Book Read Free

The Science of Ghosts

Page 15

by Joe Nickell


  PALACE GRAND THEATRE

  A red-haired beauty, Kathleen “Klondike Kate” Rockwell (1876–1957), was a true dance-hall queen (not a lady of the evening like those of Tombstone's Bird Cage Theatre). As a talented dancer, she spun many yards of bright red chiffon about her to create a “flame dance” that impressed audiences in frontier Dawson City, Yukon. This was the boomtown of the great Klondike Gold Rush at the turn of the last century. Kate was called the “Darling of Dawson” and “Belle of the Klondike,” especially when, her glory days long past, she was selling picture postcards of herself (figure 21.2) and telling gold-rush-era tales wherever she could fine a venue. She had spent only two years in Dawson, having arrived in 1900 and left when the gold rush was dying out. Yet today she has allegedly returned to grace Dawson's Palace Grand Theatre once more—this time as a backstage ghost.

  I came to feel very close to Kate—to her memory, at least, not her supposedly earthbound spirit—when I, likewise, spent much of two years in Dawson, in 1975 and 1976. I worked as a blackjack dealer and crown-and-anchor croupier (with waxed mustache, sleeve garters, and all) in Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall (named in memory of another dance-hall queen, Gertie Lovejoy). I attended the Place Grand's shows and got to know many of the theatrical folk. (Actor and mime Brian Jones, for example, who, like most seasonal outsiders in Dawson, worked two jobs, often fixed my breakfast as short-order cook at the Flora-Dora Café overlooking the Yukon River.) During my second summer I also worked as a manager of a riverboat tour company, whose owner, Captain Dick Stevenson, also had a fishing camp on a little island, and we once hosted the entire Palace Grand crew there for one of our famous salmon barbeques. On that day I ferried the theatrical folk (actors, stagehands, etc.) to the island using “my” boat: a small paddle wheeler named—tah dah!—“Klondike Kate.”

  I had another connection with Kate. I had stayed in Dawson through the winter to serve as exhibit designer for a grant-supported renovation and redesigning of displays for the Dawson City Museum. The museum had acquired from an estate sale a few of Kate's belongings: a dress, a beaded purse, and another item or two, including, if I recall correctly, a lady's fan. I set aside a small room, which we finished with period wallpaper and outfitted with an antique brass bed and small dressing table. Putting the small items on the latter and installing a glass-paneled wall case for the dress, I created “Klondike Kate's Bedroom” (Rubinsky 1976). Even so, Kate's ghost never came by.

  Before, however, one attributes the alleged ghost's absence to the fact that the bedroom was a reproduction, we must realize that is just what today's Palace Grand Theatre is: a replica. The original 1899 building had largely succumbed to time (notably from having been built on ground that alternately froze and thawed). By the 1950s it was in tumbledown shape, and it was replaced in 1962 with a replica. (Now in modern, far-north restorations, steel supports are set deep so they rest directly on the permafrost for stability.)

  This replica, too, almost perished on the night of Tuesday, May 18, 1976, when fire engulfed the historic Bonanza Hotel. Only a vacant lot intervened between it and the Palace Grand, and firemen fought valiantly to save the latter. As I wrote at the time in my journal:

  One brave fireman [I believe it was Peter Jenkins] sat against a smoldering [electric] pole…and played his stream of water along the blackening side of the Palace Grand. He didn't move even after the burning building slowly leaned over toward him and finally fell over, fortunately collapsing from underneath to land in its own blazing territory.

  Such a rush of flame billowed up that the crowd was forced back further but eventually the fire—and the threat—died down.

  Had the theater also succumbed, the entire downtown district would have gone too, in a chain reaction of each burning building kindling the next. People were crying in the streets, and the scene remains one of the most vivid of my lifetime.

  During my time in Dawson, I never heard a word about Kate's ghost inhabiting the Dawson landmark. Although devoting a ten-page chapter titled “The Queen of Klondike” to her in his Haunted Theaters, Tom Ogden (2009, 185) offers merely a single sentence of utter hearsay in that regard: “She's said to have returned to haunt the dressing rooms of the Palace Grand, the theater where she had her first triumphs in her youth.” He does add one sentence: “If you…decide to tour the old Palace Grand Theatre, look closely: If you see someone with blazing red hair backstage surrounded by red chiffon, you just might have stumbled across the ghost of the ‘Darling of Dawson’ herself, Klondike Kate” (186).

