Holzer, Hans W. (1920-)

Popular writer on paranormal topics. Holzer was born on January 26, 1920, in Vienna, Austria, and later attended Vienna University, Columbia University, and the College of Applied Science, London (M.A. and Ph.D.). In 1945 he became a free-lance writer. He was also a playwright and composer, a drama critic for the London Weekly Sporting Review (1949-60), and a television consultant. He was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, the Society for Psychical Research, London, the British College for Psychic Science, the Center for Paranormal Studies (executive vice president), American Society for the Occult (research director), the Authors Guild, and the Dramatists Guild, and was research director of the New York Committee for the Investigation of Paranormal Occurrences.

Holzer wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles on psychic phenomena, the occult, and related subjects. Through the 1970s he turned out numerous books on ghosts, the occult, and psychical topics that reached a popular audience despite continual complaints by reviewers and some people that his work contained numerous errors. At his peak he wrote three to four books a year. Several books in the 1970s helped promote the spread of witchcraft and neopaganism. In the early 1980s Holzer wrote two books that perpetuated the Amityville hoax, The Secret of Amityville and The Amityville Curse.

Sources:

Holzer, Hans. The Directory of the Occult. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1974.

——. The Great British Ghost Hunt. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1975.

——. The New Pagans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

——. Pagans and Witches. New York: Manor Books, 1979.

——. The Prophets Speak. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.

——. The Truth about Witchcraft. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.

——. Wicca: The Way of the Witches. New York: Manor Books, 1979.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.