Hans Holzer - Ghosts Ive Met

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To my wife Catherine, who has helped me so much, and to our friends in both worlds...

W HEN MY FIRST BOOK , Ghost Hunter, was published, I helped sell it by appearing as a guest on numerous television and radio programs, sometimes with photographs taken by me at various haunted locations.

At first I was invited only by local interview programs which thought of the Ghost Hunter as a nice change of diet from their usual club women, product pushers, movie stars in town to publicize a new picture, and other such inexpensive entertainment. To their amazement, the audience liked me, and I was frequently asked to repeat. Naturally, nobody paid me.

In America, TV interview programs do not pay, on the theory that one hand washes the other. There were exceptions. In Pittsburgh, for instance, John Reed King and Westinghouse always made me feel like a king myself. They spotted me in the best part of the program, paid all my expenses, and in general understood the word guest in its original sense.

As the book picked up readers, letters started to pour in. Some were from people with questions on their mindquestions my book had reopened for them. Despite a disdainful husband or wife, many came forward to write to me of their own psychic adventures and ask for an explanation.

I always tried to answer these letters, and I frequently went to the writers homes to talk to them. Now and then I found a genuine haunting and followed through on it. Sometimes I found self-deception or illness. I always tried to be helpful, but honest. My telephone started to ring at odd hours, and foreign mail mixed with the domestic correspondence.

Between October of 1963 and the summer of 1964, thousands of copies of Ghost Hunter were sold. As a result, psychic investigations and ghosts were no longer a matter for the lunatic fringe to talk about, or something people just dont mention in polite society. To the contrary, my career as a lecturer started to boom. I spoke before learned societies, colleges, womens clubs, even churches. Some of my audiences, to be sure, came to laugh or out of curiosity, but very few walked out unimpressed with the subject. Not with me.

Syndicated columnists like Earl Wilson wrote reams of material about my work of investigating and freeing ghosts (and people from ghosts). Wilson did it tongue-in-cheek, but he was sincere in his own way.

Local television eventually begat national television, and it was not long before people like Mike Douglas, Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, and Johnny Carson asked me to appear before their cameras. Steve Allen in particular played it straight and the results were a hushed audience as picture after picture of hauntings and ghosts was shown and explained. I played it straight, too, and the result was unusually good. Art Linkletter played it cautiously, asserting that he did not believe in ghosts a priori, but then he had a lot of impressionable sponsors. Linkletters audiences wrote me letters for five months after my first appearance on the show, running into many hundreds, and clamoring for information, help in distress, and more of me on television.

On one occasion, Johnny Carson had one of the Gabor sisters as a fellow guest. We discussed witchcraft and she wanted to know if she wasnt a witch because of certain uncanny happenings in her life. I assured her that, to the best of my knowledge, she was not a w-i-t-c-h, spelled that way, and hoped fondly she would stop interrupting. By prearrangement with Carsons producers, I invited him to accompany me to a haunted house in Rye, New York, and assist in my investigation, which would then be telecast on his program. He quickly accepted the challenge, and I prepared the people living in the house for the coming of the great man.

Unfortunately, the event never materialized, for Carsons producers decided against the project.

After a hundred or so television and radio appearances I realized that I could best serve the cause of psychic knowledge by having a series of my own, and I committed myself to this goal.

Meanwhile, back at the office, the mail kept piling up. Many, many letters were from people literally beleaguered by the Unseen Forces. My help was not a matter of sometime curiosity, but of immediate do-or-die concern. Whenever the house in question was near New York, I went and helped. I arranged for a trip to California, paying my own expenses, to help a lady in distress who could no longer bear living in the haunted house she once called home. I had to turn down or delay investigating dozens of good cases for each case I could get involved in right away.

This book deals with some of my adventures as the Ghost Hunter after my first book was published. My life as a writer and researcher underwent considerable changes during this time. I was no longer an unknown who had to explain himself. People didnt always remember my name or my correct nickname, but whether they call me the ghost man, the ghost chaser, or the fellow who talks to ghoststhey could always place the face.

Then, too, I acquired an army of supporters. To be sure, they are not as tangible as the ones who sometimes stop me in the street and ask, Havent I seen you on TV?but they are the ones who really appreciate me more than anyone else. The ghosts I managed to pry loose from their erstwhile emotional prisons, with the help of Mrs. Ethel Johnson Meyers and other good mediums, attached themselves to me in a grand gesture of gratitude, and now and again they come through at sances or meetings held at various times and in many parts of the world.

Truly, Some of my best Ghosts are Friends.

I T IS RATHER REMARKABLE , I think, that I have not received a single derogatory letter from anyone who read my first book, Ghost Hunter. On the other hand, cases kept pouring in, and in some instances, people who lived in haunted houses described by me write or call to tell me of their own uncanny experiences in these places.

One of my favorite cases was the Clinton Court case, in the very heart of New Yorks theatrical district. Old Moor, the sailor, and the little girl ghost who fell to her death on the winding stairs of Governor Clintons old carriage house had a charm all their own.

Consequently I was rather pleased when I picked up the telephone on a cold morning in January of 1964, and heard a pleasant female voice telling me that its possessor had been a friend and frequent visitor of the people who rented the upstairs apartment at Clinton Court. I asked the lady, whose name was Alyce Montreuil, to put her experience in writing. A week or two later she obliged:

The people who lived there from 1959 to 1963 are Danny Brown and Frank [Doc] Benner. Also Mr. Benners mother, who is a lady of eighty-six years. Several times when Mrs. Benner would go out on the porch, the front door would close, locking her out of the house. As you know, this porch is above the stone steps. The porch is sheltered on three sides, so there is no possibility of a draft blowing the door shut. Also, the door was never locked, but when she tried to open it, it always was. I have two dogs, a toy poodle and a Yorkshire terrier. These dogs have traveled all over the country, and visit everyone that I do. They are not nervous or frightened by anything. When I would go to visit at the Governor Clinton house, I always took the leashes off at the sidewalk, and they would run to the back. Mrs. Benner has a poodle, and my dogs were always anxious to play with her. When they got to the bottom of the steps, it was as though they had brakes. No matter who was at the top of the steps, they would not go up those stairs. I had to carry them. When it was time to go, they dreaded to go out on the porch, because they knew they had to go down those stairs. I would go to the bottom, walk away, call them, and they would start down. Half-way down they turned and ran back up and into the house. This might not seem like much, but if you knew these dogsall they live for is to go for a walk. When I cant plead with them to go out, something is mighty strange. Once when Mr. Benner was ill, I stayed overnight. That front door I mentioned earlier, I locked myself. In the morning not only was it unlocked, the door was standing open.