‘The Holzer Files': When Talking to Dead People Becomes the Family Business
Spine-chilling audio and visual recordings documented by America’s first ghost hunter, Dr. Hans Holzer, are opened and reexamined by his daughter Alexandra
Parapsychologist Dr. Hans Holzer changed the face of paranormal research more than a half-century ago, and in Travel Channel’s latest mystical show, “The Holzer Files,” his daughter Alexandra Holzer proudly carries on his legacy by revisiting his groundbreaking – and frequently creepy — work.
On “The Holzer Files,” true hauntings dating back to the 1950s that were documented in letters, photographs and super-chilling audio and visual recordings by America’s first ghost hunter, Hans Holzer, are being reopened and explored by a dedicated paranormal team led by investigator Dave Schrader, psychic medium Cindy Kaza, equipment tech Shane Pittman and Holzer’s daughter, Alexandra.
“I grew up in that environment, and not just with Dad, but with Mother,” Alexandra Holzer said, adding that her mom was a Russian countess. “They both had that background in different areas. And it’s fascinating. So I really can’t get away from it.”
Dr. Holzer wrote more than 140 books about ghosts, the afterlife, witchcraft, extraterrestrial beings and other phenomena. One of his most notable investigations was the Long Island house that inspired “The Amityville Horror.” Plus, Dan Aykroyd has said that he became so obsessed with Dr. Holzer’s writings that it inspired him to write a ghost hunting story of his own. “That’s when the idea of my film ‘Ghostbusters’ was born.”
After her father died in 2009, Holzer went public with her interest in and intuitive talent for communicating with the dead public but didn’t really know what to do with it. Then fate stepped in — when she says that her recently deceased father spoke to her. It happened when she was contacted by Florida paranormal investigators who asked her to do a ghost box session (a radio with a frequency scan mode that ghost hunters say communicate with spirits). She reluctantly agreed.
While Holzer was on the phone with the investigators, they were filming the session on their end with the ghost box in hand.
“Nobody was looking to call out to my father,” Holzer recalled. “They weren’t even thinking like that, they just wanted to invite me because I had been in the field already, and Dad and I had worked together when he was still alive. So, several minutes into the session, a name came through the box.”
It spoke in a different language and had a Viennese accent. Holzer believed it to be her father.
“I’ve learned throughout the past decade, you’ll get voices in different tones and accents and sometimes not speaking English because the box pulls in their energy from all around and we’re made of energy,” she explained. “So, he was announced. Trying not to cry, I said, ‘Daddy, are you OK?’ Which is the first thing that you would want to know if your parent has crossed over and you’re trying to communicate. And knowing who he was in life, knowing everything that I was taught, I became that little girl. He came through and you could hear, ‘Yes,’ and then you heard, ‘love you.’ And that was it, and it changed everything for me.”
Unexplainable activity began to rev up at her home about four years ago that further guided her to follow in her father’s footsteps — like, his books literally flying off the bookcase in her room. That’s when she and her husband said, “OK, he’s got our attention.”
“Since then, for several years now, we have been communicating with him. He’ll come when he’s needed,” she said. “I’ll have vivid dreams and we go into dream analysis. It really is all connected. If you have a poignant dream, when somebody you love has passed and they come back and you’re in a kind of a room that you might recognize and maybe they’re dressed not for the right season or time — that’s really them visiting you. I know he’s here.”
And the words his spirit spoke to her that have had a lasting hold are simple and poignant: “One of the things he said to me when we had a session with him, he said, ‘I’m still alive.’ And that’s something he would stay in life. God bless him.”
“The Holzer Files” airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. PT/ET on Travel Channel.
15 Facts About the 'Conjuring'-Verse Hauntings, Including 'The Nun' (Photos)
“The Conjuring” has led to spin-offs and sequels based on the experiences of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. But what actually “happened” and what was invented for the movies? Here’s a rundown of where real accounts and Hollywood screenwriting meet in “The Conjuring," the “Annabelle” movies, and 'The Nun."
“The Conjuring” is based on a real reported haunting | The first film in the “Conjuring”-verse is mostly an actual, reported event, if you believe in that sort of thing. As demonstrated with photos during the end credits of the movie, the Perron family really did exist, and reported they were being attacked by some kind of entity. The Warrens did, in fact, investigate. Both Lorraine Warren and the Perron family signed off on the movie as well (Ed died in 2006).
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The Warrens really do have that museum of creepy things | The Warrens began their research in 1952 and decided to open the museum in the early 1980s, after their collection of haunted objects began to accumulate. The Warren Occult Museum is housed in the basement of the Warrens’ actual home in Monroe, Connecticut, and is full of haunted artifacts and images taken from their cases. It’s home to an organ that plays itself, a mirror that is said to summon spirits and a coffin owned by a “modern vampire.” To keep the evil at bay, a local priest comes once a month to bless everything on display.
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Annabelle is a real doll | The opening portion of “The Conjuring” deals with Annabelle, a doll possessed by a demon. The story about two nurses who wound up with a haunted doll is a real case the Warrens dealt with. Ed and Lorraine really did take the doll back with them to their museum and keep it in a glass case.
