18: The Investigation
2006
The opportunity to investigate the Crescent Hotel with Ken and Carroll was like a dream come true. Sitting in their classes for a day and a half, I had already learned so much and I was ready to put my new knowledge to work.
Our group was excited to find that our first investigation of the hotel was to start in the basement. This area is very large and is divided between public and private use. The public area contains restrooms, a lobby, and a spa. The private area, only used by the hotel staff, contains the laundry room, storage, and various workrooms. When the hotel served as Dr. Baker’s Cancer Hospital, this was where the morgue was located and to this day, still holds the autopsy table.
At 10:00 p.m., we went down the stairs and stopped in front of the spa. With the business closed for the night, Ken told everyone to make themselves comfortable on the stairs or in the lobby. As he started to go over our itinerary for the evening, he abruptly quit talking.
After a few seconds of silence, Ken asked if anyone could feel anything. I was surprised to hear Wes say that he could. With my attention now focused on him, I could see that he looked a little uneasy. When Ken asked Wes to describe what he felt, I started taking pictures.
Wes said he felt a cold spot on the back of his hand. He lifted his hands and vigorously rubbed one with the other. He visibly shuddered as he told the group that it felt like someone had laid a block of ice on his hand.
With everyone’s attention turned to Wes, Ken pointed out that Wes’s hands had been hanging down to his sides. He said that was an interesting point because Wes’s hands were down low and a little boy by the name of Christopher had just walked up beside him. Ken said that the boy knew why we were there and he wanted to help us all understand. Even though I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, I continued taking pictures.
After a few minutes, Ken nodded his head as if he were having a conversation with someone the rest of us couldn’t see. He smiled and said “Thank you” to the invisible Christopher. He then told us Christopher had run up the stairs. I aimed my camera towards the staircase and took more pictures. Glancing at the screen on my digital camera, I saw that I’d photographed an orb. Hmm, that’s interesting. Mentally marking this picture as one I wanted to look at better on the computer, I heard Ken say that it wasn’t uncommon to find Christopher in this area of the hotel. He said Christopher always appeared to him as a child, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d died as a child. Ken explained that spirits could choose to come back at any age and that many times they chose to come back as children because that’s when they were at their happiest.
As Ken went on to describe, in detail, what Christopher was wearing, I just didn’t know what to think. This was weird, even for my standards. I’d always considered myself sensitive to the presence of ghosts and I hadn’t seen or felt anything. If Ken hadn’t already made such an impression on me during our classes, I would have probably discounted everything he said about the little boy. However, the main thing I’d learned from Ken and Carroll was that I still had a lot to learn.
Bringing me out of my thoughts, I heard Ken unlock the door to the private area of the basement—the area that once was the morgue. As we walked down the hall, Ken told us that most of the downstairs area was a known hot spot for ghostly activity. Ken and Carroll suggested we practice what we’d learned and try to feel for areas that contained unexplainable fields of energy.
With my thoughts still focused on “the little boy,” I stood off to the side and waited on Wes. As I watched the group walk down the hall with their hands out in front of them, I couldn’t help but feel as though I was caught up in some bizarre zombie movie. I’d seen people do this on ghost-hunting shows before, but I’d never understood why they did it. Even though I now understood, I still found I was a little self-conscious about doing it myself.
I didn’t see Wes and I wondered if he had chosen to sit this exercise out. Continuing to watch the group pass with their hands outstretched in front of them, I decided if Wes were sitting this one out, I would gladly join him. I went in the opposite direction of the group, looking for Wes and my jaw dropped as I saw him coming down the hall with his hands stretched out in front of him.
His willingness to experiment with these exercises really surprised me. I was the one who wanted to come to the seminar and yet he seemed to be a more eager participant than I was. When I fell in behind him, he reminded me not to follow too close behind or I wouldn’t be able to tell if I was feeling his energy or the energy from something else.
The “morgue” area divides into several rooms. I looked for the room that had the least number of people. For one, I was still self-conscious about doing this exercise and, as Wes had said, I needed some space to try to do this right. Walking into one of the larger rooms, I noticed there were only two other people in there, one of whom was Carroll. Putting my inhibitions aside, with my hands out in front of me, I walked around.
Walking in front of what had once been the autopsy table, I felt something. I stopped. I had the same sensation on the palms of my hands that I had earlier in class when I’d felt Wes’s energy. The difference was, there was no one standing in front of me. As I moved my hands around, I could tell this wall of energy started about two feet off the ground and went up a little higher than my head. I backed away and started again. When I approached the same area, I felt it again.
I turned to see Carroll watching me from a corner. I continued with the exercise. Each time my hand roamed over into that one spot, I experienced that “rubber balloon” feel. I turned to Carroll again. He smiled and nodded as he told me that I had it. Seeing my confusion, he said I was feeling the energy of a man who used to work in the morgue and that he’d encountered him many times in that spot.
At home, I’d had a ghost touch me before, but I’d never tried to touch one of them. This was amazing! After leaving the area for awhile, I returned and tried to locate the energy again. It wasn’t there. I backed up and tried again. It still wasn’t there. Carroll was still standing in the corner and I looked over at him. He shrugged and told me that the man had left.
Even though the investigation lasted well into the night, after going to our room, we couldn’t sleep. As we sat and talked, I asked Wes about his experience with the cold spot on his hand. Not wanting to talk about it, he quickly described the same thing to me as he had to the group earlier.
Always being the one to look for a logical explanation, he was bothered with the fact he couldn’t find one. Deep in thought, he rubbed the back of his hand and paced the length of our hotel room a few times. When I tried to bring up his experience with the cold spot again, he told me he needed to clear his head and he suggested we go walk the halls of the hotel.
Roaming the halls, we saw another couple from the seminar. I remembered their names were Don and Susan. As I was about to say hello, Wes greeted them by asking if they really believed in all of this stuff. At that point, my only wish was to melt into the floor.
Susan smiled as she gave him an unwavering yes. Speaking for her and her husband, she said they tried to be very open-minded. I was hoping against all hope Wes wouldn’t say something about their brains falling out. Luckily, Don stepped into the conversation by asking us if we were the ones who lived in a haunted house.
Hoping to keep Wes quiet, I jumped into the conversation by talking about our ghosts.
Finding out Don and Susan also suspected their home might be haunted, our talk turned to EVPs. After sharing our recordings with them, we realized we had been standing in the hall for over an hour. With our next scheduled class only a few hours away, we said our good-byes and went to our rooms.
Openly talking about ghosts with someone outside of the family had been a unique and enjoyable experience for me. It was comforting to know that other “normal” people experienced some of the same things I had. The conversation seemed to have had the opposite effect on Wes. Combining his experience with the cold spot and meeting another couple who believed in ghosts had his brain on overload. Little did he know, his brain was going to have to do a bit more expanding.