The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  “On 15 November while I was on a flight between Hollywood and New York I had an extraordinary glimpse of the unknown. I was immersed in a book for most of the journey, but at one point glanced idly out of the window. To my horror I saw huge, brilliant letters emblazoned across a cloudbank, spelling out the message, TYRONE POWER DEAD. It was a terrific shock. I began to doubt my senses when I realized that nobody else on the plane appeared to have seen them. But for a few seconds they were definitely there, like huge Teletype, lit up with blinding light from within the clouds. I was even more shocked when we finally landed and saw the newspaper headlines. Tyrone Power had suffered a heart attack and died a couple of hours earlier.”

  In attempting to find an explanation for his experience, Vincent Price took part in several séances and consulted a number of psychic investigators. But no one was able to give him a definitive answer. The whole thing seemed even stranger when he learned that someone else had had a premonition about Tyrone Power’s death. The voluptuous Swedish actress, Anita Ekberg, had come to America to represent her country in the Miss World contest and stayed to become an iconic sex symbol in pictures like La Dolce Vita (1960). She was actually working in London in 1958 on a picture called The Man Inside when the supernatural intruded into her life:

  “I have had prophetic dreams about my family and friends all my life – but there was something really supernatural about this one. When I got to the studio to begin work I asked first to see a newspaper. I leafed through it – but there was nothing there I was looking for. The next two days I did the same thing and there was still nothing. But on the third morning there on the front page was what I had seen so vividly. Tyrone Power had died suddenly.”

  Another actor who received a single word warning from the unknown was Alan Alda, the star of the hit television series M*A*S*H, who has admitted to being a firm believer in ESP after experiencing a number of unusual events during his life. The most extraordinary of these was “seeing” a disaster happen in a remote part of the world. Talking in 1984 he explained:

  “At the time I was having dinner in a New York restaurant. Suddenly these vivid images flashed through my head. The word ERUPTION kept running through my mind. Later I discovered that during the time I was having these thoughts Mount Batur on the island of Bali had erupted violently forcing over 1,000 people to evacuate their homes. After that I never made fun of the supernatural.”

  That same year, Vincent Price put into words what he, Anita Ekberg and Alan Alda had felt during their experiences: “Investigations are going on all the time into the whole subject of ESP. The truth is there’s a vast unexplored area of man’s mind and no one knows what goes on there.”

  Similar sentiments were shared by the great Hollywood screen comedy actor Jack Lemmon who also had two inexplicable encounters with the unknown that were anything but amusing. Lemon, like Vincent Price, came from a wealthy background and was educated at several prep schools before going to Harvard where he first acted in the Dramatic Club. Determined on an acting career, he worked for years in radio and television developing his ability to play every kind of role from serious drama to slapstick before earning worldwide acclaim in 1959 with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. The same year, while working on the occult thriller, Bell, Book and Candle he revealed his own exposure to ESP:

  “I was fifteen at the time and attending the Andover Prep School in Massachusetts. I was playing tennis with a classmate, Jerry. Just as he was about to hit a serve, he suddenly doubled up as if he was in great pain and fell to the ground. I ran around the court and asked him what was wrong. He didn’t know – except that he knew something terrible had happened.”

  Lemmon said the two boys finished the game, but his friend’s mind was clearly on something else. They went back to their room and puzzled over what had happened.

  “Jerry said that it had been an almost physical pain – an overwhelming realization so intense he could virtually feel it, that something terrible had happened to someone he loved. An hour later he was called to the principal’s office. There he was told the sad news that his mother had died. Almost exactly one hour earlier.”

  Almost fifty years later, while appearing on stage in London, Jack Lemmon encountered another element of the supernatural at the Haymarket Theatre, starring in the anti-war play, Veterans’ Day, with Michael Gambon. In July 1989, he saw a spirit three times in less than a week, as told Steve Absalom of the Daily Mail:

  “It has scared me to death. I’ve been in my dressing room alone with the windows shut and three times the door has opened and slammed when there’s nobody outside. At first I thought somebody might be playing a practical joke on me, which is not a wise thing to do for a guy of my age. But now I’m sure it was a ghost. It’s terrifying thinking that somebody or something is watching you.”

  To long-serving members of the theatre staff there was little doubt that Lemmon had encountered the ghost who had been reported on a number of occasions during the past half-century. It was believed to be the spirit of a former stage manager, George Buxton, who had died on the premises some fifty years earlier and had been a stickler about keeping the theatre tidy and always keeping doors shut.

  The beautiful actress Kim Novak who appeared with Jack Lemmon in Bell, Book and Candle playing a witch, was very interested in her co-star’s childhood brush with ESP – and five years later had her own frightening encounter during filming of the classic period romp, The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, at the appropriately named Chilham Castle near Canterbury in Kent. The castle, parts of which date back to the twelfth century, had been modernized in some sections and as the star, Kim was assigned to the best accommodation in an apartment in the keep, right in the centre of the building.

