The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  I walked along Gay Street last week, that tiny curving street that cuddles in the heart of Greenwich Village (New York). Little has changed since I lived there twenty-one years ago. The rows of small houses built in the early nineteenth century are still curtained in organdy frills or primly shuttered. There is an aura of age as subtle as the scent of woodruff. Cars rarely pass on this secretive little street, but when they do, you envision coaches on cobblestones. And on frosty nights, you smell oak and applewood from the still-burning fireplaces of long ago.

  But it was spring when I passed by. An old horse pulled a flower cart. There were geraniums, mimosa – and great bunches of lilac.

  Because of the lilac, I thought of Dandy and the ghost and wondered if the present tenants of Number Thirteen Gay Street were mischiefed by a little French poodle or had found lilacs in the garden where no lilacs grew. Of course, I couldn’t barge in on strangers and ask such absurd questions; but I lingered outside my old home and remembered how it had all happened. . . .

  I had moved into the basement apartment when my husband went to war in 1943. My floor-through included a rear garden which I shared with Virginia Copeland, the girl above. By the unwritten code of New York neighbors, we didn’t intrude on one another. Months went by before we met.

  From the desk at my window, I could see Virginia in the garden with a miniature French poodle whom she called “Dandy.” I thought the name suited him, for he was a cocky, prancy, elegant little dog in a curly black coat that was fashionably trimmed. He had a black button nose, plump whiskers, and velvety brown eyes. Often he clowned with blown leaves or played with sun shadows, but I noticed he never barked except to welcome Virginia home. He never even barked when her doorbell or telephone rang – which wasn’t often. She was blonde, beautiful, sad-looking, solitary.

  One night, Dandy scratched on my garden door and summoned me up to her apartment. He didn’t bark but his anxiety was evident. She met me at the garden steps – our first meeting – and I saw that she had been crying. It is difficult for a reticent person to pour out the story of an unhappy marriage and a divorce, yet Virginia needed someone to talk to. So we became close friends, she and Dandy and I.

  Two years passed. One windy April night, just for fun, Virginia brought up her old Ouija board from the basement, and we began to ask it questions. Dandy watched us intently and his concentration was so comic that we both laughed.

  I asked Ouija, “Will Virginia marry again?”

  Under our fingers the planchette moved to YES. “What’s the man’s name?” she asked. The planchette moved to CAP. “Are those his initials?” I asked. No answer.

  We varied the question but nothing happened. Finally, relinquishing Cap, Virginia asked if she would stay in New York.

  The planchette moved firmly to NO. PHIL.

  We asked if she would live in Philadelphia. NO. Where, then?

  “Man – PHIL,” Ouija answered.

  So the man is named Phil?” I asked.

  No reply.

  Virginia laughed. “It’s clear as mud,” she said. “I’m going to marry Cap and live with Phil. A wicked life, but busy.”

  So we joked and had coffee and talked about other matters. The wind rose to a gale, unusual for April, and the little house shuddered and creaked. Dandy put his paw onto the garden door and Virginia let him out, leaving the door open. Suddenly we heard him bark and he ran in to us, still barking – the exultant, welcoming sort of bark with which he greeted her when she’d been away. He seemed to be urging something – someone – into the room. Just as he had urged me to follow him two years before. His guest had apparently followed him over to the fireplace and was standing there. Dandy reared up on his hind legs and placed his front paws on its – what? Trousers, I thought. Dandy’s pink tongue seemed to lick an outstretched hand.

  “He must see a bug or a fly,” Virginia said. But there were no insects on this windy April night. Later we agreed we both had the strongest illusion that a man was standing by the fireplace, relaxed, at ease, at home.

  Then Dandy escorted his guest out the door, returned to Virginia and fluffed at her feet. There were shreds of blossoms on his curly coat and at the garden door – undoubtedly lilac.