  Then again, of course, you may see nothing at all. That is the familiar story of all theatrical ghosts: there is no evidence they actually exist, but often they play roles in little dramas that take place in our imagination.

  Hauntings—of one kind or another—are reported worldwide. Here are selected examples—from Europe, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Russia, China, and Morocco—both specific cases and generalized claims that I have investigated during years of travels. I think these brief reports convey some of the flavor of the different cultures involved, while demonstrating the persistence of belief that is a common thread throughout.

  THE WHITE LADY (EUROPE)

  A phantom figure, the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, has been called “one of the world's most mobile ghosts,” having “appeared in castles all over Europe” (Hauck 2000, 113). I have crossed her spirited path on occasion, including once in Franconia (the northern region of the German state of Bavaria) with my friend Martin Mahner in 2002. It is said that every town in the region has a legend of die Weisse Frau (“the White Lady”), who walks about at night terrifying the populace. Her saga is most firmly attached to the Plassenburg, a Renaissance fortress overlooking the Franconian town of Kulmbach.

  Tradition says the White Lady was Kunigunde von Orlamünde, whose husband's ancestors erected the castle. After she was widowed, she sought to marry a certain Albrecht von Hohenzollern, who was agreeable except for what he characterized as the “four eyes between us.” Although he apparently meant his parents, Kunigunde assumed he referred to her two children, so she secretly murdered them. So it would appear they died a natural death, she used a needle—a “golden needle” according to one of the many variant folktales—to pierce the children's skulls. However, a guilty conscience drove her to Rome, where the Pope promised forgiveness in return for her commitment to a life of monastic devotion. Supposedly, she went on her knees from the Plassenburg to the valley of Bernick to establish a monastery.

  Some versions of the legend say she died in the attempt, while others have her succeeding, then dying in her early thirties. They agree that, ever since, she haunts the numerous castles of the Hohenzollern dynasty—appearing in some simultaneously!

  The saga was first mentioned in the latter part of the fifteenth century. At the old castle of Bayreuth, says the revealing account, whenever the Cavaliers wished to be rid of the visiting ruler and his entourage, the White Lady would be conjured up to frighten them away. That is, one of the court ladies would secretly dress in a white gown and roam the dark chambers and corridors of the Plassenburg. The castle residents especially enjoyed fooling a gullible Count Friedrich. Once, however, a man who donned a white garment to play ghost and chase away the Hohenzollerns reportedly came to a tragic end. In one version of the tale, he fell drunkenly down the stairs; in another, he was pushed by the man he attempted to frighten. In any case, he reportedly broke his neck (Wachler 1931; Nickell 2007, 276–74).

  Whether the early accounts of ghostly hoaxing are true—and they deserve at least as much credit as the later ghost legends—the story of die Weisse Frau herself is cast into doubt by the historical record. Although the Countess Kunigunde did enter a monastery, she died not in her thirties but in her seventies. More important, her marriage had been childless (Wachler 1931). According to my guide at the historic castle, the true story about Albrecht's refusal to marry her was that she was impoverished. Another castle worker—who had herself never seen t
he specter and noted that there were no recent sightings—stated her belief that the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns was “only a legend” (Nickell 2007, 274).

  SPECTRAL SHIP (CANADA)

  Ghosts and ships seem made for each other, combining the spine-tingling attraction of hauntings with the enduring romance of the sea. Among the beguiling stories are those of vessels that are themselves phantoms—linked to shipwrecks and other disasters. Such is the mystery of the Teazer light, an example of “ghost lights” or “luminous phenomena” (see Corliss 1995)—in this instance, interpreted as the spectral appearance of a fiery sailing ship.

  The story begins on June 26, 1813, when a privateer's vessel, the Young Teazer, was hemmed in by British warships in Nova Scotia's Mahone Bay. The pirates’ commander, seeing that they were doomed to be captured and hanged, ordered the ship set ablaze, whereupon, according to legend at least, all men perished (Blackman 1998). However, soon afterward came reports of eyewitnesses that the vessel had returned in the form of a fiery ghost ship! Almost always, it was observed on foggy nights, especially those occurring “within three days of a full moon” (Colombo 1988, 32; Nickell 2001, 188–89).

