www.spiritbearparanormal.com
May be kicking myself before long that I initiated yet another online hobby that my rapidly diminishing free time can't sustain, but it's a means to an end, and getting a little blog-design/wordpress experience can't be a bad thing.
At this early date, the site is still disagreeably clunky and woefully bereft of content, but at least I got it loaded and functioning. Off we go.
Showing posts with label ghost hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghost hunting. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Stanley goes spirit viral !
...or something like that....
I like to tell people I've been in the ghost hunting business long enough to remember when hotels - especially expensive, image-conscious, postcard-worthy, legendary or near-legendary hotels - got squirmingly uncomfortable if you asked about their ghost. Bad for business, either because the whole subject of ghosts is vaguely offensive to acutely religious people (it is, in some cases), directly offensive (at least credibility-denting) to stalwart atheist/materialists, or a little scary for the believers...in all cases, a drag on the business.
But, at least in the case of the Stanley Hotel, the 'Ghost Hunters Effect' has taken full hold.
I noticed that Sharon had friended up with/fanned up with them on FB, so I did too. And what have we seen? Regular exhortations about ghosts: 'who's up for our Friday night investigation this week?', 'check out these cool orb pics!', 'here's some tips and tricks for newbie ghost hunters'...etc etc.
It's marketing time, kids.
And it's true, while the Stanley has hosted 'ghost tours' and been generally paranormal-team friendly over the last few years, through social media it has now connected aggressively, enthusiastically and almost exclusively with the 20-30something Ghost Hunters crowd right where they live - orb pictures, DIY investigations, guided tours, ghost stories, etc etc. And check out our discounted room rates this weekend. Oh yeah.
Maybe it's the old-fogey in me, but I have a kind of knee-jerk "get off my lawn" reaction to all this. The practice of ghost hunting, to whatever extent you believe it's a pursuit worthy of the time and effort, is something that should be undertaken with a level of seriousness, skepticism and focused reticence. The image of all these gawking 30 something females snapping pictures in the Concert Hall and squealing when they capture the inevitable orb hanging like a semi-transparent Xmas ornament over a grainy, twilight-dark exposure of nothing kind of cheapens the allure that Stanley has held for most of us longer-than-1 year ghost hunter types. The place is, deservedly or not, a kind of ghost hunter's Promised Land. And my ire isn't helped by being a Colorado resident, imbuing the whole thing with a second level of proprietary ownership I hate to see callow interlopers challenge. Grrr!!!!
And on a more practical level, this may well make it a bit harder for us, either in DGH or FME, to get back in there and do a decent investigation. (We were up there a couple of years ago, and didn't get a thing except snapping a few orbs and getting nearly mauled by a grouchy momma elk on the front lawn...) Kinda reminds me of The Ladders TV commercials - y'know, the tennis tournament when all the slobs climb down onto the court to start playing, and ruin the whole thing.
Ah...I've become such an elitist.
Related to this, Sharon and I are discussing starting our own group. I may wonder in a few months why I even considered it (either because I did and it made obvious sense, given our currently precarious and usually frustrating role with the other three groups we 'belong' to....or I didn't, for some other reason), but from where I sit, we just have to.
Cards, website, stickers, blog, domain...the whole thing. We just have to.
First thing to do is pick a name.
Flatiron Paranormal Inquiry is my favorite, followed by Spirit Bear Paranormal.
Shall see.
I like to tell people I've been in the ghost hunting business long enough to remember when hotels - especially expensive, image-conscious, postcard-worthy, legendary or near-legendary hotels - got squirmingly uncomfortable if you asked about their ghost. Bad for business, either because the whole subject of ghosts is vaguely offensive to acutely religious people (it is, in some cases), directly offensive (at least credibility-denting) to stalwart atheist/materialists, or a little scary for the believers...in all cases, a drag on the business.
But, at least in the case of the Stanley Hotel, the 'Ghost Hunters Effect' has taken full hold.
I noticed that Sharon had friended up with/fanned up with them on FB, so I did too. And what have we seen? Regular exhortations about ghosts: 'who's up for our Friday night investigation this week?', 'check out these cool orb pics!', 'here's some tips and tricks for newbie ghost hunters'...etc etc.
It's marketing time, kids.
And it's true, while the Stanley has hosted 'ghost tours' and been generally paranormal-team friendly over the last few years, through social media it has now connected aggressively, enthusiastically and almost exclusively with the 20-30something Ghost Hunters crowd right where they live - orb pictures, DIY investigations, guided tours, ghost stories, etc etc. And check out our discounted room rates this weekend. Oh yeah.
