Poltergeists (14 page)

“My body.”

“You’ve passed on, don’t you understand?”

“No...I want my body. Where is it?”

I explained again that this was no longer her house, but she kept calling for the return of “her body” in such anger and despair that I began to wonder if it had not been buried on the premises.

“They took it, my body. I saw them, I saw them!”

“You must let go of this house. It is no longer yours,” I said.

“No, my house, my house. They took it. My body. I have nothing. Get it. I feel I have one.”

I explained that we had lent her a body to speak through for the moment.

“Who are you?”
It
sounded quieter.

“A friend,” I replied, “come to help you.”

Instead of replying, the entranced medium grabbed the door again.

“Why do you want to open the door?” I asked. It took a moment for the answer to come through trembling lips.

“Go out,” she finally said. “I don’t know you. Let me go, let me go.”

I continued to question the ghost.

“Who are you? Did you live in this house?”

“My house. They took it out. My body is out there!”

I explained about the passage of time.

“You were not well. You’ve died.”

“No, no...I wasn’t cold.”

“You are free to go from this door. Your loved ones, your family, await you outside.”

“They hate me.”

“No, they have made up with you. Why should they hate you?”

“They took me out the door.”

Then, suddenly the medium’s expression changed. Had someone come to fetch her?

“Oh, Baba, darling...Oh, he loved me.”

There was hysterical crying now.

“He’s gone...My beloved....”

“What is his name?”

“
Wain
...Where is he...Let me go!”

The crying was now almost uncontrollable, so I sent the ghost on her way. At the same time I asked that Albert, Ethel’s control on the etheric side of the veil, take over her physical body for the moment to speak to us.

It took a moment or two until Albert was in command. The medium’s body visibly straightened out and all traces of a bent old crone vanished. Albert’s crisp voice was heard.

“She’s a former tenant here, who has not been too well beloved. She also seems to have been carried out before complete death. This has brought her back to try and rectify it and make contact with the physical body. But here is always unhappiness. I believe there was no love toward her as she was older.”

“Can you get a name?” I asked.

“If she refused, I cannot.”

“How long ago was this?”

“During the Nineties. Between 1890 and 1900.”

“Is this a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Anything peculiar about her appearance?”

“Large eyes, and almost a harelip.”

“Why is she concerned about her body?”

“There was no great funeral for her. She was put in a box and a few words were said over her grave. That is part of her problem, that she was thus rejected and neglected.”

“Why does she run up to the attic?”

“This was her house, and it was denied to her later in life.”

“By whom?”

“By those living here. Relatives to her.”

“Her heirs?”

“Those who took it over when she could no longer function. She was still alive.”

“Anything else we should know?”

“There is a great deal of hate for anyone in this house. Her last days were full of hate. Should she return, if she is spoken to kindly, she will leave. We will help her.”

“Why is she so full of hate?”

“Her grief, her oppressions. She never left her tongue quiet when she was disrupted in her desire to go from her quarters to the rest of the house.”

“What was her character?”

“As a young person she was indeed a lady. Later in life, a strong personality, going slightly toward dual personality. She was an autocrat. At the very end, not beloved.”

“And her relationship with the servants?”

“Not too friendly. Tyrannical.”

“What troubled her about her servants?”

“They knew too much.”

“Of what?”

“Her downfall. Her pride was hurt.”

“Before that, how was she?”

“A suspicious woman. She could not help but take things from others which she believed were hers by right.”

“What did she think her servants were doing?”

“They pried on her secret life. She trusted no one toward the end of life.”

“Before she was prevented, as you say, from freely going about the house—did she have any belongings in the attic?”

“Yes, hidden. She trusted no one.”

I then suggested that the “instrument” be brought back to herself. A very surprised Ethel Meyers awakened to find herself leaning against the entrance door.

“What’s the matter with my lip?” she asked when she was able to speak. After a moment, Ethel Meyers was her old self, and the excursion into Mrs. Wainwright’s world had come to an end.

The following morning Molly Smythe called me on the phone. “Remember about Albert’s remarks that Mrs. Wainwright was restrained within her own rooms?”

Of course I remembered.

