An Interview with Alexandra Holzer Gargiulo

Paranormal Expert, Author, Ghost Whisperer, and daughter of the famed Ghost Hunter Dr. Hans Holzer

by Brent Raynes

Alexandra Holzer Gargiulo is author, paranormal expert and ghost whisperer. The daughter of acclaimed ghost hunter Dr. Hans Holzer, Alexandra writes sci-fi/fantasy, screenplays, and supernatural/horror thrillers. Check out her latest interview “Growing Up Haunted” in Merlian News at: http:www.merliannews.com/

Her monthly column ‘Spirit Talk’ can be found at: http:www.ufodigest.com

Read what this author/psychic mom of four and resident of Chester, New York, has to say about growing up in an environment where the “paranormal was normal,” how those early influences shaped her life, and where she strives to go in the near future.

Editor: Your father, of course, is Hans Holzer, a well-known paranormal investigator and writer going back to the early 1960s. I know that he’s a prolific writer. He’s written many, many books. Dozens. I don’t know just how many.

Alexandra Holzer: Actually he’s at the point in his life that there’s so many he’s like, “I don’t know.” Hundred and forty-five (145), plus another twenty (20) in reprint.

Editor: Wow.

Alexandra Holzer: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

Editor: Yes, it is.

So how did that influence you, that kind of an atmosphere while you were growing up?

Alexandra Holzer: Well, growing up, of course, at that time, as when we all grow up we don’t really realize what’s around us. Everybody has some family history that contributes to their life as an adult. The paranormal was normal for me as I was growing up. I didn’t know any other way to grow up. My mother was very eloquent, very classy, and she was an artist. My father would run in and out, and he was doing investigations from all around the world. When I came along the trips to Europe kind of died down a bit. He would kind of go back and forth and do a lot of book signings in LA and the investigations were a little bit closer to home at that point, but growing up it kind of influenced me in the way that I knew Hans to be. You know, somebody that was interested in the non-living. It was just very normal, and also the way the apartment was decorated. We had a beautiful upper West Side apartment on the Hudson River in New York. It was an icon, and you had the George Washington Bridge as part of your landscape. My father would come home from traveling and he would have voodoo masks and antiques from all different periods of history. Plus his coin collections, and it kind of became normal to be almost like living in a museum, if you will, because that’s what it was like. He’s a history buff and he’s got a Ph.D.

So it influenced me in being open, creative and artistic, and my mother aided in that because she herself was an artist, so it really kind of fit really well. So it molded me, but it kind of left for awhile. You grow up and you go in different directions, but I came back to that, which is where I am now.

Editor: Right. So how did your novel Lady Ambrosia come about?

Alexandra Holzer: Actually nine years ago I was pregnant with me first child (I have four) and I was inspired, from the pregnancy, to get back into writing for children. I’ve always written as a child. I could never take an English assignment and write the one page. I had to write ten. You know, it was always that way, and I always got straight A’s in English and writing, and so I went back to that, to those roots, but at that time it wasn’t because of my father. It was because of something that was inside of me.

I had written a short story about Lady Ambrosia thinking (I knew that I was having a girl) a princess, a fairy tale kind of thing, and then it kind of sat for awhile until about two and a half, three years ago. I had a paranormal experience. When I say that, it’s not my first one. It’s the first connection I had where I tuned into it, because I feel that many people don’t realize that it’s around them and I wasn’t ready to receive the other side. I’ve had experiences with ghosts and there’s many stories to tell with that, but on this occasion with Lady Ambrosia we had had one loss in the family with my late aunt Rosemarie Buxhoeveden, my mother’s sister, and she came back, but after two years of her passing. It wasn’t right away, because on the other side there is no time. It’s not like when we’re on earth. It’s very different. She came back when it was my time, you see, and to say, “You need to write again,” and pushing me to write. Conversations would go on and then all of these validations would come through. I would start doing readings for people and I would have impressions. My psychic ability started to come back.

