by Groff, Nick
With all the ghost hunting groups out there looking for this stuff with cameras rolling, why are the experiences so rarely captured on tape? You might get orbs, light anomalies, EVPs, or whatever, but full-bodied apparitions are so rarely captured.
I don’t think we’ve gotten far enough with the science or technology yet. The equipment can’t yet validate what we are experiencing with our human senses. We use only such a small percentage of our brains. Many feel that there is an extra “sixth sense” that allows us to perceive ghosts. How can we expect technology to pick up on that, when it can’t even correctly convey the five senses that we’ve already proven exist?
Once I’d gathered myself together, we decided that we had to go back to the surgery area. I wasn’t okay yet. It would take weeks to process what had just happened to me. But as frightened as I was, I wanted to know more about this woman.
When something scares you that much, a lot of people ask, how do you go back into the location and continue the investigation? The only answer I can give is that you just do it. You mentally push yourself, will yourself to do it. It took me a little while, but once I’d calmed down I reminded myself that this was why I was here.
I couldn’t go back into the room where I saw the girl, but I got as close as the room that Aaron had been standing in. Zak slid an audio recorder, then a PX device into the trauma room. He was holding the PX in phonetic mode and asked, “Did we just see you?” and the PX responded immediately with, “Yeah, you did.” When he asked the follow-up question, “What do you want us to do?” the PX responded with, “Leave.” The last word the PX said was, “Dead.” After we let a static night vision camera roll for an hour in the surgical suite where I’d seen the woman, we captured one faint voice that eerily cried out something like, “Don’t leave me.”
What didn’t make it into the episode happened about an hour after my encounter with the woman. I stayed in the hallway outside the surgical suite by myself while Zak went to the morgue and Aaron went to the boiler room. At first, I was standing in the room where Aaron was filming when my encounter happened, but then I started inching my way toward the surgery room where I had seen the girl. I didn’t want to go in; I just wanted to be able to see in there. I could hear sounds coming from the room, like something being dragged across the floor and thrown into a corner. My heart started racing again—I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle another experience like I had already had that night. I admit it—I froze up and bailed out.
If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I would have gone back in. I would have stood there until the sun came up and all through the next day just to try to have that profound contact again…
But I didn’t. I walked out of there. I still had to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually process everything that had just gone down. For days, every time I closed my eyes, I saw the woman again. Now I understood what it means to be haunted.
Two seconds was all it took to change my life forever, two seconds that will forever be imprinted in my head. I still get goose bumps thinking about it today. It was one of the most powerful moments in my life. Whenever anybody wants to discuss my experiences in pursuit of the paranormal, this is the first story I tell. Even though I know nobody else could ever understand the magnitude of what I felt that night in those two seconds, it’s the story I have to tell.
The experience in Linda Vista Hospital has helped me connect with others who have had similar encounters. Before, I couldn’t really get what they were telling me, because I hadn’t seen it for myself. But my experience made me a better listener to what they were trying to say, and more compassionate about why they had to say it. I now understood the compulsion to share this story. In some ways, I even understood some of the Bible stories I’d read as a kid. When you go through something that momentous, you want to stand up and tell others.
That morning, after I got back to my hotel room, I called Veronique. I described to her the whole experience exactly as it had gone down. She was blown away. “Are you serious? Holy crap!” But she understood that it had affected me on a very deep level. I also had a conversation with my dad about it. He calls me all the time to check in on me, but we’d never really had any significant discussion about some of my paranormal experiences. He usually just calls to make sure I didn’t fall into a hole or something. “Dad, I know you’ll never believe what happened to me,” I began, and told him all about seeing the girl. When I was finished, he paused for a second, then said, “Son, I believe you.”
That was a big moment for me. “Son, I believe you,” my dad had said, but to me it was validation for my career, the life I had chosen for myself. He’d always been there for me, he’d always had my back, but this was a moment of understanding. I’d never been so grateful to have him as a father.
The more this experience sank in, the more I wanted to talk about it. I started telling my family, all my friends, everyone I knew back in New England. I remember going back to my uncle Chris’s house in New Hampshire a little while after the investigation. We were sitting at the bar in his house having beers with all my cousins. We were a few beers in, and Uncle Chris just looked at me and said, “So tell me… is it real?”
Now, in my family, there are no bullshitters. They don’t mess around. I looked him right in the eyes and said, “Absolutely.” I told them all about how deeply personal this experience was to me, and how it had affected me. I explained exactly what happened and exactly what I saw. And when I was done, you could tell by the looks on their faces that not one of them thought I was telling anything but the truth.
“Nick, we believe you,” Uncle Chris said. “We absolutely believe you.” And for the first time, those words really started to matter. I really cared if someone believed me or not.
When the Linda Vista episode aired, I felt I needed to say more than what we presented in the show. I sat down and wrote a blog about it on Facebook, something I’d never done before. But I had to share all of what I had felt, in the best way I could. If the cameras couldn’t do it, maybe my words could.