“Well,” Molly continued, “we’ve just made a thorough investigation of all the doors upstairs in the servants’ quarters where she spent her last years. They all show evidence of locks having been on them, later removed.
Someone was locked up there for sure
.”

Ironically, death had not released Mrs. Wainwright from confinement. To her, freedom still lay beyond the heavy wooden door with its brass chain.

Now that her spirit self had been taken in hand, perhaps she would find her way out of the maze of her delusions to rejoin her first husband, for whom she had called.

The next time Molly Smythe hears the front door opening, it’ll be just her husband coming home from the office.
Or so I thought
.

But the last week of April 1965, Molly called me again. Footsteps had been heard
upstairs
this time, and the sound of a door somewhere being opened and closed, and of course, on inspection, there was no one
visible
about.

Before I could make arrangements to come out to Rye once again, something else happened. Mr. Smythe was in the bathtub, when a large tube of toothpaste, safely resting well back on a shelf, flew off the shelf by its own volition. No vibration or other
natural
cause could account for it. Also, a hypodermic needle belonging to one of the nurses attending Molly’s mother had somehow disappeared.

I promised to bring Sybil Leek to the house. The British medium knew nothing whatever of the earlier history of the case, and I was curious to see if she would make contact with the same or different conditions, as sometimes happens when two mediums are used in the same house. It’s like tuning in on different radio wavelengths.

It was a cool, wet day in May when we seated ourselves in a circle upstairs in the “haunted room.” Present in addition to the hosts, Sybil Leek, and myself, were Mrs. Betty Salter (Molly’s sister); David Ellingson, a reporter from the Port Chester, N.Y.,
Item
; Mr. And Mrs. Robert Bendick, neighbors and friends of the Smythes; and Mary Melikian. Mr. Bendick was a television producer specializing in news programs.

Sybil went into hypnotic trance. It took several minutes before anything audible could be recorded.

“Who are you?” I asked.

A feeble voice answered: “Marion...Marion Gernt....”

Before going into trance, Sybil had volunteered the information that the name “Grant,” or something like it, had been on her mind ever since she set foot into the house.

“What year is this?” I asked.

“1706.”

“Who built the house?”

“My father...Walden.”

She then complained that people in the house were disturbing
her
, and that therefore she was
pulling it down
.

“My face is swollen,” she added. “I’m sick...Blood.”

Suddenly, something went wrong with my reliable tape recorder. In all my previous investigations it had worked perfectly. Now it wouldn’t, and some parts of the conversation were not recorded. The wheels would turn and then stop, and then start again, as if someone were sticking their fingers into them at will!

I tried my camera, and to my amazement, I couldn’t take any pictures. All of a sudden, the mechanism wouldn’t function properly, and the shutter could not be uncocked. I did not get any photographs. Bob Bendick, after the séance, took a good look at the camera. In a moment it was working fine again. After the séance, too, we tried to make the tape recorder work. It started and then stopped completely.

“The batteries have run out,” I explained, confident that there was nothing more than that to it. So we put the
machine on house current. Nothing happened. It wasn’t the batteries. It was something else.

After we left the “haunted room” and went downstairs, I put the tape recorder into my traveling case. About ten minutes later, I heard a ghostly voice coming from my case.
My voice
. The tape recorder that I had left in a secure turn-off position had started up by itself...or...so it seemed.

But one can’t be sure in haunted houses.
Item
reporter David Ellingson and Mary Melikian were standing next to me when it happened. John Smythe was wondering if someone had turned on the radio or
TV
. So much for the instruments that didn’t work—temporarily.

But, let us get back to Sybil and the ghost speaking through her. She claimed to have been burned all over in a fire. John Smythe confirmed later that there were traces of a fire in the house that have never been satisfactorily explained.

The ghost seemed confused about it. She was burned, on this spot, in what was then a little house. The place was called Rocher. Her named was spelled M-a-r-i-o-n G-e-r-n-t. She was born at Rodey, eight miles distant. She was not sure about her age. At first she said 29, then it was 57. The house was built by one Dion, of Rocher.

I then tried to explain, as I always do, that the house belonged to someone else and that she must not stay.