  But it was impossible, for lilac did not grow anywhere on Gay Street; and neither of us had lilac in our vases. The mystery charmed us but we soon forgot it. In May, we gave a cocktail party in the garden, and Dandy officiated as host, extending his usual silent welcome, offering a paw to friends. Suddenly he tore past us and made a flying leap onto a young man, who dropped a parcel and caught Dandy in his arms. For a moment two dark heads lay together, two faces pressed. The man’s face was wet with kisses.

  Virginia, startled by the bark, stared incredulously at Dandy in the man’s arms, and then at the fallen parcel. It had broken, and a huge bunch of lilacs spilled out. A friend introduced the young man as Major Capotosto.

  “Everyone calls me Cappy,” he said, and gave Virginia the lilacs.

  Virginia moved through the party in a radiant daze. Later she dined with Cappy and much later that night she knocked on my door. “Guess where he plans to live?”

  “Philadelphia,” I said.

  “Manila. Philippines. Remember what Ouija said? MAN – PHIL.”

  So Cappy was the Gay Street ghost. He and Virginia have been married seventeen happy years. She wrote me: “Dandy lies buried here in our garden where wild orchids trail over his grave. But lilacs would be more suitable. I wish I could grow them here in Manila . . . .”

  So last week, as I passed down Gay Street and saw lilacs on a flower cart, I remembered Dandy and the “ghost” and I paused outside number thirteen, tempted to ring my old doorbell. But what could I say to strangers, to whom the story would probably be ridiculous? Yet, impulsively, I rang the bell. Florence Mitchel, a dark, attractive young actress answered, accompanied by Misty, her French poodle. She was gracious when I explained my pilgrimage into the past and asked me in. Mindful of Virginia I asked who lived upstairs, and she took me to meet Alice Mulligan.

  “How is the garden doing?” I asked Mrs Mulligan. “Can you grow lilacs now?”

  “You can’t grow anything,” she said. “Not inside, either.”

  She showed me a row of lifeless plants on her potting table in the kitchen. “Except this.”

  She pointed to a miniature orange tree. “It’s supposed to be perishable but it blooms on, year after year. It’s called Calamondin. And it’s native only to the Philippines.”

  EXPOSING GEORGE THE GHOST

  By Ken Gardner

  Chief reporter of The People, Gardner led a team of newspapermen on several ghost hunts in the 1960s and 1970s exposing fraudulent hauntings. A resourceful and dedicated reporter, Gardner unmasked dozens of people in the pages of his newspaper from vice bosses to criminal masterminds. He was equally expert at solving suspicious cases of the supernatural like this one on 10 May 1964 – a story which predates the far more notorious “Enfield Poltergeist” in 1977.

  One of the world’s most publicised ghosts was unmasked last week. For 18 months George, as he was known to his fans, has haunted a stone cottage in the old-world village of Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos.

  Stories and articles about him appeared all over the world. A TV programme was devoted to his activities. Priests were called in to advise on the best methods of dealing with him.

  But I can now reveal that “George” was really 14-year-old David Pethrick, who lives in the cottage with his parents.

  The truth came out two nights ago, at a séance to which a team of “People” investigators had been invited.

  As “George” went through his eerie routine I suddenly shone a torch on young David, who was sitting in a corner of the living-room.

  And I caught him doing a daring ventriloquist act behind a handkerchief.

  George the Ghost first appeared during the big freeze-up of 1963, when pools of water appeared on the floor of the cottage.

  One night soon
afterwards, as David and his parents, Mr Stanley Pethrick, 59, a carpenter, and his wife Nancy, 49, sat in the firelight they heard tapping noises.

  A high-pitched voice, apparently from nowhere, started singing “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

  Later, crude drawings and messages appeared on the wall of Mr and Mrs Pethrick’s bedroom. Furniture moved of its own accord. Paper was ripped from the walls.

  Once, when Mrs Pethrick was tucking up David in bed, a stick appeared from beneath the blanket and struck her on the wrist.

  Messages scrawled in spooky writing on odd scraps of paper were found in the cottage.

