Ghosts - By Hans Holzer Page 0,41

to hysterics. When she arrived in New York at age thirty-four, she decided to look for a quiet hotel and then search for a job.

The job turned out to be an average office position, and the hotel she decided upon was the Martha Washington, which was a hotel for women only on Twenty-Ninth Street. Eileen was essentially shy and a loner who only made friends slowly.

She was given a room on the twelfth floor and, immediately on crossing the threshold, she was struck by a foul odor coming from the room. Her first impulse was to ask for another room, but she was in no mood to create a fuss so she stayed.

“I can stand it a night or two,” she thought, but did not unpack. It turned out that she stayed in that room for six long months, and yet she never really unpacked.

Now all her life, Eileen had been having various experiences that involved extrasensory perception, and her first impression of her new “home” was that someone had died in it. She examined the walls inch by inch. There was a spot where a crucifix must have hung for a long time, judging by the color of the surrounding wall. Evidently it had been removed when someone moved out…permanently.

That first night, after she had gone to bed, her sleep was interrupted by what sounded like the turning of a newspaper page. It sounded exactly as if someone were sitting in the chair at the foot of her bed reading a newspaper. Quickly she switched on the light and she was, of course, quite alone. Were her nerves playing tricks on her? It was a strange city, a strange room. She decided to go back to sleep. Immediately, the rustling started up again, and then someone began walking across the floor, starting from the chair and heading toward the door.

Eileen turned on every light in the room and it stopped. Exhausted, she dozed off again. The next morning she looked over the room carefully. Perhaps mice had caused the strange rustling. The strange odor remained, so she requested that the room be fumigated. The manager smiled wryly, and nobody came to fumigate her room. The rustling noise continued, night after night, and Eileen slept with the lights on for the next three weeks.

Somehow her ESP told her this presence was a strong-willed, vicious old woman who resented others occupying what she still considered “her” room. Eileen decided to fight her. Night after night, she braved it out in the dark, only to find herself totally exhausted in the morning. Her appearance at the office gave rise to talk. But she was not going to give in to a ghost. Side by side, the living and the dead now occupied the same room without sharing it.

Then one night, something prevented her from going off to sleep. She lay in bed quietly, waiting.

Suddenly she became aware of two skinny but very strong arms extended over her head, holding a large downy pillow as though to suffocate her!

It took every ounce of her strength to force the pillow off her face.

Next morning, she tried to pass it off as a hallucination. But was it? She was quite sure that she had not been asleep.

But still she did not move out, and one evening when she arrived home from the office with a friend, she felt a sudden pain in her back, as if she had been stabbed. During the night, she awoke to find herself in a state of utter paralysis. She could not move her limbs or head. Finally, after a long time, she managed to work her way to the telephone receiver and call for a doctor. Nobody came. But her control started to come back and she called her friend, who rushed over only to find Eileen in a state of shock.

During the next few days she had a thorough examination by the company physician which included the taking of X-rays to determine if there was anything physically wrong with her that could have caused this condition. She was given a clean bill of health and her strength had by then returned, so she decided to quit while she was ahead.

She went to Florida for an extended rest, but eventually came back to New York and the hotel. This time she was given another room, where she lived very happily and without incident for over a year.

One day a neighbor who knew her from the time she had occupied