  Kim had become interested in the occult after her earlier role, but was still not prepared for what happened one night in the apartment. Later she told her story to the Daily Express of a bruising encounter with the unknown after a long day’s shooting:

  “I had dinner then went to my room to go over my lines for the next day. I settled in a big comfortable chair and decided to put on the television and watch a musical variety programme. After a bit I fell under the spell of the music, kicked off my shoes and began to dance. Suddenly I felt as though I wasn’t dancing alone; some powerful force had grabbed hold of me. It was like strong arms around me, whirling me around the room. The music changed to a slower bit, but I was thrown around faster and faster and then the supporting arms were no longer there. I was thrown violently against the wall and I fell and struck my head and back. Fortunately, I was only dazed.”

  Initially, she told no one about her “invisible” dancing partner. But during the next three weeks of shooting the ghost – or “it” as she came to refer to him – began playing other tricks: turning lights on and off, moving things around in the apartment and rustling the curtains and tugging the bedclothes. All the time the windows were tightly shut. One night, the actress even felt her bottom being patted. As she was leaving Chilham Castle, Kim Novak mentioned her experiences to her British co-star, Richard Johnson. Not altogether surprised, he told her the building was known to be haunted by the ghost of King John who had stayed there on 11 October 1210 – the night before he had drowned in the North Sea:

  “Richard said the king was believed to have slept that last night in the keep. Ever since then he had been haunting the place – but no one wanted to tell me so as not to worry me. Well, if it was his ghost I’m glad that at least it was a royal one.”

  Kim might well have had a second experience two years later when she was due to make another supernatural thriller, The Eye of the Devil, with David Niven. As it was, she fell ill and her role was recast. The suave actor turned bestselling author, Niven faced the unknown on his own. He later recalled the events surrounding the film – and an even stranger event that occurred subsequently – while promoting his amusing autobiography, The Moon’s A Balloon in 1971.

  “There were so many
strange things while we were making The Eye of the Devil. Several members of the cast were involved in accidents. The original director was taken ill with stomach trouble and Deborah Kerr also eventually replaced Kim Novak, due to illness. I was injured after being thrown from a horse while filming.”

  But, he explained, that was nothing to the fear that enveloped him and his wife, Hjördis, during a weekend break. They were nearly killed in an accident on their way to visit friends in Switzerland. Niven recalled:

  “We were up in the mountains when the car suddenly stalled. When we looked out of the window, we discovered the vehicle was hanging over the side of a 400-feet drop. We had not been driving on a road at all, but on a hard snow ledge, which was hanging out over a valley. Hjördis was on the sheer side and she slid very cautiously out of the car with me just praying that it wouldn’t tip over before we got out. It just seemed like another uncanny episode in the making of that haunting film.”

  A few years later, the supernatural intervened again in the lives of the Nivens while playing a benevolent old ghost in the television version of Oscar Wilde’s story The Canterville Ghost, about an American family taking over a haunted stately home in England, which he recounted in 1974:

  “It happened when Hjördis and I went on a pheasant shoot with some friends on Rhode Island. My wife is Swedish and you know how they are. Rather spooky. On the day of the shoot Hjördis refused to go. I tried my best to persuade her but she kept saying no. I asked her why and she said, ‘Don’t laugh at me – I will not go because someone is going to shoot me.’ I didn’t laugh, but went on trying to convince her. Finally, our host said, ‘Look, I’ll lend you a coat – it’s heavy enough to stop any shotgun pellet.’ ”

  According to Niven, his wife was still reluctant to go, but at last relented. He concluded his story with a typical flourish:

  “Twenty minutes later, someone took aim at a pheasant, pulled the trigger – and the shotgun pellets struck Hjördis in the face, the arm and the side. In fact one of the pellets is still embedded in the bone, right next to her eye. There were twelve witnesses who heard her prediction only a short while earlier. I told you Swedes were spooky . . .”

  Films about the supernatural have had a tendency to generate mysterious occurrences, although some have clearly been the work of publicists attempting to get column inches in the papers about their movies. One story that has with stood investigation took place in Southern Italy where the exotic Israeli, Daliah Lavi was filming in 1963. The smouldering beauty who had trained as a dancer and completed her compulsory military service brought a resilience to a number of occult movies including The Return of Doctor Mabuse (1961) and Night is the Phantom (1962) before going on location in the south of Italy. She recalled the events later that year:

  “I played the part of a girl possessed by demons and the devil. I was completely possessed myself, in a way. At nights after filming I couldn’t sleep. I used to have terrible nightmares. I can remember playing one scene dressed only in a nightgown on a freezing cold night. Everyone else wore heavy coats, but I simply didn’t feel the cold! For another scene I had to go through a barbed wire fence. My body was scratched to pieces yet I felt no pain.”

  The crew working on the picture apparently became increasingly interested in its theme and even began holding séances themselves through a mixture of boredom and curiosity. Daliah felt compelled to go along.

