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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Hunt Ghosts at Mountainair Hotel

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
    Florencio Zamora, 10, and Jake Holmes, 9, believe they saw ghosts at the Shaffer Hotel and Restaurant in Mountainair.
    "I thought I saw a (woman's) face," Florencio said while he was standing in the Wedding Suite of the hotel.
    Julia Holmes said she brought two best friends to the hotel when she heard about the preliminary ghost hunt planned by the Southwest Ghost Hunters Association.
    On Jan. 12 SGHA did the preparatory hunt to ready for their all-day and all-night Ghost Expo 2008 on Feb. 9.
    The public can buy various priced tickets to the upcoming ghost-hunting event that will include lectures, high-tech equipment and legends of local ghosts. Cody Polston, president of SGHA who also wrote "Haunted New Mexico," will talk about the top 10 haunted places in the state.
    Participants can register for various activities at the expo including VIP reservations, which allow someone to spend the night ghost hunting with the experts themselves.
    SGHA learned that the hotel is a potential paranormal haven when they were scouting locations during Halloween, Polston said.
    Doing preliminary research for the expo, ghost hunters search for evidence of the paranormal by sitting in unoccupied rooms of the hotel with the lights off and some of their high-tech equipment, which is worth "about $20,000," Polston said.
    SGHA members used two TriField Natural EM Meters that, according to their Web site, detect radio waves and changes in electric or magnetic fields. Polston carried a modified Sony digital camera that had the IR-cut filter replaced with "another piece of glass so we could shoot deeper into the infrared light," he said.
    They also used a MiniDisc recorder to record electronic voice phenomena, or evp, "in tandem with a K2 meter" used to detect electromagnetic fields, said Becky Mann, a research officer.
    While in the Abo Suite with all the lights turned off, Kristin Yambo held the K2 meter and Beth Carter asked questions to a dark room.
    Florencio and Jake stood side by side quietly.
    Carter asked if anything ghostly was there, would it light up the meter once or twice for either yes or no.
    The green and red lights on the K2 meter lit up— repeatedly.
    But afterward Yambo and Carter said they were not happy with the response.
    "Whatever it was, was not patient enough to play the yes/no game," Yambo said, meaning that the group's results were inconclusive.
    Florencio, however, believes he saw a ghost.
    "I saw a foggy area near the bed," he said.
    Some SGHA members make up a group called SHIELD, providing "a skeptical balance" to analyze any odd events and explain them logically, according to the SGHA's Web site.
    Members are not paid and must pay to travel to the events. The only other financial expenditure required by members is a $20 SGHA T-shirt.
    Money earned from the events goes to purchase equipment, Mann said.
    Mann said she wasn't certain how much money SGHA would earn from Ghost Expo 2008, but said the group told the Mountainair Chamber of Commerce they would like to donate some of their money from the event to a worthy Mountainair cause.
    "I spoke to the mayor (Velta Gilley) and asked for ideas of groups who might need money, and she volunteered the local animal shelter," Mann said.
    Neither Mann nor Polston will admit to ever having seen anything otherworldly.
    "My personal take is that yes, there is something out there. I think that it's just something we haven't been able to explain with science yet," Mann said. "I don't necessarily believe it's a ghost. I believe it's something that science can explain, but I don't think we've reached that knowledge level to explain it— yet."