PAULA, ARE you out there? Francois lives to find you. Sort of. He searches the faces of everyone who comes into the Cafe Van Kleef in downtown Oakland, just in case. Asks about you all the time, although no one listens. Knocks things over and turns off the stereo system, just because he can. He's not melancholy, which is odd considering he's a former lady-loving, party-happy, live-life-to-the-wee-hours French gigolo who's now got no body -- seeing as how he's dead and all. Yes, Francois supposedly soiree-ed a little too hardee one night and keeled over from a drug overdose more than a decade ago when he lived on the fifth floor of 1621 Telegraph Ave. So now he's stuck -- haunting the hallways, the first-floor cafe and its art gallery. Ooh, and especially the creepy elevator.
"Once you get in the elevator, it hesitates, then goes -- unless somebody has pushed the button outside to get on," said cafe owner Peter Van Kleef. "But a lot of times, I've gotten on, the door closes, it hesitates -- then opens like someone was out there who pushed the button. But nobody's there.
"Some people are pretty scared of that elevator," he said. "But I say, 'Come on in!'"
Fortunately, Francois is not a fearsome ghost. He seems surprisingly cheery about being dead. Spirited, one might say, and one did. He has a great time hanging out with Van Kleef, who has been puttering around getting his very cool, eclectic bar, cafe and gallery ready to re-open in the next couple of weeks after a four-year closure.
"I feel like I know him," Van Kleef said. "It's a constant thing. You see something go by out of the corner of your eye, but there's nobody there. I've never felt anything but positive or good feelings from him. It's kind of like having a cat. First he's there, then he's not. He turns off the stereo. Knocks something off in the back.
"I welcome the company, especially on occasions when I work by myself," Van Kleef said. "I'm not a ghost believer, but I don't discount any of this."
Oui oui, Francois has a pretty good life for a ghost. He is content.
But he misses Paula.
Oh, and cheese. He misses cheese.
All this was discovered last week during a preliminary para-normal investigation of the old 1920s building, led by an electromagnetic-meter-wielding Loyd Auerbach, sensitive psychic Annette Martin, a couple of companions with video cameras and some people who just thought it was cool.
These are some of the big paranormal guns. Auerbach is one of the East Bay's resident experts on the eerie. He's the director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations in Pleasant Hill and has literally written the book on the subject, "ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists," in addition to several other related books.
Martin, a psychic from Campbell, has a degree in psychology, was once an opera singer and says she's been communicating with the decidedly deceased since she was a child. She has worked as a psychic for about 35 years, assisted in police cases and been on TV too many times to count.
She frequently accompanies Auerbach on investigations. That's the best way to hunt a ghost, you see, combining the scientific and the spiritual. Auerbach seeks out the physical evidence on film, tape, electromagnetic devices and through witness reports.
"Then if a psychic is having an experience at the same time something shows up on technology, you definitely have an anomaly happening in the environment, regardless of what you call it," Auerbach said. "That's the kind of thing we're looking for."
He has investigated the very haunted U.S.S. Hornet in Alameda and the notorious Moss Beach Distillery near Half Moon Bay, where a ghost named Kate or "The Blue Lady" lives. So to speak.
Francois is 'new'
These folks know ghosts, and they were excited about Francois. He's a "new" ghost. Nobody's heard reports of him before, but Van Kleef and others say he's been bumping around in the building for at least five years.
Auerbach, who is also a professional magician and psychic entertainer, heard the story when planning future entertainment seances, which will soon be held at Cafe Van Kleef.
So the ghosthunters came to the cafe one afternoon last week, hung out for a while sipping Van Kleef's trademark "Dutchman" coffee -- a double espresso with bittersweet and sweet chocolate imported from Europe, which is so good it's probably why Francois is hanging around. Then they headed up to the fifth floor, where Francois supposedly departed from the land of the living.
"We're going up," Auerbach announced to the group, which prompted the elevation of numerous neck hairs.
They took the elevator. Rather industrial-looking, with warm-yellow metal walls, and cramped. Kind of like being inside an egg. Francois did not get in, however. (It would later be learned that he was already upstairs.)