  “I just wanted to see what would happen, if anything. And the most amazing things happened. Once we watched the mouthpiece of a telephone rise into the air, hang in space, and then drop back. Another night we got in touch with Mussolini and King David. The king sent one of us into a trance. One man started to hum the tune of an ancient Biblical melody that dated back to the time of King David. I became so fascinated by all this, I started practising things. Then I stopped because it was so frightening.”

  Five years later Daliah Lavi appeared in John Huston’s James Bond film Casino Royale with David Niven as Sir James Bond and Peter Sellers as the enigmatic Evelyn Tremble. Cast as the exotic The Detainer, she had the opportunity to share supernatural experiences with Niven and Peter Sellers, who was already well-known for his interest in psychic matters. Sellers, in particular, was always anxious to discuss this side of his life after becoming an international star via BBC Radio’s famous Goon Show and hugely successful films including The Ladykillers (1955), Dr Strangelove (1964) and The Pink Panther (1964). In an interview with Bill Neech he explained:

  “I’m psychic. A medium. I don’t know why. I never studied it. I’ve believed in psychic powers a long time because I’ve had incredible proof. At sittings with the famous London medium, Estelle Roberts, I made contact with my mother a year after her passing. I knew it was her because we always had a very close bond. When she died it left a great void and the following months were the loneliest I have ever lived through. She came through loud and clear. Contacting her gave me a lovely warm feeling because you then know that those people you have loved in this life are really with you all the time although we cannot see them.”

  Sellers also believed that the old Victorian music hall star, Dan Leno, who had been one of his inspirations since childhood, helped his career. He told his biographer Peter Evans in 1969: “I’ve had a strange thing that has followed me all my life. Some special person in another world who takes an interest in me and guards over me. It is very weird.”

  He claimed to be clairaudient: that is, able to receive premonitions or warnings of impending trouble. One incident concerned his son, Michael, and the time he was going riding with a friend. The star continued:

  “Somebody, I don’t know who it was, said as clear as a bell in my head, ‘Don’t let him go – he’ll have a bad accident.’ But I felt I couldn’t spoil his enjoyment, though I did my best to warn him and asked him to promise to be particularly careful that afternoon. Soon after the boys left the stable, a dog startled the horses and both of them were thrown. Michael, very fortunately, was guided down and fell correctly, but his friend was kicked and quite badly hurt. I felt terrible.”

  Despite his psychic abilities, Sellers’ premonition that he would “live until he was seventy-five” fell exactly twenty years short of this time when he died in 1980.

  Roger Moore, who was a friend of Sellers and took on the role of James Bond in 1973 in Live and Let Die after perfecting the role of the dashing and handsome leading man in a series of modest film and TV series, has also confessed to an enduring fascination with psychic phenomena. He had actually revealed this interest in the supernatural several years earlier while filming the aptly titled The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) at Elstree Studios.

  “I had a couple of visitations about ten years ago when I was staying in a hotel. One night I woke up sweating. It was about 2 a.m. I remember vividly what happened and the unearthly smell in the room. I saw a mist coming streaming through the window and across the bed and form up on the right side of me. I was absolutely petrified. Then something told me not to be silly. This was not of flesh, nothing psychical. I asked it, ‘What do you want?’ Then suddenly the mist was gone and I felt very calm and at peace and went off to sleep.”

  The following night the mist appeared and disappeared at precisely the same time. Moore was understandably full of apprehension when he went to bed on the third night.

  “On that third night I noticed that the Bible next to my bed had been opened at the twenty-third Psalm, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for Thou are with me.’ I hadn’t touched it since I’d booked in. However, that night the mist didn’t come. The next morning, the maid, who said she was a Jehovah’s Witness, asked me if I’d seen the mist. When I replied in amazement, ‘No!’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you would.’ She explained she had put the Bible beside the bed. But whether it had anything to do with keeping whatever it was away from me, I just don’t know.”

  Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who launched the legend that is now Jam
es Bond in 1962 with Dr No and – significantly from his point of view, You Only Live Twice (1973) – is one of a group of leading actors who believe they have had previous existences. Apparently, though, he needed some convincing about psychic regression before his first session with the American psychic, Kebrina Kinkade, in 1980. Connery learned he had had earlier lives in his native Scotland and another in Africa. He talked about the second session to Douglas Thompson of the News of the World:

  “I saw myself standing on a railway platform in Africa watching labourers work. I felt like I belonged with the kaffirs and black women in this community. I’ve gone native, sharing two separate women. They’ve both given birth to my sons. Then I saw myself lying on the floor of a hut. I think I have just died. I can feel the ground. I see one of my women by me. I think I died from drinking a lot of liquor. Then they burned me. I can see two men putting me on a pile and setting me on fire. People come by and have a look at me and wander off and . . . that’s that.”

  The veteran Italian-American actor Ernest Borgnine who made a career from playing “heavies” like the sadistic sergeant in From Here To Eternity (1953), yet was capable of winning an Oscar as the kind, lonely butcher in Marty (1955), believed avidly in reincarnation and claimed to have experienced several previous existences. Talking about this during the making of The Day The World Ended in 1979 he explained in a very matter-of-fact interview: