I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead

by Zak Bagans

  Remember the attacks at the Exorcist House that I described in chapter 11, “Heart Attacks”? Nick and I had a spirit box session during which a voice presented itself as “Diablo” twice and gave us some other information in a short span of time. Shortly afterward, Aaron went back into the room where we captured the voice and got very dizzy and felt intense heat. At the same time, Bill Chappell (who’s an amazing engineer) monitored a sensor that measured weather data in the house, and he said that there was a sudden increase in humidity when this happened to Aaron. It was around dusk, a time of day when there should be a decrease in humidity, not an increase. We were baffled because a strange weather phenomenon was happening at the exact same time as paranormal activity, but we couldn’t find the connection between the two.

  During other investigations, passing storms affected the level of paranormal activity we captured. I’ll never forget when we were investigating the Hales-Bar Dam in Tennessee and a massive storm raged through, bringing a tornado that tossed an entire dock full of boats onto the shore (and us along with them!). That evening we caught an amazing image of an apparition manifesting on a thermal imaging camera—a rare event. We capture voices, EVPs, orbs, and other paranormal activity all the time, but an apparition is unusual, and this one appeared within a few hours of a massive lightning storm. I believe that it’s possible for the discharge of electricity into the atmosphere (in the form of lightning) to give spirits the extra energy they need to feed off of and manifest.

  I like to use movie analogies when I talk about the paranormal because it makes things easier for people to relate to. (I’m a cinephile. What can I say?) There’s a scene in Total Recall where the humans on Mars are dependent on giant fans to keep them going. When the fans slow down, the humans get sluggish and weak, and when the fans speed up, so does life. I believe that spirits are the same way. When the weather is calm, they don’t have anything to energize them, but when there’s electricity in the air, they have an energy source to draw from and can manifest. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but we don’t have the raw data to prove it…yet.

  In some places the weather is unreliable, and spirits have to find other forms of energy. Hydroelectric plants and flowing water are proven conductors of electromagnetic energy, so sites like that usually see a higher than average level of paranormal activity. The Rolling Hills Asylum in New York, which is just across the street from an electric power plant that puts out kajillions of volts of power, is one of the most active places I’ve ever been. We captured every form of paranormal evidence there, all in the same night. I think this plant powered more than just the local houses. Everything that contains life contains energy, and ghosts are attracted to that energy. I think they’re even more dependent on energy than we are.

  Think about this: We are surrounded by cosmic waves. They bombard the Earth every day, but we can’t see or hear them. Every scientist in the world will agree that the waves are there, but they’re invisible. Except for one area: the high latitudes where they collide with the magnetosphere. We call the light they create the aurora borealis, and no one can deny that it exists because it’s visible to the naked eye when the conditions are right.

  So why can’t ghosts be the same way? If they’re made up of electromagnetic energy, then what weather conditions cause that electromagnetic energy to strengthen? Dusk? Moving water? High temperature? Low humidity? Solar radiation? I’m sure there’s a connection, but the only way to prove it is to study the meteorological conditions that were present when every major piece of paranormal evidence was collected. Going back to do so for past events is impossible, but that could (and should) be a study of its own for future paranormal researchers.

  I would like to see every paranormal team out there start recording more weather data when they collect evidence. Maybe if we did that, we could spot trends and do real research. Maybe if we knew that 90 percent of the time when a ghost manifests, the humidity is below 75 percent, the temperature is above 60 degrees, and the time of day is between 7 and 11 pm, then we could start doing real predictive analysis. Maybe if we knew that there was a strong coronal eruption or sunspot 90 percent of the time when EVPs are captured, then we could connect the two and even theorize that solar eruptions (which flood the Earth with energy) give spirits the strength they need to communicate. We can’t just keep walking through the darkness in isolated teams trying to bump into things. We need to make the spirits come to us, or at least use our data to predict when and where they’ll be. Then people will look at paranormal investigators just like they do weather forecasters.

  MAYBE I’LL EVEN GET MY OWN TV SHOW...

  17

  A SAVAGE ATTACK IN A PEACEFUL PLACE

  The California coast has some dark secrets.

  Living in Las Vegas can drain a man’s soul. The transient party people, the massive temperature swings, the oppressive energy, the repeated attacks on friends in my home by dark spirits…it wears me down sometimes. Two years ago, I realized that nothing was going well here. I felt that my environment was having an effect on me, and I knew I needed to get away. I sought a change somewhere, anywhere—a refuge from the neon lights and the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” attitude.

  But I was also committed to filming Ghost Adventures, and I knew I couldn’t get away to some remote mountaintop cut off from the civilized world. It had to be near reliable transportation hubs and Internet connections so I could collaborate with my producers and crew on filming and editing the episodes. I didn’t want to get away from my life as much as I wanted to escape my town.

