Finally--Green Park Conference Day 2

After a near sleepless night in a haunted room, Tina had to be bushy-eyed for the 2pm panel on “The Nature of Spirits”. PSI’s Joe Wright and Spanky were in attendance; the bleary-eyed ghost hunters were in for a treat.

The audience asked lots of thought-provoking questions which the panelists answered using their combined decades of experience.

That night we were treated to a delicious BBQ dinner as the dining room filled with raucous paranormal camaraderie. This is where we met Brandi & Sheera, each with a daughter in tow. We chatted with the ladies until the dining room was almost empty. The wonderful hotel staff scurried about clearing away the remnants of the buffet as we talked and laughed about all things ghost-hunting.

The hunting hour was fast approaching and we excused ourselves to prepare, making note to add our new friends to our roster that night.

As expected, the assembly room was packed with the hum and chatter of excited ghost hunters. We clamored to get a clipboard and sign up our new team; which basically consisted of the previous night’s team plus Brandi, Sheera and their girls. It soon became clear that we wouldn’t get a team to ourselves and eventually we headed out with 11 people in tow.

Miraculously, we all managed to file into room 318 without any drama. Our leader explained the reported activity of the room and then we sat in relative silence in the dark for several minutes; a silence broken only by occasional shout outs from our anonymous crew. Calls to any spirit present to “tell us your name” or “give us a sign”. There was occasional ruckus in the hall; laughing, exuberant hunters, shuffling on to their next room.

Suddenly the door popped open and shadowy figures began entering our space. Four stragglers who were separated from their original group; accidentally or on purpose, I’m not sure. Now it was beginning to get crowded. The uneasiness of the other hunters filled the room as our new guests shuffled and settled into the first available space. During the uncomfortable rustling of these strangers, Tina; sitting across from me, got several spikes on her EMF detector. At the same time, what I thought was a flashlight hanging from her vest came on by itself. On , off and on again, I motioned to her that her flashlight was on as she looked at me strangely, groping for the offending device. “Your light…” I mouthed..trying not to interfere with anyone’s EVP session. She grabbed onto the thing and I nodded that yes that was the light in question. At this point, the hallway light…streaming under the huge gap in the door…revealed that the flashlight in question was actually an old 35mm camera. As we discovered later, the light was a function of the red eye reduction, not the flash, which is probably why it looked like a flashlight from across the room. To turn on this feature you have to depress the button, almost like taking a picture. Tina’s hands were nowhere near this camera when the light came on. She was too busy holding on to the EMF detector. There was nothing on her person that could have held down the button in such a way. Did a spirit child’s ghostly hands cause this phenomenon?

All too soon our adventures in 318 came to an end. As the lights came on and the crowd filtered out the door, Tina leaned over and said:”Let’s go back to HQ and see if we can split off into our own team. I do believe there are way too many people on this one to do a proper investigation.”
With that we gathered our associates and traipsed down the meeting room. Before we knew it, Scott Nicholson himself was unlocking doors for us. Could this night get any better?!
We checked out a few rooms that weren’t officially haunted and then went down to Brandi & Sheera’s to investigate. Turns out they had a strange night as well, and wanted us to check it out. After hearing our story of terror and hilarity, they wanted to hunt in our room as well. Thus we journeyed off the “official ghost hunt” for awhile.

Our adventurous spirit was rewarded with nothing more than a few EMF spikes. Mr. Grabby Hands from the night before didn’t bother to make the scene. Still trying to avoid the noisy throngs of fellow hunters, we decided to creep down to the dining room; the place we’d gotten the most activity on night one. Our perseverance would be well rewarded.

Shadows, Orbs & Waiters, OH MY!

We found unexpected sanctuary in the dining hall; the other hunters we concentrating on the “haunted” hotel rooms, oblivious to the hot spot right under their noses!
Our team gathered around one of the large tables on the upper platform of the dining hall; the same table from the first night. Soon after we settled in, we became aware that we were not alone.

