The short story was that my interest in all things occult started at a very early age when the mundane aspects of life gave way to the fantastic worlds of witches, ghosts and demons. When I first discovered that there was another world – a dark side – that secretly coexisted with our everyday grind I began to make it my business to explore that more mysterious and bizarre plane where people see floating images at their bedposts at night, hear moans and screams coming from abandon rooms and are plagued by magical “curses”. It excited me to think that the stuff of horror movies could be true. I fantasized that maybe there really were witches casting spells on people and flying on their brooms at night while I lay asleep in bed. Maybe vampires really did have those awesome powers where they could fly like bats and dematerialize into the fog. If these pilgrims of the night actually existed I wanted to find them, to meet them and most of all learn how they made their magic.
It was a hobby at first, reading the school library books on ghosts, psychics, mediums and strange creatures. But my appetite for the occult grew with an epiphany. I came across a book titled Ghosts I’ve Met, by preeminent ghost hunter, lecturer and occult expert Dr. Hans Holzer, (who coincidentally later became my friend, advisor and professor at the New York Committee for the Investigation of Paranormal Occurrences). Holzer‘s book was not the run-of-the-mill ghost book – he named names, as they say. His eyewitness accounts of paranormal events were so vividly described that by today’s standards the book would have immediately been made into a reality TV series. Holzer didn’t just write about ghosts and the occult, he lived in that world. That book and subsequent titles took me by the hand and said, “See, there really are ghosts and witches and this is who they are and where they live. Another milestone was when I interviewed the late Dr. Raymond McNally for my college newspaper. McNally is the author of In Search of Dracula – the first real investigative work on the Dracula myth that opened the doors to Transylvania as more than a mythical place of monsters. The dedicated author was also a scholarly and levelheaded person who took the dark side seriously, presenting some real evidence that vampires exist. ” Eureka! I finally had hard facts that can prove the unreal is real. That’s all I needed. I was hooked on scary stuff, and even if I didn’t believe what I couldn’t see, the yearning to uncover the mysterious became my quest.
My obsession lasted for years, and despite my enthusiasm I always looked at every description of a paranormal event with a skeptical eye, more so that I wouldn’t be disappointed than a non-believer. But I hadn’t found any hard evidence to support a bonafide paranormal event. Sure, I visited a number of haunted houses and attended myriad occult ceremonies and rituals, but I had never been blown away by what I witnessed. No ethereal wisps flew around the room, no demons spun their heads off and shot green vomit at me and I never, ever saw a ghost. That was until I went to work as a reporter for an occult news magazine in the early ‘70’s called Beyond Reality. After a few months writing about Bigfoot, UFOs and vampire graves, my editor assigned me to stay the night at the infamous Amityville Horror house on Long Island. The results are stuff for another book, but the experience made me a believer that regardless of how it’s described – there ARE other planes of existence we haven’t a clue about.
After a few hours of chatting and recounting my own brand of ghost story, (and bringing in Silvana, my “Emma Peele-like” psychic Czech colleague, dressed in her catwoman leather outfit) Vincent and I decided to create a specialized arm of his detective agency dedicated to cases involving the occult and paranormal. I christened the groundbreaking agency X-Investigations – the world’s only paranormal agency affiliated with a licensed detective agency that had the resources to solve cases both in this world and the next!
The stories that follow are hand picked cases based on real investigations straight from X-Investigations private files that have been chosen to allow you to draw your own conclusions as to whether the events were truly paranormal. Some have photographic evidence to help you decide. Others will baffle you. The names of the clients have been changed to protect people who are concerned that they would be labeled “crackpots” or witches if their peers and neighbors discovered their dilemmas. Some were frightened about retribution from others in the occult world.
Sit back and become an armchair detective with a Sam Spade of the supernatural. And by the way… now, who ya gonna call? - the Occult Investigator!
CHAPTER 1 – THE CURSE OF THE VELVET ROOM
It haunted her like she had committed a murder. Each time Mary Montrose entered the Velvet Room café on the Upper East Side of Manhattan a sense of fearful dread overcame her. She felt guilty, evil, ugly, even sinful. She felt as she had done something terribly wrong and she would somehow have to pay a horrible price. But what troubled her most was not the feeling of darkness, but the confusion in her mind as to why she should feel so badly. She was not an evil person. She did nothing to harm anyone in her life that would warrant these awful, malignant compulsions.
And what was even more disturbing was why did this feeling attack her only when she visited the quaint Madison Avenue café? The shop pleased her so much, decorated in the rich, ornate and lush Victorian period style? She loved the place. She loved the velvety soft sofas and how the cascading drapery framed the large front window. When she looked out of the window onto Second Avenue through the purple and red drapery she imagined herself a Victorian lady waiting for her gentleman’s carriage. Her heart beat rapidly and her face flushed during her café daydreams. But the glow was quickly overcome by that gnawing, ominous sense of depression that leaked into her mind and body, almost causing her to bolt from the café in a state of hysterical panic.
Mary simply couldn’t understand how a café, a storefront, could evoke such a terrible feeling within her. The first time she noticed it was in the early winter of 1995 – just after Christmas. She remembered it vividly because the New York holiday lull between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day stood out in her mind. She recalled how she desperately tried to hang onto that festive and secure feeling between the two occasions, but then remembered how it was suddenly interrupted by the Velvet Room café’s sullen shadow.
It began after a full morning’s shopping along Madison Avenue at her favorite boutiques, when Mary decided she needed a coffee break to recharge her energies for the remainder of the day. Although she vaguely remembered a small café that she promised herself she would one day visit, she couldn’t put her finger on its name or where it was located. Mary knew it appealed to her because of its décor and ambience, and that it seemed to “pop up” whenever she was shopping nearby, but she had no real sense of where the little shop actually was. She was determined to find the haven so she could rest her tired feet and also satisfy her curiOccult Investigatorty about the café. Walking aimlessly and peering down side streets looking for the shop, Mary was just about to give up and enter a Starbucks’ when a screeching taxicab jumped the curb of 56th street taking out a mailbox, three street signs and nearly crushing her into a plate glass window. She was knocked off of her feet but she fortunately managed to avoid being seriously hurt.
Once Mary caught her breath and shook the cobwebs from her head, she assured the group of people who circled around her that she was indeed not hurt. She then walked a few steps, looked up and was amazed to see that she was directly in front of the storefront she was looking for. The Velvet Room café’s ornamental sign stared at her like a welcoming beacon and she instinctively entered the store unaware that her new favorite respite was to be the beginning of harrowing journey into the supernatural that carried with it a malignant ancient curse, strange apparitions and a greedy, deranged blood relation who would affect her life for years to come.
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GHOST HUNTERS
When I pitched the idea for the creation of a special unit of Intercontinental Investigations, a prominent New York City detective agency, that would seriously investigate paranormal and occult cases, I expected to get a lukewarm response and possibly some feigned interest from my friend who owned the agency, mostly out of respect and a mutual understanding of my interest in “things