  One day my mother mentioned Monterey, California. I had never been there, but I’d heard of Carmel and knew it was pretty close by, so I looked it up. I discovered that Monterey, Carmel, and Pacific Grove all lie on a tiny, unique peninsula. The whole area looked like a different world, and I was immediately captivated. Because of the way the valley is formed and the prevailing winds blow, the temperature stays in the 60s in the summer. It looked foggy, damp, and beautiful and reminded me of Scotland’s medieval craggy cliffs, but it was right here in the U.S. I was sold. I’m not a spontaneous person, but something about it called me there. I booked a ticket and flew out the next day. I knew that I wasn’t going to see Vegas for a while, and it felt good.

  I landed, booked a room in a small resort near the water, and was lost for words. This was exactly what I needed. It was quiet. It was relaxing. It was therapeutic. I could feel the knots in my soul untying themselves. But it wasn’t cheap, and I racked up the hotel time. I make a good living, but I’m not what you call an impulsive spender or splurger. If I was going to stay a while, I needed to rent a house that was more economical, but like the spirits I encounter, the sticker shock of the California coast followed me. The only reasonable place I could find was a Grandma cottage that had honey pots painted with bees in tutus displayed on worn-out shelves. It was rustic and old, and though it wasn’t really me, it was a hundred yards from the beach, and the misty, mossy, dramatic coastline was the perfect place for a man who wants to lead the life of Dracula.

  The Monterey Peninsula had its hooks in me, and I was enjoying it too much to leave, so I rented the cottage for a month, moved my stuff in, and tried to figure out why this place had called me there. Because it did. I rarely (if ever) just pack up and leave. I plan my trips, especially when I’m going to be gone for a long time, but I also firmly believe that things happen for a reason. Forces beyond flesh and blood guide me to certain places, and something brought me here without a second thought. Something more than just my mother’s suggestion.

  I couldn’t sit around and do nothing all day, so I did some research on the area and learned about its history. I took a drive to Pacific Grove, whose Victorian homes with plaques stating the names of the families that built them in the 1800s made it seem more like Europe than America to me. It had a sense of history, of a bygone era, that I haven’t seen much on the West Coast.

  Next I visited the Carmel Mission
and met a priest named Juniper Serra who was an expert on the area. The Carmel Mission was so similar to the La Purisma Mission that we investigated in 2009 that I felt an immediate connection to it. La Purisma was such a powerful place that it became a part of me, and the Carmel Mission was damn near its twin, so I went there often to unwind and heal from all the negative energy I’d accumulated. My soul felt like a wet mop full of dirty water that needed to be wrung out.

  It didn’t take long to hear the stories of the hauntings there. Like La Purisma, the graveyard at the Carmel Mission was equal parts Native American graves and graves of the men who had journeyed there as Catholic missionaries. The ground was saturated with the histories and energies of the multitudes who had come before us, but it wasn’t negative. In fact, it was the polar opposite of the gates of hell; it was more like the stairway to heaven. It was refreshing, so I went there every day until something else demanded my attention.

  I developed a routine in Carmel: I would wake up, get my hot tea, put my dog Gracie on her leash, walk toward the ocean, let my mind go blank, and then turn toward town. There are no addresses on the houses, so it’s easy to get lost. One otherwise normal day, I took a new turn for no real reason, and then another and another. I wasn’t worried about being lost; in fact, I remember thinking, “Wherever we end up is where we end up.” Suddenly I looked up and saw an old medieval-looking castle staring back at me. The fog hovered over its tall tower, but instead of being frightened, I felt like it was inviting me in to learn more. I didn’t fight it.

  FUN FACT:

  AFTER I LEFT CARMEL, FATHER SERRA SENT ME AN INCREDIBLE VIDEO THAT CAPTURED AN APPARITION ON FILM INSIDE THE MISSION.

  I walked toward the tower with no care whatsoever about whether it was private property, and Gracie and I stood at the front gate and stared. I felt like something was looking back at me. A sign said “Tor House,” so I made a note of it and decided to come back later to explore it.

  I learned that the poet Robinson Jeffers built the Tor House by hand in 1919 and then built the adjoining Hawk Tower between 1920 and 1924. It’s an impressive structure, even more impressive when you consider that he built it by himself with only some aid from a local stonemason. Jeffers wasn’t trained in construction, but he managed to build the place by himself while he was one of the leading poets of his time. That’s talent.

  I was never one for poetry or literature or even reading books until I met Vince Huth, a stately gentleman who serves as president of the Tor House Foundation. I set up a tour (of the Tor House—pun intended), and when Huth met me at the front door, he immediately started reading a poem by Jeffers called…wait for it…Ghost.

  As he read it, I felt an incredible sense of destiny, because in the poem a man walking his dog outside the house encounters the spirit of Robinson Jeffers examining the mortar-joints. That was me, Jeffers was there, and I was chilled to the bone. Even more shocking was how the poem states that fifty years would pass before this happened, and I was there on the fiftieth anniversary of Jeffers’ death.

  This was no coincidence; it was meant to be.

  These are the types of experiences that define my life—how ghosts, spirits, demons, and supernatural powers guide me on this journey. This is why Ghost Adventures is more than just a TV show. Ghost Adventures is the journey of my life as I interact with things most people cannot see, feel, or understand. The ghosts choose the locations for us, not the other way around. I believe Robinson Jeffers was in touch with the spiritual plane while he was alive and spirits guided him to build the Tor House. He was one with the stones and knew that he and his wife would remain there after their deaths. And he knew that one day he would bring me to it.