A lot of fans found my reaction to seeing the girl pretty funny, because they were taking screenshots of the face I made and posting them on the Internet. But an interesting thing happened when they did that: people started to notice there’s actually a mistlike anomaly that kind of forms into a hand from the right side of the frame. From Zak’s angle, when he’s shooting me, you can kind of see the misty figure reach into the frame and slowly try to reach for me as I jump away. Someone posted an analysis of the video, a play-by-play where you can really see the hand reach out just as my camera freezes. It turned what was already a shocking moment into a total “Holy crap!” moment. I didn’t see anything like that when I watched it, not even slowing it down frame by frame. Perhaps it was because I was so intent on trying to find the girl, I didn’t even see this other image.
Maybe she reached out because she wanted something from me. Maybe she wanted people to know she was there, and thought I could help her let people know. It makes you wonder. What did this spirit want? Did she need something, or did she just want me to see her? And was it to ease her mind, or my own? I think a lot about going back there, about digging through the records and the history to try to figure out who she was. Maybe that’s what she wants.
I will never forget the image of this woman. I even hired an artist to sketch what I saw that night in the dark and lonely hospital.
This incredible experience would continue to affect me over the course of weeks. The eye contact was the catalyst, but the change would take some time. After Linda Vista, I feel like my eyes were opened wide to a universe of possibilities.
I’ve always considered myself an open-minded guy. I have been since I was a kid, including about all things paranormal—not just ghosts, but also extraterrestrials, bigfoot, and whatever else. It’s not enough to just say, “Nope, that doesn’t exist,” and just move on. There’s not enough science around just yet to know whether or not all these things are
possible. That’s how I look at it, and always have. And I’m not afraid to theorize a little bit either. We can’t just be here purely by accident. Life can’t be an anomaly of the natural world. So if we’re here for a reason, then what is it?
QUESTIONS FANS ASK
How do you deal with the emotional stress of what you guys do?
I’m a pretty laid-back person, but I do sometimes get freaked out at these locations. When it’s over, I remind myself that it is over. I calm myself down and put the experience behind me.
That’s the question. Everybody starts to question why we’re here at some point. It can be when you’re old and beginning to fade into death, or in the immediate seconds after you’ve been run over by a truck. You can be a kid playing in the bathtub, or a guy just driving home from work. At some point, the question pops into your head, because it’s one we spend our lives trying to answer. It’s virtually impossible to know why we’re alive while we’re caught up in the process of actually experiencing it. So we hope that when we’re done living, the question will be answered for us then.
That’s what gets me so excited about the pursuit of the paranormal, and ghosts in particular. These people have finished living, and they may be able to share with us that big answer. We may be able to find out why we’re here, without having to actually leave this plane of existence to do so. If we can perfect the science of how to communicate with the dead, we can ask the questions of why and what’s next.
When I was face-to-face with that woman in Linda Vista, when she appeared to me as a solid figure, it only sparked more questions. How is this possible? How does the energy that comprises us, that supposedly dissipates when we die, come back and resurrect itself into a form we’re familiar with, such as a lady standing in front of me? Is that the shape of what she knew herself to be before she died? Or is it an entity’s idea of what I’d expect to see when our energies come in contact with one another?
It took two and a half years before I was ready to go back to Linda Vista for a second time. After I first saw her in July of 2009, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Who is she? What was her story? She’d changed everything about the way I approach the paranormal, and for that, I’m eternally grateful to her. I wanted to go back and do something for her.
Something else happened since the first Linda Vista episode aired. I received an interesting e-mail from a woman named Kimber Chase. Kimber was a nurse in Los Angeles in the 1980s and had to go to Linda Vista regularly to help transfer critical patients to other area hospitals. The first episode of Ghost Adventures that Kimber ever watched was the Linda Vista investigation.
When Kimber saw the show, she reached out to me to say that she too had seen the ghost of a young woman there, back when Linda Vista was an active hospital. She described what she saw, and it sounded a lot like the woman I saw.
The opportunity to return to Linda Vista came up in late January of 2012. We got a call telling us that in another month the building would be sold and then transformed into a convalescence home. If we wanted to investigate again, we’d have to go now. We didn’t hesitate to book the trip back to East Los Angeles.
I was excited as I walked into Linda Vista for a second time. This place means so much to me. As I approached the surgical suite, I was thrilled to be there again too. I wanted to see this woman once more. I felt like I needed closure, and I wanted to tell her that it’s okay to move on.
For the lockdown, I’d invited Kimber Chase to share the experience with me. When I showed Kimber the sketch I’d had drawn of the woman I saw back in 2009, she gasped. She recognized her as the same apparition she had seen back in the 1980s. We believe she was the victim of organ harvesting.
Though I didn’t see this apparition on my second visit, I feel that I got what I needed. I had gone back. I spoke to the spirit of this woman and told her it was okay to move on. Whether she did or not, I don’t know. But I acknowledged her, which was the most I could do for her.
