Obituary
逝者

Hans Holzer
汉斯•荷尔泽

May 7th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Hans Holzer, ghost hunter, died on April 26th, aged 89
汉斯•荷尔泽，驱鬼师，卒于四月廿六日，享年八十九岁。

AS FAR as Hans Holzer was concerned, his Uncle Henry had started it. Uncle Henry, despite his humdrum life as a Viennese shop assistant, was a very strange man, who could feel “imprints” from the past in his 18th-century bed, and who taught his young nephew to say good morning to the fairies in the trees. After he had passed over he did his damnedest, via a British medium, to keep in touch with Hans, who had emigrated to New York. This ran up a fortune in transatlantic telephone bills. “Tell him the dog’s name was Rigo,” cried Uncle Henry, faintly and through static from the Other Side, when he thought his bona fides were doubted.

说到汉斯•荷尔泽，都是他的亨利叔叔挑的头。亨利叔叔是个维也纳店员，有平淡的生活，却是个奇怪的人。他可以在自家那张十八世纪传下的床上察觉“印迹”。他教这个小侄子向树上的精灵说早安。他去世后竭力托一位英国灵媒师和汉斯联系。其时汉斯已迁居至纽约，因此花了很多跨洋长途电话费。“跟他说那条狗叫瑞格，”亨利叔叔叫道，声线自彼岸通过静电弱弱传来，那时他觉得自己一片热诚，却遭了怀疑。

At four, Hans found himself pretending to read ghost stories in nursery class to a circle of terrified small friends. At 43, with a doctorate in parapsychology (so he said) and dozens of investigations under his belt, he produced “Ghost Hunter”, the first of around 140 books on haunted houses, “beings of light”, extrasensory perception and hair-raising subjects generally. American television snapped him up. His calm, intense look, his deliberate walk and his soft Austrian accent were somehow both scary and reassuring, just right for footage of night windows banging and curtains inexplicably blowing.

汉斯四岁大就在幼儿园对着一圈吓傻了的小朋友装模作样读着鬼故事。到了四十三岁那年，汉斯已经有了一个通灵学的博士学位（据他说），还做了数十个调查，创造了词汇“驱鬼师”——他为写了约140本鬼屋书，这是第一本的书名，“光灵”——通常为超感知觉和惊悚物质。汉斯立马成了美国的电视台的宠儿。他冷峻的神色，沉稳的步履，软绵绵的奥地利口音教人噤若寒蝉却又隐隐心安，对于午夜下窗户“梆梆”敲响，窗帘飒然飘起的桥段实在很相衬。

Mr Holzer was keen to tell Americans that ghosts were nothing to be frightened of. Though proud to be the country’s premier ghost hunter, a term he had coined himself, he preferred to be called “Doctor” or, better still, “Professor”, and thought of as a scientist. He dealt only in facts, he said, elicited from witnesses whom he interviewed repeatedly to be sure they were not crazy. It was not a matter of belief or disbelief, but of hard evidence, even if it had a shimmery and ectoplasmic look.

菏泽尔先生热衷于跟美国人说幽灵没什么好怕的。尽管汉斯对于身为美国最佳驱鬼师颇为得意，驱鬼师这词也是他自创的，他还是中意别人叫他“博士”或者再好听点，“教授”，把他当科学家看。汉斯只跟亲历者问来的事实打交道，他说经一再采访可以确定那些撞邪了的神智是清醒的。关键不在乎信或不信，而是有没证据，即使看到的只是影影绰绰或朦胧不清的幽灵。

Burying Aunt Minnie
安葬米妮婶婶

Ghosts, he explained, were perfectly natural. They were simply human beings who were not aware they were dead. They had shed their outer bodies but not their more sensitive inner ones, in which they walked about much as before. They were either in emotional turmoil, trapped between the worlds of “here” and “there” and throwing vases to get attention, or they were placid “stay-behinds”, who had died so peacefully that they never bothered to leave the place they knew. That explained, said Mr Holzer, how a grieving family could bury Aunt Minnie at midday, and find her still sitting in her chair at three o’clock.

汉斯解释道，幽灵是很自然的东西。不过是不知道自己已经死了的人。幽灵脱去躯体，留下内在精妙魂体，寄身其内然后照旧四处游走。他们要么感情激越，受困在“此界”和“彼界”夹缝中，乱扔花瓶引人注意，要么是安静的“遗魂”，死得平和，也懒得离开熟识的老地方。汉斯先生说这也解释了为何有家人明明在正午难过地安葬了米妮婶婶，却还在三点钟看到她坐在椅子上。

He seldom saw ghosts himself, though in his 40s he felt his shining, nightgowned mother push his head back on the pillow to save him from a migraine. But he found that a high-speed Polaroid camera could catch them, and that skilled mediums, sometimes young women trained by himself on his own “doctor’s” couch (for ghosts were not all he chased), could channel their conversations. This was the only equipment he took to haunted houses. There, making himself comfortable, he would ask the ghost to explain his or her problems and then encourage it to leave for the spirit world. “She’s free to go,” he instructed his medium to tell Margaret Hatton, a young woman from 1843 still trapped in a house in Port Clyde, Maine, where she was worrying about tallow for the lamps and the empty root cellar. “To Kennebunk?” came the ghost’s eager response.

