Maritza Skandunas, founder of San Diego Ghost Hunters, and her colleague, Peter Gieblewicz, responded by laughing. They said they hear stuff like this all the time. \u201cLots of spirits enjoy playing pranks,\u201d Skandunas said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
My response to the message was different, and involved nearly having to purchase new boxers. This is the room I volunteered to sleep in afterward as part of this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Grande Colonial \u201cghost log\u201d \u2014 the hotel promotes its otherworldly appeal \u2014 the non-living occupant of Room 508 revealed herself in November 2005 to a nurse sleeping there as a \u201cstrange, soft glow\u201d that seemed like a sweet, harmless 24-year-old woman with brown hair and a light lace dress named Abigail Trent. (Supposedly, before filing this incredibly specific ghost report, the nurse didn\u2019t believe in the paranormal.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no sweet, harmless Abigail identified herself to us. The spirit here was named Ann. Or at least that\u2019s what the voice told us. It also gave us the names Abe and Brent. Skandunas asked how many were gathered around us? The answer was 11. (I should have booked a bigger room.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The device is called a Ghost Box Ovilus. It assigns a couple thousand words to environmental readings. Thus, sentences can be constructed by electromagnetic-field fluctuations. \u201cIt\u2019s always slow at first, as the spirits learn to use it,\u201d Skandunas said. \u201cBut once they figure it out, they can get really chatty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were mentions of \u201cprohibition\u201d and \u201cpurgatory.\u201d \u201cIsrael\u201d came up more than any other word, about five times (making me wonder if it sensed I was Jewish). Then Gieblewicz announced he saw shadows outside in the hall and asked if an entity wanted to be let in. (\u201cCorrect,\u201d the Ovilus replied, so he opened the front door.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the most impressive evidence of the supernatural, to me anyway, came two minutes after I opened a curtain to peer outside. \u201cCurtain,\u201d the Ovilus said. Skandunas explained: \u201cThey don\u2019t like light.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reports of paranormal phenomena are frequent and consistent at the Grande Colonial. Opened by A.B. Harlan and George Bane as The Colonial Apartments and Hotel at 910 Prospect St. on Feb. 1, 1913, the La Jolla Cove landmark became an eventual favorite of celebrities including Groucho Marx, Charleston Heston and Gregory Peck (whose dad ran the onsite pharmacy). The conference room that served as the original building\u2019s lobby once stood in as a World War II barracks. And many people died here over the years, according to receptionist Jesse O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLast week, there was a woman who left in the middle of the night because she freaked out,\u201d O\u2019Brien told us. \u201cShe said she had a pitcher of water and nothing was in it, and when she woke up in the middle of the night, the pitcher was full.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I mentioned this assignment for La Jolla Light <\/em>to Skandunas, she jumped at the chance to participate. She and Gieblewicz brought along their tools \u2014 which also included the Wonderbox (an Ovilus competitor), a talking teddy bear, EMF readers and divining rods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve felt spirits since I was four years old,\u201d said Skandunas, a North Park native. \u201cThey were all around my bed. They would grab my ankles and pull me out of bed sometimes. I\u2019d scream to high heaven and my mom would run in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skandunas, a devout Catholic, started San Diego Ghost Hunters in 2003. She claims the scariest thing she ever encountered was at the William Heath Davis House, where she used to work as a historian before retiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI saw a man sitting between the doors,\u201d she said. \u201cI could see his head and body and his legs went out and were crossed. And every time I took pictures, he wouldn\u2019t show up. Then all of a sudden, he was laying flat on the ground and he turned into a cricket. And he started scurrying real fast towards me. So I screamed and he went right through me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skandunas is a sweet lady who seems to believe what she says, and there are plenty of facts that science can\u2019t explain about the universe that seem even creepier than Stephen King stories \u2014 such as entangled particles and what existed before the Big Bang. But that doesn\u2019t automatically render Stephen King stories all true. When faced with a choice, I will throw in with science every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUpstairs,\u201d the Ovilus said. Drats, I was afraid of this. Right outside Room 508, there is a long stairway ascending into pitch blackness. On the way into the room, Gieblewicz glanced at it and said even he was scared of what he felt up there (and he doesn\u2019t look like he would be scared of anything).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI feel some heavy activity here,\u201d Gieblewicz said as we climbed the stairs (and by \u201cwe,\u201d I mean them, with me trailing far behind). A landing speckled with old chairs, and a view of the roof, slowly revealed itself. That\u2019s when a little girl screamed \u2014 quite clearly \u2014 and I descended \u2014 quite quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s entirely possible that Skandunas and Gieblewicz are full of it \u2014 that their parlor tricks come pre-programmed with creepy words and that more relevant responses can be typed in, without a journalist noticing, in a dark room. It\u2019s possible that the girl\u2019s scream came from one of the occupied rooms and that all the hot and cold spots we simultaneously felt in the hallway \u2014 oh, did I forget to mention those? \u2014 were just hot and cold spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least that\u2019s all the stuff I told myself as I tried falling asleep after Gieblewicz and Skandunas concluded their investigation and headed home, declaring the Grande Colonial definitely haunted <\/em>but not nearly as much as the William Heath Davis Home or the Whaley House Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around 1 a.m., unable to sleep due to the newly acquired significance of every unexplained old-hotel creek, I scrolled through the photos I took earlier. This did not help me sleep. The one of the doorway, when Gieblewicz invited the spirit in, featured a white orb I hadn\u2019t seen while taking the photo. At that point, I switched every single light in the room on, as bright as it would go \u2014 since I hear they hate light \u2014 and cuddled like a frightened toddler with my king-size down pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether or not you believe in the paranormal is an issue entirely separate from trying to sleep in the same room where people have spent two hours saying things like: \u201cThere\u2019s a little girl here, hiding in the bathroom. Come out, little girl!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 2 a.m., the main light in the room switched off. Entirely on its own.<\/em> Reconciliation was now instantly required between my scientific worldview and the OMG! definitive supernatural evidence unfolding before me. This was no longer just entangled-particle creepiness. This was Abigail about to hop into bed with me, all brown hair and lace, for some alone time now that those annoying others went home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before surrendering to this world in which the monsters I feared in my closet as a 10-year-old were probably all there, however, it occurred to me to summon the courage to walk across my haunted hotel room to investigate the light switch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was on a timer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By COREY LEVITAN The entity had a message for those of us occupying Room 508 of the Grande Colonial Hotel on Sunday night. Uttered in a voice like Stephen Hawking\u2019s synthesizer, that message was \u201cRUN.\u201d Maritza Skandunas, founder of San Diego Ghost Hunters, and her colleague, Peter Gieblewicz, responded by laughing. They said they hear stuff … <\/p>\n
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