The Dead Files (2011) s08e03 Episode Script
No Vacancy - Grass Valley
There's something dangerous here.
And I heard summoning.
It's almost like I was possessed.
It scared me, made me jump.
The injuries make him unrecognizable.
He's getting his face bashed in.
The tray was just thrown out of my hand.
It would be like cutting out my own heart.
It's really bad.
They're gonna [bleep.]
kill me.
There's a dark presence.
My name is Amy Allan.
These things, they're freaking out.
They're from hell.
I see dead people.
They were being hunted.
I speak to dead people.
They were setting people on fire, burning them alive.
And they speak to me.
Her neck got broken.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
I hear a gunshot.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide detective.
Something's not right here.
And I know every person, every house, has secrets.
It's not safe here.
It's my job to reveal them.
Are any of them buried on the property? They're all buried here.
But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end I can't do it no more.
When we uncover if it's safe for you to stay Holy [bleep.]
Look at this.
Or time to get out.
It does not have a happy ending.
Something kills people here.
I'm in Grass Valley, California, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento.
I got a call from a guy who bought an old, historic hotel and said it was the worst thing he's ever done.
He says the paranormal activity there is so bad, it's attacking his guests, scaring his employees, and he even blames it for causing his divorce.
He says if we can't find a solution, he's gonna have to shut the place down.
MATTHEW: Before Amy arrives, I clear the area of any leading information.
Photographs and artwork can influence her findings, so it's important that I cover or remove them all.
When I'm finished, the location will be ready for tonight's walk.
AMY: This town is very active.
Everybody is yelling.
This is a long time ago.
Dirt roads.
There were a lot of tragedies here.
And people were angry about them.
They're pissed.
They're [bleep.]
pissed.
There's lots of chaos here.
Ooh.
STEVE: Well, Ian, it's good to finally meet you in person.
When we spoke on the phone, you sounded like you were at your wits end with this place.
IAN: I still come in every morning, like, "What's gonna happen today?" I've had guests check out in the middle of the night, say, "I can't stay here.
It's too scary.
" I have employees that are afraid to go to parts of the building alone.
It's stressful.
I'm tired of it.
Now, you mentioned on the phone, there was a lot of activity here.
Give me an idea what you're talking about.
I have people hearing noises.
I have objects moving around.
People are being physically touched.
I've even had people say that they were being sexually assaulted.
- Guests? - Guests.
It's not just here and there.
It's consistent.
Ian, you mentioned on the phone that this place may have even destroyed your marriage.
I mean, what did you mean by that? After I took over the hotel, my marriage really started falling apart.
It changed my personality.
I've talked to people that have worked here and managed and owners in the past, and they said the exact same thing.
It's like, "It ruined my marriage.
" I feel like there's something in the air here, something in the energy.
I see people acting in ways that they normally wouldn't be acting.
Why are you holding on to this place? You know, I love it.
I still love the Holbrooke.
It's the centerpiece for Grass Valley.
Have you done anything to try to figure out what's going on? I've had three different paranormal groups come in here over the last four years.
They had video and audio recording.
What did they tell you? They say there's a lot of activity, but no one's ever told me to do anything about it.
They're more interested in just trying to see what's here.
I want some answers.
I don't want to walk away from this place.
AMY: I think there's a living person that is doing something very bad here.
And I heard summoning.
And I do see people doing, very specifically, EVP stuff.
You mean investigations and stuff? Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if they're formal or just something that these owners or whoever are doing on their own time, but whatever it is, there's an obsession.
Now I'm hearing obsession.
STEVE: So, what's going on back here? My equipment in the kitchen is always breaking.
We'll buy brand-new equipment.
It will fail within a few weeks.
You sure you don't have an employee here who's trying to get even with you for something and breaking [bleep.]
It's possible, but I've seen equipment installed myself, and it's failed with a week for no reason.
Now, is anything else going on? I've had furniture move around in rooms.
I was staying in room number 9.
Okay.
When I went to bed, I saw where the chair was.