  In 1999, at Malone Bay to investigate the mystery of Oak Island's legendary treasure (Nickell 2001, 219–33), I determined to also maintain a vigil for the Teazer light, since I was there about three days after a full moon. Alas, the phantom ship was a no-show, but that was hardly surprising, since one of the last sightings was reported in 1935 (Colombo 1988, 32). (I wondered whether the diminishing of apparition reports could be due to encroaching light pollution, from homes, marinas, and so on, obscuring the spectral phenomenon.)

  Nevertheless, my research into the case led to a revealing account by one local man who, with some friends, had actually witnessed the phenomenon of the fiery ship from Borgal's Point. Shaking their heads in wonderment, they went indoors for about a quarter of an hour. When they then returned to have another look, “there, in exactly the same place, the moon was coming up. It was at the full, and they knew its location by its relation to Tancook Island.” The young man understood what had happened.

  It struck him that there must have been a bank of fog in front of the moon as it first came over the horizon that caused it to appear like a ship on fire, and he now thinks this is what the Malone Bay people have been seeing all these years. If the fog had not cleared away that night he would always have thought, like all the other people, that he had seen the Teazer. (Creighton 1957)

  HAUNTED CEMETERY (ARGENTINA)

  It is a memorable sight, “a city within a city,” as one writer describes it (Winter 2001). It is really a city of the dead, located in Buenos Aires (which I visited for the 2005 Primera Conferencia Ibroamericana Sobre Pensamiento Critico, i.e., the First Latin American Conference on Critical Thinking). A necropolis consisting of narrow alleys lined with ornate crypts and mausoleums, Cementerio de la Recoleta offers a prestigious final address to the once rich and powerful, including Eva Peron (the late actress turned controversial first lady). Recoleta is considered “one of the world's grandest graveyards” (Bernhard son 2004, 72). See figure 22.1.

  Some say the cemetery is haunted, while an Internet search turned up a cautionary remark: “Everybody will tell you the stories about this interesting place, but don't believe all of them; ghosts don't walk there at night” (Fodors.com 2004). Sure enough, two days after my visit, a local guide told me just such a tale about the cemetery.

  As the story goes, one night a man met a woman in the neighborhood and the pair went to the cemetery for a tryst. She borrowed a jacket from him but then suddenly ran away. He followed, searching for her. Eventually, he found his jacket at a crypt bearing a picture of a young woman who was entombed there. It was the same young lady!

  The guide who related the tale, Paola Luski (2005), told me she was dubious of it. She said one reason to question the story was the general absence of pictures of the deceased at the tombs of Recoleta.

  More important, the tale seems especially doubtful because of its obvious similarity to the widespread “Vanishing Hitchhiker” urban legend (albeit without that story's automobile). Shared narrative elements (or motifs as folklorists say) include the meeting of the pair, their linking up, the young lady's disappearance, and the cemetery as the final destination and scene of revelation. The jacket (like the coat, sweater, etc., present in some versions of the proliferating hitchhiker tale) is clearly intended to provide verisimilitude (a sense of truthfulness) to the story, and it represents an unmistakable link with the famous roadside-phantom narrative.

  Thus, the Recoleta tale is simply another variant of the ubiquitous legend that has antecedents as far back as 1876. Again, as American folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand (1981, 21) points out, multiple versions of a tale provide “good evidence against credibility.”

  A GESTURING GHOST (AUSTRALIA)

  Called “Australia's most famous ghost” (Davis 1998, 16), the alleged specter of Frederick Fisher has attracted such notables as Charles Dickens (who published a version of the story in his Household Words) and magician John Pepper (who featured it as the subject of his “Pepper's ghost” stage illusion in a circa 1879 Sydney performance). The tale has been presented in poems, songs, plays, operas, books, and countless newspaper articles, as well as being the inspiration for a movie and the focus of an annual festival in Campbell town. In 2000, I investigated the case on-site, assisted by magic historian Peter Rodgers (with whom I shared other investigations and adventures [Nickell 2004, 289–95, 331–34]).