  We ended up filming an episode at the Tor House, which was the third location in the area that I became interested in during my several-month stay. (The others were the Brookdale Lodge in Santa Cruz and the Point Sur Lighthouse in Big Sur.) As you can imagine, the investigation was a powerful one for me. Robinson Jeffers’ poetry integrated itself into our work and helped define us as we helped define Jeffers. It was as if he had predicted our visit, and it ended up being one of the most personal investigations ever for me.

  While I was using the SB7 spirit box on the very bed where Jeffers died, a voice came through and said “ghost”—the name of the poem that had brought me there and predicted this moment. I believe that this voice belonged to Jeffers himself, and I communicated him and his wife, Una. She conducted séances in the house and tower, which was the first thing I saw through the fog that day Gracie and I stumbled upon them. She spoke to us through the spirit box and said, “Welcome to my…” I never could make out the last word, but the other three were clear. I believe that Robinson Jeffers built this place out of rock in order to house his and his wife’s spirits after death, as he wrote about in his poems.

  People watch Ghost Adventures because they want to be scared or entertained, but it has a deeper meaning, as the episode about the Tor House illustrates. When you watch it, watch deeper. You’ll see the passion that brought us there, and you’ll understand why the ghosts guided us to them. It’s not some random place we wanted to film at for three days before moving on to the next one.

  Even the most wonderful locations can turn terrifying, though. It happened to me during the Monterey investigations, and I was totally unprepared for it.

  After we finished filming at the Tor House, we went straight to the Point Sur Lighthouse just down the coast. After the first day of filming there, we realized that the level of paranormal activity was intense—more intense than we thought it would be, to be honest. Over time, the lighthouse has witnessed countless shipwrecks within just a few hundred yards, and multiple investigators have captured disembodied voices and EVPs there. It’s as if the lighthouse signals spirits the same way it signaled ships on the ocean, and they flock to it.

  I had just come off of a positive spiritual investigation at the Tor House. I’d done a full day of interviews at the lighthouse, and I was really tired. I went back to “Grandma’s cottage” and got ready for bed. I was downstairs getting something to eat, alone except for Gracie and the bee jars, when I heard a boom upstairs in my bedroom, followed by loud scratching noises on the floor. I ran up there and found my clothes scattered all over the place, like something you would see in a cop drama when gangsters ransack a room looking for a safe. Something was up. Something bad. I could feel it. Looking back on it, I should have left the house right then, but of course I didn’t.

  The clothes couldn’t have made the boom noise, and there were no giant raccoons in the room to make the scratching sounds; there was no way for a critter to get in or out. I was disturbed and uncomfortable, but too tired to worry about it. I’ve faced some pretty evil stuff, so I dismissed it, cleaned up, and lay down to sleep…but never got the chance.

  Lying in bed, I was startled by banging noises followed by the feeling of hands on my shoulders. Something grabbed me and pinned me down against the headboard. It didn’t move me, but held me still with enough force that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to move until it wanted me to. I struggled, but it was too strong.

  This was no sleep paralysis. I was on my back, my eyes were open, and I was yelling. Something physically held me down for about twenty seconds, and while it did, I heard more banging noises in the room. It was one of the most disturbing feelings I’ve ever felt. A burst of negative energy attacked me not with bumps or scratches, but with a transfusion of horrific violent energy. It was powerful, and to be honest, I was scared.

  Finally it released me, but I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t move. The room was forty degrees colder—no exaggeration. The attack was so sudden and severe that I called Billy and Aaron and screamed at them to come over, my voice and hands shaking. I should have run, but I couldn’t leave the room. The spirit was still there, and it wouldn’t let me go. I was a hostage in that cottage.

  Billy and Aaron raced over, ran upstairs, and felt it immediately. They knew t
hat something was in the room, and it gave me a strange comfort to know that I wasn’t the only one who could sense it. They grabbed me and took me downstairs, and the three of us (and Gracie) peeled rubber, leaving all the lights on behind us. I booked a room in their hotel and stayed there, refusing to spend another minute in that cottage.

  I knew the force that had held me down was the same dark energy that had made the loud noise and thrown my clothes everywhere, but I didn’t feel like it was attached to the house. I’d been staying in this cottage for weeks and nothing had happened. So where did it come from? Did it follow me from Point Sur or the Tor House? If it did, why? And what was it trying to tell me—to get out of town or to stop my investigations there? It was the strangest transfusion of pure hell that I’ve ever known, which is weird because none of those locations are known to contain dark or demonic entities. It didn’t make sense then and doesn’t make sense now.

  Despite this attack, I treasure the time I spent in California. Robinson Jeffers’ spirit called me there, and I’m glad I listened, because I got the chance to tell his story and have an encounter like no other. I finally went home to Vegas and moved back into my house, my spirit refreshed and my life in a little more order than it had been. When I think about how everyone says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” I find it ironic. For me, what happened in California stayed in California.

  UNTIL NOW.

  18

  ST. JAMES HOTEL