Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  “The most troubled spirit of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is Abraham Lincoln, who during his own lifetime claimed to receive regular visits from his two dead sons, Pat and Willie.” After reporting the well-known premonitory dream in which Lincoln saw himself dead in a casket in the East Room, Miss Lawrence goes on to report that Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s servant, Mary Evan, had reported seeing Lincoln on the bed in the northwest bedroom, pulling on his boots. “Other servants said they had seen him lying quietly in his bed, and still others vowed that he periodically stood at the oval window over the main entrance of the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt herself never saw Lincoln, but she did admit that when working late she frequently felt a ghostly sort of presence.”

  Amongst the visitors to the White House who had experienced psychic occurrences was the late Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Asleep in the Queen’s Bedroom, she heard someone knock at her door, got up, opened it, and saw the ghost of President Lincoln standing there looking at her. She fainted, and by the time she had come to he was gone.

  “According to the legend, the spirit of Lincoln is especially troubled and restless on the eve of national calamities such as war.” Under the circumstances, one should expect the shade of President Lincoln to be in around-the-clock attendance these days and nights.

  * * *

  But Lincoln is not the only ghost at the White House. Household members of President Taft have observed the ghost of Abigail Adams walking right through the closed doors of the East Room with her arms outstretched. And who knows what other specters reside in these ancient and troubled walls?

  That all is not known about the White House may be seen from a dispatch of the New York Daily News dated November 25, 1969, concerning two new rooms unearthed at the White House. “Two hitherto unknown rooms, believed to date back to the time of Thomas Jefferson, have been unearthed in the White House a few yards away from the presidential swimming pool. The discovery was made as excavation continued on the larger work area for the White House press corps. The subterranean rooms, which White House curator James Ketchum described as storage or coal bins, were believed among the earliest built at the White House. Filled with dirt, they contained broken artifacts believed to date back to President Lincoln’s administration.”

  When I discussed my difficulties in receiving permission for a White House investigation with prominent people in Washington, it was suggested to me that I turn my attention to Ford’s Theatre, or the Parker House—both places associated with the death of President Lincoln. I have not done so, for the simple reason that in my estimation the ghost of Lincoln is nowhere else to be found but where it mattered to him: in the White House. If there is a transitory impression left behind at Ford’s Theatre, where he was shot, or the Parker House, where he eventually died some hours later, it would only be an imprint from the past. I am sure that the surviving personality of President Lincoln is to a degree attached to the White House because of unfinished business. I do not think that this is unfinished only of his own time. So much of it has never been finished to this very day, nor is the present administration in any way finishing it. To the contrary. If there ever was any reason for Lincoln to be disturbed, it is now. The Emancipation Proclamation, for which he stood and which was in a way the rebirth of our country, is still only in part reality. Lincoln’s desire for peace is hardly met in these troubled times. I am sure that the disturbances at the White House have never ceased. Only a couple of years ago, Lynda, one of the Johnson daughters, heard someone knock at her door, opened it, and found no one outside. Telephone calls have been put through to members of the presidential family, and there has been no one on the other end of the line. Moreover, on investigating, it was found that the White House operators had not rung the particular extension telephones.

  It is very difficult to dismiss such occurrences as products of imagination, coincidence, or “settling of an old house.” Everyone except a moron knows the difference between human footsteps caused by feet encased with boots or shoes, and the normal noises of an old house settling slowly and a little at a time on its foundation.

  * 12

  The Ill-fated Kennedys: From Visions to Ghosts

  “When are you going to go down to Dallas and find out about President Kennedy?” the pleasant visitor inquired. He was a schoolteacher who had come to me to seek advice on how to start a course in parapsychology in his part of the country.

  The question about President Kennedy was hardly new. I had been asked the same question in various forms ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as if I and my psychic helpers had the duty to use our combined talents to find out what really happened at the School Book Depository in Dallas. I suppose similar conditions prevailed after the death of Abraham Lincoln. People’s curiosity had been aroused, and with so many unconfirmed rumors making the rounds the matter of a President’s sudden death does become a major topic of conversation and inquiry.

  I wasn’t there when Lincoln was shot; I was around when President Kennedy was murdered. Thus I am in a fairly good position to trace the public interest with the assassination from the very start.

  I assured my visitor that so far I had no plans to go down to Dallas with a medium and find out what “really” happened. I have said so on television many times. When I was reminded that the Abraham Lincoln murder also left some unanswered questions and that I had indeed investigated it and come up with startlingly new results in my book Window to the Past, I rejoined that there was one basic difference between the Kennedy death and the assassination of President Lincoln: Lincoln’s ghost has been seen repeatedly by reliable witnesses in the White House; so far I have not received any reliable reports of ghostly sightings concerning the late President Kennedy. In my opinion, this meant that the restlessness that caused Lincoln to remain in what used to be his working world has not caused John F. Kennedy to do likewise.

