Gently now, she started to fade.

  “I need my chair,” she pleaded, and I told her she could have it.

  Then she was gone.

  Sybil came back now. Still in trance, she responded quickly to my questions about what she saw and felt on the other side of the veil. This is a technique I find particularly effective when used prior to bringing the medium out of trance or from under hypnosis.

  “An old lady,” Sybil said. “She is quite small. I think she is Dutch. Shriveled. She is very difficult. Can’t move. Very unpleasant. Throws things because she can’t walk. This is her house. She lived here about three hundred years ago. She wants everything as it was. She has marks on her face. She was in a fire.”

  “Did she die in it?” I asked.

  “No. She died near here. Doesn’t communicate well.”

  “There is a box with two hearts, two shields,” Sybil said. “It means something to this woman.”

  “Were there any others around?” I asked.

  “Lots, like shadows,” Sybil explained, “but this little woman was the one causing the commotion.”

  “She likes to throw things,” Sybil added, and I couldn’t help thinking that she had never been briefed on all the objects the ghost had been throwing.

  “She doesn’t know where any doors are, so she just goes on. The door worries her a lot, because she doesn’t know where it is. The front and rear have been changed around.”

  Sybil, of course, knew nothing of the noises centering around the main door, nor the fact that the rear of the house was once the front.

  I told Sybil to send her away, and in a quiet voice, Sybil did so.

  The séance was over, at least for the time being.

  A little later, we went up to the top floor, where both Molly and Sybil suddenly senses a strong odor of perfume. I joined them, and I smelled it, too. It was as if someone were following us about the house!

  But it was time to return to New York. Our hosts offered to drive us to the city.

  “Too bad,” I said in parting, “that nobody has seen an apparition here. Only sounds seem to have been noticed.”

  Betty Salter, Mrs. Smythe’s perky sister, shook her head.

  “Not true,” she said. “I was here not so long ago when I saw a black figure downstairs in the dining room. I thought it was Molly, but on checking found that I was quite alone downstairs...That is, except for her.”

  Mrs. Wainwright, of course, was of Dutch ancestry, and the description of the character, appearance, and general impression of the ghost Sybil gave did rather fit Mrs. Wainwright.

  Was the 1706 lady an ancestor or just someone who happened to be on the spot when only a small farm house occupied the site?

  The Smythes really didn’t care whether they have two ghosts or one ghost. They preferred to have none.

  * 158

  The Garrick’s Head Inn, Bath

  THREE HOURS BY CAR from London is the elegant resort city of Bath. Here, in a Regency architectural wonderland, there is an eighteenth century inn called Garrick’s Head Inn. At one time there was a connection between the inn and the theater next door, but the theater no longer exists. In the eighteenth century, the famous gambler Beau Nash owned this inn which was then a gambling casino as well.

  The downstairs bar looks like any other bar, divided as it is between a large, rather dark room where the customers sip their drinks, and a heavy wooden bar behind which the owner dispenses liquor and small talk. There is an upstairs, however, with a window that, tradition says, is impossible to keep closed for some reason. The rooms upstairs are no longer used for guests, but are mainly storage rooms or private rooms of the owners. At the time of my first visit to the Garrick’s Head Inn it was owned by Bill Loud, who was a firm skeptic when he had arrived in Bath. Within two months, however, his skepticism was shattered by the phenomena he was able to witness. The heavy till once took off by itself and smashed a chair. The noises of people walking were heard at night at a time when the place was entirely empty. He once walked into what he described as “cobwebs” and felt his head stroked by a gentle hand. He also smelled perfume when he was entirely alone in the cellar.

  A reporter from a Bristol newspaper, who spent the night at the inn, also vouched for the authenticity of the footsteps and strange noises.

  Finally, the owner decided to dig into the past of the building, and he discovered that there have been incidents which could very well be the basis for the haunting. During the ownership of gambling king Beau Nash, there had been an argument one night, and two men had words over a woman. A duel followed. The winner was to take possession of the woman. One man was killed and the survivor rushed up the stairs to claim his prize. The woman, who had started to flee when she saw him win, was not agreeable, and when she heard him coming barricaded herself in the upstairs room and hanged herself.

  Whether you will see or hear the lady ghost at the Garrick’s Head Inn in Bath is a matter of individual ability to communicate with the psychic world. It also depends upon the hours of the night you are there, for the Garrick’s Head Inn is pretty noisy in the early part of the evening when it is filled with people looking for spirits in the bottle rather than the more ethereal kind.