I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, the chair had moved to a completely different spot in the room, and I tripped on it.
- Now, were you alone? - I was alone.
- You could have broke your neck.
- Yes.
The chair moving in your bedroom upstairs when you were staying over, I can't explain that.
But the rest of this stuff, the electrical and all that it's an old building.
You think this is all paranormal? There's no logical explanation for these events that are happening.
I want people to be safe and happy here.
I'm hoping you can help me.
AMY: There's an aggressive male here.
He's very, very hyper.
And I hear "Paul.
" I am gonna say that he's mentally ill.
He likes it in here.
It feels more comfortable for him.
He likes little spaces.
He is aggressive, but it's when he feels like he's being cornered.
He kind of lashes out.
I do see him touching people.
The things he'll do is, like, hiding things, breaking things, stuff like that.
So, how long did you work here? KELLY: Approximately two years.
I was a front desk agent.
From my understanding, it looks like Ian saved this hotel.
How important is that for the city? It's very important for Grass Valley.
The Holbrooke is basically the heart of this town.
There's so much history, and everybody loves this place.
Ian was telling me that he thinks whatever's going on here is responsible for his marriage breaking up.
You think whatever's here has an effect on relationships? Yes.
I've seen a few relationships that were really, really strong break up.
There's something here that doesn't want you to be happy.
Now, when you worked here, did you have any experiences? I've actually seen a shadow figure a very tall shadow figure ln the kitchen twice.
Now, describe the shadow figure.
How did it look to you? Tall and dark.
It was definitely taller than me, over 6 feet tall.
And dark You couldn't see through it.
Okay, is there anything else you've experienced? I couldn't count how many times this happened, sitting here at the front desk, and I would hear my name and feel a presence.
And they would, you know, call my name, and I was, "Can I help you? Oh, there's nobody there.
" Are you sure it couldn't have been somebody that came in from outside? Absolutely.
No one gets in without me noticing.
- The doors are locked.
- Okay.
AMY: There's a woman, and she is a force to be reckoned with.
She's in charge, you know, with an iron fist.
She's trying to talk to people.
It bothers them.
She touches them, and it's burning.
It's hot.
It's hot.
It's so hot.
And then she's got, like, this whole white mist thing going on.
The living see her kind of as a full-bodied apparition, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, and sometimes being very forceful.
What is she trying to tell people? She's in trouble.
She needs help.
STEVE: So, Andrew, I understand that you actually work here.
ANDREW: Yes, sir.
I used to also live here.
- You lived here? - Yeah.
- For how long? - For about seven months.
- Okay, what do you do? - Now I'm maintenance.
I used to do everything from front desk, night audit, fill in for bartending.
So you basically know the whole building.
In and out.
Okay.
Now, you've experienced some stuff.
Oh, absolutely, yes.
Okay, what can you tell me? I've seen shadows and shadow figures, one with a hat that was down in the kitchen.
It was a dark figure, and you could tell there was something there, and it scared me.
Made me jump, like you or somebody was right next to me and I didn't know it.
And you were alone in the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Is there anything else going on? We get a lot of complaints from guests.
Okay, like what? I've had guests check out in the middle of the night, complaints of noise above their roof when they're on the top floor, and there's nobody up there, or the temperatures changing, or their doorknob keeps rattling.
It's an old building.
I'm sure there's some quirky things going on, but that's pretty drastic.
I had a family that checked in about 3:00 in the afternoon, and husband and wife left the son upstairs in the room to take a nap.
They were eating downstairs, and he came barging into the saloon, asked for the car key, stayed in the car.
He would not come back up to the room.
Did you find out what happened? We ask him what was going on.
He said he felt something massaging, like, his legs or his back.
And knowing nobody was in the room, he just jumped up out of the room and was not going back.
Wow.
That would have scared the hell out of me, I think.
It's almost like it's malicious in a way.
AMY: I think that there's something dangerous here.
And someone's just [bleep.]
choking bad.
There's a guy strangling a woman with his hand.
He's, like, just holding her down.
Real strong.
