Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  I tried to explain that much time had gone by, and that the matter was no longer of importance. I asked Miss Boyd to let go of the house and join her equally dead relatives on the other side of life. There was no doubt that medium Sybil Leek had indeed brought through an authentic ghost, because Elizabeth B. in discussing her research had mentioned only the name Mary Boyd. But in trance, the ghost speaking through the medium had identified herself proudly as Mary Elizabeth Boyd. When the records were rechecked it was discovered that the person living in the house in 1868 was Mary E. Boyd. There was also a William Boyd, evidently the father the ghost had referred to, who had given her the paper proving her ownership and rights to the house.

  I do hope that no one will encounter Miss Mary Boyd again, for it would seem a pity that she has to hang around such a long time just to prove that the house was, after all, hers.

  * 100

  The Haunted Ranch at Newbury Park, California

  MRS. H. IS A remarkable lady, who had spent most of her life in the little town of Newbury Park, California, which is north of Los Angeles. Newbury Park has a population of about 15,000 people and its major claim to fame is its Stagecoach Inn, which was once used as a stopover when the stagecoach traveled between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, discontinued, however in 1915. The inn was moved from its old location a few years ago and is now in a more convenient place, while a major highway goes through where it once stood. The land around Newbury Park is mainly ranch land and the houses, consequently, are ranch-style houses, low, spread out and usually painted white or gray. The H.s live on part of what is known locally as the Hays Ranch, which at one time consisted of hundreds of acres of farm land. They own two-and-a-half acres and a small but comfortable ranch house in the middle of it. Around 1920, it appears, there was a family living in the house that had a small girl who accidentally drowned in either a well or a cesspool on the property. Other than that, Mrs. H. was not aware of any tragedies having occurred in the immediate area of her house.

  Mrs. H. had originally contacted me, explaining that she had problems with ghosts, without going too much into details. Now, I questioned her about the goings-on in the house.

  “There have been three occurrences that I have not mentioned, over the past two months. The most recent was a weird ‘singing’ ‘whistling’ noise which I heard a few night ago. I am reasonably sure this was not my imagination, as my son David has told me of hearing such a noise about two months ago while he was in the bathroom. He was frightened, but no one else heard it and I could not imagine what it could be other than a little air in the pipes. But when I heard what I assume was the same noise it was while I sat up alone in our living room-kitchen.

  “The other thing that happened was the day I saw the ghost. I knew from the voice that it was a boy of about ten or twelve. But this day (in late January) while I was washing the windows, I saw through the window pane clearly standing by the fence a young boy and you could see the fence through him! It was in the morning and that side of the house was shaded but the yard behind it was in brilliant sunlight. I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes and when I turned around he was gone.

  “Another hard-to-explain event that happened was one evening at least a month ago—maybe more—when my husband and I were sitting in the living room and the room was fairly quiet. We both heard a sound that could only be called a whimpering near the door. I had heard this several months before but no one else had.”

  Apparently the H.’s children also had some experiences in the house. “David told me about some misty shapes he had seen, and said the other kids also saw them some time ago, in their bedroom. He said it was dark in the room and these ‘things’ were light. Near the ceiling he saw three misty shapes and they seemed to be looking down at the children. They were vague but he thought they were people. He called me and when I came in and opened the door they disappeared.”

  “The ‘shapeless, horrible’ thing the kids saw was on my mind for a while after that, and when I saw something in there later on, I was not sure it was not subconscious suggestion on my part and I never mentioned it to anyone, but it was about three weeks later that it happened. The children were insisting upon the door being left open and I allowed it for several weeks after they saw this thing. The night I saw something, the door was, therefore, open. I was sitting across from the door by the windows and looked up to see a misty, whitish shape in the doorway next to the partition and partly over it—above floor level, some six feet I would say.

  “There hasn’t been much else happening around here recently other than my hearing outdoors, apparently on the hill behind the clothesline, a whimpering sound, quite loud, that lasted for several minutes at a time.