Maybe it's the old-fogey in me, but I have a kind of knee-jerk "get off my lawn" reaction to all this. The practice of ghost hunting, to whatever extent you believe it's a pursuit worthy of the time and effort, is something that should be undertaken with a level of seriousness, skepticism and focused reticence. The image of all these gawking 30 something females snapping pictures in the Concert Hall and squealing when they capture the inevitable orb hanging like a semi-transparent Xmas ornament over a grainy, twilight-dark exposure of nothing kind of cheapens the allure that Stanley has held for most of us longer-than-1 year ghost hunter types. The place is, deservedly or not, a kind of ghost hunter's Promised Land. And my ire isn't helped by being a Colorado resident, imbuing the whole thing with a second level of proprietary ownership I hate to see callow interlopers challenge. Grrr!!!!
And on a more practical level, this may well make it a bit harder for us, either in DGH or FME, to get back in there and do a decent investigation. (We were up there a couple of years ago, and didn't get a thing except snapping a few orbs and getting nearly mauled by a grouchy momma elk on the front lawn...) Kinda reminds me of The Ladders TV commercials - y'know, the tennis tournament when all the slobs climb down onto the court to start playing, and ruin the whole thing.
Ah...I've become such an elitist.
Related to this, Sharon and I are discussing starting our own group. I may wonder in a few months why I even considered it (either because I did and it made obvious sense, given our currently precarious and usually frustrating role with the other three groups we 'belong' to....or I didn't, for some other reason), but from where I sit, we just have to.
Cards, website, stickers, blog, domain...the whole thing. We just have to.
First thing to do is pick a name.
Flatiron Paranormal Inquiry is my favorite, followed by Spirit Bear Paranormal.
Shall see.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Delaware Hotel
Time and tide have gotten the better of me the last few weeks, but wanted to get in and post some notes about the last two investigations we've done.
The Delaware Hotel was built in 1886 by the Calloway Brothers, three merchant brothers from back east who traveled to Leadville, CO during its ascendancy as a prosperous mining town in the early 1880's. The hotel saw many famous figures from the Old West travel its hallways - U.S. Grant, Butch Cassidy, etc - and it remains one of several steadfast icons from the town's Victorian heyday.
The lobby doubles as an antique shop, and most of the rooms are still open to visitors. Most are small, a little creaky, and all feature antiques (for sale) from various periods.
The hotel itself closes in the winter, a little counter-intuitive since Leadville is fairly close to the small but very nice Ski Cooper resort. The owner doesn't want swinging skis knocking over the lamps, etc - a fair concern, I guess, but one has to wonder if the hotel and the town might not benefit from some overnight tourist business during ski season.
We visited here a couple of years ago, during a ghost hunting tour hosted by one of the groups we belong to. We came up by ourselves this time.
The front desk guy Joe took us on a brief tour of the rooms and shared a few of the stories that the housekeeping staff had about questionable events in the hotel. Specifically, the sound of children in the second floor hallway, and a male spirit who appears occasionally on a couch in the third floor hallway, evidently a somewhat snarky chap who does not like men and appears only to women. (Note: the best haunted hotel stories always come from the housekeeping ladies.)
As far as our investigation, a couple of items of note:
Just after we checked in and arranged with Joe to tag along on his afternoon rounds through the rooms, I was stepping away from the desk and turned toward the stairs when I hit a genuine cold spot about six feet from the front desk. Now, I've been doing this for a few years and have never actually hit a cold spot before. This was a cold spot. I stopped, stepped back, and went over the same space again, and nothing. There was no ventilation grate above, beside or below me - just a small metal carpet joint flange at my feet. It felt planar to me, like a sheet of cold rather than a 'blob' of cold (and it was very cold, easily 15 degrees colder than the outside temperature), it felt like it was moving slowly toward the desk, and there was no activity at the front door just prior, which was 18-20' feet away anyway. Sharon was several feet away and didn't feel it. It didn't last more than 3 seconds or so, but it was interesting.
We got nothing on the static IR video we ran on the room while we were out to dinner, and nothing on the digital recorders. However, we did leave an EMF detector on when we turned in for sleep. The TV, suspended by a bracket over the desk facing the bed, was set on a self timer.
We had done some baseline readings on and around the desk earlier, and there was a very small but steady background EMF response on the meter. As we were watching TV, the meter suddenly off - two or three beeps, a moderate spike, then silence. Eh, ok.
About 2 hours after the TV shut itself off, and we were asleep - probably 2:30AM - the EMF detector suddenly went absolutely nuts. Rapid beeps (indicating a high spike), for 10-15 seconds. Loud and sustained enough it woke both of us up. No movement above us on the third floor, nothing electrical in the room or below us to cause this. **Edit: Sharon reported to me, and I had forgotten this, that during the period that the detector was spiking, she distinctly heard the floorboards in our room creaking. I didn't hear this, but I was 3/4 asleep at the time**
Paranormal? Dunno, but some would count it as evidence.
