August 14-16, 2011
Strange Things At The Stanley Hotel

Nikki's Thoughts:

Okay, this is what some of you, anyway, have been waiting for. Did we experience any sort of paranormal or haunted activity? Well, get your jazz hands out, make a spooky noise, and continue reading.  Before I go into any of this, let me make it clear. I'm not trying to see anything, I'm not matrixing images, and I'm not hearing anything. In fact, I tried to debunk what I did see in certain occasions. I also know that some "paranormal" images have very simple explanations.

They could be glares or reflections or dust orbs. They could be practical jokes, like what Patrick did to the bathroom mirror that I wrote about in my "what we did on our honeymoon" post, or what someone wrote at the top of the stairs leading to the bell tower.

Having said that, let's go back to Sunday night. Patrick, full belly and exhausted, was conked out on the bed next to me. I was watching TV, quietly, so as to not wake him.

This was probably about midnight, and the hotel was pretty much dead silent. Keep in mind also that our room was the last one before a dead end. (The window you saw on the outside wall was as fake as the round one on the other side of our room.)

So I'm sitting on the bed, watching the tele, when I heard footsteps outside the door. I jumped up and poked my head out. There was nobody there.



This shows how far the bed was from the door. Maybe 7 feet? Again, I go back to my show. A few minutes later, I hear the same footsteps. Again I jump up to find there is nobody there. A third time, it happened again. I grabbed the camera and rushed down to the stairwell. Nobody on the stairs, but I started taking pictures. 4 in a row. I didn't change angle, position, or flash setting. They all should have been identical.

Picture number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Did you see the twin orbs that were only in the first one? I can't call them dust orbs, as they aren't transparent like the actual dust orbs seen there. They were bright white, you can't see through them, they're in the middle. Can't call them a reflection, or the reflection would be in the others as well.

What's more is that when I showed the pictures to Patrick the next day, he noticed something on the picture across from our room (there were pictures of "ghost evidence" all over the hotel).

Look closely. Ghost orbs look familiar?

Anyway, so I ran back to the room to grab a sip of water, with plans to just go a-snapping pictures in the hallway and stairwell. I pulled the door to (but not closed), like this (pics recreated the next day, when I attempted to make this happen again):

Just as I was coming back to the door and reaching for the handle, it shut and latched on me!

Yeah, that was a little freaky.
"Okay, I'm done," I said out loud, and then I crawled into bed and went to sleep.

The next afternoon, when Patrick was at the pool, I tried to see if I could make the door do that again. Keep in mind, it's a pretty heavy door, and while the fan was on, Patrick had actually shut the window before he fell asleep, so there was no breeze or vacuum.

I tried all combinations of fan speed/off, window open/shut. Nothing. The door stayed pulled just to, but didn't close and latch on its own.

I did keep noticing that when I would shut the door, about 30 seconds to a minute later, I would hear the latch click. I told Patrick about this, stating that it must just be how that door knob/lock is set up, etc.

Later that night, he noticed that it didn't happen once when he was in the room. He was right.

Now, when he'd first gotten back from swimming, he went down to get some ice for his orange juice. I was hanging on the bed, watching TV, passing an hour or so before I needed to get cleaned up so we could go out. Suddenly, I hear the door handle jiggle.

Oh, that's right, he left his key in here when he went to the pool.

I got up and opened the door, "Sorry."

Patrick was still all the way down the hall. And he's my eye witness that nobody else was in the hall.

Okay...

After dinner, Patrick and I went around, snapping pictures, in hopes of catching something with his camera. There was one sort of anomalous thing we got.



This is Patrick walking down the hall away from Otis the Elevator. I think this was the 4th floor.



Here I am, walking away from the same elevator on the 2nd floor. If you look closely, you can see what appears to be a light darting either from or toward the elevator in a straight line. And just to the right of the elevator's frame (where it's the actual door), you can see a reflection of said light.

Same lighting in the hallway. Same camera. Same flash setting.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, when we went out for the 4 hours or so for the tour and dinner, he left an audio recorder going in the room. (He said he didn't tell me, because if he did catch anything, he didn't want me to get to jeebied to sleep there that night. He's probably right, since most of the stuff seemed to be happening OUTSIDE the room, but if I felt like something was INSIDE the room, it would have freaked me out a bit.) Keep in mind that with the "do not disturb" sign, housekeeping would not have come in or knocked on the door or whatever. The window was shut, and the fan was on low.

Click the link to check out what was caught on the voice recorder...

Strange Things At The Stanley Hotel - EVPs in Room 309

 to The Honeymoon