  Garrick’s Head Inn—Bath, England: Extremely haunted

  Bill Loud, who saw the till fly through the air

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ghosts That Aren’t

  WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE who has passed on, you are not necessarily seeing a ghost. Especially if the person is a relative or friend and the communication—either verbal or telepathic—is clearly reasonable. In these cases, you are dealing with a spirit visit.

  These visits occur, whenever there is a need for them, because of two kinds of situations. Either the departed loved one wants you to know she or he is well and is now living in another world, or the spirit has come because you need help in your own life here. This help can have to do with your job, your family, or your personal life, or it may be a warning of things to come, some of which you can avert, and some of which are inevitable. The spirit person has gotten permission from the folks “over there” who run the contact very much according to their laws, and the visits are never haphazard or without meaning.

  I have often said that
of all ghostly manifestations only perhaps ten percent are true ghosts—human beings trapped by their unfinished business on earth in the spot where their traumatic death occurred. The rest may be simply impressions left behind by an emotional event in the past, and a sensitive person will feel and relive it.

  Finally, rare cases do exist of “ghosts of the living,” in which a perfectly fine person is seen at a distance by someone with a psychic gift. The Germans used to call this the “doppelgänger,” or the etheric double, but it is really only a projection of the inner body. This occurs sometimes when the person at a distance is in a state of great relaxation or, conversely, great anxiety, and it is rare. Usually, if not always, the traveler returns quickly to the physical body.

  If anything, these cases prove that we do have an inner body, because the physical outer body keeps right on going. Some astral travel (or out-of-body experiences) happen during sleep, but some occur while the person is simply deep in thought or emotionally detached. None of them are harmful or dangerous, despite a warning issued by Madame Helen Blavatzky, the founder of theosophy, many years ago, that “strangers” can get into your body while the real you is out there traveling.

  Here are some true examples from my files of these kinds of “non-ghosts,” which are often confused with real ghosts.

  CONTACTS AND VISITS BY SPIRITS

  When the Dead Reach Out to the Living

  The annals of psychic research are full of verified cases in which the dead come to bid the living a last good-bye. But the thought of separation is often overshadowed by the desire to announce the continuance of life. This, of course, is implied in the very fact of an appearance after death: only a person who survives can come to say good-bye. Orthodox psychiatry has labored hard and long to explain most of these appearances as “hallucinations,” but the fact is that the majority of cases show total ignorance on the part of the recipient that the person who communicates after death is no longer alive. You cannot hallucinate something you don’t know.

  This type of communication occurs frequently with professional psychics. Eileen Garrett once reported to me that she was riding in a taxi down New York’s Fifth Avenue when a long-dead friend spoke to her clairvoyantly and advised her that Marie H., whom both knew, had just passed on and was over there with him. Mrs. Garrett looked at her watch and registered the time. Shortly after, when she reached her offices, she put in a call to California, where Miss H. lived. The message was correct, and when she compared the time of passing as recorded in California with the time she had received her message, she found that, allowing for the time differential, it had been given her a moment after Miss H.’s death! But laypeople, that is, people not at all concerned with the psychic or even interested in it, who are often skeptics and firm nonbelievers in an afterlife—are frequently the recipients of such messages and experience communications from the dead.

  Once, when I lecturing at Waynesburg College in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, I was approached by a young lady who had had a most interesting experience along such lines in April 1963.

  Sandra R. lived with her family in a house in a small town south of Pittsburgh. Her brother Neal R., then aged twenty-two, had been working as a bank teller for the past three years. Young Neal had often expressed a dislike of going into the Army; he had a feeling he would be killed. As a consequence, his mother and sister, to whom the young man was quite close, persuaded him to join the National Guard for a six-month tour of duty. Since he would be drafted anyway, he might thus shorten the period of his service.

  Neal finally agreed that this was the best thing to do under the circumstances, and he joined the National Guard. He resigned his position at the bank and seemed reconciled to making the best of the situation.

  In April he got his orders and tickets and was to report for basic training a week from the following Monday. Several times during those final days at home, he mentioned the fact that he was to leave at 5 A.M. Sunday, as if this were indeed something important and final. On the Monday preceding his departure, he visited friends to say good-bye. Leaving home as usual with a kiss on the cheek for his mother, he gaily said, “I’ll see you,” and went out.

  He never returned. The following morning the family was notified that he had been found dead in his car parked along a lonely country road about two miles from his home. He had committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide.

