by Chris Moon
Photographic evidence of the green demon at the Lumber Baron Inn.
We decided we would start our investigation at the top of the house, in the third floor ballroom. My dad walked through the room with the 3.2-megapixel digital camera over his head randomly snapping pictures. I think he was surprised by the amount of spirit orb activity he was capturing. I decided I would attempt to do an open-air EVP session to see if I could get any responses. I started the session by turning on the recorder and speaking to any spirits that may have been in the room with us. Just as I was saying, “I’m speaking to the spirits that we cannot see …” I was interrupted by an older gentleman grumbling somewhere in the room. Initially, I thought it was my father saying something, so I shined my flashlight directly at him. He looked back at me and shook his head as if to say it wasn’t him. Even though my father was skeptical, he was respectful of the investigation process and I knew he wouldn’t lie to me about this. I also saw a bit of unease on his face and felt he may have heard what I had. As I continued the session, I asked questions and there were several disembodied voices in the room I couldn’t logically explain. Each time I shined my flashlight back toward my father, I could see he was becoming more and more uncomfortable. As I ended the EVP session, we heard a large bang in the turret room just off the ballroom. Both of us jogged to the area, but once again could find no logical explanation for the sound we heard.
We investigated the first floor for quite some time and, other than a few spirit orbs caught on camera, there wasn’t much activity. We returned to the second floor and investigated all of the guestrooms. We went room by room, taking pictures and occasionally stopping to do an EVP session, but weren’t getting many results that we could see or hear at that time. We started to walk back toward the staircase and noticed a room that had a placard on it that said, “Valentine Suite.” For some reason, I was immediately drawn to this room.
As we walked in I shined my flashlight around the room and could see all the walls were red and there was an ornate chimney on the far wall. The large bed in the center of the room took up quite a bit of space. There was a new bathroom on the left-hand side of the room as well as a nice Jacuzzi tub under the window. There were also a few random pieces of furniture that filled the remaining space. The room had a distinct energy and to me felt extremely cold. There were streetlights shining in from the window and the flash of my father’s camera bounced off the window and the mirror just in front of me. I felt sad for no apparent reason and it was almost as if the room itself needed to talk.
In a quiet voice, I told my father to please pick a spot to stand still. I felt like I needed to do an EVP session. My dad stood near the tub and window in front of me and I felt compelled to sit on the bed. I pulled out my digital voice recorder and fumbled for the “on” switch. Once I was able to push the button, the recorder responded with a light on the display. I centered the recorder in my palm and with my other hand prepared to push the record button when I heard a female voice scream in my ear, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” I jumped from the bed, dropping the recorder somewhere on the floor. It startled my father and he took several steps toward me asking what happened. I fell to my knees searching for the recorder I dropped. Reluctantly, I reached underneath the bed, my arm flailing wildly in an attempt to find the lost device. My fingers finally touched something and I realized it was the recorder. I grabbed it and got to my feet as fast as I could. I picked up the camera I’d set on the bed and stuck it in the pocket of my vest. Without saying a word, I raced down the large staircase and out the front door. My father was right behind me and once we made it out front, he began to question me on what happened. I was extremely shaken and told him about the voice I heard. Even though he was an extremely skeptical man, I think he saw the shock and fear in my eyes and knew I was telling the truth. It took me a few minutes to compose myself before we were able to meet up with my mother and the owner. My mom conducted an interview with him while we were doing our investigation. My father set up his laptop and downloaded pictures and audio. My mother was a mediator in our disclosure of what we had discovered during the investigation of the Lumber Baron Inn.
We told the owner about our experience on the third floor and the loud banging sound we heard in the turret room. My mother smiled and laughed a little bit as she said to him, “Can you please tell them about what you told me happens up there?” The owner went on to tell us that his son, who was about seven years old at the time, stayed with him half the time and with his mother the other half. His son seemed to enjoy the house and explored it quite often. Apparently he used to get upset with his son for leaving fingerprints on the rounded windows of the third-floor turret room after being warned not to touch the glass several times. The boy swore he didn’t touch the glass, but it was obvious he was the only culprit.
One day the owner went to go clean upstairs and once again found the fingerprints on the windows. It was then he realized his son couldn’t have been the one to leave the fingerprints, as he hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks. My father turned the laptop toward the owner and showed him an outdoor picture of a bright spirit orb next to the turret as well as what appeared to be a full-bodied apparition in the window. When we took that picture, there was no one upstairs. The owner seemed a bit disturbed but also intrigued by our findings. As we continued to download evidence, I told him about the experience I had in the Valentine Suite. I was still shook by it and that intensity came through in my description. As I relived the event, I looked at my mother and her wide eyes seemed shocked by what I was saying. As I glanced toward the owner, his eyes narrowed and he had a look of disbelief on his face. I quickly told him, “This really happened! My father is a witness!”
The owner looked at me and basically accused me of doing research on the house, which of course I hadn’t. I asked, “Does this make any sense to you?”