Nice place, we'll go back again.
The Delaware Hotel was built in 1886 by the Calloway Brothers, three merchant brothers from back east who traveled to Leadville, CO during its ascendancy as a prosperous mining town in the early 1880's. The hotel saw many famous figures from the Old West travel its hallways - U.S. Grant, Butch Cassidy, etc - and it remains one of several steadfast icons from the town's Victorian heyday.
The lobby doubles as an antique shop, and most of the rooms are still open to visitors. Most are small, a little creaky, and all feature antiques (for sale) from various periods.
The hotel itself closes in the winter, a little counter-intuitive since Leadville is fairly close to the small but very nice Ski Cooper resort. The owner doesn't want swinging skis knocking over the lamps, etc - a fair concern, I guess, but one has to wonder if the hotel and the town might not benefit from some overnight tourist business during ski season.
We visited here a couple of years ago, during a ghost hunting tour hosted by one of the groups we belong to. We came up by ourselves this time.
The front desk guy Joe took us on a brief tour of the rooms and shared a few of the stories that the housekeeping staff had about questionable events in the hotel. Specifically, the sound of children in the second floor hallway, and a male spirit who appears occasionally on a couch in the third floor hallway, evidently a somewhat snarky chap who does not like men and appears only to women. (Note: the best haunted hotel stories always come from the housekeeping ladies.)
As far as our investigation, a couple of items of note:
Just after we checked in and arranged with Joe to tag along on his afternoon rounds through the rooms, I was stepping away from the desk and turned toward the stairs when I hit a genuine cold spot about six feet from the front desk. Now, I've been doing this for a few years and have never actually hit a cold spot before. This was a cold spot. I stopped, stepped back, and went over the same space again, and nothing. There was no ventilation grate above, beside or below me - just a small metal carpet joint flange at my feet. It felt planar to me, like a sheet of cold rather than a 'blob' of cold (and it was very cold, easily 15 degrees colder than the outside temperature), it felt like it was moving slowly toward the desk, and there was no activity at the front door just prior, which was 18-20' feet away anyway. Sharon was several feet away and didn't feel it. It didn't last more than 3 seconds or so, but it was interesting.
We got nothing on the static IR video we ran on the room while we were out to dinner, and nothing on the digital recorders. However, we did leave an EMF detector on when we turned in for sleep. The TV, suspended by a bracket over the desk facing the bed, was set on a self timer.
We had done some baseline readings on and around the desk earlier, and there was a very small but steady background EMF response on the meter. As we were watching TV, the meter suddenly off - two or three beeps, a moderate spike, then silence. Eh, ok.
About 2 hours after the TV shut itself off, and we were asleep - probably 2:30AM - the EMF detector suddenly went absolutely nuts. Rapid beeps (indicating a high spike), for 10-15 seconds. Loud and sustained enough it woke both of us up. No movement above us on the third floor, nothing electrical in the room or below us to cause this. **Edit: Sharon reported to me, and I had forgotten this, that during the period that the detector was spiking, she distinctly heard the floorboards in our room creaking. I didn't hear this, but I was 3/4 asleep at the time**
Paranormal? Dunno, but some would count it as evidence.
Nice place, we'll go back again.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Michael Jackson's ghost?
Interesting video, I find it difficult to write off, but pretty long shot from convincing.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Latest ghost investigation
We spent a night at a very cushy lodge resort in Manitou Springs this past weekend, our second investigation there.
A cursory examination of my digital photos and voice recordings hasn't revealed anything, but Sharon did capture at least one very interesting EVP recording, utterly unexplainable. I have not yet been through all my audio, or any of my video (video usually yields nothing anyway.)
I won't presume to be a "sensitive" - in fact, I've been called "thick" by people who know about these things - but I have to be quite honest that I did not feel on either trip anything particularly spooky about this place. Another paranormal group insists the place is crazy haunted, based on the evidence they caught a month or so ago.
Being a very comfortable lodge resort, beautfully maintained and cush to the max, it may be that my own biases are coming into play here (haunted houses are supposed to be creaky, cold, derelict, etc...). I do think that this pursuit is fraught with personal biases all the time - the mere fact that you're there suggests you have some reason to believe some location is haunted, and that predisposition may be based on no more than someone else's belief that it is so, which may be based on yet someone else's belief, etc etc. In this vein, I have often believed that an effective test of so-called sensitives would be to walk them through three house, one of which has reported activity they are not informed of, and the other two with none, and see which one they choose.
But I do insist that, just as belief in the paranormal should as much as possible be based on evidence, a disbelief in the paranormal should at the very least be subjected to a possible encounter with evidence of the contrary...and thus the hunt goes on.
I'll see about uploading Sharon's evidence if I can get an edited version of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)