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Telly Savalas' Ghostly Encounter

Diabolik8

Gone But Not Forgotten
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....

I remember reading a story concerning Telly Savalas in a book many years ago.. I've just done a quick search on the net & found it..

It was late when he began his drive home from a friends house at Long Island to his own home in New York. He was also out of gas, but the lights from an all night cafe lit up the darkness. He managed to pull in, and having a coffee, asked the way to the nearest garage. He was told to take a path through the wood at the back of the cafe until he reached the freeway. Just about to set off on the daunting walk, a voice called out, asking if he wanted a lift. It was gratefully received and Telly got into the Cadilac of this good Samaritan.

It wasn't until he got to the gas station that he realised his wallet was missing and the man kindly gave him some money with Telly insisting on having his name and phone number. Harry Agannis wrote his name on a scrap of paper and Telly thanked him for all he had done.

When it came to contacting the man he spoke to his wife who told him the sad news that he had died. Telling her what had happened and how her husband had helped him, she said that was impossible as his death was not recent. He had been dead three years. The star was shocked, and then intrigued. He described the car which she agreed was the same as her husband's. The clothes, which she said he was buried in. Then there was the voice which was unusually high pitched. That could have accounted for the fact that Harry Agannis had taken his own life, shooting himself in the throat. Telly eventually met the widow and showed her the piece of paper on which the man had written. She was more than sure that it was her husband's handwriting. It was certainly an experience that Telly Savalas never forgot, and earned him a new friend in Mrs Agannis.

Taken from :-
http://groups.msn.com/paranormalx
 
As if Telly Savalas wasn't already one of the coolest muddyfunsters on the planet when he was alive, he also left us this story thanks to a show called The Extraordinary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzksX-9vh9s

As mentioned in the current FT. Never heard of the show, but it does look unintentionally funny, the excellence of Mr Savalas notwithstanding. Anyway, in that case it was the driver not the hitcher who was the ghost, which is rare I think.
 
I did listen to the Telly Savalas story. I googled the story as well and there were some wildly varying accounts. The baseball player was more likely Harry (The Golden Greek) Aganis who died at the age of 26 in 1955, giving us the year and 1953 the year of Mr. Cullen's death. Telly's acting career did not get started until 1959, and his Twilight Zone episode was in 1963. White Castle is a famous hamburger chain that got going in 1921 before McDonalds. They have a lot of them in the New York City area.

Wasn't able to track down James Cullen, but quite a celeb story.
 
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Tele Savalas story of picking up a phantom hitchhiker appears in countless paranormal anthology books, with the precise details altering from book to book, but Savalas himself can be found recounting it in his own words on youtube (If nothing else it belies the article in FT a while ago which claimed no first hand phantom hitchhiker stories could be found, they were always FOAF.)
 
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Just to correct my initial Tele Savalas reference, on second thoughts I believe he was the hitchhiker and the person giving him the lift was the phantom... a whole new twist on the cliche, and an imponderable one, since he presumably was transported a number of miles in a non existent (physically at least) car.
 
Just to correct my initial Tele Savalas reference, on second thoughts I believe he was the hitchhiker and the person giving him the lift was the phantom... a whole new twist on the cliche, and an imponderable one, since he presumably was transported a number of miles in a non existent (physically at least) car.

Haha, I've got an image of Kojak just floating along the road in a non-existent car now!
 
Telly Savalas, a well-known American film and television actor, had an extremely unusual experience in which he was the hitchhiker and the man who gave him a ride seems to have been a ghost. Read the story here:

http://www.journalofthebizarre.com/2016/07/the-paranormal-experience-of-telly.html

I am really not sure what to make of this episode. Seeing a ghost is one thing, but interacting with seemingly material objects and beings is something quite different. Assuming it's is not a fabrication, it's hard to even make a guess at the true nature of his experience.
 
Telly Savalas, a well-known American film and television actor, had an extremely unusual experience in which he was the hitchhiker and the man who gave him a ride seems to have been a ghost. Read the story here:

http://www.journalofthebizarre.com/2016/07/the-paranormal-experience-of-telly.html

I am really not sure what to make of this episode. Seeing a ghost is one thing, but interacting with seemingly material objects and beings is something quite different. Assuming it's is not a fabrication, it's hard to even make a guess at the true nature of his experience.