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That’s not what Annabelle looks like | Among the liberties taken with bringing the Annabelle story to the screen, though, is changing the doll itself. The eerie American Girl porcelain look isn’t like the doll from the real case — instead, it was a big Raggedy Ann doll with red yarn hair and button eyes.
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The exorcism in “The Conjuring” never happened | Although the people involved claim many elements of the haunting of the Perrons really happened, the movie’s climactic possession and exorcism by Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) isn’t among them. Lorraine Warren said her husband would never have tried to perform an exorcism, since he wasn’t a priest.
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But Andrea Perron, one of the Perron children, who was 11 at the time of the events in the movie, said she did see her mother Carolyn (played by Lily Taylor in the movie) possessed. Andrea said she secretly watched a seance during the haunting and saw her mother speak a language she didn’t recognize in a different voice -- before her chair levitated and Carolyn was thrown across the room.
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“Annabelle” is not the true backstory of the doll | The first spinoff of “The Conjuring,” “Annabelle,” serves as an origin story for the creepy doll. But none of the stuff that happens to Mia (Annabelle Wallis) and John Gordon (Ward Horton) has any documentation in reality — it was all created for the movie. The Warrens’ case with Annabelle starts in the hobby shop seen at the end of the film, where the doll was purchased by the mother of one of the nurses.
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Annabelle might have a real victim, though | It wasn’t in any of the movies, but Annabelle might have a real victim. After it was in the Warren museum, it might have inflicted its evil on someone. According to the Warrens, a man came to the museum and banged on Annabelle’s case, mocking the doll until Ed Warren threw him out. Lorraine Warren claims the man’s girlfriend told him the pair were laughing about the doll afterward while riding away on his motorcycle — until he mysteriously lost control and crashed into a tree.
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“The Amityville Horror” is also based on a Warren case | Mentioned in “The Conjuring 2” is another haunting the Warrens worked on in Amityville, N.Y. In that case, the Lutz family was haunted after moving into the home in which Ronnie DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family the year before. Bits of the story of the haunting are part of the story of "The Conjuring 2," and the case went on to inspire all of the movies in the various “Amityville Horror” franchises. (The Lutzes' story is now known to be a hoax.)
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Amityville was also a hoax | The Amityville haunting story has been widely debunked. Ronnie DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, admitted the story was a hoax he and George Lutz dreamed up. Weber had hoped to use the haunting to get his client a new trial, and the Lutzes profited from the story's widespread notoriety and fame.
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“The Conjuring 2” is based on another real haunting | The Enfield Haunting is one of the most famous and best-documented supposed hauntings ever, and a lot of what’s seen in “The Conjuring 2” is part of the record of what’s actually supposed to have happened. For one thing, the recording of Janet Hodgson allegedly speaking in the voice of Bill Wilkins does exist in some form, as do images that allegedly show the children levitating. Police responding to calls from the family say they did see furniture move on its own, just like in the movie.
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But there’s debate surrounding it, too | The Hodgsons really did get caught faking evidence of the Enfield Haunting. Janet Hodgson said she faked a very small amount of the evidence in the case, claiming it was because so many people were investigating and sometimes spooky things wouldn’t happen on cue. And according to at least one investigator on the case, the Warrens’ involvement was much less than in the movie — supposedly they showed up “uninvited” and stayed only one day.
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“The Crooked Man” is a real English nursery rhyme | And it’s distinctly less sinister than in "The Conjuring 2." It was first recorded in the 1840s. The monster seen in the movie was actually just a manifestation of the demon antagonist Valak used to attack and scare the Hodgson family. But the Crooked Man is getting his own movie spinoff, and so is Valak, so expect some new backstory for "The Crooked Man" likely not based in any real hauntings or cases.
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“Annabelle: Creation” is another Hollywood addition to the mythos | Since the movie “Annabelle” is a Hollywood creation and not the actual, true backstory of the real-life doll in the Warren museum, the same is true of “Annabelle: Creation.” The second movie is another prequel to “The Conjuring” that goes back even further in the doll’s life, to track where it first came from, but it's pretty far removed from the Warrens' cases at this point.
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The Demon Nun Valak is a “real” demon... | The demonic nun that’s a major antagonist in “The Conjuring 2” is mostly an invention of director James Wan based on a conversation he had with Lorraine Warren about “a spectral entity that has haunted her in her house.” Valak, though, is based in demonic lore and mentioned in several books on demons from the 14th and 15th Century.
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...but "The Nun" isn't based on a true story |
The story of Valak gets fleshed out in "The Nun" a bit, explaining how the demon haunted a convent in Romania and giving something of a reason for it appearing as a nun, but it's all invented for the series and not based on real history or the Warrens' cases. Valak is known as "The Defiler," so turning positive religious imagery scary fits that description. The demon lore Valak is based on doesn't say anything about appearing as a nun, though -- it's described as a cherub-looking child with wings and rides some kind of two-headed dragon. It is associated with serpents and snakes, though, something that makes it into the movie.
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Here’s what’s based on real-life hauntings, and what isn’t
“The Conjuring” has led to spin-offs and sequels based on the experiences of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. But what actually “happened” and what was invented for the movies? Here’s a rundown of where real accounts and Hollywood screenwriting meet in “The Conjuring," the “Annabelle” movies, and 'The Nun."
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