Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

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  By far the majority of communications regarding President Kennedy relate to his death and are in the nature of premonitions, dreams, visions, and other warnings prior to or simultaneous with the event itself. The number of such experiences indicates that the event itself must have been felt ahead of its realization, indicating that some sort of law was in operation that could not be altered, even if President Kennedy could have been warned. As a matter of fact, I am sure that he was given a number of warnings, and that he chose to disregard them. I don’t see how he could have done otherwise—both because he was the President and out of a fine sense of destiny that is part and parcel of the Kennedy make-up. Certainly Jeane Dixon was in a position to warn the President several times prior to the assassination. Others, less well connected in Washington, might have written letters that never got through to the President. Certainly one cannot explain these things away merely by saying that a public figure is always in danger of assassination, or that Kennedy had incurred the wrath of many people in this country and abroad. This simply doesn’t conform to the facts. Premonitions have frequently been very precise, indicating in great detail the manner, time, and nature of the assassination. If it were merely a matter of vaguely foretelling the sudden death of the President, then of course one could say that this comes from a study of the situation or from a general feeling about the times in which we live. But this is not so. Many of the startling predictions couldn’t have been made by anyone, unless they themselves were in on the planning of the assassination.

  Mrs. Rose LaPorta lives in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Over the years she has developed her ESP faculties—partially in the dream state and partially while awake. Some of her premonitory experiences are so detailed that they cannot be explained on the basis of coincidence, if there is such a thing, or in any other rational terms. For instance, on May 10, 1963, she dreamed she had eaten something with glass in it. She could even feel it in her mouth, so vividly that she began to spit it out and woke up. On October 4 of the same year, after she had forgotten the peculiar dream, she happened to be eating a cookie. There was some glass in it, and her dream became reality in every detail. Fortunately, she had told several witnesses of her original dream, so she was able to prove this to herself on the record.

  At her place of work there is a superintendent named Smith, who has offices in another city. There never was any close contact with that man, so it was rather startling to Mrs. LaPorta to hear a voice in her sleep telling her, “Mr. Smith died at home on Monday.” Shocked by this message, she discussed it with her coworkers. That was on May 18, 1968. On October 8 of the same year, an announcement was made at the company to the effect that “Mr. Smith died at home on Monday, October 7.”

  Mrs. LaPorta’s ability to tune in on future events reached a national subject on November 17, 1963. She dreamed she was at the White House in Washington on a dark, rainy day. There were beds set up in each of the porticoes. She found herself, in the dream, moving from one bed to another, because she wanted to shelter herself from the rain. There was much confusion going on and many men were running around in all directions. They seemed to have guns in their hands and pockets. Finally, Mrs. LaPorta, in the dream, asked someone what was happening, and they told her they were Secret Service men. She was impressed with the terrible confusion and atmosphere of tragedy when she awoke from her dream. That was five days before the assassination happened on November 22, 1963. The dream is somewhat reminiscent of the famed Abraham Lincoln dream, in which he himself saw his own body on the catafalque in the East Room, and asked who was dead in the White House. I reported on that dream in Window to the Past.

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  Marie Howe is a Maryland housewife, fifty-two years old, and only slightly psychic. The night before the assassination she had a dream in which she saw two brides with the features of men. Upon awakening she spoke of her dream to her husband and children, and interpreted it that someone was going to die very soon. She thought that two persons would die close together. The next day, Kennedy and Oswald turned into the “brides of death” she had seen in her dream.

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  Bertha Zelkin lives in Los Angeles. The morning of the assassination she suddenly found herself saying, “What would we do if President Kennedy were to die?” That afternoon the event took place.

