Reaching Through for the First Time

The Stanley Hotel has drawn me into it's lobby since I was a child.  It lingers in the background of my dreams and gives me a feeling of calm, even though it is quite possibly the most haunted place in America. I stayed there on the 99th anniversary of the hotel on July 4th, feasted at many a mother's day brunch and even held a position as a ghost tour guide for a whole day (the commute from Denver was too much.  The fact that I couldn't work there is one of the biggest disappoints of my life to date), so it's only logical I took part in a ghost hunt.

It resulted in the first time that I successfully reached through the veil...

It's not only what you know...


I will admit, I was a fan of the show "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel Channel.  I rarely watched "Ghost Hunters" on SyFy, though I knew they had done a live event from the Stanley Hotel a few times.  I became obsessed with the Ghost Adventures Crew right before I made a *cough* mistake and dislocated my knee and had corrective surgery, keeping me prone in front of a TV for a month and a half.  I started to follow host Zak Bagans on Twitter, mostly because he posted pictures of where they were  currently filming.  


About half way though my knee surgery recovery, I opened Twitter on my phone to a picture of the three guys of Ghost Adventures standing in front of the fountain behind the Stanley's main building.  Any other time I would have been in my car and making the 45 minute drive from Fort Collins to Estes Park, but I was still incapacitated.  What timing.  But I knew that an episode at the Stanley was coming, and that was exciting enough.


When the day of the show finally came, I got a brilliant idea: Watch the premier at the Stanley!  I gathered by friends Katie Bolger and Nick Farnan and we were on our way just in time to arrive before the show started.  The Cascades bar was full, save for the corner of the bar next to who I figured was running the Twitter and Facebook accounts for the hotel.  Her name is Callea Seck and she is the resident paranormal investigator at the Stanley Hotel.  


Callea is by far one of the nicest people I have met in a very long time - she has been willing to put up with me on several occasions.  From my eagerness at the GA premier to giving me an interview for the CSU paper, she has proven that she is always willing to communicate to anyone who asks.  I got really excited to know her and started to pay attention to her posts on the Stanley's Facebook and Twitter accounts, which ultimately led to my brief employment and the ghost hunt that has changed my life.  I also met Karl Pfeiffer, who won season 1 of the show "Ghost Hunters Academy," and Clay Johnson, who was a paranormal investigator in Wyoming before becoming tour manager at the hotel. 


Ultimately, the paranormal crew at the Stanley is a force to be admired.


The Meeting...


Racing up the Big Thompson Canyon at 7:15 pm, my heart was pounding.  The ghost hunt was starting at 8:00 and I barely had the time to make it up to Estes Park.  I screeched into a parking space at 7:57, just enough time to get in and join the group.  


According to Callea, who was running the show, it was one of the first times that a ghost hunt hadn't been sold out.  The fewer people to hunt, the better.  From the Ghost Tour lobby in the basement of the Stanley Hotel, we moved east to the Music Hall, where we were introduced to the crew mentioned above.  After a quick intro to our hosts and an introduction to the available equipment, we were split into two teams.  The decision was clear: we split in half as though we knew who we wanted to hunt with. I was part of the team that would stay in the Music Hall while the other team would move the Manor House.


While in the Music Hall, KJ McCormick of "Ghost Hunters" introduced us to "Lucy's Room," which was reported to hold the spirit of a runaway named Lucy who took shelter in the Music Hall during the foreclosure era of the hotel (which happened many times).  According to Karl Pfeiffer, Lucy was a very active spirit.  She had run away from home in Estes Park at the age of around 18 and found shelter in the boarded-up Music Hall.  She lived there until she was discovered by the police who had no choice but to throw her out into the streets.  The police found her body after that night, frozen to death in the high-altitude town of Estes Park.


KJ and Clay took our team (which I will call team 2) into Lucy's room in the basement of the Music Hall.  Mr. McCormick explained the state of the hotel at the time: Lucy had become quiet, and something called "elementals" have moved in from the Carriage House, East of the Music Hall (More on this phenomena soon).  Short story: We had no experiences, save for the rose scent emanating from Mrs. Stanley's viewing balcony.


Then the time came to change locations.  Team 1 came to the music hall, and my friends from Team 2 were to move to the Manor House.  


Nothing could prepare me for the Ghost Box session that happened in the Manor House.  


I found myself with Callea Seck and Karl Pfeiffer as they explained the experiences they had in this room in the Manor House of the Stanley Hotel.  These included the "Pig Man" and an explanation of the history of the ouija board (Again, to be explained in detail later).  Then Callea pulled out two paranormal devices: A PX Device and a Ghost Box.  As a team, we decided to use the Ghost Box to reach though the veil.  


Here is where it gets crazy...


Ghost Box Session - The Stanley Hotel by OneManMedia22
This is the conversation that we experienced.  If you listen, you can tell the main points of the investigation.  