他自己很少看到幽灵，虽说四十几岁发作偏头痛时曾感觉到穿着睡衣，通体发光的母亲把他的头推到枕头上缓减痛楚。不过他发现用宝丽来一次成像高速相机可以拍到幽灵，而身怀绝技的灵媒师能与冥界通上话。灵媒师中有些是他通过自己那张“博士长榻” 亲手训练出来的年轻女士（他追的也不都是鬼）。汉斯去鬼屋只带这台相机。在鬼屋他会叫幽灵详述困扰所在，鼓励它起身去灵界，这样让他颇为惬意。“她可以走了”，汉斯指示他的灵媒师告诉玛格丽特•汉通，这个幽灵姑娘自1843年起便困在缅因州克莱德港的一座房子里，其时正为油灯油没着落，地窖里也没菜了忧心不已。“那去肯内班克吗？”幽灵急切问道。

His most famous investigation was not his most successful. In January 1977, in company with Ethel Johnson Meyers, he went round 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island. The house, cold, empty and boarded up, was a wooden Dutch Colonial at the edge of the water. Three years before a young man had murdered his parents and siblings, one by one, in their beds. Since then, sounds of doors slamming and bands playing had been heard there. Swarms of flies infested the place. Green slime oozed from the hall walls, crucifixes rotated and a child with red glowing eyes was seen at the top of the stairs. Mr Holzer, ever the scientist, dismissed most of that. The solution to the “Amityville Horror”, as Hollywood soon called it, was simple demonic possession by an Indian chief, who was channelled by Ms Meyers. Hollywood, with whom Mr Holzer had rather tense relations, promptly made a sequel, “Amityville II: The Possession”. The Amityville Historical Society, however, could not find any link between the house and Indians, annoyed or otherwise.

他最有名的调查却不是最成功的一次。1977年1月，他和埃塞尔•约翰逊•梅耶一并探访长岛阿米提维尔的海洋大道112号。那座房子阴冷，空旷，与世隔绝，是座临水的木质荷兰殖民建筑。三年前一个年轻人把双亲和兄弟一个接一个地杀死在床上。从此便有人在那房子里不时听到大门砰地关上，乐团霍地奏响；成群苍蝇遍布，大厅墙壁渗出绿色黏液，还看到旋转的十字架和楼梯顶端的小孩双眼血红，幽光冥冥。菏泽尔先生很有科学家精神地排除了多数情况。要解决“阿米提维尔灵异事件”（他随后起的名字），只须让一位印第安酋长附身梅耶女士。跟菏泽尔先生关系相当密切的好莱坞立即拍了续集《鬼哭神嚎II：入魔》。然而阿米提维尔历史学会找不到这座房子跟印第安人有任何联系，也不知该不该为此烦恼。

Mr Holzer never knew whether his attempts to nudge ghosts to the Other Side (another of his coinings) were successful, or not. He did not make it sound particularly enticing. No angels, he said confidently, and no “fellows in red underwear with pitchforks” either. Disappointingly, the whole place was much like here, but with no sense of time and with everything “strung out further” in the thinner atmosphere. Even more disappointingly, it was run by a giant and orderly bureaucracy, in which spirits had to ask permission and list their motives if they wished to contact mediums and had to stand in line, waiting for a clerk to find suitable parents, in order to be born again. “They” used the word “clerk”, he said. And “they” had also instructed him to tell the world the truth about ghosts. They would be irritated if he failed, and would put him down for further education.

菏泽尔先生从来不知道他劝幽灵去彼岸（他创造的新词）究竟结果如何。他对彼岸的描述听上去并不很引人入胜。他确切说过没有天使，也没有“身穿红内衣手持干草叉的哥么”。那地方跟这里也差不了多少，只是没有时间感，因为空气稀薄那里的东西都“轻飘飘”的，还真令人失望。更扫兴的是，那地方受一个巨大有序的政府管理，在那里他们要想联系灵媒得先打申请，列出动机，再排队等候一位职员找到合适的双亲来转世。“他们”都用“职员”这词，菏泽尔先生说。还有“他们”也命他跟世界如实解释幽灵。要是这事办不成，他们就要发火，把他记下，拉去接受再教育。

No funeral arrangements were announced for Mr Holzer. He did not intend, however, to stick around

菏泽尔先生没有葬礼。他也不太想在附近转悠。

注1. Imprints：汉斯宣称 75~80%的“见鬼”见到的都不是鬼，只是过去的能量留下的印迹，就像看到了过去拍的电影。
注2. Ectoplasm：灵的外质（据说是灵媒在降神的恍惚状态中发出的一种黏性体外物质） ECD 2
注3. 采访汉斯•荷尔泽链接
http://www.ofspirit.com/lauriesuebrockway2.htm

 

译者/ben_walking：  http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=19119&extra=&page=1