That was a good read. And extremely interesting, and I too am not sure what to make of it. It seems a strange story to make up, years after the event, and for no obvious reason, so I think Mr Savalas was likely telling something that really did happen.

I'm not aware of any similar stories where there is 'evidence' left behind though, that's the puzzling thing. To think that the scrap of paper remained afterwards... I'd have expected it to have mysteriously vanished like these things so often do.

But who knows.
 
That was a good read. And extremely interesting, and I too am not sure what to make of it. It seems a strange story to make up, years after the event, and for no obvious reason, so I think Mr Savalas was likely telling something that really did happen.

I'm not aware of any similar stories where there is 'evidence' left behind though, that's the puzzling thing. To think that the scrap of paper remained afterwards... I'd have expected it to have mysteriously vanished like these things so often do.

But who knows.


Echoes of the receipt from the transdimensional gas station.... :)

It is an interesting story. I'd agree that it would be an oddly specific thing to make up. And if Savalas *had* made this up, to what end it would have been intended to serve.

So he was telling this story in 1993? Granted, yes, some of the details don't appear to match up as he says, as the article points out. But a good number of years had passed since that incident. Getting the city wrong, when you'd lived in multiple cities, is not implausible some 40 years after the event.
 
Echoes of the receipt from the transdimensional gas station.... :)

It is an interesting story. I'd agree that it would be an oddly specific thing to make up. And if Savalas *had* made this up, to what end it would have been intended to serve.

So he was telling this story in 1993? Granted, yes, some of the details don't appear to match up as he says, as the article points out. But a good number of years had passed since that incident. Getting the city wrong, when you'd lived in multiple cities, is not implausible some 40 years after the event.

I think the author at that blog is confused, but I didn't take the trouble to sort it out. The author seems to be confused about who was a baseball player, who answered the phone at the bar, and so on. Or maybe I missed something. Anyway, it was a great story.
 
(To Carl Grove; in the Kersey Time Slip thread ... )

Also, I've been meaning to ask if you've ever seen the Telly Savalas (Kojak) interview where he talks of a (very) strange encounter he had on Long Island in 1959.
 
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The Telly Savalas case... rings a bit of a bell but not sure if I have seen anything specific about it. Will have a look.
 
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Thanks, I'll check that out later!
 
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Ok. Keep me posted!
I remembered seeing that interview with Savalas on the Australian programme some years ago. Not a time slip case (the strange voice and the deliberate reference to the deceased baseball player) but there is the same element of physicality that you get in time slips -- a solid enough man driving a car around with the witness in it, writing his name and address on a piece of paper, helping push Savalas's car to get it going. Again I have to fall back on some kind of virtual reality explanation -- can't see any other answer.
 
I remembered seeing that interview with Savalas on the Australian programme some years ago. Not a time slip case (the strange voice and the deliberate reference to the deceased baseball player) but there is the same element of physicality that you get in time slips -- a solid enough man driving a car around with the witness in it, writing his name and address on a piece of paper, helping push Savalas's car to get it going. Again I have to fall back on some kind of virtual reality explanation -- can't see any other answer.
To be honest, if it wasn't Telly Savalas telling the story, I perhaps wouldn't have paid as much attention, certainly not just from that video (I don't know if that's really how the guy in the car spoke, but I certainly wouldn't have got in if it was!) Maybe it was embellished for dramatic effect. What gets me though, is that old Telly was pretty much like Kojak; a tough no nonsense New York kind of guy (which doesn't mean he can't lie of course). I must look up the baseball player who died in 'suspicious circumstances'. When I first read/heard about this incident, I also found an article which said that 3 or 4 years later, Telly heard the same high voice while on a golf course one afternoon with some friends. The voice said ''Have you seen what they've done to Kennedy?''. He looked around but there was no one there. On getting back to the club house, the TV was on with the news that Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas. (I haven't heard Telly actually speak of this second incident though.)
 
