‘Ghost’ haunts Denver home.
By James Foster. Rocky Mountain News Writer.
Poltergeist, according to Webster, is a noisy ghost; a spirit assumed as the explanation of rappings and other puzzling noises. Dr Robert A Bradley, his wife, Dorothy, and their three sons live at 4100 S. University blvd. Also living there is Carl Vogel, an interior decorator, and Dr. Siegwalt Palleske, a University of Denver professor. That is all… or is it?
Who (or what) turned the bedroom lights on and off 24 times at 4 o’clock in the morning? Who (or what) caused the shuffling footsteps in the empty upstairs hallway which halted when confronted by queries from Vogel and disappeared when members of the family were called out to search the entire area? And who (or what) caused a table cigarette lighter to float across a coffee table and land silently while Bradley stood by watching?
Dr and Mrs Bradley, amateur students of the supernatural, are consumed with the task of collecting situation information and researching possible explanations of the phenomena. Bradley long has been interested in “new frontiers of the mind,” and in the past three years has given more than 300 lectures pertaining to hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance and extra-sensory perception (ESP). His work in psychosomatic (mind-body) medicine and natural childbirth (mislabeled hypnotic trance childbirth) has made him a controversial figure to skeptics both in and out of the medical profession.
The problem, he explains, is that hypnosis and ESP have been regarded as parlour tricks or nightclub acts, rather than the mental phenomena that they are. “The human mind is like a 10-cylinder engine only functioning on two cylinders,” he declared. “There are aspects (other than the normally recognised everyday functions) which can’t be ignored.” Bradley described some portions of the human brain as being identical to that of some animals, and he said it followed that perhaps if its composition is similar, its capabilities should be similar. “I’ve been chasing this for years through hypnosis,” he said. “Maybe humans are instinctual, the same as animals. Animals know how to swim; babies know how to swim,” Bradley explained. It is only when the basic instincts are smothered by conscious-level fears and adult-learned conditioning that the human becomes limited, he said.
Extra-sensory perception actually is a misnomer, Bradley maintains, because there is really nothing extra about it. Some of these senses simply are seldom if ever used – by humans. How do all the fish swimming in a school know to turn at the same instant? Bradley asks. How can animals and fowl sense such things as weather changes, pending danger, their way home after being deliberately lost? Bradley points to an almost-untapped field when he asks, “What other instinctual abilities do animals have in common with humans?” He envisions the human being as consisting of three parts – body, mind and soul. While medical treatment traditionally deals with the body and the mind (“There is an emotional overlay to all medical disorders”), Bradley and his wife have pursued their interest in the soul – the subconscious. They call it “George.”
George is a peculiar fellow, the Bradleys explain, because he is the only part of the human body that continues working without rest. He does not depend on the same source of metabolism as the rest of the body, thus he can and does exist before birth and after death, they believe. They offer several clinical cases in which a person, dead by all physical measurements, has given signs of thought and speech.
Mrs Bradley says that when unexplainable things happen in the house, such as the things that have happened in their 30-room, 5-fire-place Tudor style home, “You can’t remain passive. You get shook. You want answers.” They are compiling tales of some of their experiences in book form.
Witnesses to the strange happenings have not been limited to residents of the house. Three years ago, when the Bradleys purchased the home, it was in poor repair. It had stood grandly atop the rise some distance back from S. University blvd. as the home of Dr Hubert Work, and for many years also was the residence of the Merritt Ganos. Vandals had caused considerable damage during the year it was vacant, prior to the Bradley’s and Vogel’s refurbishing project. An electrician, who shall not be identified more than to say he was a non-drinking, God-fearing sort of craftsman, rewired the entire structure. The lights worked perfectly on the day the Bradleys moved in. That night they would not work. The following day, according to the Bradleys, after every wire and every connection had been checked, the electrician discovered unbraided and connections crossed [sic] in a conduit buried in the wall plaster. The electrician, Mrs Bradley recalls, came walking down the hall, eyes glazed and debating with himself. “I just don’t believe it,” he muttered over and over as he jumped into his truck and drove away.
The Rocky Mountain News (Daily), May 30th 1965.