Ghosts

by Hans Holzer

  Frank G. and forty-one others were aboard a Navy transport flying over the ocean. On the nights of October 26, 27, and 28, 1954, Mrs. B. had a vivid dream in which she felt someone was drowning. This recurrent dream puzzled her, but she did not connect it with her brother as she had no idea where he was or what he was doing at the time. On October 30, 1954, she was awakened from sleep by the feeling of a presence in her room. This was not at her own home but at the house of her in-laws. Her husband was sleeping in an adjoining room. As she looked up, fully awake now, she saw at the foot of her bed a figure all in white. A feeling of great sorrow came over her at this moment. Frightened, she jumped out of bed and ran to her husband.

  The following evening, the telephone rang. Her brother, Frank, crewman on an ill-fated air transport, had been lost at sea.

  Mrs. William F. of Salem, Massachusetts, no witch but rather a well-adjusted housewife, had what she calls a “spiritual experience,” which was enough to assure her that life did indeed exist beyond the grave.

  In 1957, her aged grandmother had passed on, leaving the care of her grandfather to her parents. The old man was lost without his companion of so many years, and eventually he deteriorated to the point where he had to be placed in a hospital. He died in 1961, and the family went jointly to the local funeral parlor for a last good-bye.

  Mrs. F. and her older sister were sitting in the room where the body lay, when suddenly both of them—as they later realized—had the same strange feeling of a presence with them.

  The feeling became so strong that Mrs. F. eventually lifted her head, which had been lowered in mourning. It may be mentioned that she did not like funeral parlors and had never been inside one before.

  As she looked up beyond the coffin, she saw her grandfather and her grandmother with smiles on their faces. Although their lips did not move, the woman got the impression her “Nana” was saying to her: “It’s all right now. I am taking care of him now. Don’t be sad. We’re together again.”

  When the dead reach out to the living—A portrait of Mrs. Martha Holzer, Hans Holzer’s mother. This was obtained through photographic mediumship of the late Dr. John Myers, with Mike Wallace as the monitor. (Lifetime photo on the right.)

  The parents did not see this vision, but the older sister did.

  The apparitions of the dead wish to be recognized as the people they were and are. Thus the majority of them appear looking as they did in physical life—that is, wearing the clothes they had on when they died or clothes they liked to wear ordinarily. But there are also cases where the dead have appeared dressed in a simple white robe instead of their customary clothing. I myself saw my mother several years after her passing, wearing what I then called “a long nightshirt.” The moment was brief but long enough for me to realize I was fully awake and that she cast a shadow on the opposite wall.

  I think that this white robe is perhaps the “ordinary” dress over there, with the earth-type clothing optional when and if needed. No doubt the white robe is behind many legends of white-robed angels appearing to mortals and the generally accepted description of ghost being “white.” It is also true that ectoplasm, the material of which materializations of the dead are created, is white. It is an albumen substance that has been analyzed in laboratories and that is drawn from the living during physical séances.

  The white color has some bearing on the need for darkness whenever such manifestations are induced in the séance room. Evidently strong white light destroys the material, perhaps because light and psychic energies are traveling on collision courses and might cancel each other out. But the ectoplastic substance is tangible and real and is by no means a figment of the imagination.

  Mrs. C. M. R., a widow living in eastern New England, was married more than forty years to her husband, John, who passed away in 1966. John R. had worked as a machinist for a leather factory. When he complained of pain in his chest, his ailment was diagnosed as pleurisy, and he was told to stay in bed. There was no indication of imminent death on that March day in 1966. The doctor left after a routine inspection, and John R. went back to bed.