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  Marion Confalonieri, a forty-one-year-old housewife and a native of Chicago, has worked as a secretary, and lives with her husband, a draftsman, and two daughters in a comfortable home in California. Over the years she has had many psychic experiences, ranging from déjà vu feelings to psychic dreams. On Friday, November 22, the assassination took place and Oswald was captured the same day. The following night, Saturday, November 23, Mrs. Confalonieri went to bed exhausted and in tears from all the commotion. Some time during the night she dreamed that she saw a group of men, perhaps a dozen, dressed in suits and some with hats. She seemed to be floating a little above them, looking down on the scene, and she noticed that they were standing very close in a group. Then she heard a voice say, “Ruby did it.” The next morning she gave the dream no particular thought. The name Ruby meant absolutely nothing to her nor, for that matter, to anyone else in the country at that point. It wasn’t until she turned her radio on and heard the announcement that Oswald had been shot by a man named Ruby that she realized she had had a preview of things to come several hours before the event itself had taken place.

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  Another one who tuned in on the future a little ahead of reality was the famed British author, Pendragon, whose real name was L. T. Ackerman. In October 1963, he wrote, “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of attempted assassination or worse if caught off guard.” He wrote to President Kennedy urging him that his guard be strengthened, especially when appearing in public.

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  Dr. Robert G. is a dentist who makes his home in Rhode Island. He has had psychic experiences all his life, some of which I have described elsewhere. At the time when Oswald was caught by the authorities, the doctor’s wife wondered out loud what would happen to the man. Without thinking what he was saying, Dr. G. replied, “He will be shot in the police station.” The words just popped out of his mouth. There was nothing to indicate even a remote possibility of such a course of action.

  He also had a premonition that Robert Kennedy would be shot, but he thought that the Senator would live on with impaired faculties. We know, of course, that Senator Kennedy died. Nevertheless, as most of us will remember, for a time after the announcement of the shooting there was hope that the Senator would indeed continue to live, although with impaired faculties. Not only did the doctors think that might be possible, but announcements were made to that effect. Thus, it is entirely feasible that Dr. G. tuned in not only on the event itself but also on the thoughts and developments that were part of the event.

  As yet we know very little about the mechanics of premonitions, and it is entirely possible that some psychics cannot fine-tune their inner instruments beyond a general pickup of future material. This seems to relate to the inability of most mediums to pinpoint exact time in their predictions.

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  Cecilia Fawn Nichols is a writer who lives in Twenty-nine Palms, California. All her life she has had premonitions that have come true and has accepted the psychic in her life as a perfectly natural element. She had been rooting for John F. Kennedy to be elected President because she felt that his Catholic religion had made him a kind of underdog. When he finally did get the nod, Miss Nichols found herself far from jubilant. As if something foreboding were preying heavily on her mind, she received the news of his election glumly and with a feeling of disaster. At the time she could not explain to herself why, but the thought that the young man who had just been elected was condemned to death entered her mind. “When the unexpected passes through my mind, I know I can expect it,” she explained. “I generally do not know just how or when or what. In this case I felt some idiot was going to
kill him because of his religion. I expected the assassination much sooner. Possibly because of domestic problems, I wasn’t expecting it when it did happen.”

  On Sunday morning, November 24, she was starting breakfast. Her television set was tuned to Channel 2, and she decided to switch to Channel 7 because that station had been broadcasting the scene directly from Dallas. The announcer was saying that any moment now Oswald would be brought out of jail to be taken away from Dallas. The camera showed the grim faces of the crowd. Miss Nichols took one look at the scene and turned to her mother. “Mama, come in the living room. Oswald is going to be killed in a few minutes, and I don’t want to miss seeing it.”

  There was nothing to indicate such a course of action, of course, but the words just came out of her mouth as if motivated by some outside force. A moment later, the feared event materialized. Along with the gunshot, however, she distinctly heard words said that she was never again to hear on any rerun of the televised action. The words were spoken just as Ruby lifted his arm to shoot. As he began pressing the trigger, the words and the gunshot came close together. Afterwards Miss Nichols listened carefully to many of the reruns but never managed to hear the words again. None of the commentators mentioned them. No account of the killing mentions them. And yet Miss Nichols clearly heard Ruby make a statement even as he was shooting Oswald down.