“Go away,” the ghost mumbled, not at all pleased with the idea of moving. But I insisted. I told her of her husband who wanted her to join him “over there.”

“I hate him!” she volunteered, then added—“I start moving things...I break things up...I want my chair.”

“You must not stay here,” I pleaded. “You’re not wanted here.”

“
He
said that,” she replied in a sullen voice. “Alfred did. My husband.”

“You must join him and your children.”

“I’ll stay.”

I repeated the incantation for her to leave.

“I can’t go. I’m burned. I can’t move,” she countered.

I explained that these were only memories.

Finally she relented, and said—“I’ll need a lot of rags...to cover myself.”

Gently now, she started to fade.

“I need my chair,” she pleaded, and I told her she could have it.

Then she was gone.

Sybil came back now. Still in trance, she responded quickly to my questions about what she saw and felt on the other side of the veil. This is a technique I find particularly effective when used prior to bringing the medium out of trance or from under hypnosis.

“An old lady,” Sybil said. “She is quite small. I think she is Dutch. Shriveled. She is very difficult. Can’t move. Very unpleasant. Throws things because she can’t walk. This is her house. She lived here about three hundred years ago. She wants everything
as it was
. She has marks on her face. She was in a fire.”

“Did she die in it?” I asked.

“No. She died near here. Doesn’t communicate well.”

“There is a box with two hearts, two shields,” Sybil said. “It means something to this woman.”

“Were there any others around?” I asked.

“Lots, like shadows,” Sybil explained, “but this little woman was the one causing the commotion.”

“She likes to throw things,” Sybil added, and I couldn’t help thinking that she had never been briefed on all the objects the ghost had been throwing.

“She doesn’t know where any doors are, so she just goes on. The door worries her a lot, because she doesn’t know where it is. The front and rear have been changed around.”

Sybil, of course, knew nothing of the noises centering around the main door, nor the fact that the rear of the house was once the front.

I told Sybil to send her away, and in a quiet voice, Sybil did so.

The séance was over, at least for the time being.

A little later, we went up to the top floor, where both Molly and Sybil suddenly senses a strong odor of perfume. I joined them, and I smelled it, too. It was as if
someone were following us about the house
!

But it was time to return to New York. Our hosts offered to drive us to the city.

“Too bad,” I said in parting, “that nobody has
seen
an apparition here. Only sounds seem to have been noticed.”

Betty Salter, Mrs. Smythe’s perky sister, shook her head.

“Not true,” she said. “I was here not so long ago when I saw a black figure downstairs in the dining room. I thought it was Molly, but on checking found that I was quite alone downstairs...That is, except for
her
.”

Mrs. Wainwright, of course, was of Dutch ancestry, and the description of the character, appearance, and general impression of the ghost Sybil gave did rather fit Mrs. Wainwright.

Was the 1706 lady an ancestor or just someone who happened to be on the spot when only a small farm house occupied the site?

The Smythes really didn’t care whether they have two ghosts or one ghost. They preferred to have none.

T
HREE HOURS BY CAR
from London is the elegant resort city of Bath. Here, in a Regency architectural wonderland, there is an eighteenth century inn called Garrick’s Head Inn. At one time there was a connection between the inn and the theater next door, but the theater no longer exists. In the eighteenth century, the famous gambler Beau Nash owned this inn which was then a gambling casino as well.

The downstairs bar looks like any other bar, divided as it is between a large, rather dark room where the customers sip their drinks, and a heavy wooden bar behind which the owner dispenses liquor and small talk. There is an upstairs, however, with a window that, tradition says, is impossible to keep closed for some reason. The rooms upstairs are no longer used for guests, but are mainly storage rooms or private rooms of the owners. At the time of my first visit to the Garrick’s Head Inn it was owned by Bill Loud, who was a firm skeptic when he had arrived in Bath. Within two months, however, his skepticism was shattered by the phenomena he was able to witness. The heavy till once took off by itself and smashed a chair. The noises of people walking were heard at night at a time when the place was entirely empty. He once walked into what he described as “cobwebs” and felt his head stroked by a gentle hand. He also smelled perfume when he was entirely alone in the cellar.