  Between 2 and 3 A.M., he suddenly complained of pain. He was sitting on the bed when his wife rushed to his side. She made him comfortable, and he went back to sleep—never to wake up again. Because of the complaint, Mrs. R. kept a vigil close to the bed. Suddenly she saw a white-robed figure rise up from the bed and sit on it for a moment, as if to get its bearings. There was a rustling sound of sheets moving. Since the figure’s back was turned toward her, Mrs. R. could not make out its features. But it was a large person, and so was her husband. At the same time, she had a peculiar sensation inside her head. Suddenly, as if a balloon inside had burst, the sensation stopped and all was silent. The white-robed figure had disappeared. She stepped to the bed and realized that her husband was gone.

  Mrs. R.’s brother, Robert C., was a lieutenant in the army during the Second World War and later worked for the C.N.R. railroad in Canada. Mrs. R. had not been in constant touch with him, since she lived a thousand miles away. But on April 11, 1948, she and her daughter were in their bedroom when both women saw the figure of Robert C., dressed in black, looking into the room, his hand on the doorknob. He smiled at them and Mrs. R. spoke to her brother, but he vanished into thin air. That was between midnight and 1 A.M. Hospital records at the Halifax Victoria General Hospital show that Lieutenant C. passed away officially at 7 A.M., April 12, 1948. Evidently he had already been out of the body and on his last journey several hours before. Stopping in at his sister’s house on the way, he had come to say good-bye.

  Diane S., a high school graduate and as level-headed as you would want to meet, did not show the slightest interest in psychic matters until age seventeen. She lived with her parents in a medium-sized town in Michigan. Her friend Kerm was the apple of her eye, and vice versa. No doubt, if things had preceded normally, they would have married.

  But one night, after he had driven her home, Kerm was killed in a car accident on the way to his own place. The shock hit Diane very strongly, and she missed him. She wondered whether there was anything in the belief that one survived death.

  One week after the funeral of her friend, she smelled the scent of funeral flowers on arising. For five days this phenomenon took place. There were no such flowers in the house at that time. Then other things followed. Diane was on her way home from a girlfriend’s house. It was around midnight. As she drove home, she gradually felt another presence with her in the car. She laughed it off as being due to an overactive imagination, but the sensation persisted. She looked around for a moment, but the back seat was empty. Again she focused her eyes on the road. Suddenly she felt something touch first her left hand, then her right. There was no mistaking it; the touch was very real.

  At another time she awoke in the middle of a sound sleep. She felt the presence of something or someone in the room with her. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked in all directions. She saw nothing unusual, but she was sure there was another person sitting on the second bed, watching her. The feeling became so intense that she broke out in a cold sweat. But she did not dare get up, and finally she managed to get back to sleep. The next morning, when she awoke, her first act was to have a look at the other bed. There, at the foot of the bed, was an imprint on the bedspread, as if someone had been sitting on it!

  After that there was a period of quiet, and Diane thought with great relief that the psychic manifestations had finally come to an end.

  But in late July 1965, something happened that caused her to reconsider that opinion. A young man named Jerry had been a steady companion of hers since the unfortunate accident in which Kerm had been killed. There was a party at Diane’s house one evening. After the company left, Jerry stayed on.

  Together they sat and talked for several hours. It grew late, and dawn began to show itself. The two young people were sitting on the couch downstairs when suddenly Jerry looked up and asked if her mother was standing at the top of the stairs! Di
ane knew that her mother would be asleep in her room, yet she followed Jerry’s eyes to the top landing of the stairs.

  There was a figure standing there, rather vaguely outlined and seemingly composed of a white filmy substance. At its base there was a luminous sparkle. As the two young people stared at the figure, without daring to move, it gradually faded away.

  Jerry then left for home, and Diane went to bed. As he drove down the road, he was about to pass the spot where Kerm had been killed a couple of months before. He stopped for a moment and got out to stretch his legs. When he walked back to his car, he noticed that it was enveloped by a thick fog. He got into the car, which felt strangely cold and clammy. He glanced to his right, and to his horror he saw a white, cloudlike object cross the road toward the car. As it approached the car, Jerry could make it out clearly enough: it was a blurred image of a human body, but the face was as plain as day. It was Kerm. He got into the front seat with Jerry, who shook with terror. Jerry’s eyes were watering, and he dared not move.