Lady Ambrosia was worked on again. I brought her back out and I worked on her and I tried getting her published and I tried getting an agent, the whole thing, and I eventually did succeed. I got an agent, but for screenplays.

It’s a very funny story. Where you think you’re going to end up you don’t and then it leads to something else you can’t always assume, and I brought her back and she’s full of fantasy, science fiction and magic, just the way that I like it.

Editor: Okay, and this was how long ago?

Alexandra Holzer: When I first had the connection with my late aunt it was three years ago. She died on Easter. She was the one who said that “you will be very well known,” “you will be an author of dozens and dozens of books,” and “you need to write again.”

Editor: And she told you all of this from the spirit world?

Alexandra Holzer: From the spirit world, yeah. I was actually, as many people who are parents will appreciate, men and women alike, I was folding laundry. I was doing my thing, and I started to get an impression and I saw her, and I pushed it away because I didn’t want it. I grew up with it. For me, like I said, the paranormal is normal. I didn’t need to tap into it. There was no reason, at the time.

She kept coming back and then I had a very vivid dream of her. We were sitting in a café somewhere. She told me the name and later on I asked her husband, “Does this place exist? Do you even know?” I had told him about the dream, and he said, “Yes, there is a place in Pennsylvania that your aunt and I went for lunch and that is the place that you just told me about.” Now how could I have known that? These were the things that were happening to me. So I decided to open up and listen and I started to get messages from her. We were talking, not like you and I, but in a way, because you do talk to the spirit out loud like this. They’re your guide and they’re there to help, unlike a ghost, but that’s a whole different thing. So that’s how it began.

Editor: Writing is a very important process for you. Could you share some about what writing means to you?

Alexandra Holzer: Writing was always there. Sometimes in life we veer off and we raise families, go through marriages and divorces, we take careers at the time that we think is what we should be doing, and then later on find out that it’s not what we should be doing. That’s what life is. Life is an experience, and then we pass and sometimes we come back, if we believe in reincarnation, which is a different topic for another day, and that’s the whole point of what life is. It’s not meant to be taken too seriously. Anyway, writing was always there and I forgot. I just plum forgot, and my spiritual experience with my aunt from the other side brought it back, and it takes time. I mean, it’s almost two years that I’m finally getting somewhere and I still have a long road ahead of me to convince people that I’m really good at this. There can be other people that are as successful, like the Harry Potter series. There are a lot of people out there who can do it. It’s vast like the universe, it’s so open and huge and sometimes you doubt yourself. You go back and forth, but I’m at a point now that when it comes to my writing I feel more confident. Having my family and the writing, it goes hand in hand because it pours onto them. You know, it just does. They love it, they love that mommy has her book out, they love to see mommy write other books, different types of writing and different forms of expression. It’s just so healthy.

Editor: What are your future plans with writing?

Alexandra Holzer: Well, I currently have a supernatural screenplay, which is very fitting, of course, which I did not plan, which is a horror screenplay, and it’s at a production company now. The only reason that it is at a production company in the city where you don’t just send submissions to them (some places accept, some don’t) is that my agent, who it took about three months for me to try and convince her to listen to me, didn’t really take novelists. She only took screenplay writers. So there are different forms of literary representation. This agent said screenplay not novel.

I had written a book. This screenplay was a horror book, and month after month I was calling her and she was always too busy to talk to me. She knew who my father was. She was always polite, but didn’t buy it, and then finally I kept her on the phone one night and I sold her on the idea of the book and she said, “How does it end?” So I came up with the ending, over the phone. I hadn’t written it yet. I had to finish it and send it her. Two months after that goes by, and this is the whole thing that you go through in life (it’s not easy, it doesn’t just happen) she made it obvious that screenplay was where it was at. That’s really what she does. This screenplay came from this book that I held off on getting published, which is kind of like a dark novel which I turned into a supernatural thriller for young adults. As a parent I also wanted something out there in the theaters that wouldn’t be so gory and horrifying for the kids because you know I pay attention, and like my father Hans, who also loves movies and takes note of what’s good and what’s bad, and I just kind of felt like it would be really great to go back to the basics, like The Shining and The Exorcist, where it was really scary but it had truth underneath it. Don’t be afraid. There are bad things out there and you should know about it.

