by Hans Holzer
While the house was being reconstructed, Mr. Walker was obliged to spend nights at a nearby inn, but would frequently take naps during the day on an army cot upstairs. On these occasions he received distinct impressions of “a Revolutionary soldier” being in the room.
Mr. Walker’s moving in, in the spring of 1942, touched off the usual country gossip, some of which later reached his ears. It seemed that the house was haunted. One woman who had lived in the place told of an “old man” who frightened the children, mysterious knocks at the front door, and other mysterious happenings. But none of these reports could be followed up. For all practical purposes, we may say that the phenomena started with the arrival of Mr. Walker.
Though Mr. Walker was acutely sensitive to the atmosphere of the place from the time he took over, it was not until 1944 that the manifestations resulted in both visible and audible phenomena. That year, during an afternoon when he was resting in the front room downstairs, he was roused by a violent summons to the front door, which has a heavy iron knocker. Irritated by the intrusion when no guest was expected, he called “Come in!,” then went to the front door and found no one there.
About this time, Mr. Walker’s butler, Johnny, remarked to his employer that the house was a nice place to stay in “if they would let you alone.” Questioning revealed that Johnny, spending the night in the house alone, had gone downstairs three times during the night to answer knocks at the front door. An Italian workman named Pietro, who did some repairs on the house, reported sounds of someone walking up the stairs in midafternoon “with heavy boots on,” at a time when there definitely was no one else in the place. Two occasional guests of the owner also were disturbed, while reading in the living room, by the sound of heavy footsteps overhead.
In 1950 Mr. Walker and his secretary were eating dinner in the kitchen, which is quite close to the front door. There was a sharp rap at the door. The secretary opened it and found nobody there. In the summer of 1952, when there were guests downstairs but no one upstairs, sounds of heavy thumping were heard from upstairs, as if someone had taken a bad fall.
Though Mr. Walker, his butler, and his guests never saw or fancied they saw any ghostly figures, the manifestations did not restrict themselves to audible phenomena. Unexplainable dents in pewter pieces occurred from time to time. A piece of glass in a door pane, the same front door of the house, was cracked but remained solidly in place for some years. One day it was missing and could not be located in the hall indoors, nor outside on the porch. A week later this four-by-four piece of glass was accidentally found resting on a plate rail eight feet above the kitchen floor. How it got there is as much of a mystery now as it was then.
On one occasion, when Johnny was cleaning the stairs to the bedroom, a picture that had hung at the top of the stairs for at least two years tumbled down, almost striking him. A woman guest who had spent the night on a daybed in the living room, while making up the bed next morning, was almost struck by a heavy pewter pitcher which fell (“almost as if thrown at her”) from a bookshelf hanging behind the bed. There were no unusual vibrations of the house to account for these things.
On the white kitchen wall there are heavy semicircular black marks where a pewter salt box, used for holding keys, had been violently swung back and forth. A large pewter pitcher, which came into the house in perfect condition, now bears five heavy imprints, four on one side, one on the other. A West Pointer with unusually large hands fitted his own four fingers and thumb into the dents!
Other phenomena included gripping chills felt from time to time by Mr. Walker and his more sensitive guests. These chills, not to be confused with drafts, were also felt in all parts of the house by Mr. Walker when alone. They took the form of a sudden paralyzing cold, as distinct as a cramp. Such a chill once seized him when he had been ill and gone to bed early. Exasperated by the phenomenon, he unthinkingly called out aloud, “Oh, for God’s sake, let me alone!” The chill abruptly stopped.
But perhaps the most astounding incident took place in November 1952, only a few days before the rescue circle met at the house.
Two of Mr. Walker’s friends, down-to-earth men with no belief in the so-called supernatural, were weekend guests. Though Walker suggested that they both spend the night in the commodious studio about three-hundred feet from the main house, one of them insisted on staying upstairs in the “haunted” room. Walker persuaded him to leave the lights on.
An hour later, the pajama-clad man came rushing down to the studio, demanding that Mr. Walker put an end “to his pranks.” The light beside his bed was blinking on and off. All other lights in the house were burning steadily!
Assured that this might be caused by erratic power supply and that no one was playing practical jokes, the guest returned to the main house. But an hour or so later, he came back to the studio and spent the rest of the night there. In the morning he somewhat sheepishly told that he had been awakened from a sound sleep by the sensation of someone slapping him violently in the face. Sitting bolt upright in bed, he noticed that the shirt he had hung on the back of a rocking chair was being agitated by the “breeze.” Though admitting that this much might have been pure imagination, he also seemed to notice the chair gently rocking. Since all upstairs windows were closed, there definitely was no “breeze.”
“The sensation described by my guest,” Mr. Walker remarked, “reminded me of a quotation from one of Edith Wharton’s ghost stories. Here is the exact quote:
“‘Medford sat up in bed with a jerk which resembles no other. Someone was in his room. The fact reached him not by sight or sound…but by a peculiar faint disturbance of the invisible currents that enclose us.’
