Ghost Hunting (21 page)

Steve followed Brian’s gaze—and saw something as well. It was a black shadow in the corner beside the bed, as if someone was crouching there. Brian and Steve tried to catch it on camera, but by the time they reacted it was already gone.

They were understandably pumped by the experience. However, they had been in T.A.P.S. long enough to know the kinds of questions they had to ask themselves. Had a gust of wind moved the curtains, making it appear as if there had been a shadow? Could another gust have made the bed shake?

As Steve and Brian pondered those questions, Grant and I were making our way down to the hotel’s basement. On more than one occasion, employees had reported feeling something tugging at their clothes down there. Suddenly, we heard a knocking sound. Tracing it to its source, we found ourselves confronted by a padlocked door.

The way my mind works, I couldn’t help thinking there was someone on the other side trying to get out.

Steve and Brian, meanwhile, had made their way to the infamous room 217, where Mrs. Wilson was supposed to have unpacked Stephen King’s bags. “Give us a sign,” they asked, scanning the place with their instruments. No answer.

Around 5:30 a.m. we called it quits for the night. However, we left our cameras running in room 401, where I was planning on hitting the hay. This was the place where the guy had supposedly lost his jewelry to a ghost. It didn’t take me long to fall into a deep sleep.

But I wasn’t destined to sleep for long, because a few minutes later I heard something—the sound of the closet door opening and closing, and what sounded like conversation. Getting up out of bed, I went to check the closet door. It was open all right. But that wasn’t the only thing in the room that had changed.

I always take a pill in the morning to address a chronic acid reflux problem. That means I’ve always got a glass beside my bed, whether I’m at home or on the road. This night was no different.

But while I was sleeping, the glass had shattered—and not in the usual way. It hadn’t fallen and hit something. It had simply cracked, popping out a single jagged piece, as if pressure had expanded it from the inside.

Part of me wanted to stay awake and think about what had happened. However, I knew I had another night’s investigation ahead of me. If I didn’t sleep, I’d be dead to the world. So I moved the camera to cover the closet door, crawled back into bed, and drifted off.

For all of nine minutes.

By 5: 48 I was up again, wakened by a new set of sounds. There was so much banging in the closet, it sounded like there was a party in there. Yet when I checked it out, there was nothing to be seen.

One phenomenon that didn’t make it into the TV show took place in Grant’s hotel room. Whenever he went to pull the drapes closed so he could change his clothes, they sprang open again the width of a key card. It was kind of frustrating.

But that wasn’t the full extent of the problem—because one time when he closed the drapes and turned around for a second to do something, they sprang open again. And not just a little. They opened all the way.

He had never seen drapes do that before, but there’s a first time for everything. So he pulled them closed and went to the bathroom. But when he came out, the drapes were wide open again.

Now his curiosity was on high alert. He closed the drapes again, then sat down on the bed and watched television. But at the same time he was keeping an eye on the drapes, waiting for them to pop open. For twenty minutes, nothing happened. At that point, he gave up and turned to his computer bag.

That’s when he heard it—the sound of the drapes hissing along their track. When he turned around, they were open all the way again.

Our second night in the hotel hit its first nugget of activity while Brian was setting up the mini DVR camera in room 1302. He was halfway through when he heard a man’s voice whispering to him. Looking around, he tried to find the source of it, but there was no one there.

“Hello?” he called. “Hello?”

Then he heard it again. But as before, he couldn’t find anyone who might have made the noise.

A little while later, Grant and I found ourselves in the basement of the Concert Hall, checking out the concierge’s claims that the place was haunted by the spirit of the homeless woman. Listening closely, we heard what sounded like footsteps and running water. Were there people in the building? Icemakers? We hoped to find out.

Two hours into the investigation, Steve and Brian walked into the MacGregor Room—and got EMF readings that were off the charts. The lowest one was over 9.0, the highest one 53.4! (Compare that to a baseline reading of 1.0!)

Steve pointed to the floor. There had to be something underneath it if he and Brian were getting a reading that incredibly high. More than likely, an electrical source. Brian went down to the basement to check it out. It didn’t take long for him to find the reason for all the electromagnetic activity—a communications junction. And not a small one. It served the entire hotel.

By that time, Grant and I were examining room 401, where I had slept—or tried to—the night before. The broken drinking glass was still there, with a fragment popped out of it. Neither of us could figure out how it had happened, much less how the closet door had opened on its own.

At about 1: 00, some four hours into the investigation, Brian and Steve made their way to the Billiard Room, where Mr. Stanley supposedly made an appearance from time to time. They were taking EMF readings when Brian swore and pointed to a French door—at which point Steve swung his flashlight in that direction.

By that time, there was no one there. But Brian claimed he had seen someone standing by the door until Steve’s light had chased the figure away. They examined the hallway beyond the door.

“Can you give us a sign of your presence?” Steve asked. “Can you make a noise?”

As if on cue, they heard something—the sound of a doorknob jiggling. “Did you hear that?” Brian whispered and began moving toward the noise.

“Go slow,” Steve cautioned him. “Go slow.”

It seemed to be an outside door that had made the noise, so they went out into the cold. But there was no one there.

About that same time, Grant hooked up with Lisa and Dave and told them he wanted to check out the stage in the MacGregor Room. Lisa and Dave followed Grant into the room, intending to scan the place with their instruments—until Grant pulled aside a curtain on the stage. Suddenly, there was a face poking through a hole in a half-shattered door—a face with a maniacal grin, a lot like Nicholson’s in
The Shining.
As it happened, the face was
mine,
but that didn’t stop Lisa and Dave from jumping a mile into the air, scared out of their wits.