Editor: So is it in production now, or about to be?

Alexandra Holzer: Oh gosh, I wish it was! I wish that we were at that point already. It’s only been a month and the only reason it was there is because my agent, who is very hard to get in touch with, so it’s always a battle there, and because it leads to my life path it’s never easy. She came across a young actor who knew an actor I wrote this for. To backtrack, the novel came from a dream that I had about a man in a scene. I didn’t know who this man was until one night he was on my TV. My children were watching a movie, which of course I had stopped watching movies. You’re raising four kids and you’re really between Teletubbies, Barney, Sesame Street and laundry, you know? Not to be stereotypical but you’re running a house, you’re running a family, and that’s the way it is.

It clicked who he was. It was for him. There was a connection there. I have been told by psychics that we’re supposed to work together. It’s just one of those things. Don’t question it. So I tried mentioning this to my agent and she had no clue who he was. She’s seventy years old, she runs in different circles, so finally one day I get a phone call from her, which was rare, saying that she had met a young actor “who knows your actor who you wrote this for,” and she said, “I believe this has to be fate.” And so it kind of spiraled into that, this young actor worked with the other actor on a film that is going to be coming out this year, that was filmed in New York City, which is where everybody is based, and he said, “Let me give you the name of the production company that you can send it to,” who doesn’t just take screenplays like that, and so it was kind of like an in, and so the actor and I are conversing and it’s almost like there’s a backdoor, and there’s a reason why there’s a backdoor. And hence, you’ve got fated paths in there, predestined way of living, and so did I get from person A to person B though person C to make the project become a reality?

Editor: A lot of wonderful synchronicity there.

Alexandra Holzer: Yeah, it’s really quite amazing and I’m waiting to see how it ends.

Editor: Now your father, what’s he doing these days? Is he writing anything?

Alexandra Holzer: Hans is always doing, period! (laughs) He put out the latest Amityville book, which is basically a collection of the beginning, the middle, and the end of the true story, and there’s really nobody else out there who is putting anything else out about the Amityville case because a lot of the people who were involved in the case have passed over. I don’t know if that’s an omen or something, but he’s still standing and he’s done the most research work on it. He has a lot of screenplays that he wants to get back to. I’m kind of helping him now. It’s almost like the direction is father-daughter now versus it’s always been about Hans and Hans’s world with his investigations. He’s kind of like taking a backseat and taking things in, and doing more interviews. He’s reflecting and he’s going toward the road of being more scientific still. He put out The Journey of the Magi last year, so he’s still turning out books. He turns out probably 2 or 3 a year.

Editor: And he’s also working on screenplays?

Alexandra Holzer: Oh yeah. He’s got a whole bunch of screenplays, trying to get backing and financing. He’s very old fashioned. He doesn’t have cell phones and he’s not on the Internet. When all of this happened for me I kind of stepped in and said, “I need to help him.” So when it comes to radio shows and things like that I kind of pull him in because I’m the young generation, you know, like the next generation of ghost hunting and paranormal awareness and cultivating an understanding of it, but being more modern about it. My father still tends to be back in that day of being very scientific and he still is, but he wants his audience to still understand that he’s not basing it on religion. He doesn’t go down that road. He does believe in what he believes and will stay true to it. If you interview him today he still sticks to the facts and he’ll even say, “Look I’ve learned a few things down the road. I’m not perfect and there’s things that have popped up that I’ve questioned.” That’s kind of where he’s at. He’s still learning. He’s not one of those people who has written all of these books and says, “Well, I know everything now.”

Editor: He’s objective, cautious and scientific in his approach to things then.