Living people are experiencing this, like, little snippets of past events all over the place.
[Door creaks.]
Some chick's [bleep.]
crying.
She had a [bleep.]
fight with some guy.
She's drinking morphine.
You know, somebody's who's in this room, they would hear her crying.
They would hear the pacing, you know? They would feel like they're having mental breakdowns.
[Bleep.]
[Gasps.]
MATTHEW: What's going on? Whatever is here makes the living [bleep.]
insane.
I don't even know how anyone could stay here.
There are just so many dead.
STEVE: So, how long you been here? TERRI: Over seven years.
Okay, so you were here before Ian even bought the place? - Yes.
- Okay.
Any experiences you can't explain? When I was working graveyard, I would get up from my desk and go do something, and then on my way back, I would see somebody sitting in my chair.
So I'd look again, and they'd be gone, so Now, you said you worked the graveyard shift.
Did you have the doors locked? Yes.
I always locked the doors for my protection.
What about a guest? No.
It was too fast for it to be a person.
Okay, so, anything else? I waitress now, and a few times, I would be walking with the empty tray going to the dining room, and the tray just, with force, was just thrown out of my hand.
That's happened three times.
So, where does this usually happen? Back here in the hallway.
It happened more towards the kitchen.
Did it feel like a hand came up and smacked it or Exactly.
It felt like somebody just went underneath and just popped it right out of my hand.
Okay.
That's interesting.
It scared me.
So, you've had a few things.
Anything else? Yes, I've taken three very bad falls in this building since Ian has taken over.
I fell out here in the lobby once with a wine glass in my hand cut my hand.
Another time, I fell in the kitchen, and that was a hard fall.
I really hurt my hand.
I had bruises all over the place.
And then another time, I slipped, and I went and told the cook, I'm all, "This is dangerous.
It's like ice there," you know? And he's testing it with his feet, and he said, "No, it's not.
It's not slippery at all.
" That's strange.
These falls, now, is this uncommon for you? I've only fallen in here.
I don't usually fall.
I'm not clumsy.
I don't know if that's paranormal, but you've had stuff just pop out of your hands.
- Right.
- So it's not out of the realm that somebody may be trying to make you fall, either.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Okay.
This hallway is not a good place to be if you're a living person.
These dead people who have issues are running amok doing a lot of, like, weird physical [bleep.]
here.
This is not a good hallway to be in.
It's very bad in here.
Ohh.
I feel sick, sick.
STEVE: Considering Ian's owned the hotel for five years, he really doesn't know much about it.
So I've reached out to a local historian, who says it's actually a miracle that the Holbrooke's still standing today.
STEVE: So, Hilary, do me a favor.
Will you just start from the beginning with this place? When was the hotel built? It was built in 1851, as the Golden Gate Saloon.
Did it flourish as a saloon? Yes, for several years until the fire of 1855, where most of the town was burnt down.
So, what kind of damage are we talking about in this fire? - Over 60 acres.
- Wow! Over 300 buildings were destroyed, including the Golden Gate Saloon.
Okay, so, obviously, they rebuilt.
Yes.
They rebuilt, and then they added the lot next door, and they called it the Exchange Hotel.
When did it become the Holbrooke Hotel? January 1, 1879.
Daniel and his wife, Ellen, Holbrooke bought the hotel for $12,000.
I have a photo of Daniel Holbrooke.
They renovated it and reopened it as the Holbrooke.
Nothing's really changed.
No, that's the nice thing about that hotel.
So, now they have the hotel.
How's it work out for them? Unfortunately, four years after they bought it, Daniel Holbrooke passes away in the hotel.
In the hotel? Yes, and here's a copy of his obituary.
And they have his funeral at the hotel a couple days later.
What happens with the hotel? Well, Ellen takes it over, and she runs it for the next 23 years until her death in 1906.
And I have a copy of her obituary here.
She also dies in the hotel.
Now, you mentioned on the phone that it was a miracle that the Holbrooke was even standing, still.
What did you mean by that? Well, after that big fire of 1855, there were four more major fires that devastated Grass Valley one in 1860, 1862, 1873, and 1896.
