Paranormal Investigation Team Mendocino’s investigation of the Mendocino Hotel

The Guest Ghosts investigation held on Good Friday last week was prevented by poltergeist like activity.

On Friday April 19th Mendocino TV and the Paranormal Investigation Team Mendocino embarked on an investigation of paranormal activity emanating from the Mendocino Hotel.

Mendocino Hotel 2013

After the last investigation of the Mendocino Hotel in 2013 we were left with more questions than answers. During that investigation we encountered many strange failures and electrical phenomena.

• The Hotel WiFi network immediately crashed cutting us off from the outside and on line audience, isolating us to an unoccupied second floor of a Victorian Hotel perched on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, navigational buoys whistling through the fog.
• Charles spent some time laying on the bed in Room 16 when he felt an unseen force start pressing down upon his head. He struggled to no avail for several minutes, attempting to raise his head and cry out but he was rendered mute during the encounter. This event was witnessed by Michael over the monitors in the room. Johanna and I were down the street having dinner at a local pub while these events were occurring.
• 20 minutes later, after Charles left room 16 to monitor it from outside, Charles and Michael observed a woman walk down the hallway, turn to room 19 and attempt to unlock the room. After her lack of success in navigating the lock she turned and walked away. She was described by both as having dark hair, medium height, wearing jeans and a top. We called to the front desk to ask about her and the front desk said they had no guests that fit that description and that room wasn’t rented. In fact, due to the season, two weeks before Christmas, the whole second floor suite of rooms was not rented. There weren’t supposed to be any guests on that floor.
• The rest of the night was spent watching little glowing orbs moving around the room. These orbs could be explained away as dust floating in the air. The speed, trajectory and direction of these orbs seemed to move in a different way than I ever saw dust motes float by. Of special interest were the ones we observed through the hallway camera, where these orbs would appear from under the door of room 18 and move across the floor and enter room 16 under it’s door. There was very little room under these doors for any physical object to slide under.
• After that night’s investigation we were stymied trying to get the recordings off of the digital recorder we used to record the video from the four Infra red cameras that we had placed in the room and hall. It was fortunate that we had placed another camera, recording over our shoulder the events as they rolled out. To this day we have not been able to access those video files recorded on the Digital Video Recorder, even with increasingly sophisticated equipment.

Good Friday, April 19 2019, Guest Ghosts!

We had very high expectations when the Mendocino Hotel asked Paranormal Investigation Team Mendocino and Mendocino TV to attempt another ghost hunt.

With the memory of how many failures and puzzling happenstances we were hoping we could bring in different equipment and test extensively before the investigation. We tested internet and local connectivity and found the network passed or exceeded technical requirements. We designed a redundant system in case of failures with the local network.

The promotion of the event proceeded in a normal manner, with lots of activity and engagement on Facebook. As the weeks passed we got a message from the Mendocino Hotel declaring that nobody has called their telephone number to inquire about the event, nobody, zilch, nada! This is after 370 responses on facebook, hundreds of shares and reposts and hundreds of facebook users.

We dropped the price from $150 per person to $50 per person and we still had no tickets sold. On Friday April 19th we cancelled the Guest Ghosts event and proceeded to perform the investigation as it’s own livestreaming event.

We arrived in the afternoon to setup the investigation equipment where everything went according to plan. The members of the team arrived later in the evening when we availed our self to the exquisitely prepared menu selections. From Short ribs in a demi glace to Paella the wine & menu selections were delicious.

10:00pm, The Investigation.

The production started out ominously. Mendocino TV was switching the live production through a PC based switching system. We planned on using the Hotel’s wifi connection yet we couldn’t connect through it. We lost all contact with the outside world as well as 5 different cameras which connect to the network with that mysterious gap between us.

I inserted a usb modem from Verizon into the PC/switcher and re-established network connectivity. We started by streaming the video of the past investigation out to the live audience while we were still debugging system failures.

We placed a Full Spectrum Camera in the hallway where activity has been. This camera refused to start, giving an error message of “Low Battery” even witnessed by the rest of the crew was that every time they brought the camera back to the control room, it worked fine and showed a charged battery. We just couldn’t get it to record. By midnight it had become obvious that we were in the middle of possible poltergeist activity.

We cancelled the overnight investigation and went home with our tail between our legs, thinking that this investigation catastrophe was a result of poor planning and execution.

The next morning, while I was loading the equipment into my car the manager of the hotel asked as to how the event went. After I explained the sequence of events, she laid a bombshell in my lap. The Hotel’s network suffered a serious crash that night, losing their point of sale system, their reservation system and their complete wifi connectivity! No wonder nothing worked because nobody thought to tell us that their system was failed!

The next time, if there is a next time, we will build a completely wired system. Ghosts don’t like wifi!