  The fact that she alone heard the words spoken by Ruby bothered Miss Nichols. In 1968 she was with a group of friends discussing the Oswald killing, and again she reported what she had heard that time on television. There was a woman in that group who nodded her head. She too had heard the same words. It came as a great relief to Miss Nichols to know that she was not alone in her perception. The words Ruby spoke as he was shooting Oswald were words of anger: “Take this, you son of a bitch!”

  This kind of psychic experience is far closer to truthful tuning in on events as they transpire, or just as they are formulating themselves, than some of the more complicated interpretations of events after they have happened.

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  Two Cincinnati amateur mediums by the names of Dorothy Barrett and Virginia Hill, who have given out predictions of things to come to the newspapers from time to time, also made some announcements concerning the Kennedy assassination. I have met the two ladies at the home of the John Straders in Cincinnati, at which time they seemed to be imitating the Edgar Cayce readings in that they pinpointed certain areas of the body subject to illness. Again, I met Virginia Hill recently and was confronted with what she believes is the personality of Edgar Cayce, the famous seer of Virginia Beach. Speaking through her, I questioned the alleged Edgar Cayce entity and took notes, which I then asked Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, to examine for validity. Regrettably, most of the answers proved to be incorrect, thus making the identity of Edgar Cayce highly improbable. Nevertheless, Virginia Hill is psychic and some of her predictions have come true.

  On December 4, 1967, the Cincinnati Inquirer published many of her predictions for the following year. One of the more startling statements is that there were sixteen people involved in the Kennedy assassination, according to Virginia’s spirit guide, and that the leader was a woman. Oswald, it is claimed, did not kill the President, but a policeman (now dead) did.

  In this connection it is interesting to note that Sherman Skolnick, a researcher, filed suit in April of 1970 against the National Archives and Records Services to release certain documents concerning the Kennedy assassination—in particular, Skolnick claimed that there had been a prior Chicago assassination plot in which Oswald and an accomplice by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee and three or four other men had been involved. Their plan to kill the President at a ball game had to be abandoned when Vallee was picked up on a minor traffic violation the day before the game. Skolnick, according to Time magazine’s article, April 20, 1970, firmly believes that Oswald and Vallee and several others were linked together in the assassination plot.

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  When it comes to the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, the picture is somewhat different. To begin with, very few people thought that Robert Kennedy was in mortal danger, while John F. Kennedy, as President, was always exposed to political anger—as are all Presidents. The Senator did not seem to be in quite so powerful a position. True, he had his enemies, as have all politicians. But the murder by Sirhan Sirhan came as much more of a surprise than the assassination of his brother. It is thus surprising that so much premonitory material exists concerning Robert Kennedy as well. In a way, of course, this material is even more evidential because of the lesser likelihood of such an event transpiring.

  Mrs. Elaine Jones lives in San Francisco. Her husband is a retired businessman; her brother-in-law headed the publishing firm of Harper & Row; she is not given to hallucinations. I have reported some of her psychic experiences elsewhere. Shortly before the assassination of Robert Kennedy she had a vision of the White House front. At first she saw it as it was and is, and then suddenly the entire front seemed to crumble before her eyes. To her this meant death of someone connected with the White House. A short time later, the assassination of the Senator took place.

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  Months before the event, famed Washington seer Jeane Dixon was speaking at the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles. She said that Robert Kennedy would be the victim of a “tragedy right here in this hotel.” The Senator was assassinated there eight months later.

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  A young Californian by the name of Lorraine Caswell had a dream the night before the assassination of Senator Kennedy. In her dream she saw the actual assassination as it later happened. The next morning, she reported her nightmare to her roommate, who had served as witness on previous occasions of psychic premonition.

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  Ellen Roberts works as a secretary and part-time volunteer for political causes she supports. During the campaign of Senator Robert Kennedy she spent some time at headquarters volunteering her services. Miss Roberts is a member of the Reverend Zenor’s Hollywood Spiritualist Temple. Reverend Zenor, while in trance, speaks with the voice of Agasha, a higher teacher, who is also able to foretell events in the future. On one such occasion, long before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Agasha—through Reverend Zenor—had said, “There will be not one assassination, but two. He will also be quite young. Victory will be almost within his grasp, but he will die just before he assumes the office, if it cannot be prevented.”

