On Saturday, February 23, 2013, I spent the night in a "Haunted Hotel" in Liberty, Texas along with fellow ghost buster, Jamie Salinas and about another half dozen interested parties. We were led on this paranormal excursion by the team from Southern Paranormal Investigators (S.P.I.). The place was the Haunted Historic Ott Hotel located about an hour or so southeast of Houston.The hotel sits just yards away from an active train rail that has activity 27/7. Not only is the whistle loud, but the whole building shakes from the passing behemoths.
After a lovely dinner of fried catfish, shrimp and jalapeno hush puppies at nearby “Jax Hamburgers”, we returned to the Ott Hotel for a history lesson and guided tour of the old hotel by its owner, Susan McCain.
We then went into the living room for a presentation by the S.P.I. team on the do’s and don’ts of what we should and shouldn’t do during the evening. They then explained all the ghost hunter tools that would be at our disposal including EMF (Electro Magnetic Field) Meters, digital cameras, infrared and heat sensitive scopes, digital audio devices, and more. We then broke up into three teams for the “sweeps” which included three of us novices and two from the S.P.I. team.
At the end of the hall on the first floor was a mirror.
We were told to take several pictures of the mirror throughout the night because some believe it to be a portal into the "other" side. Some have been said to have photos showing people standing behind them when there were no physical bodies behind the photographer. Some have photographed legs or arms sticking out from behind the photographer. Other photos have supposedly shown an older version of the hallway with gaslights hanging on the wall behind the person in the photo.
After the S.P.I. team got all the cameras situated, we went into the rooms: one team upstairs, one team downstairs, and the third on a break. We rotated each hour with an hour break in between. When it was time to do the fourth sweep at 4:30 a.m., Jamie and I decided that it was time to head home as we had seen enough.
You can hear the podcast elsewhere on The Magic Word, but I think you might also enjoy this five minute video of some of what the evening was like.
