Hans Holzer Loved By Witches Everywhere!

As a Wiccan and Witch myself I had seen Prof. Holzer's work even before I knew his name through my studies in Ghost Hunting and Investigation techniques. When I was a lot younger and taking up my first studies in "The Craft" Prof. Holzer's voice made itself known to me loud and clear through his gifts he had already given and continued to give to the Wiccan/Witch community. The authors of this article are one and the same that published a "must have always" book and tool that were a constant companion to me as a Wiccan and Witch as it was for all others like me. After all, what would a Witch's day, week, month or year be like without The Witches' Almanac?! We'd fall off our broomsticks not knowing what planetary hour it is, what the moon's phase is, what kind (or name) of moon we are under ...... All of those things essential to Witches everywhere was just a glance away in this book! After all, even in this age of technology and the Internet it still isn't as easy and it may seem to find out which way to fly. That book is like a Wiccan Broomstick GPS system. Why stir our cauldrons widdershins and have it blow up in our face when the moon said go deosil? Or what if we stirred in our desires deosil when the planetary hour and spell called for widdershins? I'm proud to share this article I found from one of our main resources to magical working on Dr. Hans Holzer. Know there was more to his work than often met the eye and he had a hand in many pies. Let the spell be spoken in rhyme to manifest your desire every time!

I had an inkling of what I was getting myself into when I presented this idea of my blogging about Dr. Holzer's work to his daughter, Alexandra Holzer, about two years ago to honor his life and work and also to bring it back into the view of the modern day paranormal researchers but I had almost forgotten one thing: The work to honor him must be as deeply researched as he, himself, researched his own work. Dr. Holzer was a very thorough man and rarely missed a detail to make it very precise what he was saying and not saying and what his evidence had shown. I vow here to do the same in honor of him and plead that more researchers of today take that kind of care with their own research, presentations, and words to better the understanding of the community as a whole and help the people of the world who need us.

Blessed Be, Dr. Hans Holzer!

Source Link: The Witches' Almanac: Hans Holzer

Hans Holzer
January 26, 1920 – April 26, 2009

I was privileged to enjoy the friendship of Hans Holzer for fifteen years and will miss his company. I visited him from time to time at his home in New York and loved our time together. Hans made himself comfortable on his easy chair, his cat Isis on his lap.

"You need to touch your animals," he would say. "That'’s why they’re called pets."

The room was filled with artifacts collected from his travels and from local flea markets over the years. We rarely shared meals. Hans was a lifelong vegan and his diets were difficult to follow.

My friend enjoyed talking about his busy, event-filled life. I would bring my latest finds for him to sign – any of his out-of-print books I had discovered in used-book stores. Hans wrote an amazing number of books, around one hundred forty or so, maybe three or four a year, and an incredible number of articles and scenarios.

He may be most famous for his ghost-hunting TV series and for the Amityville Horror books and films. But for "Old Religion" witchcraft and newer Wicca communities, Hans Holzer's work had special significance. He provided information about the Craft when publishers didn't have much taste for the subject and interest was surfacing. The Witches’ Almanac, first published in 1971, was one of the few available sources.

One of the author's books most important to the Craft is Witches: True Encounters with Wicca, Wizards, Covens, Cults and Magick. The huge book has terrific basic information, with chapters including material on what witchcraft is, the place of the Old Religion in the modern world, how to become a witch. There are interviews with key practitioners. Hans asked me to contribute photos and discussions of my own practices.

My friend enjoyed a matter-of-fact, demystifying attitude about pagan beliefs. According to Hans, "To people untrained in such practices, favorable results sometimes seem 'miraculous,' although they are merely natural. There is, after all, nothing in this universe that is supernatural – only natural laws not fully understood."

We have been very lucky to have had Hans Holzer's ideas within the Almanac’s pages in recent years. In the 2007/2008 issue, check out "Wicca and Christianity: A Personal Perspective." In the 2009/2010 issue you'll read an insightful biographical interview by Robin Antoni.

Andrew Theitic
April 2009

Obituary - Hans Holzer, Ghost Hunter, Dies at 89

I found it only fitting to include Professor Holzer's Obituary in this blog, keeping always in mind this blog is about his life and not his death. In honor of his memory it is in that light I present this Obituary from the New York Times.

