Now, we want to be kind and fair to our good friends at the Stanley Hotel. The facility itself is stately, well kept, in a beautful location and, from our couple of trips up there (one investigation and one “just visiting”), the staff there are all friendly and open and welcoming. Most of us who live in Colorado regard the place with fondness and a gentle sense of pride…whether we hunt ghosts or not.
And…being the middle of winter, and not located near any of Colorado’s ski areas, it’s the low season for them and there’s always a need to drum up business.
Having issued these disclaimers, what is up with the “Celebrity Ghost Hunt” thing? Our Facebook feed just got an invite for a mass ghost hunt up there on February 25th with TV para-celebs like GH‘s Dustin Pari and KJ McCormick, ”Fact or Faked” hosts Austin Porter and Jael De Pardo (does anybody actually watch this show?), and others from the para-TV world.
The cost? A meet ‘n greet (hang with the TV folk and do an investigation – no overnight room) is $235 !!!! Investigation only (no celeb schmoozing) is a mere $163. And if you just want to oggle the celebs, you can do that for about $30.
Seriously – what is this turning into? Plenty of us who have a deep and abiding interest in the paranormal, attempting to reconcile personal beliefs or chase that elusive “definitive evidence of an afterlife”, initially regarded the explosion of para-TV with glee and a vague sense of vindication. The boom has (predictably) turned into something of a cheap carnival, a kind of digital-device free-for-all where nice facilities turn para-fans loose with K2′s and digital cameras for an evening, imitating their fave TV stars and gaping with wonderment at orb photos, while the proprietors count up the cash and the promoters scurry to write contracts for the next event.
Is this what paranormal inquiry has turned into?
Look – we don’t know if the place is haunted. We did an investigation up there a few years ago, and got more or less nothing save one interesting photo (which was “proof” of nothing). And hey, far be it for us to disparage free enterprise. We have no reason to question the staff stories we heard while we were up there…but stories are stories. We’d like to think the whole point of paranormal investigations is to remove the existence of ghosts from the fabric of lore and establish it as real.
We’d also like to think that the search for spirits is still a quiet, private and (sorry to sound precious about this) somewhat solemn experience. It is a tricky enough proposition sifting through evidence, battling personal biases and reconciling the fact that anything approaching a “scientific” investigation demands extremely rigorous controls and a deeply skeptical approach, neither of which are likely to be enforced at any level with a few dozen para-TV fans bumping into each other in darkened hallways and EMF-reading each other’s cell phones.
Haunted locations are not zoos. If, as many of us believe, they are places with trapped and possibly tormented spirits, those spirits should be treated with respect and dignity. Not coaxed to leaving little blips on digital equipment and not treated like prized trout at the end of a fishing line.
We understand most people don’t get a chance to see a place as famously haunted as the Stanley very often. But we also think treating spiritual activity as a carnival with an admission price does both the discipline and the spirits a regrettable disservice.
