True Ghost Stories
by Steven Hager
copyright 2012 by Steven Hager
Published by Steven Hager at Smashwords
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4661-1173-8
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
It started the day artist David Pinter let himself into his Manhattan apartment and found his pots and pans strewn across the floor. That night, as he sat in the living room, the lights flashed off, then on again. A few days later he found all his ashtrays broken. David was puzzled by these incidents, nothing more. But he began to worry when he came home one day and found his paintings stacked against the sofa.
"Until then I blamed everything on construction in the neighborhood," he said. "I thought vibrations were moving things around. But how could my paintings jump off the wall and stack themselves against the couch?"
David doesn't believe in ghosts, but since he had the only keys to the apartment he began to wonder.
"One night some friends came over for dinner and I kiddingly told them I had a ghost," he said. "As I told the story, the lights started flickering."
David moved out the next day. He was living with a classic example of what para-psychologists call a poltergeist, which is the most common form of ghost, those elusive spirits from the hidden dimensions.
Poltergeists are mischievous beings who are heard but never seen, and "may be the result of internal, kinetic energy," says Nancy Osborne, co-author with Richard Winer of Haunted Houses (Bantam Books). In fact, poltergeists are so common they rarely stir up any excitement in psychic circles.
Apparitions, on the other hand, are ghosts that are seen but not heard. Because of their rarity, they provide much bigger game for ghost hunters. The best and scariest hauntings, however, usually combine elements of both.
There are no statistics on how many apparitions or poltergeists are experienced each year—most people are reluctant to report them—but a Gallup Poll once indicated 11% of the population believes in ghosts. In a similar survey taken by the University of Chicago, 19% of Americans felt they'd been in contact with a dead person at some time in their lives.
If you've got the nerve, and want to go ghost hunting, New York City is a great place to start. Some of the country's most famous hauntings have occurred here, and almost every neighborhood has its restless spirits. Following are the three most outstanding cases I could find, culled from files of local psychic researchers. Even if you're skeptical about such matters, these stories might send a chill or two down your spine.
Manhattan
If New York Governor DeWitt Clinton took a walk through the West Forties today, he'd have trouble recognizing his old neighborhood, including his former residence. Things change in 150 years, and his house—once a fashionable address—is now a run-down building in Hell's Kitchen. But if he walked around behind it, he'd find something looking very familiar: His carriage house still looks remarkably close to it's heyday, even though it has been converted into two apartments.
Robert Henderson (not his real name) has been living on the second floor for four years. When he moved in, a neighbor told him the place was haunted. He laughed. After all, what intelligent person actually believes in ghosts these days?
But on his third night in the apartment, Henderson was preparing to go to sleep, when something happened he finds difficult to explain. While sitting on the bed he leaned over to untie his shoes and saw a shadow on the bedspread beside him. "I don't know why," he says, "but I thought it was a woman's gown rustling in the wind."
Henderson looked around the empty room and then back at the bedspread. The shadow was gone. He shrugged his shoulders and leaned over to take off his shoe. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the shadow reappear on the wall near the closet door, which was slightly ajar. He felt the presence of another being in the room so strongly that he got up, turned on the light, got out of bed, opened the closet door, looked under the his bed, and then, finally, turned off the light and went to sleep.
Two months later, Henderson was sitting in the living room reading late one night, alone except for his bulldog, Tiger, who was sleeping on the couch beside him. He switched off the light around midnight, too tired to continue reading. Tiger woke up and walked into the kitchen.
"It was dark and I was about to get up and go to bed when I heard a voice whispering in the kitchen," says Henderson. "I thought it was some burglars. I couldn't make out the words, but as I sat there wondering what to do, I realized I was listening to a little girl."
He tiptoed to the kitchen and turned on the light.
"Tiger was facing away from me toward the corner," he says. "He looked at me and then back toward the corner." There was no one in the room, and no way for someone to get out without being seen.
Not long afterward Henderson began hearing footsteps upstairs when no one else was at home. At first he'd run up the stairs and frantically search the bedroom for an explanation. Eventually, he gave up. A few months later, the noises stopped.
"It occurred to me nothing dangerous or threatening had happened," he says. "so I became convinced there was nothing to be afraid of."
Henderson still lives in the carriage house and he recently saw a shadowy figure cross the terrace outside. "It seemed to be walking to my front door," he says. "Even Tiger was fooled and he stood by the door expecting someone to come in. But when I eventually opened the door, no one was there."
Staten Island
The old stone house at 1476 Richmond Road was built by the Dutch around 1660. It is the oldest house on Staten Island and the third oldest in the city. In 1966, John Evelyn and his wife Genevieve moved into the house as curators for the Staten Island Historical Society.
One of the first things John noticed was how cold and clammy the house seemed, even on hot days. While researching its history, he discovered that one of the former owners, Hamilton Perine, had blamed the cold for his wife's early death from pneumonia.
One day, while tacking down stairway carpet with a hammer, John felt a chill shoot through his body. "It's very difficult to explain," he says. "but I saw a shadow at the top of the stairs and I got the most peculiar sensation. I felt someone was watching me."
John didn't pay much attention to the incident—the peculiar feeling went away almost as fast as it came—but a few days later his wife told him about a similar experience she'd just had in the garden.
