The Tea Room

investigation: As an unlikely twist, SPIRIT was invited to investigate a potentially haunted Tea Room in down town Calistoga in October of 2008. When I heard we were going to a Tea Room, I was immediately excited because it was unlike anything else I'd done with SPIRIT and we were actually called in by the clients... something like TAPS? LOL. Well, when we arrived at the Tea Room on that October night, it was very much like an episode of Ghost Hunters. We were greeted by the Tea Room owners who are from England and we also had the added surprise of a reporter from the local paper who was there to do a story on us!
We also had 3 new members present: Zip, his wife Chris and Craig, a former actor turned Paranormal Investigator. Sort of like me. Or not. But I digress...
The only problem was that we were a little congested in the Tea Room. There were a lot of us and a lot of things going on. I, personally, kept getting distracted by the amazingly beautiful job the owners did with decorating the rooms. Each room is named for a flower and there is English China everywhere and I just wanted to shop for collectibles then sit down and have tea and crumpets. I kept reminding myself that I was there to investigate a potential haunting, not to have High Tea.
We started off with a vigil, and sort of went our seperate ways, although we were still altogether since the rooms were open and we could hear everyone else. The biggest issue I had that night was not the amount of people there, but the Ovilus, an electronic machine used to help decipher the messages from Spirits through words. With all due respect, I find the Ovilus to be nothing more than a toy, not unlike the Ouija board, and therefore not holding one bit of water scientifically speaking. But still, I wanted to remain open-minded.
A better piece of equiptment was brought by Craig: a paraballic microphone. This "Big Ear" as I like to call it, amplifies sound in the way that our digital recorders do, therefore allowing you to hear every small sound, including whispers that you would not normally hear.
The most exciting part of the evening was back in the Lavender Room where Craig said he heard some giggling through the Big Ear. (a ghost of a child is thought to be one of the ones at the Tea Room) Immediately, Paul, Jackie and I pointed our audio in that direction. Jackie even began to play hide-and-seek with the potential spirit! It was pretty funny, very reminiscent of The Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice and Wonderland.
We left the Tea Room at close to 1am. I was anxious to go over my audio ASAP, especially the part where Craig heard the giggling.

evidence: Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is, a couple of weeks later, my parents went to the Tea Room and brought me back some delicious cake. The bad news is that I did not find one bit of evidence from this investigation. That's not to say that The Tea Room is not haunted, however. Many times there just isn't anything going on at a given moment. SPIRIT went back to the Tea Room in December with less people to re-investigate. All of that can be found on the official site!

For the official accounts from this investigation please visit SPIRIT

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