We were very sorry to hear of the passing of ghost hunter extraordinaire Hans Holzer at age 89 (and we’ve already made all the appropriate jokes about him being easier to contact now, so don’t bother.) Like most, we were first exposed to Hans through the childhood milestone of In Search Of, on which Holzer served as a producer, consultant, and guest. His seemingly endless enthusiasm and curiosity for the paranormal fed our own, and I can vividly remember being disappointed that our small local library had almost no information on Bigfoot. But Holzer’s biggest claim to fame were his investigations on the experiences of the DeFeo and Lutz families at 112 Ocean Ave in Amityville. Holzer and his team were largely responsible for the Indian burial ground theory of the haunting, and believed that Ron DeFeo Jr, was possessed by the spirit of an Indian Chief when he murdered 6 members of his family while they slept on November 13, 1974. Holzer and his team took a series of photographs in the house in 1977 that, faked or not, are truly, madly, deeply creepy.
We learned about Holzer’s good works primarily on the Coast to Coast AM radio show – essentially a one-stop shop for all news regarding UFOs, black helicopter conspiracies, myths & monsters, etc – where he was always taken a good deal more seriously than the garden variety ghost hunter. We believe (or at least, want desperately to believe) that Holzer was the genuine article; his approach was so much more scholarly than the current variety of charlatan that populates the airwaves of reality television.
We look forward to hearing from Hans in the not too distant future. If communication from the beyond is even remotely possible – this is the guy who will find a way.