  But I am not a hundred per cent sure any longer. Having learned how difficult it is to get information about such matters in Washington, or to gain admission to the White House as anything but a casual tourist—or, of course, on official business—I am also convinced that much may be suppressed or simply disregarded by those to whom experiences have happened simply because we live in a time when psychic phenomena can still embarrass those to whom they occur, especially if they have a position of importance.

  But even if John Fitzgerald Kennedy is not walking the corridors of the White House at night, bemoaning his untimely demise or trying to right the many wrongs that have happened in this country since he left us, he is apparently doing something far better. He communicates, under special conditions and with special people. He is far from “dead and gone,” if I am to believe those to whom these experiences have come. Naturally, one must sift the fantasy from the real thing—even more so when we are dealing with a famous person. I have done so, and I have looked very closely at the record of people who have reported to me psychic experiences dealing with the Kennedy family. I have eliminated a number of such reports simply because I could not find myself wholly convinced that the one who reported it was entirely balanced. I have also eliminated many other reports, not because I had doubts about the emotional stability of those who had made the reports, but because the reports were far too general and vague to be evidential even in the broadest sense. Material that was unsupported by witnesses, or material that was presented after the fact, was of course disregarded.

  With all that in mind, I have come to the conclusion that the Kennedy destiny was something that could not have been avoided whether or not one accepts the old Irish Kennedy curse as factual.

  Even the ghostly Kennedys are part and parcel of American life at the present. Why they must pay so high a price in suffering, I cannot guess. But it is true that the Irish forebears of the American Kennedys have also suffered an unusually high percentage of violent deaths over the years, mainly on the male side of the family. There is, of course, the tradition that way back in the Middle Ages a Kenn
edy was cursed for having incurred the wrath of some private local enemy. As a result of the curse, he and all his male descendants were to die violently one by one. To dismiss curses as fantasies, or at the very best workable only because of fear symptoms, would not be accurate. I had great doubts the effectiveness of curses until I came across several cases that allowed of no other explanation. In particular, I refer back to the case of the Wurmbrand curse reported by me in Ghosts of the Golden West. In that case the last male descendant of an illustrious family died under mysterious circumstances quite unexpectedly even while under the care of doctors in a hospital. Thus, if the Kennedy curse is operative, nothing much can be done about it.

  Perhaps I should briefly explain the distinction between ghosts and spirits here, since so much of the Kennedy material is of the latter kind rather than the former. Ghosts are generally tied to houses or definite places where their physical bodies died tragically, or at least in a state of unhappiness. They are unable to leave the premises, so to speak, and can only repeat the pattern of their final moments, and are for all practical purposes not fully cognizant of their true state. They can be compared with psychotics in the physical state, and must first be freed from their own self-imposed delusions to be able to answer, if possible through a trance medium, or to leave and become free spirits out in what Dr. Joseph Rhine of Duke University has called “the world of the mind,” and which I generally refer to as the non-physical world.

  Spirits, on the other hand, are really people, like you and me, who have left the physical body but are very much alive in a thinner, etheric body, with which they are able to function pretty much the same as they did in the physical body, except that they are now no longer weighed down by physical objects, distances, time, and space. The majority of those who die become free spirits, and only a tiny fraction are unable to proceed to the next stage but must remain behind because of emotional difficulties. Those who have gone on are not necessarily gone forever, but to the contrary they are able and frequently anxious to keep a hand in situations they have left unfinished on the earth plane. Death by violence or under tragic conditions does not necessarily create a ghost. Some such conditions may indeed create the ghost syndrome, but many others do not. I should think that President Kennedy is in the latter group—that is to say, a free spirit capable of continuing an interest in the world he left behind. Why this is so, I will show in the next pages.

  * * *

  The R. Lumber Company is a prosperous firm specializing in the manufacture and wholesale of lumber. It is located in Georgia and the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard R., are respected citizens in their community. It was in April of 1970 that Mrs. R. contacted me. “I have just finished reading your book, Life After Death, and could not resist your invitation to share a strange experience with you,” she explained, “hoping that you can give me some opinion regarding its authenticity.

  “I have not had an opportunity to discuss what happened with anyone who is in any way psychic or clairvoyant. I have never tried to contact anyone close to the Kennedys about this, as of course I know they must have received thousands of letters. Many times I feel a little guilty about not even trying to contact Mrs. Kennedy and the children, if indeed it could have been a genuine last message from the President. It strikes me as odd that we might have received it or imagined we received it. We were never fans of the Kennedys, and although we were certainly sympathetic to the loss of our President, we were not as emotionally upset as many of our friends were who were ardent admirers.

  “I am in no way psychic, nor have I ever had any supernatural experience before. I am a young homemaker and businesswoman, and cannot offer any possible explanation for what happened.

  “On Sunday night, November 24, 1963, following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, my family and I were at home watching on television the procession going through the Capitol paying their last respects. I was feeling very depressed, especially since that afternoon Lee Oswald had also been killed and I felt we would never know the full story of the assassination. For some strange reason, I suddenly thought of the Ouija board, although I have never taken the answers seriously and certainly have never before consulted it about anything of importance. I asked my teenage daughter to work the board with me, and we went into another room. I had never tried to ‘communicate with the dead.’ I don’t know why I had the courage to ask the questions I did on that night, but somehow, I felt compelled to go on:

  Question: Will our country be in danger without Kennedy?

