Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  Materialization photographs by Dixie Tomkins of Troy, Michigan

  The whole matter of these pictures was so outlandish that I felt either they were clever frauds and that I was being duped (although I did not see how this was possible under my stringent conditions) or that the material had to be factual, appearances to the contrary. Circumstantial evidence can be very misleading in so controversial a subject as psychic photography and I was determined not to allow opinions, pro or con, to influence my findings in this case.

  Psychic photograph of Catherine the Great appearing with her descendant

  Clearer psychic picture of Catherine the Great

  Consequently, I went to San Francisco in May 1966, to test the good doctor. In my presence he took the original picture and mounted it on the wall, then placed film into his Crown Graphic camera with a Polaroid back. I inspected camera and film and nothing had been tampered with. The first two pictures yielded results; again a clear imprint of Catherine the Great was superimposed on the whitish outline of the original. But this time Catherine extended an arm toward her descendant! In her extended right hand the Empress tendered a crown to my ex-wife, but the two pictures are otherwise somewhat different in detail and intensity, although taken one after the other under identical light and exposure conditions in my presence. At this point I confess I became somewhat impatient and said aloud, “I wish Catherine would give us a message. What is she trying to tell us?” As if I had committed lèse majestè, the psychic camera fell silent; the next picture showed nothing further than the whitish outline. We discontinued the experiment at this point. I inspected the camera once more and then left the doctor.

  Contemporary print of Catherine the Great

  Before we parted I once more inspected the camera. It looked just like any ordinary Crown Graphic does, except for the Polaroid back. The enlarging lens was still set at F/32; the exposure, I knew, had been just one second, using ordinary daylight reinforced by one 150-watt lamp. Dr. von Salza later sent me a cheerful note in which he said, “Seeing is believing, but even seeing, so many cannot believe, including myself.” He found the whole situation very amusing and made no serious effort to do much about it scientifically, except that he did cooperate with me whenever I asked him to.

  Von Salza’s first encounter with the uncanny was in 1963, when the widow of a colleague of his, Dr. Benjamin Sweetland, asked him to do a photo portrait of her. Von Salza obliged, but imagine their surprise when the face of the late husband appeared superimposed on a lampshade in the room. No double exposure, no fraud, no rational explanation for this phenomenon could be found, although von Salza, with his worldly training, insisted that “there had to be some other explanation!” To test this situation, he decided to photograph the widow Sweetland again, but with another camera and outdoors. Using a Leica and color film, and making sure that all was in order he found to his amazement that one of the 20 exposures showed the late doctor’s face against the sky.

  Experimental séance with Dr. von Salza

  Dismissing the whole incident for want of an explanation and trying his best to forget it, he was again surprised when another incident took place. This time he was merely using up the last picture in his roll, shooting at random against the wall of his own room. When the roll was developed, there appeared on the wall the face of a young girl that had not been there when he took the picture. He was upset by this and found himself discussing the matter with a friend and patient of his by the name of Mrs. Pierson. She asked to be shown the picture. On inspection, she blanched. Andrew von Salza had somehow photographed the face of her “dead” young daughter. Although the doctor knew of the girl’s untimely death, he had never seen her in life.

  Several more incidents of this nature convinced the doctor that he had somehow stumbled onto a very special talent, like it or not. He began to investigate the subject to find out if others also had his kind of “problems.” Among the people interested in psychic phenomena in the San Francisco area was Evelyn Nielsen, with whom von Salza later shared a number of experiments. He soon discovered that her presence increased the incidence rate of psychic “extras” on his exposures, although Miss Nielsen herself never took a psychic photograph without von Salza’s presence, proving that it was he who was the mainspring of the phenomenon.

  I have examined these photographs and am satisfied that fraud is out of the question for a number of reasons, chiefly technical, since most of them were taken with Polaroid cameras and developed on the spot before competent witnesses, including myself.

  In early May 1965 I went to San Francisco to observe Dr. von Salza at work—psychic photography work, that is, not his regular occupation, which is never open to anyone but the subjects! I fortified myself with the company of two “outsiders,” my sister-in-law, Countess Marie Rose Buxhoeveden, and a friend, social worker Lori Wyn, who came with me to von Salza’s apartment. There we met the doctor, Evelyn Nielsen, and Mrs. Sweetland, as well as two other ladies, friends of the doctor’s, who had been sympathetic to the subject at hand. It was late afternoon, and we all had dinner engagements, so we decided to get started right away.

  With a sweeping gesture the doctor invited me to inspect the camera, already on its tripod facing the wall, or, as he called it, his “ghost corner,” for he had always had best results by shooting away from the bright windows toward the darker portion of his big living room. The walls were bare except for an Indian wall decoration and a portrait of the doctor. In a way, they reminded me of motion-picture screens in their smoothness and blue-gray texture. But there was absolutely nothing on those walls that could be blamed for what eventually appeared “on” them.