  The night of the murder, Ellen Roberts fell asleep early. She awakened with a scene of Robert Kennedy and President Kennedy talking. John F. Kennedy was putting his arm around his brother’s shoulders and she heard him say, “Well, Bobby, you made it—the hard way.” With a rueful smile they walked away. Miss Roberts took this to mean the discomfort that candidate Robert Kennedy had endured during the campaign—the rock-throwing, the insults, name-callings, and his hands had actually become swollen as he was being pulled. Never once did she accept it as anything more sinister. The following day she realized what her vision had meant.

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  A curious thing happened to Mrs. Lewis H. MacKibbel. She and her ten-year-old granddaughter were watching television the evening of June 4, 1968. Suddenly the little girl jumped up, clasped her hands to her chest, and in a shocked state announced, “Robert Kennedy has been shot. Shot down, Mama.” Her sisters and mother teased her about it, saying that such an event would have been mentioned on the news if it were true. After a while the subject was dropped. The following morning, June 5, when the family radio was turned on, word of the shooting came. Startled, the family turned to the little girl, who could only nod and say, “Yes I know. I knew it last night.”

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  Mrs. Dawn Chorley lives in central Ohio. A native of England, she spent many years with her husband in South Africa, and has had psychic experiences at various times in her life. During the 1968 election campaign she and her husband, Colin Chorley, had been working for Eugene McCarthy, but when Robert Kennedy won the primary in N
ew Hampshire she was very pleased with that too. The night of the election, she stayed up late. She was very keyed up and thought she would not be able to sleep because of the excitement, but contrary to her expectations she fell immediately into a very deep sleep around midnight. That night she had a curious dream.

  “I was standing in the central downstairs’ room of my house. I was aware of a strange atmosphere around me and felt very lonely. Suddenly I felt a pain in the left side of my head, toward the back. The inside of my mouth started to crumble and blood started gushing out of my mouth. I tried to get to the telephone, but my arms and legs would not respond to my will; everything was disoriented. Somehow I managed to get to the telephone and pick up the receiver. With tremendous difficulty I dialed for the operator, and I could hear a voice asking whether I needed help. I tried to say, ‘Get a doctor,’ but the words came out horribly slurred. Then came the realization I was dying and I said, ‘Oh my God, I am dying,’ and sank into oblivion. I was shouting so loud I awoke my husband, who is a heavy sleeper. Shaking off the dream, I still felt terribly depressed. My husband, Colin, noticed the time. Allowing for time changes, it was the exact minute Robert Kennedy was shot.”

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  Jill Taggart of North Hollywood, California, has been working with me as a developing medium for several years now. By profession a writer and model, she has been her own worst critic, and in her report avoids anything that cannot be substantiated. On May 14, 1968, she had meant to go to a rally in honor of Senator Robert Kennedy in Van Nuys, California. Since the parade was only three blocks from her house, it was an easy thing for her to walk over. But early in the evening she had resolved not to go. To begin with, she was not fond of the Senator, and she hated large crowds, but more than anything she had a bad feeling that something would happen to the Senator while he was in his car. On the news that evening she heard that the Senator had been struck in the temple by a flying object and had fallen to his knees in the car. The news also reported that he was all right. Jill, however, felt that the injury was more serious than announced and that the Senator’s reasoning faculties would be impaired henceforth. “It’s possible that it could threaten his life,” she reported. “I know that temples are tricky things.” When I spoke to her further, pressing for details, she indicated that she had then felt disaster for Robert Kennedy, but her logical mind refused to enlarge upon the comparatively small injury the candidate had suffered. A short time later, of course, the Senator was dead—not from a stone thrown at him but from a murderer’s bullet. Jill Taggart had somehow tuned in on both events simultaneously.