  Answer: Strong with, weak without Kennedy, plot—stop.

  Question: Will Ruby tell why President was killed?

  Answer: Ruby does not know, only Oswald and I know. Sorry.

  Question: Will we ever know why Kennedy was killed?

  Answer: Underground and Oswald know, Ruby does not know, gangland leader caught in plot.

  Question: Who is gangland leader?

  Answer: Can’t tell now.

  Question: Why did Oswald hate President?

  Answer: Negroes, civil rights bill.

  Question: Have Oswald’s and Kennedy’s spirits met?

  Answer: Yes. No hard feelings in Heaven.

  Question: Are you in contact with Kennedy?

  Answer: Yes.

  Question: Does Kennedy have a message he would send through us?

  Answer: Yes, yes, yes, tell J., C., and J.J. about this. Thanks, JFK.

  Question: Can Kennedy give us some nickname to authenticate this?

  Answer: Only nickname ‘John John.’

  Question: Do you really want us to contact someone?

  Answer: Yes, but wait ‘til after my funeral.

  Question: How can we be sure Jackie will see our letter?

  Answer: Write personal, not sympathy business.

  Question: Is there something personal you could tell us to confirm this message?

  Answer: Prying public knows all.

  Question: Just one nickname you could give us?

  Answer: J.J. (John John) likes to swim lots, called ‘Daddy’s little swimmer boy.’ Does that help? JFK.

  Question: Anything else?

  Answer: J.J. likes to play secret game and bunny.

  Question: What was your Navy Serial number?

  Answer: 109 P.T. (jg) Skipper—5905. [seemed confused]

  Question: Can we contact you again?

  Answer: You, JFK, not JFK you.

  Question: Give us address of your new home.

  Answer: Snake Mountain Road.

  Question: Will Mrs. Kennedy believe this, does she believe in the supernatural?

  Answer: Some—tired—that’s all tonight.

  “At this point the planchette slid off the bottom of the board marked ‘Good-by’ and we attempted no further questions that night.

  “The board at all times answered our questions swiftly and deliberately, without hesitation. It moved so rapidly, in fact, that my daughter and I could not keep up with the message as it came. We called out the letters to my eleven-year-old daughter who wrote them down, and we had to unscramble the words after we had received the entire message. We had no intention of trying to communicate directly with President Kennedy. I cannot tell you how frightened I was when I asked if there was a message he would send and the message came signed ‘JFK.’

  “For several days after, I could not believe the message was genuine. I have written Mrs. Kennedy several letters trying to explain what happened, but have never had the courage to mail them.

  “None of the answers obtained are sensational, most are things we could have known or guessed. The answers given about ‘John John’ and ‘secret game’ and ‘bunny’ were in a magazine which my children had read and I had not. However, the answer about John John being called ‘Daddy’s little swimmer boy’ is something none of us have ever heard or read. I have researched numerous articles written about the Kennedys during the last two years and have not found any reference to this. I could not persuade my daughter to touch the board
again for days. We tried several times in December 1963, but were unsuccessful. One night, just before Christmas, a friend of mine persuaded my daughter to work the board with her. Perhaps the most surprising message came at this time, and it was also the last one we ever received. We are all Protestant and the message was inconsistent with our religious beliefs. When they asked if there was a message from President Kennedy, the planchette spelled out immediately “Thanks for your prayers while I was in Purgatory, JFK.”‘

  * * *

  I have said many times in print and on television that I take a dim view of Ouija boards in general. Most of the material obtained from the use of this instrument merely reflects the unconscious of one or both sitters. Occasionally, however, Ouija boards have been able to tap the psychic levels of a person and come up with the same kind of veridical material a clairvoyant person might come up with. Thus, to dismiss the experiences of Mrs. R. merely because the material was obtained through a Ouija board would not be fair. Taking into account the circumstances, the background of the operators, and their seeming reluctance to seek out such channels of communication, I must dismiss ulterior motives such as publicity-seeking reasons or idle curiosity as being the causative factor in the event. On the other hand, having just watched a television program dealing with the demise of President Kennedy, the power of suggestion might have come into play. Had the material obtained through the Ouija board been more specific to a greater extent, perhaps I would not have to hesitate to label this a genuine experience. While there is nothing in the report that indicates fraud—either conscious or unconscious—there is nothing startling in the information given. Surely, if the message had come from Kennedy, or if Kennedy himself had been on the other end of the psychic line, there would have been certain pieces of information that would have been known only to him and that could yet be checked out in a way that was accessible. Surely, Kennedy would have realized how difficult it might have been for an ordinary homemaker to contact his wife. Thus, it seems to me that some other form of proof of identity would have been furnished. This, however, is really only speculation. Despite the sincerity of those reporting the incident, I feel that there is reasonable doubt as to the genuineness of the communication.