He looked at me in a very odd way and said something like, “Obviously it does.” Then he told us what had taken place in the location now known as the Valentine Suite many years earlier. The October 13, 1970, headline of the Denver Post newspaper read “Teen Girls Found Slain in Denver Apartment.” Seventeen-year-old Cara Lee Knoche and eighteen-year-old Marianne Weaver were found murdered in what is now the Valentine Suite of the Lumber Baron Inn. Cara Lee was sexually assaulted and strangled, her nude body crammed underneath the bed. Apparently her friend Marianne, the mother of a small child, walked in on the crime taking place and was found lying on the bed with her arms folded across her chest and a single bullet hole in her head. At that time, the Lumber Baron Inn had been run down and was being used as low-rent apartments. Though the police quickly tried to make the girls look like hoodlums, stating they had found marijuana and a pipe in the apartment, the girls both came from affluent families. According to Cara Lee’s father, a doctor had recommended the use of marijuana for her seizures. The police painted Cara Lee as a runaway, but she had her parents’ consent to live there and had planned to move back home just days after the horrific crime happened.
The person who discovered the crime scene was a friend of both girls. Apparently he had been driving by the building in the early morning hours and noticed the light was off in Cara Lee’s apartment window. According to the young man, he went into the building, climbed the stairs, and found the door to the apartment ajar. As he pushed it open, he said all the lights were off inside the room, but he could see the silhouette of someone lying on the bed. This is when he discovered Marianne’s body on top of the bed and saw Cara Lee’s foot sticking out from underneath the bed. Apparently there wasn’t a pay phone inside the building, so the young man had to run down the street to find a pay phone and contact the police. The crime scene was botched and appears to have not been taken seriously. A killer was never identified and the case remained unsolved.
As the owner relayed the story to me, many of the events that took place in the Valentine Suite that night started to make sense. When I hear
d the spirit screaming, “Get out!” in my ear, I had assumed it was a spirit telling me to leave that location. I quickly realized it was a spirit recounting what had taken place on that terrible night, maybe doing so knowing I might be able to understand. We asked the owner if it was all right if we came back to investigate with the goal of helping the girls. He agreed and we said good night.
On the drive back to South Denver, my mother and I discussed how amazing it was that these girls were reaching out to us and how incredible it would be if we could help these poor lost souls.
It wasn’t long before we contacted the owner and asked to come back to do another investigation. This time around, we focused all of our energy on the Valentine Suite. In our open-air EVP sessions, we explained to the girls who we were and why we were there. We reviewed our evidence in the room on our laptop computers and listened to the voices of the girls as they relived this terrible crime. Within a few sessions, Cara Lee started to respond to some of the questions we asked—it was incredible! After returning from the Sallie House investigation where we used the Ghost Box for the very first time (our fourth investigation of the Sallie House), we decided to attempt communication inside the Lumber Baron Inn.
Once again we focused our investigation on the Valentine Suite and attempted to contact both girls. Everyone on my team was elated when we heard the voice of Cara Lee come through the Ghost Box and we began to use the device to answer very specific questions about the crime. Unfortunately, Marianne seemed to be in a very dark, earth-bound state at this time. Cara Lee answered questions to the best of her ability regarding names, license plate numbers, weapons, and telephone numbers. We were able to document the majority of information that came through the device even though the communication through the Ghost Box was still static-ridden and not very clear. A month or so later, we spoke to the owner of the Lumber Baron Inn about conducting one of our Ghost Hunter University events at the location in hopes someone from the public might be able to come in and ask the right questions. The owner agreed and we set up our first event. It started out small, only 30 people or so, but the attendees who came in seemed determined to help us solve the crime and it quickly gained momentum. Soon afterward, several different local news stations contacted us, asking if they could film our investigations and events in hopes we might be able to find out who killed the two girls. Once the media attention started, the events became much larger. The next event we held had to take place in the ballroom because well over 100 people attended.
I used to start the Ghost Hunter University events by going around the room and having everyone give their first name and state whether they were a believer, a skeptic, or a drag-along. Even though we had a huge number of people, we decided to stick with this practice. When we finally got back to the front row of people, I turned my attention to the next person in line, a pretty blond woman. She said she was a believer and said she actually had a ghost in her own home. She also intended to help Cara Lee and Marianne and hopefully solve the crime. Next to her was her husband, who as I recall was wearing a suit. He told me that he was a drag-along and didn’t believe in any of this. Sometime later, I found out the man worked for a Colorado law enforcement agency. I conducted the class that day and, while everyone seemed to have a good time, he didn’t really seem interested. He also wasn’t impressed with the haunted history dinner.