Source Link: New York Times

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: April 29, 2009 

 

Hans Holzer, whose investigations into the paranormal took him to haunted houses all over the world, most notably the Long Island house that inspired “The Amityville Horror,” died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.

The death was confirmed by his daughter Alexandra Holzer.

Mr. Holzer — who wrote more than 140 books on ghosts, the afterlife, witchcraft, extraterrestrial beings and other phenomena associated with the realm he called “the other side” — carried out his most famous investigation with the medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers in 1977. Together they roamed the house in Amityville, in which a young man, Ronald DeFeo Jr., had murdered his parents and four siblings in 1974.

The house had become notorious after its next owners claimed to have been tormented by a series of spine-chilling noises and eerie visitations, set forth in the best-selling 1977 book “The Amityville Horror: A True Story,” written by Jay Anson.

After Ms. Johnson-Meyers channeled the spirit of a Shinnecock Indian chief, who said that the house stood on an ancient Indian burial ground, Mr. Holzer took photographs of bullet holes from the 1974 murders in which mysterious halos appeared.

Mr. Holzer went on to write a nonfiction book about the house, “Murder in Amityville” (1979), which formed the basis for the 1982 film “Amityville II: The Possession”; he also wrote two novels, “The Amityville Curse” (1981) and “The Secret of Amityville” (1985).

Hans Holzer was born in Vienna and developed an interest in the supernatural when his uncle Henry told him stories about ghosts and fairies. He studied archaeology, ancient history and numismatics at the University of Vienna but left Austria for New York with his family in 1938, just before the Nazi takeover.

After studying Japanese at Columbia University, Mr. Holzer indulged an infatuation with the theater in the 1950s. He wrote sketches for the short-lived revue “Safari!” and the book and music for “Hotel Excelsior,” about a group of young Americans in Paris, which opened in Provincetown, Mass., and proceeded no farther. He also wrote theater reviews for The London Sporting Review.

He earned a master’s degree in comparative religion and a doctorate in parapsychology at the London College of Applied Science. He went on to teach parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology.
In 1962 he married the Countess Catherine Genevieve Buxhoeveden. The marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter Alexandra, of Chester, N.Y., he is survived by another daughter, Nadine Widener of Manhattan, and five grandchildren.

In pursuit of ghosts, Mr. Holzer began investigating haunted houses and recording the testimony of subjects who believed that they had had paranormal experiences. This field research, usually conducted with a medium and a Polaroid camera, provided the material for dozens of books, beginning with “Ghost Hunter” (1963).

Mr. Holzer called himself “a scientific investigator of the paranormal.” He disliked the word “supernatural,” since it implied phenomena beyond the reach of science, and did not believe in the word “belief,” which suggests an irrational adherence to ideas not supported by fact. Nevertheless, he held in contempt electronic gadgetry for detecting cold spots, magnetic anomalies and the like, preferring direct communication through a medium.

He did believe in reincarnation and past lives (he vividly recalled the Battle of Glencoe in 1692 in one of his Scottish lifetimes) and was a Wiccan high priest, as well as a vegan.

He felt completely at ease with ghosts. “In all my years of ghost hunting I have never been afraid,” he told Leonard Nimoy on the television series “In Search Of” (for which he was a consultant). “After all, a ghost is only a fellow human being in trouble.” Specifically, a human who has died in traumatic circumstances, does not realize he or she is dead and is, as he told the Web site OfSpirit.com in 2003, “confused as to their real status.”

His continuing ghost quest yielded books like “Ghosts I’ve Met” (1965), “Yankee Ghosts” (1966), “The Great British Ghost Hunt” (1975) and “Hans Holzer’s Travel Guide to Haunted Houses “ (1998). But he had a wide-ranging interest in paranormal phenomena and the occult, reflected in books as varied as “Beyond Medicine” (1973), “Inside Witchcraft” (1980) and “Love Beyond the Grave” (1992).

