Haunted countess, painter with a paranormal legacy

Before chasing spirits was popularized by television ghost hunters armed with digital gadgetry and infrared video, one young woman traveled to the darkest corners of the globe, communing with the dead and chronicling her experiences in pen and ink.

At the time, Countess Catherine Buxhoeveden was married to famous paranormalist and author of 140 books Hans Holzer, and for years she and her husband sought out ghosts all over the world. He wrote about their haunted adventures and her illustrations brought the dead and their often forbidding dwellings to life. A Southampton resident, Ms. Buxhoeveden recently had a show of her drawings and a collection of new paintings at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor, where she was joined by her 37-year-old daughter, Alexandra Holzer. An author and rising star in the paranormal world in her own right, Ms. Holzer signed copies of her new memoir, “Growing Up Haunted,” which recounts her colorful upbringing as the child of a countess and a ghost hunter.

Ms. Buxhoeveden and her husband enjoyed success and recognition for their work in the 1960s, but by the mid 1970s mainstream interest in the supernatural had waned and the two stopped making books together. They divorced in 1985 and while Mr. Holzer pressed on, Ms. Buxhoeveden stepped away from her work in the nether world and began a career among the living. “The whole thing died,” as the countess recalled succinctly.

Now 68 and with her passion for art and the mysteries of the afterlife rekindled, Ms. Buxhoeveden has emerged from the shadows, putting herself back in the public eye. “Growing Up Haunted” reveals many of the Holzer family’s intimate and personal stories and Ms. Buxhoeveden has a central role in the book. That, combined with her daughter’s newfound celebrity, may have pushed her into the spotlight, but the Russian countess and direct descendent of Catherine the Great credits her resurgence in large part to her partner of two years and now manager Tricia Rother.

“It’s been a collaboration,” Ms. Buxhoeveden said, explaining that she painted on and off for years while working first as a facilities manager in New York and then as a real estate broker on the East End. She occasionally took commissions, usually pet portraits, but Ms. Rother, a former gallery owner, really encouraged her to show seriously again. Ms. Rother helped introduce the countess to the East End in 2007 by renting space in Bridgehampton for “Hauntingly Beautiful,” a one-day retrospective of her work, just before Halloween. “It was very successful,” Ms. Buxhoeveden said.

The new paintings at Romany Kramoris may still be seen by appointment. The majority are dusky scenes of Sag Harbor, each with spirit orbs hidden in the composition. Dubbed “the Haunted Countess,” Ms. Buxhoeveden says she paints only at night and became used to the low light while painting in her Manhattan dining room.

She still experiences contact with the other side and will forever be possessed by her haunted past. “An orb to me is a spirit, it’s energy,” she said, explaining why she paints the white spheres that are essentially invisible to the naked eye and occasionally appear in digital photographs.

The light anomalies are controversial among paranormal investigators, as some believe them to be ghosts in a less dramatic form, while others discount orbs as dust, moisture or visual effects created by poorly designed digital cameras.

Not long ago, Ms. Buxhoeveden photographed one of her daughter’s sketches and an orb “the size of a grapefruit” appeared in the exposure. A practicing paranormalist and self-proclaimed “sensitive,” Ms. Holzer encouraged her mother to take more shots and the orbs continued to show up. “On the curtains, on the floor, on the dresser, on the walls—I got all these different size orbs,” the countess said, noting that her daughter believed them to be spiritual evidence of her aunt Rosemarie, Ms. Buxhoeveden’s sister.

Rosemarie died four years ago and Ms. Holzer said her aunt’s spirit contacted her, sparking a psychic reawakening and entrée into the paranormal field. “As a kid I experienced a lot of weird things,” Ms. Holzer said of her childhood in New York City. “What was paranormal was normal to me,” she laughed, acknowledging that her parents never eliminated the possibilities of a life beyond the grave.

Ms. Buxhoeveden still shows her pen and ink drawings from her years researching ghosts, and while her acrylics of Sag Harbor are not haunted locations, the scenes are darker, more personal interpretations than the typical depictions of the historic port. “I loved doing the pen and inks because from the bottom of my heart, I love creating moods,” she said, pointing to the contrasting sections of light and shadow in her work at the gallery, an orb usually hidden somewhere within. “What better mood is there?”

She is looking forward to painting a series of New Orleans haunted houses and showing them at a mortuary there, where some of her earlier work is to be permanently displayed for tourists and serious paranormal explorers.

“That would be fascinating,” Ms. Buxhoeveden said, adding later that she and her daughter are scheduled for another show on October 18 at East End Books in East Hampton and might also schedule an exhibition at the supposedly haunted John Jermain Library in Sag Harbor. Ms. Holzer is the younger of two daughters born to the countess and Mr. Holzer.

A mother of “four noisy ghosts” of her own, Ms. Holzer successfully juggles her family and career, frequenting myspace to promote herself and making appearances at paranormal events, on radio shows and at book signings. She and her mother will continue collaborating as they did in Sag Harbor and Ms. Holzer said that today they are “connecting on a level that we never have.”