  “Also, yesterday afternoon, my daughter and I were sitting on the patio and we both heard distinctly two car doors slam on the other side of the house. She went to see if the truck doors had slammed shut, but they were both open and there were no cars out there.”

  Who the ghost or ghosts at Newbury Park are, I do not know. It may well be that the H.s are simply picking up memories from the past, at least in part. But the white shapes floating into the room are hard to explain on that basis. In an area which has been lived in for such a long time as this area, tragedies are bound to occur without being recorded. Perhaps someone from the past is still around, wondering who the newcomers are in what used to be his place.

  The haunted ranch at Newbury Park

  * 101 The Narrowsburgh Ghost

  NARROWSBURGH, NEW YORK lies about four hours from New York City on the Delaware River, where Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey meet. This is a beautiful and somewhat remote area of the country, with large, open acreage and beautiful trees, and the houses, mainly farms, can be very isolated. The house in question is directly on the Delaware and had been owned by the parents of the lady who contacted me originally to investigate it, Mrs. M. of Long Island. Prior to the parents’ acquisition of the house in 1942, it had been vacant for seven years and was in a run-down condition. However, it has since been restored and is used mainly on weekends by Mrs. M. and her family. The house itself is about two-hundred years old and much restructuring has gone on over the years. However, the foundation and the outside walls are intact and are exactly as they were when the building was first erected. On many occasions, the ghost of a woman has been seen just outside the house as though she were about to enter. This happens usually at the same hour, and with some regularity. Both Mrs. M. and her husband have actually watched for her and seen her. Also, the sound of a door closing by itself has been heard for years and Mrs. M. has been awakened during the night many times with the feeling that someone is watching her.

  One night in 1971, Mrs. M., her husband and two friends attempted a séance. For a few minutes, the room seemed to change to what it once was and Mrs. M. found herself crying uncontrollably without reason. She had the feeling that she was experiencing something that happened to a woman in 1793. In addition to the woman in distress, Mrs. M. felt a male presence as well, but from a different time period.

  I asked for additional information about the house and learned that it was built in 1752 by Dutch settlers. The deed itself goes back to 1861. Narrowsburgh can be reached over Route 97. In addition, Mrs. M. explained that she had the increasing feeling that a skeleton may still be buried in the basement, but has so far not tried to dig for it. The M.’s children have also seen the apparition of the man, and Mrs. M.’s mother has felt very uneasy in certain parts of the house. Since they felt that the ghost was frightening the children, they got in touch with me in the hope I would visit and exorcise either one of the presences in their house. I agreed to visit the house in the company of my psychic friend, Ingrid Beckman, who had been an excellent medium on a number of earlier occasions. We went through the house, room by room, hoping that she would pick up some of the puzzles of the past. Within moments, Ingrid picked up the impressions of a man who was staying on after death in the northeast bedroom. Ingrid felt that the
house once belonged to this man, perhaps fifty or sixty years ago, and the reason for his continued presence was that he didn’t realize he was dead and considered the people he saw in his house as intruders. This is a common misconception among ghosts.

  We then went into the cellar, an area in which Mrs. M. had felt some of the strongest vibrations. It was then that we discovered a secret room, almost concealed by the rough stones of the basement. What was this room used for, I wondered? Today it is used as a coal bin. Ingrid felt that someone was buried in that area. Now Ingrid got the entire picture more clearly. “I feel it is a woman about twenty-five years old and she was looking for some man to come to her, but he didn’t show up and somehow she left the room and went down here where she was entombed. Whether she was murdered or went in there to hide, I cannot say. I feel there was a defense of the house and I sense a man with a very long rifle. This happened a long time ago. I think the woman died in this little room, either she was hiding or she couldn’t get out and died there.”

  The house in Narrowsburgh is privately owned, and I doubt very much that visitors would be welcome.