Mr. Holzer saw life on the other side in sharp detail. As he described it to the Web site ghostvillage.com in 2005, it is strangely like this side, and bureaucratic to boot. The dead who become restless and wish to return to Earth for another go-round must fall in line and register with a clerk.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 30, 2009, on page B13 of the New York edition.

One of Professor Hans Holzer's Interview Videos On the Amityville Case

Here are the videos that I promised in the first post showcasing the interview with Prof. Holzer and the Amityville case. There are more to come. This one is the specific interview I spoke of. I love Prof. Holzer's remarks!

Description: http://www.amityvillefiles.com

The Amityville Files is the largest archive of Amityville-related research on the web. Our mission is to present our readers with both the facts and the myths surrounding the Amityville case from all sides of the controversy. The site includes a vast archive of information, allowing the viewer to do their own research into the topic, and decide for themselves where the truth lies in this highly controversial case.

Is the story of America's most famous haunted house real horror, or a common hoax?

In 1976 The Lutz family fled from their home in Amityville, Long Island, claiming that they had been driven out by terrifying and unexplained phenomena. Their story went on to become a worldwide bestseller which spawned dozens of books and films.

This followed the mysterious slaughtering of an entire family one night a few years previous. The murderer claimed it was the work of the devil.

Mediums and psychic investigators have claimed that there is a curse on the property, while others believe the gruesome history has been invented as a money-making scheme.

This documentary sets out to discover the truth about one of American folklore's most notorious mysteries and features George Lutz's last on-camera interview before he died in 2006.

The "Amityville Horror House" Up For Sale - May 30, 2010

I find it only fitting, as one who's studied Prof. Holzer's work all my life and admired him both as an individual and a ground-breaker in the paranormal field of study, that my first post here in this blog to honor his work be showing just how correct he really is on things. I admire you, Prof. Holzer, and I know you're watching somewhere.

I wrote this article for "A Paranormal World", one of my other blogs on Sunday, May 30, 2010.

On May 25th, 2010 I saw on CNN that the house that is famous for the Amityville Horror is now up for sale. Wolf Blitzer was asked if he was interested in buying it and without hesitation a big “NO” came from his mouth, even before the question was fully out of the lady’s mouth. I couldn’t help but chuckle and agree because that was my own reaction, too.

Professor Hans Holzer, Phd., did a television interview on the Amityville case that he investigated while the haunting of the Lutz family was still in progress. The interview was much later, rather recently before his death, in the timeline of events. I will post the video of this interview in the next posts. I found it quite intriguing that his prediction in that interview did come true. In fact, I have been waiting to hear this news also just as he was waiting. It was a “if and when it occurs” issue to Professor Holzer kind of thing. He stated he would not be surprised to hear of spontaneous fires and was watching the papers for the sale of the home and property. I’m not sure about the fires occurring as his prediction in the present time frame but the for sale part is indeed true at last. He had watched the newspapers in NY to see this ad since his initial learning of new owners.

The article states the address of the home had been changed but according to other sources the telling eye-like windows were also replaced to make the home less noticeable to “fans and fanatics”.

Here it is:

Source Link: BBC News - 'Amityville Horror' home goes on sale for $1.5m

Article:

Six members of the DeFeo family were shot and killed in the house in 1974.

The house made famous by the 1970s Amityville Horror film has gone on sale in Long Island, New York, with a price tag of $1.15m (£800,000).

The five-bedroom house at 108 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, gained notoriety through the film based on the story of the Lutz family, who moved in in 1975.

The Lutzes say they soon discovered that the house was haunted.

Several months earlier, six members of another family had been shot and killed as they slept in the house.
The family's eldest son, Ronald DeFeo Jr, was convicted of the 1974 murders.

A book and a series of films based on the events described by the Lutzes followed.

The high asking price of the house - a Dutch Colonial style home overlooking a canal - is based on renovation work, reports say.

It has had several owners since the 1970s. The address has been changed from the original 112 Ocean Avenue in a effort to keep onlookers away.

Another article says that the organization PETA may rent the home: PETA Aims To Rent 'Amityville Horror' House


Footnote: I've not done any further research into the selling/buying of the home since I found out about this the week it went up for sale but will post updates when I find them.