  “Take care of Di,” a strangely broken voice said next to him. It sounded as though it were coming from far away, like an echo.

  Then a hand reached out for his, and Jerry passed out. When he came to, he found himself parked in front of the local cemetery. How he had got there he did not know. It is some distance from the spot of Kerm’s accident to the cemetery. But there he was, barely able to start his car and drive home.

  When he told his story to his parents, they thought he had dreamed it. Jerry was sure he had not. The events that followed bore him out. It would seem that Kerm wanted to make sure Jerry took good care of his former girlfriend. At various times, Jerry would feel a hand at his shoulder.

  At this point Diane got in touch with me. As I could not then rush out to Michigan, I sent her explicit instructions about what to do. On the next occasion when the restless form was in evidence, she was to address him calmly and ask that he cease worrying over her. Jerry would indeed look out for her, and they would rather not have him, Kerm, around also. Three does make a crowd, even if one is a ghost.

  Apparently Kerm took the hint and left for good. But to Diane it was an indication that there is another world where we all may meet again.

  Although many visits of departing loved ones take place while the recipients of the message are fully awake or as they are being awakened to receive the news, there are many more such incidents on record where the events seemingly occur in the dream state. I devoted an entire chapter to the many-sided nature of dreams in my book ESP and You. Many dreams are physically caused or are psychoanalytical material. But there are such things as true dreams and psychic dreams, in which precise messages are received that later come true.

  Mrs. Madeline M. lives in a large Eastern city. She is a “true dreamer” and has accepted her ESP abilities calmly and without fears.

  “True dreams I can’t forget on awakening, even if I try,” she explained to me, “while the ordinary kind fade away quickly and I couldn’t recall them no matter how hard I try to.”

  When Madeline was fourteen, her mother was taken to the hospital with a fatal illness. The girl was not aware of its seriousness, however, and only later found out that her mother knew she would soon die and was worried about leaving her daughter at so tender an age.

  At the time, Madeline had accepted the invitation of a friend and former neighbor to stay overnight with her. That night she had a vivid dream. She saw her mother standing at the foot of the bed, stroking her feet and smiling at her with a sweet yet sad smile. What puzzled Madeline, however, was the way her mother looked in the vision. To begin with, she wore a strange dress with tiny buttons. Her hair was done in a way she had never worn it before. Both dress and strange hairdo impressed themselves upon the young woman, along with a feeling of emptiness at the sight of her mother.

  “I have to leave now, Madeline,” the mother said in the dream.

  “But where are you going?” Madeline heard herself ask in the dream.

  “Never mind, Madeline, it’s just that I must go!”

  And with that remark, her mother eased herself toward the door, gently closing it behind her and looking back once more, saying: “Good-bye, Madeline.”

  With that, the door was shut.

  The next thing Madeline knew, she found herself sitting on the bed, sobbing hysterically, “Mother, don’t go, please don’t go!” Her hostess was next to her trying to get her out of the state she was in.

  “It’s only a dream,” the friend explained, “and look, it’s late—five minutes past two! We must both get some sleep now!”

  With that, Madeline and her friend went back to sleep, but not until after Madeline had reported her vision to her friend in every detail.

  She was roused from deep sleep by her friend early the next morning.

  “Your brother is here to have breakfast with us,” her friend explained. Hurriedly Madeline got dressed to meet her brother.

  “Tell him about your dream,” the friend nudged her.

  There was a pause, then the brother remarked: “I’m jealous, Madeline; why didn’t she come to me?”

  He then informed her that their mother had passed away at five minutes past two the previous night.

  Too stunned to cry, Madeline realized that her mother had come to say good-bye. In the dream state the connection can be made a lot easier, because there is no conscious thought wall to penetrate and that interferes with the flow of communication.