Periodically we saw a small shadow moving up and down a brief set of stairs across the room. Each of us saw this thing at least once. It was barely 3 feet tall and quite like a child, it scurried up and down and up the stairs; repetitive, obvious, and solid black. Our expert debunker Tori, searched for obvious causes (the shadows of folks walking by, car lights bouncing off of chandelier crystals), none of which explained what we; what all of us, had seen. Kendra even journeyed over the table nearest our little shadow friend, in an attempt at interaction. She asked “it” to move a glass on the table. Our friend never complied, but continued to tromp up and down the stairs.

I was most enthralled with this little shadow when Tina called my name from across the table. I instinctively turned towards her and was quite literally taken aback by a tall shadowy mass standing behind her. She later revealed that she felt the presence there and my reaction simply confirmed what she was feeling.

At this point let me say that shadowpeople are NOT my favorite things. I’ve had bad experiences with them in the past and to me they are unreadable; meaning they are able to get quite close without me sensing them. Their form and their intentions are a mystery, although I assume negativity. Some folks don’t view these as “evil” entities at all. Interpretation is relative and my run-ins with these forms have been negative for the most part. Even the small shadow playing on the stairs sent a chill down my spine.

This crazy active investigation was only to get stranger. We witnessed strange green orbs on one of the dining room tables. So bright and intermittent were these lights that I assumed they were a product of someone’s equipment. Eventually the others witness these orbs and checked the area for the device that was creating them. No equipment was located on the table or near it; neither were there any reflective surfaces like a spoon or glass. These lights, which were witness by everyone in attendance are still a mystery.

In addition to the green lights, we also witnessed a pale pink shimmering orb right above the area where the shadowperson romped. Several people witnessed it and we set about trying to debunk it. There were glass panels on the doors and crystals on the chandeliers; we imagined that this was some funny trick of light. After shining flashlights on crystals and through the glass from every conceivable angle we were unable to replicate the orb. We even sat quietly at one point, watching closely to see if the movement of people in the lobby or cars in the parking lot could be the culprit. We never saw anything like this pink orb again.
The girls were exhausted and soon both moms dragged them off to bed. We were beginning to feel the accumulation of sleepless hours ourselves and slowly began packing up our gear. As it turns out, the ghosties had other plans.

In the shuffle of chairs and feet, Kendra asked:”Tina, have you taken the thing out of your EMF yet?” Tina shoves a coin or a guitar pick into the button of the EMF detector to hold it down. This cuts down on false positive and crampy thumbs. As we strained to followed Kendra’s pointing hand in the dark, we realized that T’s EMF detector was lit up full tilt!

This seemed to snap the sleepiness right out of us and we took our seats around the table much quicker than we’d vacated them. We began an amazing EMF session…getting what seemed to be answers to our questions from some unseen force. Through the course of nearly half an hour, we discovered that we were talking to a former waiter at the hotel. Through yes and no questions,

he indicated that he’d loved his job and was quite good

at it. Most of all he enjoyed meeting all the famous people that made their way through the Green Park over the years. He did not tell us when he worked there…we were too excited with our progress to go year by year! He seemed to be most excited when Annie Oakley was mentioned. At one point, he wanted to ask us questions rather than answer ours. “How’s that gonna work?” Tina laughed.

Our waiter friend seemed to fade out when other people entered the room. Some of the PSI folks came through looking for missing equipment. Each time, “the waiter” stopped responding and started up again only when they’d left. We asked if it was draining for him to answer all these questions to which he replied yes. Eventually the responses stopped and we finally called it a night.

The next day there was talk that someone from PSI had captured an amazing FLIR image of a little girl jumping on the bed in Rm 318. Unfortunately, the guy with the footage was already gone by the time we dragged ourselves downstairs. Scott Nicholson interviewed Tina for his upcoming book and we had a wonderful chat with the PSI guys.

All in all the experience was wonderful! The Green Park staff were awesome, the organizers did a fabulous job of shuffling around all the eager ghost hunters. I highly recommend this event for novice and experienced ghost hunters alike.