“Many people in real life have experienced this sensation. I myself had not spent a night alone in the main house in four years. It got so that I just couldn’t take it. In fact, I built the studio specifically to get away from staying there. When people have kidded me about my ‘haunted house,’ my reply is, would I have spent so much time and money restoring the house, and then built another house to spend the night in, if there had not been some valid reason?”
On many previous occasions, Mr. Walker had remarked that he had a feeling that someone was trying “desperately” to get into the house, as if for refuge. The children of an earlier tenant had mentioned some agitation “by the lilac bush” at the corner of the house. The original crude walk from the road to the house, made of flat native stones, passed this lilac bush and went to the well, which, according to local legend, was used by soldiers in Revolutionary times.
“When I first took over the place,” Mr. Walker observed, “I used to look out of the kitchen window twenty times a day to see who was at the well. Since the old walk has been replaced by a stone walk and driveway, no one could now come into the place without being visible for at least sixty-five feet. Following the reconstruction, the stone wall blocking the road was torn down several times at the exact spot where the original walk reached the road.”
In all the disturbances which led to the efforts of the rescue circle, I detected one common denominator. Someone was attempting to get into the house, and to call attention to something. Playing pranks, puzzling people, or even frightening them, were not part of the ghost’s purpose; they were merely his desperate devices for getting attention, attention for something he very much wanted to say.
On a bleak and foreboding day in November 1952, the little group comprising the rescue circle drove out into the country for the sitting. They were accompanied by Dr. L., a prominent Park Avenue psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and of course by Mr. Walker, the owner of the property.
The investigation was sponsored by Parapsychology Foundation, Inc., of New York City. Participants included Mrs. Eileen J. Garrett; Dr. L., whose work in psychiatry and analysis is well known; Miss Lenore Davidson, assistant to Mrs. Garrett, who was responsible for most of the notes taken; Dr. Michael Pobers, then Secretary General of the Parapsychology Foundation; and myself.
The trip t
o the Rockland County home of Mr. Walker took a little over an hour. The house stands atop a wide hill, not within easy earshot of the next inhabited house, but not too far from his own “cabin” and two other small houses belonging to Mr. Walker’s estate. The main house, small and compact, represents a perfect restoration of colonial American architecture.
A plaque in the ground at the entrance gate calls attention to the historical fact that General Wayne’s headquarters at the time of the Battle of Stony Point, 1779, occupied the very same site. Mr. Walker’s house was possibly part of the fortification system protecting the hill, and no doubt served as a stronghold in the war of 1779 and in earlier wars and campaigns fought around this part of the country. One feels the history of many generations clinging to the place.
We took our places in the upstairs bedroom, grouping ourselves so as to form an imperfect circle around Mrs. Garrett, who sat in a heavy, solid wooden chair with her back to the wall and her face toward us.
The time was 2:45 P.M. and the room was fully lit by ample daylight coming in through the windows.
After a moment, Mrs. Garrett placed herself in full trance by means of autohypnosis. Quite suddenly her own personality vanished, and the medium sank back into her chair completely lifeless, very much like an unused garment discarded for the time being by its owner. But not for long. A few seconds later, another personality “got into” the medium’s body, precisely the way one dons a shirt or coat. It was Uvani, one of Mrs. Garrett’s two spirit guides who act as her control personalities in all of her experiments. Uvani, in his own lifetime, was an East Indian of considerable knowledge and dignity, and as such he now appeared before us.
As “he” sat up—I shall refer to the distinct personalities now using the “instrument” (the medium’s body) as “he” or “him”—it was obvious that we had before us a gentleman from India. Facial expression, eyes, color of skin, movements, the folded arms, and the finger movements that accompanied many of his words were all those of a native of India. As Uvani addressed us, he spoke in perfect English, except for a faltering word now and then or an occasional failure of idiom, but his accent was typical.
At this point, the tape recorder faithfully took down every word spoken. The transcript given here is believed to be complete, and is certainly so where we deal with Uvani, who spoke clearly and slowly. In the case of the ghost, much of the speech was garbled because of the ghost’s unfortunate condition; some of the phrases were repeated several times, and a few words were so badly uttered that they could not be made out by any of us. In order to present only verifiable evidence, I have eliminated all such words and report here nothing which was not completely understandable and clear. But at least 70% of the words uttered by the ghost, and of course all of the words of Uvani, are on record. The tape recording is supplemented by Miss Davidson’s exacting transcript, and in the final moments her notes replace it entirely.
Uvani: It is I, Uvani. I give you greeting, friends. Peace be with you, and in your lives, and in this house!
Dr. L.: And our greetings to you, Uvani. We welcome you.
Uvani: I am very happy to speak with you, my good friend. (Bows to Dr. L.) You are out of your native element.
Dr. L.: Very much so. We have not spoken in this environment at all before….
Uvani: What is it what you would have of me today, please?
Dr. L.: We are met here as friends of Mr. Walker, whose house this is, to investigate strange occurrences which have taken place in this house from time to time, which lead us to feel that they partake of the nature of this field of interest of ours. We would be guided by you, Uvani, as to the method of approach which we should use this afternoon. Our good friend and instrument (Mrs. Garrett) has the feeling that there was a personality connected with this house whose influence is still to be felt here.