  Mr and Mrs Pethrick sought the advice of a local clergyman, the Rev. Henry Cheales, who called at the cottage to hear George for himself.

  Afterwards he said: “There is definitely a ‘presence’ here. I have advised the Pethricks to be kind to him, otherwise he might get violent.”

  When the “People” team went along accompanied by Brigadier Frank Spedding, an authority on the supernatural, George was too shy to appear at first.

  But photographer Pat Scott felt something rubbing his leg, fired a photographic flash – and saw David’s foot disappearing under the table.

  Then David suggested he should move to a seat on the far side of the room. He also suggested that the room was too crowded, and that some of us, including Brigadier Spedding, should leave.

  Almost at once George began to speak.

  Mrs Pethrick invited him to sing, and he obliged with “Pat-a-cake.” At this point I switched on my torch.

  David stopped singing immediately, and stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket.

  “It wasn’t me – honest,” he stammered.

  But a few minutes later, when I took David to one side, he admitted the voice was his.

  “I don’t know why I do it,” he said. “Most of the time I hardly realise myself that the voice is mine. Sometimes I feel that a ghost is inside me.”

  David denied that he was responsible for moving furniture or writing messages.

  But Brigadier Spedding, who listened to David’s performance through a window, and later questioned David and his parents, said:

  “From all the evidence I do not feel there is anything supernatural in this house.”

  Said the Rev. Mr Cheales: “To be blunt, I now think that David is responsible for many of the things which were attributed to George.”

  Mr Pethrick said: “At first I was convinced that George was a spirit. Now I am not so sure. But if it is my son I shall be greatly surprised.”

  Mrs Nancy Pethrick said: “George really does exist. Nothing will shake me from that conviction.”

  THE SIX O’CLOCK VISITOR

  By Gerard Fairlie

  A correspondent for The Times and the News of the World, Fairlie shared Ken Gardner’s scepticism about the supernatural until he encountered what he believed to be a real event. Fairlie’s war work as a correspondent and intelligence officer – not to mention an escape from the Germans – made him the inspiration for his friend, HC McNeil’s famous character, Bulldog Drummond, and after the author’s death, Fairlie wrote several more of the Bulldog books. In this report for the News of the World, 20 December 1964, Fairlie describes how his disbelief in ghosts was dramatically changed.

  Do you believe in ghosts? If you don’t, you’re crackers. I was crackers until about a couple of years after Joan and I were married.

  We then moved into a little house in a small square just south of Hyde Park in London.

  We thought that it was a lovely little house, perhaps partly because it was our first home of our own. It had a cosy little sitting-room with a small open fire.

  Everything was wonderful for a few weeks. Then, at six o’clock on a Friday, I was relaxing with the first drink of the evening when I nearly dropped the glass. Some silly joker had abruptly crumpled up a large newspaper just behind my chair. It makes an alarming noise.

  Some silly joker hadn’t. When I whipped round, already uttering my vivid protest, there was nobody there.

  Now, believe it or not, this went on happening every Friday evening at six o’clock and I was not the only one who heard it.

  I made sure that others, unwarned, were in the room at that hour, and they all heard it. It frightened no one but it startled everyone.

  And our dog, about a minute before the hour, would jump to his feet with his hair on end, growling.

  We stayed several years in that house. After a few months the noise ceased to be regular, but it went on happening occasionally, always at six on a Friday.

  No, I never found any possible explanation.

  But one afternoon, while we were still in that house, Joan was returning from shopping when, on entering the small square, she saw a little old lady dressed entirely in grey approaching our door.

  In fact our front door was the only one in the square with steps up to it. The little old lady went up the steps and rang the bell.

  Joan has never been much of a one for callers. So when she saw the door opened, and the visitor disappear through it, she circled the square hoping that, since the little old lady was bound to be told that Joan was out, she might leave.

  But nothing happened. So Joan faced the inevitable, and went into the house.

  She found no visitor inside. She questioned the help, who had been alone in the house. The help said that she had admitted nobody, that no bell had rung.

  Joan never saw the little grey lady again.

  THE EMPTY HOUSE

  By Gordon Honeycombe

  The actor-turned-broadcaster Gordon Honeycombe was several times voted the most popular newscaster on British television in the 1980s. Apart from newsreading, he was also the commentator on many documentaries that revealed his passion for research and investigation into the abormal. His interest in the supernatural was evident in the first of his subsequent string of novels, Dragon Under The Hill (1972), which was based on an experience of his own while he was still a child – as he explained in the Sunday People, 15 December 1974.

  I used the story of my ghost in my first book, Dragon Under The Sea. It happened in India near Karachi where I was born.

  As a boy I used to play a game with a friend. I stood on the verandah of this empty old house and sang. I sang any old song I could think of. And as I sang my friend and I would hear footsteps pacing about inside the empty house.

  But as soon as I stopped singing, the footsteps stopped. When I started again, so did the footsteps.

  Finally, the front door would open – very slowly. My friend and I never waited to see what happened. Our nerves just went and we fled.

  I never found out an explanation for what happened. But it happened every time we had enough courage to go to that empty old house.

  A MESSAGE FOR GEORGINA

  By Brian Inglis

  Brian Inglis was a journalist, television presenter and unquestionably the most important investigator of the paranormal in the second half of the twentieth century. An Irishman by birth, he joined the staff of the Spectator in 1954 where his interest in the supernatural was formed and began the exhaustive research that would result in his masterwork, Natural and Supernatural (1978). This was followed by a second landmark volume, Science and Parascience (1984), investigating the development of psychic research. Inglis also enjoyed great popularity as a presenter on TV, especially with the series All Our Yesterdays. His life ended on a curious note. One of Inglis’ closest colleagues, Bill Grundy, died on 9 February 1993 – and he had just finished writing his friend’s obituary when he, too, died.

  In 1979 I was asked by the Features Editor of the “new, swinging Tatler” if I would review the autobiography of a medium, Doris Stokes. Doris was then better known in Australia than in Britain. She had just filled the Sydney Opera House three nights running, and to accommodate an interview with her on TV, Starsky and Hutch had been shifted to another slot. I had met her only once, on a TV programme in Newcastle. Still, the book proved to be rather endearing, and
I agreed to bring the Features Editor – Georgina Howell – to Doris’s flat in Fulham, to introduce them, so that an interview could accompany my review.

  I was just about to leave them to it, after coffee, when Doris announced that she was receiving a message for Georgina from the spirit world. Doris is “clairaudient”; she “hears” what the spirits have to say. In this case the message came from “Clive”, who had just “passed on”. Georgina could think of nobody she knew of that name, in this world or the next. “Clive”, however, was insistent. He wanted his girl-friend, Tracy, to know he was all right. She was not to worry, but to get on with her own life. Still, Georgina shook her head. She knew nobody of that name.

  At this point the photographer who had come with her, who had been silent, said he felt he had to interrupt. He had a friend called Clive, he said, who had died at three o’clock that morning. Tracy was his fiancée.

  There was no way in which Doris could have known about Clive and Tracy, and the long arm of coincidence would have to be dislocated to accommodate the episode. Somehow, the information must have been fed into her mind through . . . Clive, communicating with her? Or telepathic pick-up from the mind of the photographer? Either way, it was affected by what the parapsychologists call “displacement-effect”, which is one of the nuisances confronting psychical researchers.

  But either way, it was surely ESP?

  5

  Haunted Stars

  Show Business and the Supernatural

  There is little argument that Marlon Brando was one of the most famous and influential films stars of the twentieth century. Like a number of other well-known actors and actress of the last century, he was also very interested in the supernatural and towards the end of his life came to believe that he was haunted by the ghost of a man that one of his sons had killed in 1990. However, unlike some of his iconic contemporaries including Marilyn Monroe who haunts Forest Lawn Cemetery and Elvis Presley in Memphis there have been no reports, as yet, of his ghost being seen in Hollywood.