Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Ghost Hunts & Dog Sharts

I'm back in Austin, Texas again working like a dog and sick as one due to a nasty bout with food poisoning.
Staying in at night eating nothing but watermelon allows me a few moments before bed to blog and I feel like I need to say something of my eccentric trip up north.
Fist stop was a camping trip in Palo Duro Canyon in Canyon, TX. RECOMMENDED... IF you have an airconditioned RV, or it's November and only IF there aren't girl scout troops camping next to you. Despite the girls, the heat and the perv in the men's shower, I loved it and I woke up in great shape which I feel like I owe to fresh air.
Next Stop: Garden of the Gods. Manitou/Colorado Springs. Love it. Must go back.
Significance.
I have a mysterious OLD black and white photo that I've had my whole life I seem to have inherited from family. I never knew where the photo was taken but it's incredible. The minute I started dating Johnny and he saw it, he knew instantly. It's his favorite place on earth. The Garden of the Gods. It's so incredible and impossible to describe, but it's basically a cluster of giant rock formations. Manitou is a cozy quaint mountain village behind it that has a tad bit of darkness to it and a pinball-arcade game museum that you can actually play in. Rad.
Next up, 3 more hours to Estes Park in the Rockies, just north west of Denver. This is where the dogs go to a very nice kennel a few streets away from the Stanley Hotel, where we stay for 3 nights.
Many people think the Stanley is where the filming was done of the Shining. Not so. It's where Stephen King was inspired to write it after having some, um, experiences there. The hotel is haunted by a variety of spirits with pretty accurate hang outs.
We were to meet up with the Ghosthunters from the SyFy TV show and some of the other paranormal professionals they work with, including Chip Coffey, the psychic and medium from Paranormal State and Psychic Kids on A&E. I'm a sucker for Chip. If he wasn't related to any this, I would want to be his friend.
We went to classes and dinners and got to investigate one full night in all of the most active locations. Some were active, some were not. Many of the people offering the classes and panels had totally different views on what's paranormal vs psychological. Some were religious. Some not. Interesting.
My biggest investigative experience was with Grant from the show, my husband John and a handfull of others in one of the most active rooms on the 4th floor. (Take it or leave it. For what it's worth, there is no way for me to explain the feel of the room or the ease in which the lighted answers came...but I will attempt. I'm not writing my experiences to debate. I could give a shit really whether anyone believes or doesn't. I have my own opinions.This is just what happened.)
The K-II meter, which is a device that works to pick up on fields that are considered to be electromagnetic. Paranormal researchers believe that each spirit is composed of a specific type of "energy". In most homes, businesses, and even in the environment, there are normal ranges of energy that are considered to be electromagnetic, but most of the levels in a particular area will remain constant. The K-II meter picks up on inconsistencies in these levels, often showing them to go higher in range. For the ghost hunter, this typically indicates that there is the possibility that a "ghost" or a "spirit" is near, emitting the energy.
Grant started to ask questions of any of the spirits in room 417 and eventually the K-ll device started to light up in yes or no reactions using the lights from ONLY one of the K-II meters in the room. No one was holding the K-ll meter and we have other equiptment with which to measure energy fluctuations and record EVPS. From the answers coming through the K-ll, we were able to conclude that this was a boy child ( Hello, sounds of balls bouncing through those halls) and when his answers started to trail off Grant asked if he wanted to talk to a girl instead. Each female in the room asked him if it was them he wanted. After several girls asked, he picked me. And Grant then, taught me how to best talk to a ghost. And we talked for about 10 minutes. Awesome. Yes or no answers came rapidly for me and then he got slower so I let him go,
Besides that, there were a few more episodes in different rooms and I can say that I was never comfortable in ours. John and I had chills the whole time, I inistsed on the door being open when I bathed, and the chills only stopped when we checked out. I also had a fairly traumatic and inspiring totally personal message come to me from Chip Coffey as he picked me last out of about 20 people in a room of 150 to tell a messge to. THAT situation is far more strange and wild and only for those who choose to ask me what happened in person. Get ready. It's freaky. True or not. I'm processing still.
John and I also broke our dogs out of the kennel every day and hiked the Rockies with them which I have to repeat at some point. We then drove another 12 hours to KCMO, and Olive the puppy had a stomach problem and shat all over the front seat. After much swerving, we finally pulled over at a horrible gas station in Topeka that had no paper towels or soap...but did have Nag Champa. We did the best we could and held Nag Champa next to our faces the rest of the way. We saw friends in KC and went to see the show Quixotic there and I continued my usual tour of nursing homes to visit family. We drove another 12 miles back to Austin with a baby bird I saved from a dog's mouth who fell from it's nest and who rode around on my shoulder only to meet it's destined end back in the mouth of my Catahoula hunting dog puppy when we turned out back for a second. I'm seriously heartbroken. Nature sucks sometimes. But Roadtrips rule.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ori "Couch Surfing Ori" Bengal said...

Awww! Sorry to hear about the dead baby bird... Would've been cute to have another pet in your collection.

Sounds like an amazing trip though!

I really enjoyed reading it, especially after reading Johnny's Epic Haiku version... so I got both sides of the story, in different styles.

That ghost stuff sounds incredible! I would love to go on one of these trips, and you know I'm going to ask you what happened next time we're on the phone!

11:18 AM  

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