Uvani: Yes, I would think so. I am confronted myself with a rather restless personality. In fact, a very strange personality, and one that might appear to be in his own life perhaps not quite of the right mind—I think you would call it.
I have a great sense of agitation. I would like to tell you about this personality, and at the same time draw your attention to the remarkable—what you might call—atmospherics that he is able to bring into our environment. You, who are my friend and have worked with me very much, know that when I am in control, we are very calm—yes? Yet it is as much as I can do to maintain the control, as you see—for such is the atmosphere produced by this personality, that you will note my own difficulty to retain and constrain the instrument. (The medium’s hand shakes in rapid palsy. Uvani’s voice tremble.) This one, in spite of me, by virtue of his being with us brings into the process of our field of work a classical palsy. Do you see this?
Dr. L.: I do.
Uvani: This was his condition, and that is why it may be for me perhaps necessary (terrific shaking of medium at this point) to ask you to—deal—with this—personality yourself—while I withdraw—to create a little more quietude around the instrument. Our atmosphere, as you notice, is charged…. You will not be worried by anything that may happen, please. You will speak, if you can, with this one—and you will eventually return the instrument to my control.
Dr. L.: I will.
Uvani: Will you please to remember that you are dealing with a personality very young, tired, who has been very much hurt in life, and who was, for many years prior to his passing, unable—how you say—to think for himself. Now will you please take charge, so that I permit the complete control to take place….
Uvani left the body of the medium at this point. For a moment, all life seemed gone from it as it lay still in the chair. Then, suddenly, another personality seemed to possess it. Slowly, the new personality sat up, hands violently vibrating in palsy, face distorted in extreme pain, eyes blinking, staring, unable to see anything at first, looking straight through us all without any sign of recognition. All this was accompanied by increasing inarticulate outcries, leading later into halting, deeply emotional weeping.
For about ten seconds, the new personality maintained its position in the chair, but as the movements of the hands accelerated, it suddenly leaned over and crashed to the floor, narrowly missing a wooden chest nearby. Stretched out on the floor before us, “he” kept uttering inarticulate sounds for perhaps one or two minutes, while vainly trying to raise himself from the floor.
One of Dr. L.’s crutches, which he uses when walking about, was on the floor next to his chair. The entity seized the crutch and tried to raise himself with its help, but without success. Throughout the next seconds, he tried again to use the crutch, only to fall back onto the floor. One of his legs, the left one, continued to execute rapid convulsive movements typical of palsy. It was quite visible that the leg had been badly damaged. Now and again he threw his left hand to his head, touching it as if to indicate that his head hurt also.
Dr. L.: We are friends, and you may speak with us. Let us help you in any way we can. We are friends.
Entity: Mhh—mhh—mhh—(inarticulate sounds of sobbing and pain).
Dr. L.: Speak with us. Speak with us. Can we help you? (More crying from the entity) You will be able to speak with us. Now you are quieter. You will be able to talk to us. (The entity crawls along the floor to Mr. Walker, seems to have eyes only for him, and remains at Walker’s knee throughout the interrogation. The crying becomes softer.) Do you understand English?
Entity: Friend…friend. Mercy…mercy…mercy…. (The English has a marked Polish accent, the voice is rough, uncouth, bragging, emotional.) I know…I know…I know…. (pointing at Mr. Walker)
Dr. L.: When did you know him before?
Entity: Stones…stones…. Don’t let them take me!
Dr. L.: No, we won’t let them take you.
Entity: (More crying) Talk….
Mr. Walker: You want to talk to me? Yes, I’ll talk to you.
Entity: Can’t talk….
Mr. Walker: Can’t talk? It is hard for you to talk?
Entity: (Nods) Yes.
Dr. L.: You want water? Food? Water?
Entity: (Shakes head) Talk! Talk! (To Mr. Walker) Friend? You?
Mr. Walker: Yes, friend. We’re all friends.
Entity: (Points to his head, then to his tongue.) Stones…no?
Dr. L.: No stones. You will not be stoned.
Entity: No beatin’?
Dr. L.: No, you won’t be stoned, you won’t be beaten.
Entity: Don’t go!
Mr. Walker: No, we are staying right here.
Entity: Can’t talk….
Mr. Walker: You can talk. We are all friends.
Dr. L.: It is difficult with this illness that you have, but you can talk. Your friend there is Mr. Walker. And what is your name?
Entity: He calls me. I have to get out. I cannot go any further. In God’s name I cannot go any further. (Touches Mr. Walker)
Mr. Walker: I will protect you. (At the word “protect” the entity sits up, profoundly struck by it.) What do you fear?
Entity: Stones….
Mr. Walker: Stones thrown at you?
Dr. L.: That will not happen again.
Entity: Friends! Wild men…you know….
Mr. Walker: Indians?
Entity: No.
Dr. L.: White man?
Entity: Mh…teeth gone—(shows graphically how his teeth were kicked in)
Mr. Walker: Teeth gone.
Dr. L.: They knocked your teeth out?
Entity: See? I can’t…. Protect me!
Mr. Walker: Yes, yes. We will protect you. No more beatings, no more stones.