  * 102 The Ghost in the Pink Bedroom

  THE AREA AROUND Charlottesville, Virginia, abounds with haunted houses, which is not surprising since this was at one time the hub of the emerging young American republic. There was a time when the American government had its capital, if only briefly, in Charlottesville and prior to the Revolution, the large landowners had built many magnificent manor houses which still dot the area. Much history and much tragedy has occurred in some of them, so it is not surprising to find that the reports of strange goings-on in the area are comparatively plentiful. One such house is the property of Colonel Clark Lawrence and his family, known as Castle Hill. It is considered one of the historical landmarks of the area and while it is not open to visitors, especially those looking for the ghost, it is conceivable that prior arrangements with the owners could be made for a student of history to have a brief visit. If this is diplomatically handled, the chances of being allowed to visit are good.

  The main portion of the house was built by Dr. Thomas Walker in 1765, but additions were made in 1820. The original portion was made of wood, while the additions were of brick. These later changes executed under the direction of the new owner, Senator William Cabell Rives, gave Castle Hill its majestic appearance. Senator Rives had been American ambassador to France and was much influenced in his tastes by French architecture. This is clear when one sees the entrance hall with its twelve-foot ceilings and the large garden laid out in the traditional French manner.

  On the ground floor, to the rear, there is a suite of rooms which has a decidedly feminine flavor. This is not surprising since they were the private quarters of a later owner, Amelie Rives, an author and poet whose body lies buried in the family plot on the grounds.

  In this suite there is a bedroom called the pink bedroom, which is the center of ghostly activities. Whenever guests have been assigned to sleep in this room, they invariably complain of disturbances during the night. Writer Julian Green, a firm skeptic, left the next morning in great hurry. Amelie Rives herself spoke of a strange perfume in the room, which did not match any of her own scents. The ghostly manifestations go back a long time, but no one knows exactly who is attached to the room.

  Castle Hill, Virginia

  From the testimony of various guests, however, it appears that the ghost is a woman, not very old, rather pretty, and at times playful. Her intentions seem to be to frighten people using the room. Curiously, however, a few guests have slept in it without being aroused by uncanny noises or footsteps. Legend has it that those the lady ghost likes may sleep peacefully in “her” bedroom, while those she does not like must be frightened out of their wits.

  I visited the bedroom in the company of sensitive Virginia Cloud, who had been there many times before. Curiously, I felt the vibrations of another presence, a fine, almost gentle person, but I could not see anyone. Nevertheless, I realized that I was not alone in the room, and Miss Cloud also felt that we were being observed by the unseen former owner of the place.

  During the Revolutionary War, British General Banastre Tarleton and his troops occupied Castle Hill. The then owner, Dr. Walker, served them breakfast on June 4, 1781, and in the course of his hospitality delayed them as long as he could so that Jefferson, then in nearby Charlottesville, could make good his escape from the British. Whether or not one of the ladies played any significant part in this delaying action is not known, but I suspect that there is involvement of this kind connected with the appearance of the ghostly lady at Castle Hill. It was not uncommon for the women of the Revolutionary period to use their charms on the British, in order to further the cause of the revolution. Several such instances are known, and it must be said for the gallantry of the British officers, that they did not mind the intrigues of the American Colonial ladies at all.

  The haunted “pink bedroom”

  * 103 The Poughkeepsie Rectory Ghost

  A FEW YEARS AGO Bishop James Pike made news by publicly declaring that he had spoken with his dead son James in a séance arranged on Canadian television with the late medium Arthur Ford. Not much later he himself became news when he died near the Dead Sea, having run out of gas and water in the desert. A controversial figure both in life and afterlife, Bishop James Pike, one-time Bishop of California, and the author of a number of remarkable books, was no stranger to psychic phenomena.