Alexandra Holzer: Yeah, absolutely. What Hans stands for is the truth and seeking the truth in a world that is so misunderstood, and he has really pioneered it and kind of paved the path for what you see now on TV, the ghost hunters, ghost chasers, and ghost this and ghost that. A lot of them are great and a lot of the mediums incredible, but it becomes a little bit played out. He pioneered this work and worked closely with the Eileen Garrett Foundation. Eileen said, “Hans. You need to write your first book,” and he said, “No, I want to do musicals.” So can you imagine. He had his own life path. But he’s still going.

Editor: That’s wonderful.

Do you have any advice to aspiring authors and paranormal investigators?

Alexandra Holzer: I do. Anybody who wants to get published needs first and foremost to be very tough and take run arounds with a grain of salt because for every twenty submissions maybe you’ll get one positive response out of it, and that might just be, “Your idea sounds interesting, butÉ” It’s really hard. I think that anything in life is hard, and some people might get on their life path and it might be easier, but most of it we do have to work at it and we often struggle, and I think that everybody has their own destiny and if you really want it and you believe in what you’re doing, regardless of how bad your day was and that you didn’t get very far, you have to go through that next day because that might be the day, and that’s what keeps you going.

That’s my message to people who want to write. It doesn’t matter what topic you want to write on, especially in fiction. Fiction, my God, I mean non-fiction you’re basing it on research and facts, which is what Hans has done most of his life, but when you do what I do with fiction it’s very difficult. Now I’ve done a non-fiction memoir which I did have a publisher interested, but they wanted me to keep working on it, to expand it, so I have been. It’s entitled “Growing Up Haunted,” which I’ve been using as my catchphrase, and when I’m doing articles. It was quite an amazing way to grow up. It’s not going to just feature the Holzer side, but it’s going to feature my mother’s side, the Buxhoeveden side, because my mother comes from a royal Russian lineage and she was related to Catherine the Great. So there’s a lot of history there and it’s very important because my grandfather used to hold séances in a haunted castle where my mother grew up in Italy. So you can’t leave stuff like that out.

When you’re writing you don’t know what direction you’re going to go in, so my advice to writers is to just go with it and just keep on it because you have to believe in yourself and convince others. If you lose that then nobody else is going to jump on that bandwagon.

Editor: And at least maybe keep a journal until you get where you can put it all together.

Alexandra Holzer: Keep a journal. Write notes. Whatever works for that person. My method is that I just type on a computer. If I get something when I’m running around with the children trying to separate them from not pulling their hair out from each others head then I have paper all over the house, but what works for me is that I sit down and I decide, “All right. Let’s do it.” And of course when you’re creative once it flows it flows. You just do it and it gets done.

Editor: Now this is totally off from what we’ve just been talking about, but it’s something that if you’ve read my website then you know I’m interested in UFOs and I know that your father had written a book on UFOs at one time, and I was wondering if in your life experience that subject ever came up?

Alexandra Holzer: Yeah. Actually it’s very funny. Again I believe in what I believe and if it ever comes back to haunt me, no pun intended, I’ll have to deal with it then, but on the topic of UFOs I remember, and I was probably around 8 or 9 years old and my father was just always saying, he’d look across out the window (I had mentioned earlier we had lived in Manhattan in front of the Hudson River, a very open and wide space) and there were sightings of UFOs way back then, I think in the 1970s and ‘80s, of these little metallic objects in the sky, and I remember he would look out that window and he would be just mystified because he really believed that he had seen something that one night. He has had his own experiences with it and his own belief, and growing up I kind of felt “what if.” We’re not the oldest planet. Who are we to say that can’t exist or there’s no proof. But, you know, so what. Some seem to feel like they’re the creator who is sitting on that throne and who says this and that exists because they said so and nobody is higher than them, and I always felt that was very egotistical, and Hans never was like that. He always put it out there, interviewed other people with their experiences with that topic, which fits in with the paranormal. Why not! I could think of worse things in this world, to be honest with you.