Ghostwriter The Polaroid Ghost & Other True Tales of the Paranormal

Joe Augustyn

© 2014 All Rights Reserved

 

 

GROWING  UP  WITH  GHOSTS  

My personal history with ghosts began several decades before I was born.

Several members of my family have reported ghostly experiences, at least as far back as my great-grandfather. With several members of the recent generations—uncles, cousins, grandmother, myself—having paranormal experiences, I have no doubt that a form of psychic mediumship runs back through the family for centuries.

My father’s mother grew up in southern Poland, on a farm in a tiny village outside of Tarnow, not far from the base of the Tatras—the highest peaks of the Carpathian Mountains. Students of history will know that Poland didn’t technically exist at the end of the 19th Century—it had been sliced up by Russia, Germany and Austria a century before. But the Poles rigorously maintained their language and customs, despite vicious campaigns to stamp it out.

Anyone who’s been to a traditional Polish wedding knows how vigorously the Poles like to party. Vodka was invented by them and flows freely at every event. And no dance in the world is more energetic than the polka, with couples whirling like dervishes, swinging their partners like square dancers amped up on meth. Every religious feast day and holiday is an excuse for a long raucous party.

While people today can schmooze live via skype or cellphone, at the turn of the 20th Century people had to travel many miles to touch base face-to-face with old friends. In the farm country, families traveled for miles to celebrate holidays with friends and relatives. And with no television or movies or even radio back in those days, any party or celebration was milked for all it was worth.

And so it was on a steamy summer night that my great-grandfather Pomykacz found himself with two of his children a few miles from home in a nearby town, at the tail end of a festive celebration. His exhausted wife had left earlier, taking their other children home in an overloaded horse-cart. Great-granddad had stayed to party a while longer, along with his five-year-old daughter, Bertha, and her three-year-old brother. Poles are generally a free-spirited and family oriented people, so Polish children are no strangers to late night partying. (At least not in my family.)

Sometime around midnight the trio headed home. Her father took little Bertha by the hand and hoisted his sleeping son into his other arm. They bid friends and family farewell and headed off into the countryside, a long hike ahead of them.

As they hiked down the lonely dirt road the night grew foggy. After a mile or so walking through the thickening mist they approached a crossroads, marked with the ubiquitous wooden grotto housing a religious icon to ward off evil spirits.

 

In many cultures crossroads are believed to be multi-dimensional crossroads as well as earthly ones, allowing spirits to cross over from the other side. And in the days of yore when local superstitions carried more weight than government regulations, suicides were often buried at crossroads in the belief that their spirits would be trapped there, confused as to which road to choose and therefore unable to find their way home in case they they returned as vampiric ghosts.

As the little group of hikers reached the crossroads a figure appeared in the fog. It was a woman dressed from head to toe in white, with a long veil covering her face.

“May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” great-granddad spoke nervously. It was a traditional greeting, even more mellifluous in Polish than it sounds in English.

“And with your spirit,” replied the mysterious woman in white. It was the traditional answer to the greeting. But somehow it seemed more poignant, under the circumstances, coming from such an eerie source. And with your spirit.

 

GENIUS  LOCI  

The "Sightings" investigative crew was tired but still enthusiastic. Early results

had been promising, but the task was as laborious as any occult investigation. Although an exciting and romantic occupation, psychic research is as demanding as any scientific venture, and ghost hunting is particularly tedious. The simple truth is, even in the most notoriously haunted houses, ghosts don't punch time clocks.

Over one hundred ghost photos had been snapped on Polaroid film in John Matkowsky’s house by the time the "Sightings" crew became involved, which was several months after the “ghostwriter” phenomena began.

Executive produced by Henry Winkler, who earned worldwide fame starring as The Fonz on the hit TV show “Happy Days,” “Sightings” was an early entry in the second wave of investigative paranormal programming, along with the Robert Stack hosted “Unexplained Mysteries” and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy. The genre actually dates back to the 1950s with John Newland’s landmark television series “One Step Beyond,” which presented dramatizations of exceptionally unique and intriguing cases of occult phenomena and a memorable on-camera trip on magic mushrooms by the intrepid host.