  During my work with him, I got to know the Christ Church rectory at Poughkeepsie pretty well. In 1947 Pike had been offered the position of rector, and he spent several years there. Christ Church is a large, beautiful, almost modern Episcopal church. The altar with its candles indicates what are generally called “high church” attitudes, that is, closer to Roman Catholicism. The outside of the church has remained turn-of-the-century, and so has the rectory attached immediately the church itself. There is also a small library between the rectory and the church.

  I asked permission of the rector of Christ Church to visit, and in July 1968 took medium Ethel Johnson Meyers there. She relived practically the entire incident Bishop Pike had reported to me privately earlier.

  What had occurred during the two-and-a-half years of James Pike’s residency at Poughkeepsie was not unusual as hauntings go. To him it seemed merely puzzling, and he made no attempt to follow up on it in the way I did when I brought Mrs. Meyers to the scene. Pike had taken over his position at Poughkeepsie, replacing an elderly rector with diametrically opposed views in church matters. The former rector had died shortly afterward.

  Pike soon found that his candles were being blown out, that doors shut of their own volition, and that objects overhead would move—or seemingly move—when in fact they did not. All the noises and disturbances did not particularly upset Bishop Pike. However, on one occasion he found himself faced with a bat flying about madly in the library. Knowing that there was no way in or out of the library except by the door he had just opened, he immediately closed the door again and went to look for an instrument with which to capture the bat. When he returned and cautiously opened the door to the library, the bat had disappeared. There is no possible way by which the animal could have escaped.

  The haunted rectory in Poughkeepsie

  Those wishing to visit Poughkeepsie can do so freely, although the rector may not be too keen to discuss psychic phenomena.

  * 104 The Ghost at West Point

  SO MUCH HISTORY has taken place at the Military Academy at West Point, which used to be a fortress guarding the approaches of the Hudson River, it is no surprising that ghostly apparitions should have also occurred from time to time.

  Four military cadets at the United States Military Academy saw the apparition of a soldier dressed in eighteenth century cavalry uniform, and according to the witnesses, the apparition seemed luminous and shimmering. Apparently, the ghost materialized out of the wall and a closet in room 4714 and on one occasion also from the middle of the floor. Once it ruffl
ed the bathrobe of a cadet, and on another occasion it turned on a shower!

  As soon as the publicity drew the attention of the guiding spirits (of the military kind) to the incident, room 4714 was emptied of its inhabitants. The room itself was then declared off-limits to one and all. Ghosts, of course, do not obey military authorities. Cadet Captain Keith B., however, was willing to discuss it intelligently. “There is no doubt about it at all,” he said, “the room grew unnaturally cold.” Two weeks before, he and another upperclassman spent a night sleeping in the room, their beds separated by a partition. At about two in the morning Cadet B’s companion began to shout. He jumped from his bed and rounded the partition, but he could not see anything special. What he did feel, however, was an icy cold for which there was no rational explanation.

  However, he and his companion weren’t the first ones to encounter the ghost. Two plebes who occupied room 4714 before them also saw it. The second time the apparition walked out of the bureau that stood about in the middle of the floor. He heard the plebes shout, and ran into the room. One of the cadets who actually saw the apparition was able to furnish a drawing. It is the face of a man with a drooping moustache and a high, old-fashioned cap surmounted by a feather. It is the uniform of a cavalry man of about two hundred years ago.

  West Point, where an unhappy plebe still walks

  West Point has a number of ghostly legends, what is now the superintendent’s mansion allegedly has a one-hundred-fifty-year-old ghostly girl, a woman named Molly, who in life was a sort of camp follower.

  Another cadet was taking a shower, prior to moving into the haunted room on the same floor and on leaving the shower noticed that his bathrobe was swinging back and forth on the hook. Since the door was closed and the window closed, there could be no breeze causing the robe to move. The building in which this occurred stands on old grounds; an earlier barrack stood there which has long since been demolished. Could it be that the ghostly cavalry man might have died there and been unable to adjust to his new surroundings?