THE GHOST WALKS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 136, 21 March 1935, Page 3

THE GHOST WALKS

EXPERTS PUZZLED. BOARDERS ROUTED. This is a ghost stoty. It concerns weird and unexplainable happenings in a century-old frame house in Astoria, Queens. Hereward Carrington director of the Americal Psychical Research Institute, which has for years been exploring the realm of the psychic and ghostly, told the story to the "New York Times." About two years ago there came to his office a 30-year-old Italian who had sold a prosperous beauty parlour to buy the house Astoria. He told Dr. Carrington that he had information that a hoard of gold lay buried under the house.

"Associated with him in the project," said Dr. Carrington, "was an Irish woman about 80 years old. They planned to let some of the rooms in the old house to lodgers to provide them with household expense money while the man went on with his digging in the cellar." They soon learned, however, that they could not keep the lodgers. One of their boarders', a woman, awoke one night in the upstairs bedroom. Something had caught her by the throat. When the light was snapped on her neck bore fingerprints. Dr. Carrington checked this story; found records to substantiate it. He also learned that in the same room the garroting ghost had visited, the original owner of the house had strangled his daughter-in-law. The old Irish woman, free of the superstitions of her people, tried to get new boarders, but the irregular visits of the poltergeist (German for noisy or mischievous ghosts) drove them all out. Deep down in the basement the former beauty parlour expert kept stubbornly on with his digging. When Dr. Carrington and his wife went to the place he had already been at work for more than two years. He had dug a pit 20 feet deep and 10 feet wide, but had found no gold. Woman and Dog Attacked!. One sunny afternoon the old Irish woman was walking out of her bedroom on the lower floor of the house, with her great German shepherd dog advancing before her. Something lifted the dog several feet from the floor. She saw the animal's rear legs contort at a crazy angle as if some invisible hand was bending them. The dog fell to the boards, whimpering. When she. knelt beside it she found that both legs were broken. Six weeks later, in exactly the same spot, the same invisible hands lifted the old woman and dropped her. Her left leg and left arm were fractured. She was coniined to her bed for a long time. Dr. Carrington said there are records of this injury.

One night, as the Italian beauty specialist lay asleep, something awakened him. Sitting on his bed was an indistinguishable shape—not the conventional ghost of fiction, all draped in white—but something dark. He knew from its voice that it was the shade of the woman who had been murdered.*

"Do not be afraid of me," it said. "Go on with your digging. There will lie no rest for me until you find what you seek." All these happenings took place before Dr. Carrington and his wife went to the house. They agreed to make the trip when the little barber and the Irish woman pleaded that they could not exist without boarders and that they thought the Carringtons, with their knowledge of psychic phenomena, might help them get rid of the troublesome visitors. Visit House Three Times. The Carringtons went to the house three times. On each occasion they brought a medium who had no previous knowledge of the conditions alleged to exist there, yet each of the mediums became instantly aware of a supernormal presence; even described the huge pit in the cellar without descending below the first floor. Nothing that occurred during the visits of the Carringtons indicated that the forces behind the tricks that disturbed the household were of human origin. They were unable to explain the happenings.