The door to room 217—not to mention the hatchet in my hand—were props left over from the TV miniseries. It was a good joke, if I say so myself. After all our hard work, it loosened everybody up.

When the hooting and jeering were over, I told Brian I wanted him to come with me to get another look at the Concert Hall. He looked surprised. After all, I work with Grant most of the time if I work with anybody, and Brian usually winds up with Steve or somebody else. But this time was different.

It was cold outside as we left the main building, but as residents of Rhode Island we weren’t exactly strangers to cold. We just put up our hoods and made our way to the Concert Hall, our breath freezing on the air like tiny wraiths.

When we got inside, we listened for sounds. One of the claims the hotel staff had made was that there was a screeching noise in the hall. We wanted to see if we had the same experience. We waited for a while, but nothing happened.

Then I broached the real reason I had asked Brian to accompany me to the Concert Hall. The guy was like a little brother to me, and had been since he joined T.A.P.S. in the early days. Yet his presence on the team had always been a source of annoyance to me and others, and his girlfriend had distracted him with her cell phone calls to the point where he had become a burden.

When he left, it was more of a relief than anything else. Then he had asked to come back and we had accepted him—against our better judgment. But it was clear to everyone, including him, that he was unofficially on probation. After being back for a while, he deserved to know where he stood.

“So,” he said as we sat in the balcony, listening for anything even vaguely like a screeching noise, “how am I doing?”

I felt good being able to tell him, “Pretty good. To be honest, I didn’t want to see you come back, but you live for this.”

We talked about how he had gotten his life together, putting some money in the bank for a change. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was twenty-nine years old. It was time to grow up, I told him.

“I know,” said Brian. He went on to tell me how much he appreciated the opportunity to rejoin the team.

I could have said that he had shown us what we wanted to see, and that he could feel secure in his position with us, but I didn’t. I knew Brian well enough to understand he needed me to be real with him.

“Don’t shut the door again,” I told him. “Prove me right.” I had taken some heat from Grant and the rest of the team when I’d suggested we return Brian to the fold. Now he had to show us he was a changed man, not just for a moment but for the long haul.

It was a good conversation. Brian seemed to feel good hearing what I had to say. It had to be a load off his mind to know we were pleased with him.

Grant, meanwhile, was working with Dave and Lisa. They were going from guest room to guest room, trying to see if they felt anything. As I’ve said before, we depend heavily on our instruments for verification of our experiences, but we all go by our feelings as well.

None of the guest rooms seemed promising to them until they got to room 1302. Then they all felt something. By then, it was about 3:30 a.m. and we were seven hours into the investigation, so everyone was a little tired. But that wasn’t why Lisa took the opportunity to lie down on the bed. She wanted to relax so she could open herself up to any presences in the room.

Dave said he had a feeling that they were being watched. They asked if there was anyone else in the room with them, hoping to get a ghostly response. But it was very quiet.

Grant’s tape was coming to an end in his mini digital video recorder, so he went over to a heavy wooden table to change it. But it was dark in the room so Kendall Whelpton, one of our camera operators, went over to lend Grant the illumination from his camera’s LCD screen.

Suddenly the whole table lifted up and slammed down—right along with the chair that was standing beside it. The movement and the resulting bang were enough to get Grant’s heart pounding in his chest, and with all he’s been through over the years he doesn’t shock easily.

In the wake of that bang, he looked around, searching for an explanation. It occurred to him that Kendall could have moved the table with his leg as he brought his camera over, but the table was too heavy to be budged that way.

Kendall was just standing there with his mouth open, not knowing what to say. Clearly, the table had assumed a new position in the room. That much was evident from the tape Kendall had taken previously.

It was at that point that Brian and I got there and heard the story. Brian noted that he had heard a man’s voice in that part of the room during his travels earlier in the evening.

Unfortunately, Dave hadn’t seen the table move. He was looking in another direction at the time, so he had only heard it. Disappointed, he lingered in the room, accompanied by Steve. “It’s all patience,” Steve told him.

Steve’s first experience was in a cemetery, but after that he didn’t have one for almost five years. He knew how Dave felt. Chances to witness paranormal phenomena up close were few and far between. It was frustrating to have something take place a few feet away and not get to see it.

Trying to console Dave, Steve told him he had come a long way. Dave said that he appreciated the opportunity T.A.P.S. had given him. After all, ghost hunting was his passion in life. Finally, the edge taken off his disappointment, Dave followed Steve out of the guest room.

As for Kendall, who
had
seen the table move, his whole view of the paranormal had changed. Prior to that night, he’d been a skeptic. He had wanted proof—and now he had gotten it. “I’m a believer now,” he said, still a little shaken from the experience.

Though it was too late for us to keep investigating, we left our instruments up and rolling the rest of the night. Lisa would have to go home the next morning, but the rest of the team would stay in the hotel to analyze the data we had collected and conduct some local research.

The first apparent evidence Steve and Dave came across was the pattern of three lights that Grant and I had discovered in the MacGregor Room. At the time, we had entertained the idea that the lights were a reflection but rejected it. On the tape, however, it was clear that the lights were moving with the camera, so Steve and Dave concluded that they were a reflection after all.