What a gem of a place! And did I mention that it's haunted?
Some team members and myself went up and stayed for a night and did an investigation of this place, and we were not disappointed. There are 6 rooms total, and at the time we were there, room 2 was closed for renovations. We had rooms 1, 3, 5, and 6. Another couple had room 4, but they found us in the restaurant at dinnertime and asked us to investigate their room as well, so we basically had the place to ourselves (which is terrific, to eliminate contamination sounds).
The staff was knowledgeable and wanted to share a few stories:
- In the distant past of the building, there was a woman who lived upstairs and worked downstairs. She returned to her room to find her boyfriend with a prostitute. A fight broke out between the women and the prostitute got the upper hand and pushed the woman over the balcony railing, and she died.
- In the 1970s there was a man named Mark who shot his girlfriend in one of the rooms.
- A regular at the bar died and has been seen still sitting at the bar at times.
- An "imbalanced" man in the 1990s shot a bow and arrow into the building while people were there. He was tackled to the ground, hit his head, started convulsing, and died.
Based on all those stories, I'm sure there were other events that occurred as well, that were not big enough to make news, but nonetheless were full of human emotion and could certainly leave a residual mark on the location.
One of the accommodating staff members allowed us some time in their empty event room, after the restaurant and bar quieted down for the night. There is an OLD, HUGE, historic mirror in the room, and we decided to start with an EVP session right in front of it. Sometimes, I like to place my flashlight on the ground several feet away from me before starting a session, and then I try to encourage entities to turn the flashlight on or off in response to questions. This time, two of our other team members had the same idea, so we had 3 flashlights out.
Note: This is an experimental method, and we try not to use it very often on client cases because there are so many factors.... how easy is it to turn on the flashlight? Is it so easy to trigger that a vibration in a floorboard can set it off? Does humidity in the air increase the sensitivity of the electrical contacts in the flashlight?... you see how it goes. So we usually use the flashlights in this way on recreational cases such as this.
We hardly started our session and explained how to turn on the flashlights when they started to turn on and off, seemingly in response to direct requests and questions. At one point, we were asking "them" to turn off my flashlight, and it was flickering heavily, but not turning all the way off. We caught this EVP:
Event room - child voice- I do what I want
That was the best one I got in the building, but WOW, it's a good one.
I had heard previously that there is a possibility of a child ghost named Christopher in the building. Some attribute certain activity to him, such as things moving in the kitchen, glasses to move across the bar, items off tables, and to cause other small pranks. Was this the voice of Christopher? We don't know, but we were thrilled with the EVP.
We had another possible EVP in the same room, while we were still setting up our experimental equipment:
Event room - singing in background while we set up
The flashlight activity seemed to be consistent throughout the building, which was interesting. It seemed that whoever was there, was eager to communicate and cooperative with our efforts to connect. On our infrared DVR video camera, room 3 (the one I was sleeping in that night) had a lot of orb activity. I am VERY skeptical of orbs because I personally feel that 99.9% of orbs are either dust or bugs, but it was interesting to note that it was full of orbs in room 3 and no where else.
I plan to return to the Sierra Nevada House soon. It has the small town feel, it is a small business (which I love supporting, rather than big business), and there are spirits who want to communicate. Gotta love it!