  I stepped up to the camera and looked inside, satisfying myself that nothing had been pasted in the bellows or gizmo, or on the lens. Then I looked at the film, which was an ordinary Polaroid film pack, black-and-white, and there was no evidence of its having been tampered with. The only way to do this, by the way, would have been to slit open the pack and insert extraneous matter into the individual pieces of film, something requiring great skill, total darkness and time. Even then traces of the cuttings would have to appear. The pack Dr. von Salza used was fresh and untouched.

  Psychic photograph taken by Mae Burrows

  The room was bright enough, as light streamed in from the windows opposite the L-shaped couch which lined the walls. The seven of us now sat down on the couch. Von Salza set the camera and exposed the first piece of film. Within sight of all of us, he developed the film in the usual fast Polaroid manner and then showed it to me. Over our heads there appear clearly four extra portraits, and the wall can be seen through them. I did not recognize any of the four in this instance. The doctor continued, this time including himself in the picture by presetting the camera and then taking his place next to Evelyn Nielsen on the couch.

  The second picture, when developed, evoked some gasps of recognition from the audience. Four faces of various sizes appeared and a light-shaft (of psychic energy?) also was now evident on the left side of the photograph. But the gasp of recognition was due to the likeness of the late John D. Rockefeller, Sr. I might add here that this gentleman must have an avid interest in communicating with the world he left in 1937 at age 90. His face has appeared in other instances of psychic photography, especially in Britain with John Myers.

  MAE BURROWS’ GHOSTLY FAMILY PICTURE

  Mae Burrows has long since joined her family on “the other side of life.” But for many years she was the undisputed premier medium in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her reputation as such, and a devout spiritualist, was similar to the celebrated mediums of turn-of-the-century England.

  Cecilia Hood’s psychic photograph

  In 1930 a photographer friend visited Mrs. Burrows, and asked to photograph her with a plate camera, then the best way of taking photographs. She readily agreed to sit for him, and the result was indeed startling, though not so much to the medium as to the photographer.

  Instead of getting just a nice portrait
of his friend, the photographer captured images of a lot of “extras.”

  First of all, there is the picture of Mrs. Burrows’ Indian guide, and while investigators may have differing opinions about the prevalence of Indians among spirit guides (controls), the fact is, most professional mediums do have them, perhaps because Indian shamans were so close to being spiritualist mediums.

  I saw Mrs. Burrows in 1970 and again in 1971, when she described the others in the remarkable photograph. There are three women in the picture, which she identified as her great-grandmother who died seventy-five years prior, her aunt who had been gone for seventy-three years, and her sister, who died sixty-four years before our meeting. As for the men, they were two medical doctors named Crowley and Ramey, and the man who turns his head sideways in the picture was a friend of the family who had taken his own life seventy-six years before.

  Group spirit pictures like this are not so rare and have been obtained under strictest test conditions. There is no question as to the authenticity of this one.

  A GHOSTLY APPARITION IN THE SKY

  Reports of miraculous apparitions of the Virgin Mary, even of Jesus, and of various angels and saints, come to public attention from time to time. Invariably, the believers immediately flock to such sites mainly to obtain miraculous cures, or at least be spiritually enriched.

  Since ancient times, people have reported these events, usually interpreting them as the spirit visitations of heavenly personalities. Rarely has anyone who actually observed such an apparition considered the visions to be spiritual beings of lesser stature, such as relatives or friends of worshippers, or simply people who have passed on to the next stage of existence, and for one or the other reason, decided to manifest in this manner and place.

  An interesting and unsought photograph was taken by Cecilia Hood, a very spiritual lady from upstate New York. Rev. Hood is an ordained spiritual minister and has practiced as such for many years. On October 14, 1975, she shared with me an extraordinary original photograph which falls into this category. The picture was actually taken in 1971 during a terrible storm in rural Pennsylvania by Rev. Hood’s friend and associate Margie Brooks. There was a terrible flood and the sky was very dark. Suddenly Miss Brooks observed a figure in white in the sky and took this picture. Was it a way those from the other side wanted to reassure her of her safety?

  THE PARISH HOUSE GHOSTS

  Ron and Nancy Stallings head the Maryland Committee for Psychical Research, a body of researchers I helped create some years ago. The Stallings are dedicated, scientifically-oriented people. When I first met this couple, they lived with their children in a haunted house near Baltimore, which I investigated and we eventually put down as a solved case.

  Since then, the Stallings have taken their camera to many haunted places and come up with positive results of photographs taken under test conditions. Nancy is undoubtedly the catalyst as she is a strong medium.

  Three pictures taken by Ron and Nancy at a haunted parish house in Baltimore County, are presented here for the first time in print.