I heard "Shooting Buckhorn."  After many references to this, we find that it may be the spirit of Lord Dunraven, the man who owned the land before the Stanley Hotel was built.  Listen to the Ghost Box session, especially the explanation of the story after the ghost box turns off, and I will post soon about my conclusions of this first time that I reached through the veil...

Reaching Through My Own History

It's never easy to start a conversation about the paranormal.  You never know if what you will be taken seriously or just rejected as crazy.  At least that is how things used to be.  It's quite interesting that, be it from a shift in culture or a shift in mindset, we are becoming more and more interested in what is on the other side.  An even more amazing question is being asked by some I have come across - "What is the other side?"

As a kid I was always curious about what was out there, and I can't tag this memory to an obsession with a movie or story or something like that.  It just happened.  The first experience I can remember happened while I was living in my second house.  I moved there when I started second grade and went to high school in the same house, so I consider it the house in which I grew up.

I was convinced the house was haunted from a young age.  Something about it never felt right to me.  Admittedly, to this day, I still think something is there (though I have no proof).  It was one of those places where you run up the stairs from the basement because it felt like something was following you.  The house is in a dark section of the street so it always looks ominous to passers-by.  There were three distinct events in that house that I remember vividly that were perhaps the catalyst to my obsession today.

Dragging me to curiosity

I was about 12 years old when I was literally scared for the first time.  I was lying in my bed, unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep, as was usual for me in that house.   My mom, brother, and grandma were all asleep in their own rooms as I started to hear some movement in the attic above me.  A thud.  Something dragging?  Another thud, another drag.  This time it's metallic.  

That was it, I was convinced I was hearing someone walking in the attic above me, dragging something like chains behind him.  It walked from right above my head to the other side of the room and stopped.  I laid there in fear for a good hour before I was able to stand up and run to my mom's room.  To this day she thinks I was dreaming, and I have no proof to say otherwise, save for one coincidence.  

The walk-in closet in my room had an access panel to the attic.  My friends and I would always talk about building a fort up there at some point.  It never happened.  But the next morning, I went into my closet to get dressed for school, and when I looked up, the panel was lifted off the hole, slightly ajar resting about 8 inches above my closet on the top of the access shaft.  

I still remember the feeling of my mouth dropping to the floor.  I had never seen that panel moved in the years that I had lived in the house.  To me, that was proof.  Obviously, I never lost the feeling and I was instantly curious, if not terrified.

A friendly reminder

Before I turned 15, my grandma passed away.  She was one of those grandmas who was there when I woke up and when I got home from school, every day.  She took great care of our family, it was a tragic loss for all of us.  

She had a routine that we all remember.  She had a couple nighties she wore at night, but she mostly wore one that was pink.  She would watch TV in her recliner in the evening while drinking tea.  If she ran out, she would have to walk across the kitchen table area and toward the stove, past the sliding-glass door.  

After she passed, I was upstairs in my room doing homework when I got thirsty and decided to go downstairs to get some soda.  As I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I saw my brother sitting at the kitchen table doing homework as well.  He was in front of the sliding-glass door, and instead of looking at me as I came downstairs, his head shot to the glass.  I was looking there too when I saw the reflection of my grandma, in her pink nightie, walking to the kitchen with teacup in hand and a smile.  Frozen at the bottom the stairs, my brother quickly snapped his head toward me and asked "Did you see that?!"

That was the first validated experience I had in my life.  At the time I was calmed, knowing that my grandma was still around, yet I was worried that she may be trapped.  I was too young to know about residual hauntings, which I now believe this to be.  But I remember thinking that if this did not prove there is something else out there, I was going to find something else.  

A tingling fear

Our basement was creepy, no doubt.  It had low ceilings, few lights and a lot of small rooms.  To me, it always felt like there was someone else down there, no matter how many people were with me.  The stairs were a big place for this.  But I was a fat kid and my video games were down there, so I found myself in what I call "the pit" quite often.  

I lost weight one year though diet and exercise, but mostly though an obsession with Dance Dance Revolution.  I would burn though calories like I used to burn though pizza rolls.  One night I was having a particularly intense session when I sat on the couch to take a break.

Not two seconds later, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.  It had happened to me before many times, so I wasn't worried.  But this time it didn't go away - it got stronger.  I felt my hair actually move, like someone was running their fingers along the back of my hair - something my grandma did often.  

I didn't like it.  It's weird to say to this day, that something that used to comfort me now scared me, but it's true.  I ran from the basement like I never had before and never whet back down there until two years later when we moved and I had to pack some boxes.  

These experiences are what have led me to the paranormal and I intend to find the answers quickly.  I know a lot of people say they are researching paranormal and say they are completely objective are mistaking - if you are studying the paranormal you have a reason to and you know it's there.  That's the stance I am taking.  I know nearly everything can be explained, and I have very few stories that I believe contain the paranormal, but I refuse to study something I don't believe in.