  They went to the viewing of the body. When Madeline caught sight of her mother’s body, she grabbed her brother’s hand and dug her nails deeply into it.

  “What is it?” he asked with surprise. She could only point to her mother’s appearance: the dress with the tiny buttons she had never worn before and the strange hairdo—exactly as Madeline had seen it in her “dream.”

  Evidently Madeline M. was and is a good recipient of messages from the departing and departed. Many years later, in 1957, she had another true dream. This time she saw herself walk into a house, go straight to the back of the house, and stop in a doorway that opened into a large dining room. As she stood in this doorway, in the dream, she noticed her dead father seated at the head of the table. Her dead mother walked in just as Madeline arrived at her observation point. Her mother now stood next to her father, whose face was aglow with joy. Both father and mother appeared very much younger than they were at the time of their deaths, and both seemed very excited. But it was not the dreamer’s presence that caused all this commotion; in fact they paid no attention to her at all. In her dream Madeline felt left out and wondered why she had not been asked to sit down at the dinner table, since there was an extra place set at the table.

  “Isn’t it wonderful that we are all here together again?” she heard herself ask. “Where is my brother?”

  Finally her mother spoke up, pointing to the empty chair. “Oh, he will be here; we’re expecting him—in fact, he is on his way now!”

  The next morning Mrs. M. recalled her dream vision only too clearly. But it was not until nine months later that the events alluded to in the dream became reality. Her brother had the same fatal illness that had taken her mother, and after a brief hospital stay he too passed into the world of the spirit, where a place had already been set for him at Thanksgiving the year before.

  There are instances when the dead wish to let someone living know that they are across the veil and not merely somewhere on earth and out of touch. Especially in the United States, where the movement of people is unchecked by police registration, people can easily drop out of one another’s sight and may be hard to trace or track down. One case involved a young lady who had moved in with a married sister in coastal Virginia.

  Mrs. Doris S., the married sister, has a husband in the Army, and consequently they move around a lot. But at that time she had a house, and her sister was welcome in it. The sister was engaged to a young man with whom she had kept company for several years. Her weakness was cigarettes, and even her
young man frowned on her excessive smoking.

  “I’ll be back in one month to take you with me,” he had promised before he left, “and if you’ve cut down on cigarettes to ten a day, I’ll marry you!”

  Soon after he had left, strange occurrences began to puzzle the two women. The sister’s clothes would be moved around in her closet without any reason. Cigarette butts would be found all over the house like markers, although neither sister had put them there. One of the dresses disappeared completely, only to show up a week later, neatly folded, in another drawer. There was walking upstairs at times when there was no human being in that part of the house. Then one day a shoe of the sister’s walked down the steps by itself—as if someone were moving it!

  Mrs. S.’s husband was impressed with the unaccountable events she wrote him about, and it was decided that they would look for another house. Then, when he had some leave coming to him, the family decided to go home to Pennsylvania. There they found out something they had not known before: the sister’s friend had been killed in a car accident several weeks earlier. As he didn’t have any family, nobody had let them know of his death.

  “It must have been he,” Mrs. S. remarked, “trying to keep his word. After all, he did promise to get sister in a month.”

  After that there were no unusual happenings in the house.

  Mrs. Darlene V., a housewife in suburban New York City, has had numerous premonitory experiences. But the incident that convinced her that she had a special gift happened when she was sixteen years old and a junior in high school in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Mrs. V., a Catholic, attended a religious study course at the time. It was held at the local church, and the group consisted of youngsters of both sexes. During her study sessions she noticed a certain young man who sat all by himself on the side; his sad and lonely expression attracted her interest. She inquired about him and learned that his name was Roger but that his friends called him Rocky. He had been studying for the priesthood but had had to stop recently because of illness. He was then in his early twenties. A bond of friendship grew between Darlene and this unhappy young man, although her mother did not approve of it.