  Briefly, the story began with Fisher's disappearance on June 17, 1826. He was a paroled convict who had built a shack in Campbell town, where he caroused with other parolees and ne'er-do-wells, including his neighbor George Worrell. To protect his assets while he was in prison, he had signed over his property to Worrell, only to discover on his release that his supposed best friend had been claiming it as his own. When Fischer conveniently disappeared, Worrell told inquirers that the ex-con had returned to England. However, suspicions were raised when Worrell began wearing Fisher's clothes and “proved” his ownership of one of Fisher's horses with a crudely forged sale receipt.

  The Colonial Secretary's Office on September 23 offered a reward for “the discovery of the body of the missing man,” or a lesser amount for proof that he had indeed “quitted the Colony.” At this point, a townsman named James Farley reportedly encountered Fisher's ghost! Walking near Fisher's property one evening, he spied Fisher's apparition, sitting on a fence, emitting an eerie glow, and bleeding from a gashed head (figure 22.2). Moaning, the specter “pointed a bony finger in the direction of the creek that flowed behind Fisher's farm.” The sighting prompted a police search of the area, and soon Fisher's corpse was unearthed. Subsequently, Worrell was arrested, convicted, and executed—reportedly confessing just before he was hanged (Fowler 1991, 13).

  So Fisher's ghost acted like many another purposeful phantom of yore that sometimes “advised where their bodies might be discovered” (Finucane 1984, 194). Or did it? An examination of the records in the proceedings of the Supreme Criminal Court of February 2, 1827, shows that nowhere is there any mention whatsoever of the ghost. In fact, the proceedings demonstrate that Fisher's missing body was located in a purely rational—not supernatural—manner. Constable George Looland testified that blood on fence rails at Fisher's paddock led him to search the area, assisted by two Aboriginal trackers. They came to a marshy spot where there was apparently a surface disturbance and probed with an iron rod before procuring a spade to excavate farther. Soon they had revealed “the left hand of a man lying on his side,” but left further exploration for the coroner. When the corpse was subsequently examined, “several fractures were found in the head” (Supreme Criminal Court 1827).

  The fanciful story of the gesturing ghost may have been launched by an anonymous poem, a fictionalized narrative published in 1832. And over time the tale shows evidence of folkloric evolution. For instance, the earliest account of t
he tale has Fisher sitting on the rail of a fence, but that motif was eventually transformed into the rail of a bridge, and, when the bridge over Fisher's Ghost Creek was rebuilt at a different site, the supposed apparition followed. One such sighting in 1955 proved to be only a white cow in the distant darkness! (Nickell 2004, 304–10)

  GHOSTLY PORTENTS (RUSSIA)

  According to The International Directory of Haunted Places (Hauck 2000, 129–31), Russia has haunting phenomena similar to those now reported around the world. However, a published photograph showing a “Moscow ghost” looks like nothing more than a wandering fingertip bouncing back the flash!

  Of more interest are the reported apparitions. At the Kremlin the specter of Ivan the Terrible has reportedly been seen on several occasions. Most appearances occurred during 1894, prior to the wedding of Nicholas II to Alexandra, when Nicholas was to accede to the throne after his father's death. Purportedly, the phantom of Ivan brandished his scepter while flames danced around his face (Nickell 2004, 311–12).

  The ghost of Lenin (1870–1924), the Russian revolutionary, also allegedly haunts the Kremlin. His spirit purportedly contacted a medium in 1961 to tell her he resented sharing his mausoleum with the late dictator Joseph Stalin (1879–1953). The medium—herself a communist heroine who is devoted to Lenin and who was imprisoned by Stalin—disclosed Lenin's alleged feelings in an address she gave to the Party Congress; the following night the dictator's body was disinterred and relocated elsewhere.

  These examples of apparitions—typical of those reported elsewhere and no doubt similarly explained (see appendix for “apparitional experiences”)—demonstrate a tendency for Russian apparitions to serve as omens. People tend to perceive ghosts in terms of their own cultural attitudes, notes R. C. Finucane (1984) in his Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts. As purposeful as are, say, the ghosts of Shakespeare's plays (recall how the specters of Hamlet's father and Banquo were motivated by revenge), those of Russian historical figures similarly function as portents in anxious times.

 

‹ Prev