I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (17 page)

After we finished filming at the Tor House, we went straight to the Point Sur Lighthouse just down the coast. After the first day of filming there, we realized that the level of paranormal activity was intense—more intense than we thought it would be, to be honest. Over time, the lighthouse has witnessed countless shipwrecks within just a few hundred yards, and multiple investigators have captured disembodied voices and EVPs there. It’s as if the lighthouse signals spirits the same way it signaled ships on the ocean, and they flock to it.

I had just come off of a positive spiritual investigation at the Tor House. I’d done a full day of interviews at the lighthouse, and I was really tired. I went back to “Grandma’s cottage” and got ready for bed. I was downstairs getting something to eat, alone except for Gracie and the bee jars, when I heard a boom upstairs in my bedroom, followed by loud scratching noises on the floor. I ran up there and found my clothes scattered all over the place, like something you would see in a cop drama when gangsters ransack a room looking for a safe. Something was up. Something bad. I could feel it. Looking back on it, I should have left the house right then, but of course I didn’t.

The clothes couldn’t have made the boom noise, and there were no giant raccoons in the room to make the scratching sounds; there was no way for a critter to get in or out. I was disturbed and uncomfortable, but too tired to worry about it. I’ve faced some pretty evil stuff, so I dismissed it, cleaned up, and lay down to sleep…but never got the chance.

Lying in bed, I was startled by banging noises followed by the feeling of hands on my shoulders. Something grabbed me and pinned me down against the headboard. It didn’t move me, but held me still with enough force that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to move until it wanted me to. I struggled, but it was too strong.

This was no sleep paralysis. I was on my back, my eyes were open, and I was yelling. Something physically held me down for about twenty seconds, and while it did, I heard more banging noises in the room. It was one of the most disturbing feelings I’ve ever felt. A burst of negative energy attacked me not with bumps or scratches, but with a transfusion of horrific violent energy. It was powerful, and to be honest, I was scared.

Finally it released me, but I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t move. The room was forty degrees colder—no exaggeration. The attack was so sudden and severe that I called Billy and Aaron and screamed at them to come over, my voice and hands shaking. I should have run, but I couldn’t leave the room. The spirit was still there, and it wouldn’t let me go. I was a hostage in that cottage.

Billy and Aaron raced over, ran upstairs, and felt it immediately. They knew that something was in the room, and it gave me a strange comfort to know that I wasn’t the only one who could sense it. They grabbed me and took me downstairs, and the three of us (and Gracie) peeled rubber, leaving all the lights on behind us. I booked a room in their hotel and stayed there, refusing to spend another minute in that cottage.

I knew the force that had held me down was the same dark energy that had made the loud noise and thrown my clothes everywhere, but I didn’t feel like it was attached to the house. I’d been staying in this cottage for weeks and nothing had happened. So where did it come from? Did it follow me from Point Sur or the Tor House? If it did, why? And what was it trying to tell me—to get out of town or to stop my investigations there? It was the strangest transfusion of pure hell that I’ve ever known, which is weird because none of those locations are known to contain dark or demonic entities. It didn’t make sense then and doesn’t make sense now.

Despite this attack, I treasure the time I spent in California. Robinson Jeffers’ spirit called me there, and I’m glad I listened, because I got the chance to tell his story and have an encounter like no other. I finally went home to Vegas and moved back into my house, my spirit refreshed and my life in a little more order than it had been. When I think about how everyone says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” I find it ironic. For me, what happened in California stayed in California.

UNTIL NOW.

The show must go on.

There are days when you say, “I’m dying,” in a joking way, and then there are days when you actually believe that you may be on your last legs. When we traveled to Cimarron, New Mexico, to investigate the St. James Hotel, I was so sick that I honestly felt like I was dying—like one of those cases of pneumonia you hear about that eventually takes someone’s life. I could barely remember my name, let alone focus on an interview. When I eventually did do the interview, I swayed like a drunkard. I didn’t know what I had, but it was hell.

When we travel to film in some of these haunted locations, there’s nothing else around. It’s scary sometimes when one of us gets sick or ill, because there’s no urgent care in these remote areas. I’ve done investigations in faraway places that were hours from any kind of healthcare. If you slipped while rappelling down an old mineshaft, you’d be screwed. I learned long ago not to take unnecessary risks like that or to put myself in a position that could cause permanent injury so far from civilization.

In the middle of New Mexico, Cimarron is three hours from the nearest major city (Denver to the north and Albuquerque to the south). It has a population of around 900 people, so there’s no real hospital to speak of. I was sick and needed medicine, and the future of the episode was in jeopardy, so we drove north to Trinidad, Colorado, which we later learned is the sex change capital of the world.

FUN FACT:
D
R
. S
TANLEY
B
IBER STARTED CONDUCTING SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY IN THE 1960S IN
T
RINIDAD AND GAINED A REPUTATION FOR BEING VERY GOOD AT IT
. A
T HIS PEAK, HE PERFORMED UP TO FOUR OPERATIONS PER DAY
. H
IS PRACTICE WAS SO WELL KNOWN THAT
B
IBER WAS FEATURED IN AN EPISODE OF
S
OUTH
P
ARK
.