The elevator opened to several bright rooms, walls of Crayola yellow, purple and blue.
No spooky cobwebs. This part of the building once held several apartments where Francois used to live, but now houses three youth-oriented nonprofits. Workers there hadn't experienced Francois. Dang.
But Martin did. Instantly. She took a deep breath.
Psychic's 'goosebumps'
"Oh, I'm getting goosebumps," she said. "It's gone now. It was like he just went right by me."
Everybody got quiet. Auerbach headed down a hallway, holding a meter in front of him, looking for all the underworld like Spock carrying a tri-corder. Martin stopped and closed her eyes.
"I'm getting a man with long brown hair. Some kind of moustache. Slight build. He's almost like a ballet dancer, he moves so gracefully," she said.
"And I'm getting a nice reaction here on the natural magnetic field meter," Auerbach said. The pointer bounced back and forth when Auerbach stood near the kitchen area. "Well, the fridge has certainly set this thing off," he joked.
Martin moved near the bathroom. "There's something here. An impression," she said, pointing to the floor. "I see a body on the floor."
An impression, Auerbach explained later, is different from a "ghost." It's like holding an object in your hand and talking about it. Or like a film strip playing over and over. But a ghost -- there's an actual presence there, who can be communicated with. There go those pesky neck hairs again.
Martin sighed heavily. "I hear him singing. Humming. Kind of dancing around a little bit."
"He's not singing 'Just a Gigolo,' is he?' Auerbach asked. (Paranormal humor.)
"He's very loving," Martin continued. "A very different kind of personality. A lot of female mixed up with male in his personality. He's asking a question of what we're doing here, why we're trying to find him."
Suddenly, the natural meter went crazy, then bounced gently. "There's definitely a fluctuation here," Loyd said. "That's not the refrigerator."
Someone asked why Francois is sticking around.
"Memories," Martin answered for Francois. "Lots and lots of wonderful happy memories for him here. Parties. Music. Wine. Cheese. Oh, how he misses the cheese. Mmm. He says he wishes he could taste cheese again.
"And he's looking for people. Goes around and looks in their faces to see who they are. He prefers the bar where people are laughing and talking.
"He's looking for a very beautiful young woman," Martin muttered. "Pale skin. Long, straight nose. Brown eyes. He's looking for her."
Martin paused. Stood perfectly still with eyes closed, hand extended, as if frozen mid-sentence. Hearing words in the quiet.
Looking for Paula
"Paula," she muttered. "Her name is Paula. That's who he's looking for."
Francois must have tired of talking, and the conversation seemed to come to an end. Everyone moved to another room except Martin, still frozen but seriously sweating. She sighed, opened her eyes. "Is it hot in here?" she asked.
It wasn't.
All told, the preliminary investigation went well. "The natural meter, which usually doesn't react at all except at Kate's and at the Hornet, was totally going nuts," Auerbach said. The next step is to interview more witnesses. Take more readings. Try to find actual details of Francois' death in county records and coroner's reports. Rule out possible physical explanations, such as short circuits in the stereo system.
After Martin's "conversation," Van Kleef confirmed much of the story. "I never met Francois, but a friend of mine lived in this building for about seven years and he knew him," Van Kleef said. "He described him to me as a beautiful young man. Angelic. Cherubic. Long hair. More beautiful even than his girlfriends, which was a blessing and a curse.
"The story goes that, because of the way he looked and spoke, people would give him anything he wanted," Van Kleef said. "So he quit working and his girlfriends started supporting him.
"Then he met a very beautiful worker in the entertainment industry -- she was a stripper in San Francisco. That might have been Paula.
"She drove in the fast lane in more ways than one. She was wise in the ways of the world. He was more of an innocent. She introduced him to elements of the dark side, and one of those elements did him in on the top floor by the bathroom. He overdosed."
"Francois likes your energy," Martin told Van Kleef. "The way you make people laugh and tell them stories. He's around you more than you think."
"Does he mind hearing the same jokes and stories over and over?" Van Kleef asked.
"No," Martin said, smiling gently. "He said, 'Merci beaucoup, mon ami.'"