To be honest, if it wasn't Telly Savalas telling the story, I perhaps wouldn't have paid as much attention, certainly not just from that video (I don't know if that's really how the guy in the car spoke, but I certainly wouldn't have got in if it was!) Maybe it was embellished for dramatic effect. What gets me though, is that old Telly was pretty much like Kojak; a tough no nonsense New York kind of guy (which doesn't mean he can't lie of course). I must look up the baseball player who died in 'suspicious circumstances'. When I first read/heard about this incident, I also found an article which said that 3 or 4 years later, Telly heard the same high voice while on a golf course one afternoon with some friends. The voice said ''Have you seen what they've done to Kennedy?''. He looked around but there was no one there. On getting back to the club house, the TV was on with the news that Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas. (I haven't heard Telly actually speak of this second incident though.)
No, the video was a bit daft, made it all look "spooky" which according to Savalas, it wasn't. I'm afraid that's how TV tends to present these things.
I found his account pretty convincing, no reason why an established star should make up such a strange story, especially as the public image of ghosts is that they are etherial things, not solid or capable of pushing cars. (As we know, there are plenty of traditional ghost stories that do imply physicality in various ways. I used often to stay weekends with my wife when she was working as deputy manager at a sheltered housing facility, and plenty of physical things happened there. She was a bit upset when, half asleep, she felt me pulling off the bed clothes -- then remembered that I wasn't with her that night...)
I didn't know about the voice telling him about Kennedy, though.
 
No, the video was a bit daft, made it all look "spooky" which according to Savalas, it wasn't. I'm afraid that's how TV tends to present these things.
I found his account pretty convincing, no reason why an established star should make up such a strange story, especially as the public image of ghosts is that they are etherial things, not solid or capable of pushing cars. (As we know, there are plenty of traditional ghost stories that do imply physicality in various ways. I used often to stay weekends with my wife when she was working as deputy manager at a sheltered housing facility, and plenty of physical things happened there. She was a bit upset when, half asleep, she felt me pulling off the bed clothes -- then remembered that I wasn't with her that night...)
I didn't know about the voice telling him about Kennedy, though.
Blimey, I'd be scared stiff. -A friend of mine said a similar thing often happened in his old house where an entity of some sort got in bed with his Mother. (No jokes please.)
 
Maureen has (like me) had a lot of experiences herself, so is normally quite blase about these things, but even she kept her light on all night after that. When she got the job the manager somehow forgot to mention that the place was haunted, but it didn't take too long to figure it out.
Apparently a previous deputy manager said she found a little boy jumping up and down on her bed, so maybe it wasn't a spirit with wicked designs on her!
 
Maureen has (like me) had a lot of experiences herself, so is normally quite blase about these things, but even she kept her light on all night after that. When she got the job the manager somehow forgot to mention that the place was haunted, but it didn't take too long to figure it out.
Apparently a previous deputy manager said she found a little boy jumping up and down on her bed, so maybe it wasn't a spirit with wicked designs on her!
Just looked up Harry Agganis (the baseball player) mentioned by the driver. It doesn't appear that he died in the 'suspicious circumstances' mentioned by Savalas.
 
Just looked up Harry Agganis (the baseball player) mentioned by the driver. It doesn't appear that he died in the 'suspicious circumstances' mentioned by Savalas.
Interesting. Was it just that he was relatively young when he died, especially for a sportsman, so maybe Savalas just assumed it was something odd?
 
Interesting. Was it just that he was relatively young when he died, especially for a sportsman, so maybe Savalas just assumed it was something odd?
Yes, I suppose the original headlines that day could have perhaps been more sensational due to his young age. But why did the 'ghost driver' mention him? He knew he (the baseball player) was going to die soon, or as he (the driver) was 'dead' himself, he had already met him in the 'other world' as it were?
 
Yes, I suppose the original headlines that day could have perhaps been more sensational due to his young age. But why did the 'ghost driver' mention him? He knew he (the baseball player) was going to die soon, or as he (the driver) was 'dead' himself, he had already met him in the 'other world' as it were?
Seems like an indirect way of telling Savalas that he had departed from this world... Difficult to come out suddenly with, "By the way, I actually died a few days ago."
 
I always thought that this story was rather compelling (please ignore the over-the-top host)...

 
I always thought that this story was rather compelling (please ignore the over-the-top host)...

Great story and very well told. I was aware that he’d had some kind of ghost experience but thought I’d read he had picked up a ghost hitchhiker who had vanished in the car. Or was that another celebrity?
 
Great story and very well told. I was aware that he’d had some kind of ghost experience but thought I’d read he had picked up a ghost hitchhiker who had vanished in the car. Or was that another celebrity?

That's the story I thought I'd heard about Savalas too. Presumably I've misremembered it.
 
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