The group was too large to take everyone into the Valentine Suite at one time to do a Ghost Box session, so we broke the group into several smaller groups. We had wonderful communication with both young women through the Ghost Box and it felt they were making progress in giving us information. When the law enforcement officer’s group came in for a session, I was nervous. It turns out he looked into the closed files of the case and was listening for any unknown specific information that might change his stance. As one of the girls spoke through the Ghost Box, each person in the room had a chance to ask a question, including the officer. He had a very specific question and the response that was relayed back surprised him. Apparently it was a fact he was looking for. We spoke to him after the event and he asked if we were interested in unofficially working with him to solve this case. We jumped at the opportunity!
That night he and I did a full-blown interview using the Ghost Box. He asked several questions relating directly to the crime and the girls responded to the best of their ability. As time went by, the officer and his wonderful wife invited me to their home to do Ghost Box sessions and discuss any advancements either one of us had made in the case. He also asked I keep him informed of anything relevant taking place while doing our investigations and events.
At this point, my magazine business had become overwhelming and, in addition to day-to-day literary work, we were also doing Ghost Hunter University events all around the country. Quite a bit of time went by before I was finally able to contact the owner of the Lumber Baron Inn again to ask if he’d be interested in having us do another event. He agreed and we made the arrangements. The classes we held were unique and fun, but several newly formed ghost-hunting groups decided to put on their own events, so it became more difficult to draw attendees.
I decided to place an ad in one of the local Denver papers in hopes it might garner some attention. I was extremely excited about this particular event because I had talked Frank Sumption into doing a live demonstration and history of his Ghost Boxes during the event. Frank was shy and it was difficult to convince him to come out of his workshop, so this was a big deal.
I was manning the phones at the office when I received one of the strangest phone calls I’ve ever gotten. It was a man who said he saw the ad for the event in the newspaper and wanted to sign up. In most cases when people ask questions about the event, they want to know things like: What’s for dinner? How long is the event? Should I bring my own equipment? This man simply said, “Sign me up for your ghost thing.”
I was bothered by the man’s energy and voice and quickly made a note to myself about this phone call. When the afternoon of the event arrived, I was excited to get back to the Lumber Baron Inn. We had a very nice size crowd and we were once again in the ballroom area. I started the presentation and noticed that everyone was watching except for one man who was sitting alone against the back wall. Once I introduced Frank, I took a step back to listen. Frank was extremely entertaining and talked about how he became involved in building the Ghost Box devices and how we were now working together. He brought a few versions of the machines to give the audience a demonstration of how they sounded differently from one another.
As I stood listening, I could clearly hear one of the girl’s voices calling out a man’s name through the machine. Realizing the name coming through the speakers was the name of the man sitting by himself, I quietly walked toward him and said, “Sorry to bother you, but I hear your name coming through the Ghost Box.”
The awkward man immediately became flustered and stated, “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
I said, “I know it sounds strange, but I can clearly hear your name coming through the machine.”
He then vehemently reiterated, “I don’t hear anything! I don’t see how you understand any of the noise coming out of that thing!” I could sense his volatility and decided it was best to return to the front of the room.
Once again I stood behind Frank and listened as the girls’ voices, as well as several others, pushed through the speakers of the Ghost Box. This man’s name emerged several times. Something urged me to the back of the room and confront him again. I gently kneeled down next to him and said in a very low tone, “I’m sorry, but your name is clearly coming through.” The man shifted in his chair. It was clear he was uneasy with the situation. All at once, I felt extremely uncomfortable.
He volunteered, “I’ve never been in this house before!”
Before I could open my mouth, as if something prodded him, he said, “Yeah, so, my mom died recently and I inherited the house just
down the street that I grew up in.”
All I could say was, “Okay—” before he continued “All right, yeah, so I use to date a girl that lived inside this house … So what?” He quickly folded his arms, looked at the floor, and decided those would be the last words he was going to say.
This dark demon was captured
via a cell phone camera at the Lumber Baron Inn.
Once again, I returned to the front of the room to watch the end of Frank’s demonstration. I was able to finish my lecture even though my mind was only on the strange behavior of this individual. We got through dinner and eventually were able to take three separate groups into the Valentine Suite to use the Ghost Box to hopefully communicate with the spirit girls. The strange man was in the last group that came into the room. Most people wanted to be as close to the machine as possible to hear things as they came through. This man was quite different, though. He stood as close to the door as possible. I think he was trying to be closest to the door, but unfortunately for him, a few people crowded in behind him. As I always do, I explained to the group I was going to start the session by turning on the machine and attempting to contact my Spirit Technicians for safe communication. I said then, and only then, could we attempt to reach the spirits in the room. Customarily, I rubbed my fingers together in an attempt to ground my energy and then reached for the power switch on the Ghost Box. As I flipped the switch of the somewhat smaller, black generation-two Ghost Box, I could feel the unease within the machine. Hesitantly, I turned up the volume on the front of the device. Just as the sounds from the speakers became audible, the volume shot up beyond my control and before I could say a word, both of the girl’s voices started screaming frantically from the Ghost Box, “He’s here! He’s here!”