The “Sightings” producer and production crew had arrived well prepared to debunk the “Polaroid ghost” phenomena, augmenting their ranks with a photo expert and parapsychologist Kerry Gaynor from UCLA. The investigators had already witnessed a few Polaroids develop bearing ghostly messages etched in ectoplasmic scrawl, but were not yet convinced there was no trickery involved. They had yet to conduct an experiment that satisfied their own scientific standards—and it was for this purpose that they’d recruited the expert assistants.

In an effort to circumvent any tampering by those involved in the case, they had also brought along a case of fresh, factory sealed film direct from the Polaroid Corporation, and, according to the "Sightings" producer, were "checking, rechecking and logging it carefully" as they doled it out one pack at a time in the course of the paranormal experiment.

The day was wearing thin. Aside from the residents—John Matkowsky and his new roommate, John Huckert—and a few trusted friends and neighbors, the modest home was crammed with the “Sightings” video crew and their equipment, the show’s producer and her assistants, parapsychologist Gaynor, and Edson Williams, an imaging expert from the Brooks Institute of Photography, whose main job that day was to keep an attentive eye on the Polaroid film, from the first steps of unpacking and loading through to its final development, and to log it all carefully using the factory coding printed on the film stock and packaging.

 

Parapsychologist Kerry Gaynor of UCLA and imaging expert Edson Williams

of the Brooks Institute monitoring the logging and loading of film sent directly from the Polaroid Corporation during a “Sightings” investigation.

Under these rigid controls, no ghost photos had been produced that day, and

inklings of skepticism were spreading among those present. What happened next was captured on video. It’s the kind of evidence that skeptics

like Michael Shermer and his comrades who make their living as professional naysayers routinely declare does not exist.

After duly logging the code numbers in his official record book, Mr. Williams handed a factory sealed packet of film to John Matkowsky, who casually ripped open its foil covering with his teeth and loaded it into one of the four cameras in use that day, all in full view of the video crew and their cameras.

“Okay? What shall we ask?” asked someone. At this point in the day, weary of getting no response from the phantom

communicator who on a previous occasion had identified himself as "Wright”— a name that turned up in the history of the property unearthed at City Hall—it was becoming a chore just to muster fresh questions to ask.

One of the flaws in the televised report on "Sightings" is that John Huckert asked the question, "Are you here because of the guys (guys meaning Huckert and Matkowsky) or because of this place?" In fact, as is evident when studying the raw video footage shot by the "Sightings" crew that day, the question was first proposed by a woman off-camera—and then repeated louder by John Huckert before John Matkowsky snapped the next Polaroid picture.

 

In clear view of the videographer's lens, Matkowsky then removed the ejected Polaroid shot from the camera and held it up for all to see as it developed. Forty-five seconds later—the entire process captured on video—the Polaroid picture developed. Over the image of Huckert in the background of the photo were the words "genius loci" suspended in the air in front of him, and several ghostly forms.

A surge of excitement energized everyone present. A Latin dictionary was quickly consulted by one of the investigators. (Foreign language dictionaries were on hand because foreign language messages had been received on prior occasions.)

"A spirit connected to a place," she announced. But a second Latin dictionary brought by Kerry Gaynor offered a more detailed

definition, which he read out loud: "The guardian spirit of a man or a place." The answer was in perfect keeping with the nature of earlier responses from the

spirit—precise yet artfully ambiguous. Edson Williams, the photo expert who inspected the Polaroid camera before and

after the incident and had carefully monitored the loading of the camera, admitted having an eerie feeling as he first examined the photo with his likeness obscured by the ectoplasmic writing.

The evidence couldn’t be clearer. A packet of factory sealed film, torn open and loaded into a carefully checked camera, the entire process recorded on video, resulting in an uncannily clever answer to a question proposed at random by a third party in full view of a roomful of witnesses. Impossible. But a done deed. The video evidence exists.

 

Perhaps in this age of ultimate cynicism where even DNA evidence is discarded

by jurors in favor of subjective testimony, no evidence can be deemed sufficient to prove the existence of otherworldly entities.

But maybe, if the science of parapsychology is allowed to evolve—with proper funding and respect from the scientific community—there will come a day when a device is developed that can capture evidence sufficient to satisfy even the most hard-hearted of skeptics.

When that day comes, with its undeniable glimpse at the spiritual underpinnings of this ball of mortal illusion we call reality, the human race will take a giant leap forward on the climb from animal to angel. We will stare, in wonder... in glee... or merely in simple acceptance... at what only a few lonely voyagers have thus far been graced to see.