On this same trip, Zak, Aaron, and I decided to visit the LA coroner’s office, the largest of its kind in the United States, and not far from Linda Vista. It was an experience I’ll never forget.
The coroner hit a button and a large metal door slid open. Inside were 289 bodies covered in white sheets. The smell took my breath away. It was like formaldehyde combined with the most pungent rot I’ve ever smelled. The three of us took turns walking in there alone holding a camera.
The room is cold: thirty-seven degrees, to be precise. Just enough to slow down decomposition.
As I walk in, I’m okay for the moment. I see bullet holes in one guy. I see a woman’s foot that looks like it melted in a fire. I see an obese man splayed out on a table, and another man with half his head missing. Then I start to see their faces and it hits me that these were living people. That energy that makes us human was there and now is gone. All of us are destined to end up like this.
It’s powerful when you walk in the valley of death like that.
Before Linda Vista, I was on this quest because I was a believer—just an inexperienced believer. In that dark hospital ward, my beliefs became validated.
That moment in July of 2009 was like the first chapter of my new life. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
CHAPTER 14
MY PARANORMAL LIFE
Some people might look at what I’ve accomplished and say, “Dude, you’ve made it.” I played a big part in making a popular documentary that aired on national television and helped create a very popular television series. I’ve been on Maury and the Howard Stern Show, been interviewed on countless TV news stations, and been profiled in magazine and newspaper articles.
But that’s what I’ve been able to accomplish in the entertainment field, and I don’t think I ever “made it.” That makes it sound like it was an overnight thing, as if somebody handed us a television show and we became an instant success. “Made it” also sounds like I have nothing left to accomplish—and I know that’s far from true.
I’ve worked hard over the years to get to this point. Everything was a building block, a stepping-stone, and it wasn’t until season five of Ghost Adventures that I stopped looking over my shoulder or waiting for the other shoe to drop. During season five, I felt like I could get back to some of my other passions: music, screenplays, and other television show ideas.
The weird dichotomy of making this show is that we’re actually serving two masters: the television viewers and the paranormal community. They’re not mutually exclusive, of course, but there’s a difference in what we owe each one. If Ghost Adventures ever stops being interesting to people or generating ratings and advertising dollars, it will be canceled. That’s pretty straightforward, and we knew that was part of the whole package going in. But the other side of it is the place we’ve carved out for ourselves as paranormal investigators. For better or worse and certainly not through our own doing, we’re considered leaders in the field and innovators for the approach and the equipment we use. That wasn’t our intention; we just wanted to conduct the best investigations we could, and that meant being cutting-edge in technology, technique, and theory.
QUESTIONS FANS ASK
Does your wife believe in ghosts? Have any ever followed you home and scared your family?
Veronique does believe in ghosts and has since she was a child. Her father passed away when she was one, and she’s been very spiritual ever since. She had a bad experience with a Ouija board as a teenager when she watched the planchette move across the board without anyone touching it, and she believes she had an encounter with my grandma Groff right after she died. When my grandma died, I was filming the Ghost Adventures documentary at the Washoe Club. Veronique woke up that night back in our home in Las Vegas to the feeling of someone wiggling her big toe. She felt like it was my grandma’s spirit coming to let her know that she was okay and I was okay at the Washoe Club.
As for something following me home, there was one time I had just finished filming a location right
before Halloween. When I got home, my cousin Justin had come to stay with us for a couple of days. I bought a Halloween mask and took a picture of it. In the photo I saw a strange ball of energy near it. We all saw it. Like an idiot, I ran to grab my audio recorder to do an EVP session.
In the playback we heard three different voices: a little kid’s voice, an old lady’s voice, and this growl. We were all freaked out when we went to bed that night. But the EVP wasn’t the end of the experience. Around two in the morning I heard pots and pans banging around in my kitchen and the sound of the sink filling up with water. I was sure there was a burglar in my house. I got up and pushed my two dogs, Coco, an English springer spaniel, and Scrappy Doo, a Yorkie, out into the hall. The dogs were just as freaked out as the rest of us. Then the sounds stopped. Ever since then I don’t investigate or do any EVP sessions in my house anymore. I love my work, but I don’t want to take it home!
I’m still finding my way in the paranormal field. There’s so much we don’t know, you can never be comfortable enough with what you do know. No matter what you believe, something can come along in an instant—like the spirit I saw in Linda Vista—that shatters all your preconceived notions. It’s not the paranormal that’s evolving, but our understanding of the paranormal.
It’s always bothered me that when you think the paranormal exists, it’s called belief and subject to ridicule and mockery. But when you buy into religion unabashedly, it’s called faith, and that’s perfectly acceptable. “Belief” is a word that has grown to have almost negative connotations. But “faith”—well, faith is all right, as long as it doesn’t step on someone else’s faith at the same time.