  Photo A shows Nancy, the dark woman on the right. There appear to be three figures in the doorway, one of which is indeed very clear. When the photo was taken, there wasn’t anyone in that doorway.

  Photo B shows three people standing in an empty doorway—it appeared empty when Ron took this picture!

  Psychic photographs taken by Ron and Nancy Stallings

  Photo C shows Nancy standing on the right, being hugged by what she described as a little girl, and two standing figures again in the same doorway. Nancy reported that they recorded a child’s voice at the same time, calling out for “Mommy” and literally following the investigators around as they made their way about the premises of the old parish house.

  Hans Holzer with ghost of Pennsylvania Boatsman at the Black Bass Inn—photographed by Rosemary Khalil

  Books Previously Published by Hans Holzer

  NON-FICTION

  Witches

  Hans Holzer’s Travel Guide to Haunted Houses

  The Secret of Healing: The power of the healer Ze’ev Kolman

  Healing Beyond Medicine: Alternative paths to wellness

  Prophecies: Truth, Possibilities, or Fallacies?

  The Directory of Psychics

  Life Beyond

  Hans Holzer’s Haunted America

  Great American Ghost Stories

  Real Hauntings

  The Power of Hypnosis

  Tales at Midnight

  The Psychic Side of Dreams

  The Ghosts of Old Europe

  Hans Holzer’s Haunted House Album

  Where the Ghosts Are

  True Ghost Stories

  Yankee Ghosts

  Dixie Ghosts

  Ghosts of New England

  The Lively Ghosts of Ireland

  Are You Psychic? ESP and you and the truth about ESP

  Window to the Past

  In Quest of Ghosts

  Ghost Hunter

  Ghosts I’ve Met

  Gothic Ghosts

  The Ghosts that Walk in Washinton

  Westghosts

  The Spirits of ‘76

  In Search of Ghosts

  some of My Best Friends are Ghosts

  The Truth About Witchcraft

  The New Pagans

  The Witchcraft Report

  Star in the East

  The UFOnauts: New Facts on Extraterrestrial landings

  The Habsburg Curse

  Word Play

  Murder in Amityville: Amityville II The Possession

  America’s Mysterious Places

  America’s Haunted Houses

  America’s Restless Ghosts: Psychic photography

  Elvis Speaks From Beyond

  Ghostly Lovers: True cases of love beyond the grave

  Born Again

  Life After Death: The challenge and the evidence

  The Handbook of Parapsychology

  The Great British Ghost Hunt

  Patterns of Destiny

  The Truth About ESP

  ESP and You

  Predictions—Fact or Fallacy?

  The Prophets Speak

  Psychic Investigator

  Best True Ghost Stories

  The Powers of the New Age

  Possessed

  The Psychic World of Bishop Pike

  The Directory of the Occult

  The Psydhic World of Plants

  The Human Dynamo

  Charismatics: How to make things happen for you

  How to Cope with Problems

  Speed Thinking

  How to Win at Life

  Astrology: What it can do for you

  The Vegetarian Way of Life

  The Aquarian Age

  Psycho-Ecstasy

  FICTION

  The Alchemist

  Heather, Confessions of a Witch

  The Clairvoyant

  The Entry

  The Amityville Curse

  The Secret Amityville

  The Zodiac Affairs

  Circle of Love

  The Randy Knowles Adventure Series:

  The Red Chindvit Conspiracy

  The Alchemy Deception

  The Unicorn

  *Vol. V., p. 409.

  *Trow’s New York City Directory for 1872/73, p. 448 regular section and p. 38 City Register section.

  † Ibid, City Register, p. 18, under “City Railroads.”

  ‡ Trow, 1895/96, p. 550.

  ** Trow, 1872/73, City Register, p. 27.

  †† Trow, 1895/96, p. 174, lists his office as 132 Nassau.

  * 1872, p. 1287, regular section.

  † Trow, 1872, City Register section, p. 39.

  * Courtesy of Tomorrow, Vol. I, No. 3.

  * Verplanck’s Point, on the Hudson River, was a Revolutionary strongpoint at the time.

  * Richard Varick, of noble Dutch descent, became Aide-de-Camp to General Arnold in August 1780, six weeks prior to the treason. He was not involved
in it, however.

  * General John Lamb was sent by General Washington on September 25, 1780, to secure Kings Ferry on the eve of Arnold’s treason.

  † AndR Eas?

  *Fate, July, 1954.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

  Chapter One The Nature of Life and Death

  Chapter Two What Every Would-be Ghost Hunter Should Know

  Chapter Three Ghosts and the World of the Living

  Chapter Four What Exactly Is a Ghost?

  Chapter Five Famous Ghosts

  Chapter Six This House Is Haunted

  Chapter Seven Haunted Places