Prime Time Replay:

Hans Holzer
Author of
Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond


MsgId: *high_strangeness(4)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:01:25 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

Welcome to High Strangeness! My name is Patrick Huyghe and our guest tonight is Hans Holzer, who is known the world over as the "Ghost Hunter." That was the title of his first book on the subject in 1965. The lastest, published this year, is "Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond" (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers). It's a huge, 761-page volume covering more than 150 "fully documented" encounters with ghosts and other apparitions. It's such a big, heavy book that, improperly handled, could be called a "Ghost Maker".

Hans Holzer studied at Vienna University, Austria, Columbia University, New York, and holds a Ph.D. from the London College of Applied Science. Holzer has extensively studied those who "live" in the next dimension and explains why they seek contact with our world. He also gives expert adivice on how to interpret sights, sounds, poltergeist activities, dream visions, and other experiences that signal the presence of someone from "the other side."

Now let's begin. Do you consider yourself to be an investigator of ghosts or a reporter on the phenomenon?

MsgId: *high_strangeness(6)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:04:48 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Certainly both. First I investigate, and then I report what I find to the readers of my books such as "Ghosts" or my television audience who are eager to learn the truth
MsgId: *high_strangeness(8)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:05:21 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

How many cases have you investigated over the years?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(9)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:06:47 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Several thousand cases - some of which turned out to be without merit, but many of which turned out to be important evidential cases for the reality of life after death.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(10)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:07:54 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

How do yo differentiate between "cases without merit" and the "real" thing?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(11)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:10:06 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

As a professional parapsychologist, I am not skeptical, but open-minded. Alternate explanations have to be eliminated first and scientific evidence is that which cannot be explained in any other way.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(13)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:11:15 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

Let's step back a moment: what exactly is a ghost?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(14)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:13:29 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

A ghost is a human being who has passed out of the physical body usually in a traumatic state and is not aware usually of his true condition. My new book called "Ghosts" contains over 1000 authentic cases of hauntings and some 200 photographs taken under test conditions.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(16)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:14:42 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

How are spirits different than ghosts?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(17)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:16:31 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

We are all spirits encased in a physical body. At the time of passing, our spirit body continues into the next dimension. A ghost, on the other hand, due to trauma, is stuck in our physical world and needs to be released to go on.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(19)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:17:06 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

You also distingish between actual ghosts and a psychic impressions. Please explain.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(20)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:19:44 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

About 80% of all ghostly sightings or apparitions are psychic impressions from the past without any further life. Left behind in the atmosphere through emotional impact. Ghosts are disturbed people and manifest in different ways at different times. Imprints are always the same.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(22)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:20:57 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

And one more question of this kind: What are "phantoms of the living"?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(23)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:22:56 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Phantoms of the living are similar to out of the body experiences where a person may appear to someone at a distance while physcially present somewhere else. This is due to strong emotions, deep thoughts and does not signify death or the iminence of death.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(25)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:23:57 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

You state at one point in the book that dreams of ghosts and spirits can be real. How so?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(26)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:26:43 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

In an earlier book called "Psychic Side of Dreams," I differentiated between 4 dream categories, 2 of which are not dreams at all, but visitations from beyond, or visitations to the beyond, usually called out of the body experiences.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(27)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:28:09 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

How can one tell the difference?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(28)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:30:56 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

A psychic dream stays with you long after you wake up and it feels very real, which in fact it is. It is easier for the visiting spirit to get through to you in the dream state when the conscious mind is shut down. Out of the body experiences leave you tired and there is a feeling of falling from great heights.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(30)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:31:54 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

You state that only people with psychic powers can see ghosts. What do psychic powers have to do with the afterlife?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(31)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:34:14 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Psychic ability is present in everybody in varying degrees. Ordinary people have experiences with spirits or ghosts because of that fact. Professional psychics such as Marisa Anderson of Scarsdale can hear as well as see the departed person and bring back what they have to communicate.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(32)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:35:02 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

How did you first become involved in ghost investigations?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(33)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:37:13 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

It was not because of a personal experience, but because of scientific curiosity then the late Eileen Garrett of the Parapsychology Foundation entrusted to me an investigation of haunted hauses in the Eastern US which lead to the best-seller "Ghost Hunter" which somehow became a name for me.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(35)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:38:20 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

Have you ever seen a ghost yourself?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(36)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:41:27 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

No, but I have heard ghostly voices in a house in Dublin and I was able to photograph under test conditions the monks of an English church who had been dead for 400 years. I have seen the spirit of my late mother many years ago and I have heard the voice of a relative clear and loud after his death.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(37)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:43:39 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

So does your belief in these matters stem more from these personal experiences or from the investigations you have conducted?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(38)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:46:42 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

I don't believe in beliefs or in disbeliefs, only in factual evidence carefully presented. The reason that I wrote my latest book "Ghosts" was to give people a chance to hear all the evidence for their existance, purpose and how one is to deal with them when one encounters one of the unfortunate ones.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(39)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:47:25 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

Many people who see ghosts come to you for advice. Why? What do you tell them?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(40)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:50:08 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Both individual questioners and people at my lectures are reminded that ghosts or the apparition of spirits of departed ones or friends are not to be feared. They are not monsters or figments of the imagination but human beings in another dimension alive and well or with ghosts, unable to go there.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(41)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:50:43 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

What is the most impressive case you have ever investigated?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(42)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:53:12 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

A Fifth Avenue ghost who disclosed the name and address of his landlady during the mediums' trance and my ability to find her as well as a handyman to whom he paid the rent in 1873, both listed in the records.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(44)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:55:09 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

I trust that the medium could not have known this information?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(45)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:56:35 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

She did not even know the address where we had taken her. And all research started at the end of the many sessions.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(46)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:57:34 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

One last question: Has your work in this field led you to make any adjustments to your own life?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(47)
Date: Tue Aug 12 22:59:06 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Yes, it certainly has. I fear not death for I know where I am going and I have become convinced that there is a higher order of things, a universal law and that life is eternal.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(48)
Date: Tue Aug 12 23:00:23 EDT 1997
From: Moderator At: 168.100.204.161

On that note we will end our interview. The shear number of ghost and spirit cases out there -- and in your book -- is absolutely astounding. Something is up and I think you've done a excellent job sorting out what's what. Now if only more scientists would pay attention to this phenomenon.

Well, our time is up. Thank you very much, Hans Holzer (and Claudia Strauss for the internet connection). For High Strangeness, this is Patrick Huyghe. Goodnight!

MsgId: *high_strangeness(50)
Date: Tue Aug 12 23:02:32 EDT 1997
From: Hans Holzer At: 152.163.195.151

Good night and thank you from both of us, and may all of your ghosts be friendly!


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