  The news created a state of shock in his family. At first they would not believe the news, for they were sure he would have left some sort of note for his family. But nothing was ever found, even though the family searched the house from top to bottom. He had put all his things in order, leaving no debts or commitments, but there was no message of any kind for anyone.

  He was buried in his hometown, and the family tried to adjust to their great loss. Sandra, his sister, was three years his junior, but the two had been close enough to have many telepathic experiences in which they would read each other’s thoughts. She could not understand why her brother had not confided in her before taking this drastic step.

  In the house, both Sandra’s room and Neal’s had been upstairs. After Neal’s death, Sandra could not bear the thought of sleeping so near to her late brother’s room, so she slept on a rollout divan placed in the living room downstairs. The day of the funeral was a Friday, and it seemed to Sandra that it would never pass. Finally, after a restless, almost sleepless night, Saturday dawned. All day long she felt uneasy, and there was an atmosphere of tension in the air that she found almost unbearable. When night came, Sandra asked that her mother share the couch with her. Neither woman had taken any tranquilizers or sleeping pills. They discussed the suicide again from all angles but failed to arrive at any clues. Finally they fell asleep from exhaustion.

  Suddenly Sandra was awakened from deep slumber by a clicking sound. It sounded exactly as if someone had snapped his fingers just above her head. As Sandra became fully awake, she heard her mother stir next to her.

  “Did you hear that?” her mother asked. She too had heard the strange snapping sound. Both women were now fully awake.

  They felt a tingling sensation pervading them from head to toe, as if they were plugged into an electric socket! Some sort of current was running through them, and they were quite unable to move a limb.

  The living room is situated in the front part of the house. The blinds were all closed, and no light whatever shone through them. The only light coming into the room came from a doorway behind them, a doorway that led into the hall. All of a sudden, they noticed a bright light to their left, moving toward them. It had the brightness of an electric bulb when they first saw it approach. It appeared about two feet from the couch on the mother’s side and was getting brighter and brighter. “What is it, what is it?” they cried to each other, and then Sandra noticed that the light had a form. There was a head and shoulders encased in light!

  Frightened, her heart pounding, Sandra heard herself cry out: “It’s Neal!” At the moment she called out her late brother’s name, the light blew up to its brightest glare. With that, a feeling of great peace and relief came over the two women.

  Mrs. R., still unable to move her body, asked: “What do you want? Why did you do it?”

  With that, she started to cry. At that moment waves of light in the form of fingers appeared inside the bright light as if someone were waving good-bye. Then the light gradually dimmed until it vanished completely.

  At that instant a rush of cold air moved across the room. A moment later they clearly heard someone walking up the stairs. They were alone in the house, so they knew it could not be a flesh-and-blood person. Now the steps approached Neal’s room upstairs. When they reached the top step, the step squeaked as it had always done when Sandra’s brother had walked up the stairs. Over the years, Sandra had heard this particular noise time and again. Neal’s room was directly over their heads, and there wasn’t a sound in the house. Except those footsteps overhead. The two women were lying quite still on the couch, unab
le to move even if they had wanted to. The steps continued through the hallway and then went into Neal’s room. Next they heard the sound of someone sitting down on his bed, and they clearly heard the bed springs give from the weight of a person! Since the bed stood almost directly over their heads down in the living room, there was no mistaking these sounds. At this moment, their bodies suddenly returned to normal. The tension was broken, and Sandra jumped up, turned on the lights, and looked at the clock next to the couch. The time was 5 o’clock Sunday morning—the exact moment Neal had been scheduled to leave, had he not committed suicide!

  With this, all was quiet again in the house. But Sandra and her mother no longer grieved for Neal. They accepted the inevitable and began to realize that life did continue in another dimension. The bond between their Neal and themselves was reestablished, and they felt a certain relief to know he was all right wherever he now was.

  At different times after that initial good-bye visit, they experienced the strong smell of Neal’s favorite aftershave lotion in the house. At the time of his death, he had a bottle of it in the glove compartment of his car. As no one else in the house was using any aftershave lotion, an alternative explanation would be hard to come by.

  Neither Mrs. R. nor her daughter is given to hysterics. They accepted these events as perfectly natural, always carefully making sure no ordinary explanation would fit. But when all was said and done, they knew that their Neal had not let them down, after all. The bond was still unbroken.

  Mrs. G. B., a housewife living in a Pittsburgh suburb, and her brother, Frank G., had been close in their childhood, which may be of some importance in the event I am about to relate. Whenever there exists an emotional bond between people, the communication between the world of the dead and that of the living seems to be easier. But this is by no means always the case, as even strangers have communicated in this way with each other.