Harold Scharper and Why I Loved Reading the Letters

One day while going through the Parapsychology Lab archives, I came across this November 9, 1946 letter to J.B. Rhine from Harold A. Scharper, a returning WWII soldier who was now a paraplegic writing from the Vaughan Veterans Hospital, in Hines, Illinios. He’d heard about their work and was offering himself up for research.

“I will have to resort to developing more than I ever dreamed the use of my intellect.  I finally believe that this is an asset to most disabled people for we have the time and can develop the patience needed far better than the normal person … I am not going to kid myself into believing I will be able to perform miracles but I do as I said before firmly believe that the work that you are doing can help me and others like myself to become leaders in many fields.  I will appreciate deeply anything that you can say or do to confirm my belief.”  More below …

GizzKids

J. B. wrote a tender letter back, assuring Harold that it was true, “about the capacity of the mind to make up in one for the handicaps that may develop” but he wanted to give him more.  He included some of the lines from William Cullen Bryant’s poem, The Chambered Nautilus,

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll.
Leave thy low-vaulted past.
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast
Till thou at length are free
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s
unresting sea.”

And he closed with, “Our research does, I think, help support the view that the mind is a free, creative, volitional system.  It does encourage one to reach out for greater powers.  It adds to the sense of adventure in merely being alive.”

I was able to find out a few things about the very active Harold Scharper. He was married the year he wrote Rhine. The next year, in February, 1947, he attended the first meeting of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. He then went on to serve on the Board of Directors for Delta Sigma Omicron, which was founded in 1948 at the University of Illinios, where Harold was a student in psychology at the university. “Delta Sigma Omicron was an integral part of the first comprehensive program of higher education for those with disabilities in the world … It co-sponsored the first National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in the spring of 1949 and shared in the growth and development of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and other sport activities for those with disabilities.” Harold played on that first wheelchair basketball team, called the Gizz Kids.

Sadly, he died the next year, on June 7, 1950. He was only 31 years old. Delta Sigma Omicron established two awards in his name, the Harold Scharper Service and Achievement Awards.

Harold served in the 15th Infantry and had been wounded at Anzio. Oh god, I just read this in a description of what happened at Anzio. “Efforts by the 4th Rangers and 15th Infantry to rescue the beleaguered units failed, and by noon armored units of the Hermann Goering Division had forced the Rangers into the open. The Americans had only grenades and bazookas for antitank weapons, and as they attempted a fighting withdrawal in small and scattered groups they were cut down mercilessly. Of the 767 men in the two battalions, only 6 eventually returned to Allied lines.”

The picture is from the University of Illinois Archives. The caption reads, “Member of the University of Illinois Gizz Kids being hugged by a Gizz Kid Cheerleader.”

More Mina Crandon (aka Margery)

This is a picture of medium Mina Crandon with her husband Dr. Le Roi G. Crandon on the right. I don’t know who the ghost floating above was supposed to have been. When Mina became famous, I was told, she’d stay at home while Crandon would lecture around the country, carrying a picture of her without her dressing gown on, which he’d pull it out at every opportunity.

After his death due to a fall, one of Rhine correspondents told Rhine about the rumors that were circulating about Margery. He said that Crandon no longer believed in Mina’s abilities and people were saying that his death may have been “an unconscious suicide following the terrific shock which the loss of faith in his wife must have caused him.” Word was the pair were having troubles and naturally the troubles were Mina’s fault. But Mina’s husband had fallen on a sidewalk and fractured his pelvis. While confined to his bed he developed pneumonia and died.

The photograph is courtesy of the The Libbet Crandon de Malamud Collection.

Hans Holzer, RIP


Ghost hunter Hans Holzer died last Sunday, on April 26, 2009. He didn’t like being called that so I apologize, but that’s how everyone thought of him. He’s in my book a little bit, but I ended up cutting most of him out, just because he’s so far afield from what they were doing at Duke. I kept him in mostly to contrast their experiments with the more 19th century seance thing he was into.

I interviewed Holzer when he was clearly at the end of his life. He had trouble getting around, and remembering things, and he wasn’t happy at my shock when we started watching an old tape of his and I said something stupid like, “Look at you all dapper and young.” I meant it as a compliment, but he looked stricken and asked if he looked all that different and I immediately felt like an ass. I liked the guy. His cat was with us the whole time, which I enjoyed. At one point he said, “Life is better with a cat,” and it is. Nothing wrong with a guy who knows that.

I have fond memories of reading his books when I was an adolescent, and just learning that there were people who believe in ghosts. Thank you for the memories, Hans. Here is the section I removed from the book.

Ghost investigator Hans Holzer sees the spirits who linger in places like the Morris Jumel Mansion as trapped souls, and he believes it’s both his job and moral responsibility to help these poor souls move on.  This is accomplished by using a trance medium like Ethel Johnson Meyers.  “A trance medium is somebody who can slip out of their physical body,” Holzer explains, “and let the spirit or the ghost slip in and use them to talk.”  When this happens Holzer becomes something like a therapist for the dead.  He gently tells the ghost that they have passed on and they must call on loved ones who have already died to help them move on to the other side.  It may be that for many, getting to the other side is not an unpleasant trip.  Ernest Hemingway had an out-of-body experience once when he was wounded in World War I.  He wrote that it “was as if a silk handkerchief had been gently pulled from a pocket by a corner.”  J. B. Rhine kept a file on Hans Holzer, and occasionally added articles about his exploits.  But Holzer’s work of helping people move on was pretty much as far from Rhine’s parapsychological world as one could get.   No one at the Lab considered Holzer a scientist. [I’m sorry, Hans.]  

For Hans Holzer, the survival question is not even a question.  Life goes on, and on the other side there’s a well organized society with a strictly defined caste system which has been outlined to him by those who are already there.  “The first level is a very dark place,” Holzer explains.  “This is where the bad guys go.  They need to be educated and shown the error of their ways in order to rise to go to next level.  This is what religion calls Hell, but there are no devils or fire.  

“Most people are on the second level.  This is where everybody goes.  They have a timeless existence and if they are happy there, if they don’t want to be a baby and be reborn, they can stay there.  They have a normal life.  

“The people on the third level have special skills that could be used further for the benefit of humanity.  Engineers, technicians.  They will help someone in the same category over here, if they need help.  

“The fourth level is where groups form, like groups of doctors who work together in unison, to heal.  They are spirit healers.

“The fifth level is where the leaders are.  Jesus, Buddha.  The great spiritual leaders.  

“The sixth level is where the government exists.  They are the angels.  The government runs the whole show.”  Holzer questioned the entity who was explaining the different levels via a trance medium about the final two levels. 

“How many are you?”

“There are nine of us.  There used to be ten, but one has left.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“My name is Michael.” 

“What do you call yourselves?”  

“We are called the beings of light.  We don’t like to be called angels.”  (“They don’t like the term angels because they are not messengers,” Holzer adds.)

“What’s on the seventh level?  Is that supposed to be God?”  

“All we can see is an enormous power source, an enormous light.  That’s all we know.”

Nobody knows, not even the angels (or beings of light) who or what is at the very top.  When asked if he believes in God, Holzer answers, “I don’t say I don’t accept the existence of a higher power, but the higher power is not just one person, it is an energy field.  I’m still working on that.  I want to know more about the nature of this seventh level.”

[The photograph is from the New York Times obituary.]