Over the next few months, the Evelyns became aware of a presence in the house. It disturbed them enough that in 1967 they invited John Kolisch, a psychic researcher, to come out and investigate. Kolisch brought along a friend, who was hypnotized in one of the bedrooms. He identified the ghost as a young girl named Mary, who'd been savagely raped and murdered in the garden.
"After the seance, the house received tremendous visitation from the public," says John, "and I came to the conclusion the ghost was there for the same reason I was—to protect and preserve the house."
John will never forget the night of the first New York blackout. After dinner he took a seat in the living room while his wife washed dishes by candlelight. He was sitting quietly in the dark when he felt a familiar sensation.
"Mary," he said, "you're not trying to scare me, are you?" (John had learned long ago that talking to the ghost was the best way to avoid being frightened by its energies.)
Suddenly, John heard his wife shout: "John, Mary is here!" John ran into the kitchen. Genevieve held out her arm. It was covered in goose bumps. John looked at his own arm. He had them too. "But neither of us were afraid," says John proudly. The next morning, Genevieve saw a shadowy figure walking in the garden.
Unfortunately, John eventually lost his sight and once that happened, the Historical Society asked him to move out. The house on Richmond Road was closed. It's garden has become a tangle of weeds.
"I miss living there," says John. "And I miss Mary."
Brooklyn
On March 11, 1972, Dr. Karlis Osis was seated at his large, walnut desk on the fourth floor of the American Society of Psychical Research on West 73rd Street, when he received a call from a psychology professor at Columbia University. Was Osis interested in looking at a haunted house?
Of the of dozens of psychic investigators in New York City, Osis is certainly the most respected and well-known. Unlike some, he pursues his profession out of scientific curiousity rather than for money. The society he works for is non-profit: instead of mass-market paperbacks, Osis writes detailed research papers.
Since it's very difficult for para-psychologists to find authentic data, Osis was immediately interested in the Columbia professor's report that a young acquaintance of his and two of her friends had seen an apparition. The experience had upset them all, and they were looking for professional advice.
On March 16, Osis met with two women and one man. "The first thing I did was put them in different rooms," he says, "because I wanted to question them separately to find out how closely their stories matched."
The first person he talked to was Jean Lodge (not her real name), in whose apartment the incident had occurred. He recorded their conversation.
Jean told how she had moved into an apartment in Brooklyn in December. From her first night there, she was frequently bothered by the sensation of being watched. At first, she dismissed this as a product of a lively imagination, but the feeling recurred several times.
She began to tell friends about her feelings and discovered her best friend, Patti Hart, was having similar sensations when she visited the apartment. Shortly afterwards, Jean was awakened out of deep sleep several times by strange noises. She became convinced someone—or something—was trying to scare her. Although Jean isn't particularly religious, she hung a silver cross on the living room wall, put rosary beads over her door, and kept an open Bible next to her bed. "Why should I feel this way?" she wondered. "This is my apartment. I'm alone here."
But Jean became so became so uncomfortable in the apartment she actively began looking for another place to live. In February she found one.
On March 1, she went with her friend to pick up the keys to the new apartment. "I was very happy that night," she recalled. "I was supposed to move in the next Saturday, but we decided to move some clothes and suitcases over right away. Patti's husband came with us to help. I was exhilarated because I felt I'd finally be left alone."
As the three sat in her old apartment, they heard someone sobbing in the bedroom.
Patti got up to investigate. She stood in the doorway and motioned for the others to come look and see what she could see.
"I was afraid," recalled Jean. "I didn't really expect to see anything, but when I looked inside I saw bloody body parts scattered across the foot of my bed, apparently the mutilated remains of a very young child. On the left-hand side of the room, standing a few feet from the window, I saw a very old, wrinkled and shriveled woman who had an evil smirk on her face and she looked terribly angry." Patti's husband took one glimpse and ran out of the apartment, asking the others to follow. But stunned and in shock, Jean just backed away from the terrible sights and stood motionless in the living room, while Patti continued to look into the bedroom in stunned silence.
"How long did you see it?" asked Osis.
"A couple of minutes."
"How was the clarity?"
"You could definitely discern a person and the cut-up parts of a child."
"Did you turn on the light afterwards?"
"No, the light in the bedroom was broken."
Patti eventually grabbed Jean by the arm and forced her back into the bedroom, which by then appeared back to normal. Patti told Jean to say the words: "You didn't win. You didn't get me." When Jean spoke the words, however, she distinctly saw the old woman's face in the window staring straight at her, and smiling.
After talking with all three witnesses, Osis was convinced they'd seen the same apparition. He spent many weeks investigating the apartment, and police files were checked out to see if a murder had taken place anywhere nearby. Osis studied several possibilities, but produced no evidence and no theory.
"Unfortunately, nothing turned up," he says sadly. "Jean never returned to the apartment and she never had another experience. Police records didn't show anything, and a psychic who visited the apartment did not identify the presence of a spirit. There are many theories as to the cause of apparitions, but we really don't know anything about them."
The End
Note from the author:
If you enjoyed this ebook, please check out Art After Midnight, Hip Hop, Looking for the Perfect Beat, The East Village, The Stockholm Manifesto, The Steam Tunnels, Bugging Out on the Endless Peak , also available at smashwords.com