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BELIEVES IN GHOSTS!
by Laura Wayne
TV Photo Story
June 1971
But Liz, who's Mrs. Bill Asher in private life and the mother of two adorable young boys, has assured me that she is a normal woman with no mysterious powers.
"Sometimes I wish that I really were a witch," Liz confessed once.
"Why?" I asked.
"Do you realize how little time I have to spend with my family?" Liz replied. "Just think, if Elizabeth were as good at magic as Samantha is, I could whisk myself home to spend an hour with my two little boys at any time."
I found Liz's wish perfectly understandable. After all, most of us would find it rather convenient in many ways to be a witch--and a lot of fun besides. For example, when your nagging mother-in-law comes to visit you, you might turn her into a magpie and put her in a cage until she's ready to go home again! Or if your boyfriend jilted you for another girl, wouldn't it be fun to turn him into a toad when he and his new friend were in the middle of a necking session?
You bet it would! But that's all just wishful thinking. Today we don't believe in anything that can't be proven by scientific analysis. And most scientists are at least skeptical of supposedly supernatural phenomena. This is the twentieth century, the atomic age, the age of space travel and color television, and we just don't believe in ghost either. Or pookas, banshees, leprechans or will-o'-the-wisps, for that matter.
Or do we? Imagine my surprise the other day when I learned that Liz Montgomery believes very firmly in the existence of ghosts! Yes, ghosts, those very airy spirits of the dead who are supposed to flit around scaring people on Halloween night and haunt creaky old houses and sit around on their tombstones chatting about juicy beyond-the-grave gossip on cold winter nights!
It is true that superstitions persist among some people throughout the world. In Haiti many still believe in Voodoo, and members of certain nutty sects in England and New York's Greenwich Village consider themselves witches and claim to have conjured up little green imps. There are credulous people who pay large sums of money to astrologers to have their horoscopes cast, and lonely widows who go to phony sceances hoping to contact the spirits of their departed husbands.
But Elizabeth Montgomery doesn't fall into any of these groups. She's enlightened, intelligent and very modern. She's the kind of woman one listens to seriously and whose opinion commands respect. Nonetheless, she believes in ghosts due to a personal experience.
When Liz first told me that she believes in ghosts, I smiled becasue I though she was joking.
"No, really," insisted Liz. "I believe in ghosts."
I stopped smiling and must have had a very puzzled expression on my face because Liz began to smile at me with a mischievous glint in her eye.
"You'd be surprised how many people share my belief," said Liz. "It's probably becasue of my TV alter ego, but people are always telling me about some hard-to-believe event they have experienced. Some people have even seen ghosts, you know."
"Are you sure they're not a bit unbalanced?" I asked.
"Yes, quite sure," answered Liz. "You see, I 've seen a ghost myself."
"Oh," I said, very embarrassed. "Are you sure you're not carrying your TV role a bit too far?"
"It happened long before that," said Liz. "In fact, I was only a young girl then, I was visiting England with my parents at the time."
"I'm very glad," I interjected. "I'd reallly hat to think of anybody's seeing a ghost in a place like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."
"No, it was England," said Liz, twitching her nose at me, and in spite of myself I shifted uneasily in my seat. "And it happened in an old manor house too."
"Of course," I said sarcastically still quite skeptical.
"My room," Liz began, "was on a corridor near the main stair, off which a hallway extended into another wing of the house and dead-ended some fifty feet beyond my door.
"One afternoon, shortly after we arrived, I was about to open my doore when I became conscious of someone hurrying down the hall. A few days later the same thing happened. Again I was just vaguely conscious of feeling someone hurry by me. The third time it occurred, however, I definitely saw a foot and the bottom of a skirt as "it" disappeared around the corner. Quickly I rushed to the corner and looked down the hall.
"There was no one there and it would have been impossible for anyone to have reached and entered one of the doors in that hall in so short a time.
"When I returned to my room, thinking about the incident, I became certain that whoever, or whatever, I had seen was not dressed in the fashion of the day. The skirt was long and full, and the foot and ankle which had disappeared around the corner were clad in a high-buttoned shoe.
"The housekeeper came into my room a few minutes later, and when I told her what had happened, she said, 'Oh, you've seen her. She has been here for many years, ever since this house was new,' and passed the incident off very casually.
"I never learned the name of my ghost, or her story," Liz concluded as I smiled indulgently. I didn't really believe that Liz (or anyone else) had ever seen a ghost, of course, but I wanted to be polite. Then I glanced out the window and saw that it was already getting dark.
I arose to go, then hesitated. "Will you walk me to my car?" I asked. For some reason I didn't want to walk outside alone. Liz smiled knowingly and obliged.