We found this little health food store that was selling herbal oil remedies passed down through generations of Native Americans. When we went in, we were like three city slickers walking into the High Noon Saloon in Dodge City in 1888. The music stopped. Heads turned. I felt uneasy, even through all the pounding in my head and the hummingbirds in my stomach that wouldn’t stop fluttering. A bad situation quickly got worse, but it wasn’t me everyone was wary of.

Aaron, with his bald head, goatee, and hoodie, was singled out as the criminal of the group, and the locals watched him like a hawk. We browsed the store, and while I was looking for anything that would make the golems in my gut go away, everyone watched Aaron. I hated that, but I bought a bunch of tinctures in glass bottles because at that point I would have tried anything to get better. We got back in the car, and I threw back shots of these oils, the smell of which made all of us sick. Every time my body would try to heave up the oils, I would force them back down, because in the back of my mind I thought,
This is the only option I have. There’s nowhere else to go for healthcare around here.
I felt like I was back in medieval times subject to ancient natural cures, and none of them worked. It was awful.

The thing about being a TV show host is that the show must go on. If I’m down, then it’s a domino effect; it costs more money, more problems, and more headaches for everyone if I can’t do my job. The network has deadlines and a lot of people were counting on me, so I had to push through it. In television, no one cares how sick or distracted or dead to the world you are; you have to find the strength to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and accomplish your mission. In the military they call this FIDO: Fuck It, Drive On.

As I’ve said, my buddies and production crew are my family, especially when I’m at my worst. My production manager kept bringing me water, and the guys kept asking if there was anything they could do. We’ve built camaraderie like I imagine a platoon of soldiers would in combat. These are your brothers, and they’re all you have out there in the middle of nowhere.

The worst part for me is that I’m a perfectionist. I want to deliver the best show, the best interviews, the best investigation. I won’t settle for anything less. That’s why I’m the leader of
Ghost Adventures.
I constantly push Nick, Aaron, and everyone on our production crew to do better and make each show better than the last.

So when I’m down, I don’t like it. It makes me feel insecure about my performance as a host and as a paranormal investigator, because I know that the product everyone will see, which represents me, my crew, and the Travel Channel, is not going to be as good as it could be. Is that micromanaging? Maybe, but
Ghost Adventures
is my life, and the show’s reputation is a direct reflection on me and all the people who believe in me, so it’s my responsibility to get it right. I had to fight through the pain to deliver a great investigation.

It ended up being a great episode, but that wasn’t the last of it. After the investigation was over, we piled into an RV that we had rented because the site was so far from civilization and headed back to the town we were staying in, which was about forty minutes away. We were exhausted. I was physically sick, mentally drained from coming in contact with several spirits that night, and ready to collapse. Aaron was sleeping in the cabin above the driver, and I was propped up like a scarecrow in between and just behind the driver and passenger. I should have gone to sleep on one of the benches, but for some reason I couldn’t. I think the events of the investigation were still running through my head, or maybe the most recent episode of
Game of Thrones
was on my mind. Either way, my head was still in the game, but only in short bursts. I droned in and out of consciousness as we drove until…

“Oh my God!” the driver yelled, snapping me awake and scaring the crap out of me. I’ve faced some dangerous beastly spirits in my life, but this startled me pretty badly. What the hell was going on?

An elk. Or a moose. I really don’t know which it was, but I’m guessing it was an elk since moose rarely wander that far south. Either way, it was huge. And not just one, but two. And then…a lot more. A herd. A herd of giant animals was standing in the middle of the road in the earliest hours of the morning, staring at us. The message in their eyes was clear: “No,
you
move.”

It was what I imagine an acid trip must be like. Giant elk—or moose or reindeer or Sasquatches for all I knew, I was so sick and tired—were standing on a road in a remote part of northern New Mexico, blocking our path. It was blacker than black. No moon. Our headlights reflected off of them, and we finally inched our way around the herd and got moving again.

The danger seemingly behind us, I started to doze off again, but what do you think happened minutes later? “Oh my God!” our driver screamed again. I looked up and saw another huge beast trying to cross the road in front of us. We were going too fast to stop in the road like we had for the herd, so the driver swerved left to avoid this 1,000-pound animal, but couldn’t. The elk hit the passenger side of the RV, and I’ll never forget the sound it made. Please keep in mind that I’m an advocate for animal rights; I’ve adopted pets and donated tens of thousands of dollars to animal shelters over the course of my life. So hearing the dull thud of a majestic beast hitting the side of our RV at 60 miles per hour and knowing that the blow was probably fatal sickens me to this day.

The right side of the RV that juts out just behind the passenger seat had caught the elk’s head. Had the animal been a few feet farther into the road, it might have come through the windshield and injured Nick. We immediately slowed down and stopped about 100 feet from the impact site, all of us dumbfounded about what had just happened.

As we turned around to go back, we saw chunks of flesh in the road, and I knew what the fate of this elk must be. There was no way it could have survived. But as we got closer to the impact point, we saw it on the side of the road. I’ll be honest, I was a little afraid to get out, because elk and moose are known to bum-rush people and stampede them, and we had just seen a herd not ten minutes before. How many more of them were out there in the darkness just off the road?