But, somehow, the Holbrooke was left standing.
How close of a call was it for the hotel? Well, in 1860 and 1873, everything within 100 feet of the Holbrooke burned down.
So, for some miraculous reason, this survives.
- Right.
- Okay.
AMY: There were a lot of tragedies here, but then good stuff.
Good things coming in waves.
So, it's like good, good, good, and then [bleep.]
decimation.
You know, I'm seeing, like, buildings I don't know, burning.
The ground goes under, buckling.
It's [bleep.]
chaos.
[Gasps.]
Frankly, I don't know how there's still, like, a [bleep.]
town here.
So, you've got a hotel and bar operating for over 150 years.
I got to think there's some violence there.
I called the Grass Valley police chief, and he said some cases come to mind that will definitely help my investigation.
STEVE: So, what were you able to find out? Well, the first mysterious death was a suicide.
And that occurred April 17, 1927.
And the gentleman's name was John Henry Martin.
He was a wealthy miner and a gambler.
Okay.
Martin was found here dead in his hotel room at the Holbrooke.
Do we know how this guy killed himself? Yes, he slashed his own throat.
That's unusual.
Yes.
Here's a death certificate.
I've been in the business for 34 years, and I've never experienced anyone cutting their own throat.
- I've seen it once.
- Yeah.
Did we have any idea why he did it? No.
But I do have a suicide note that he left.
In the note, he says he was being shadowed and followed.
That's strange.
So, it sounds like this guy might have been hallucinating about something.
That's what it appears.
Okay.
What else you come up with? The second one was 1909, and it involved a former bus driver of the hotel named Cyrus McMath.
- Okay.
- He was downstairs in the bar, drinking one night and very intoxicated, and he got into some kind of beef with the owner.
Frank DeMaine was his name.
He was 76 years old.
Here's his picture.
Okay, so this guy's the owner of the Holbrooke at the time.
Correct.
McMath starts beating DeMaine.
And his son, Louis, is upstairs, hears about this, comes down, and tries to protect his father, and gets in a fight with McMath.
Well, McMath loses, and he gets pummeled.
Really? Witnesses report they can't even identify who McMath is because the injuries make him unrecognizable.
Okay, so what happens next? He's still conscious, and he's taken home, but he dies shortly thereafter at home.
AMY: I'm seeing, like, another guy.
He's getting his face bashed in.
I'm literally seeing men's boots, the bottom of their shoes, coming down on my face.
And that hurts.
And then these two guys picked me up, and they're dragging me, 'cause I can't even walk.
This is [bleep.]
up.
This was creepy.
I'm thinking, "Oh [bleep.]
They're gonna [bleep.]
kill me.
" If you need us to investigate unexplained activity in your home, go to the "Dead Files" page at travelchannel.
com.
Click on "Help me, Dead Files" to submit you story, and we'll help if we can.
STEVE: So far, I've uncovered several deaths inside my client's property and multiple fires that devastated the city of Grass Valley.
But I need to see if there's anything else.
Searching through old records, I find an article about an exotic dancer named Lola Montez.
Turns out she brutally beat a local newspaper man inside the hotel.
I'm on my way to meet with a local author who said Lola Montez traveled the world, and wherever she went, violence followed her.
So, Chris, you mentioned on the phone this Lola Montez was quite a character.
But let me ask you a question.
Was she from Grass Valley? She was not.
She was born in Ireland between 1818 and 1821, and she was raised in India.
She was quite beautiful from a very young age.
She becomes this great dancer by the time she's 17, 18 years old, and starts to develop what we know as the spider dance today.
Okay, so, what the hell is a spider dance? Part ballet, part interpretive dance, pretending as though she was caught in a spider web.
And as she's spun around, the opportunity to be able to see some thigh or maybe the dress coming up a little bit higher than the thigh was something that was very real and the audience thought was risque.
And, certainly, men would come to see this.
Lola Montez's dance is so titillating that she gains the attention of King Ludwig of Bavaria.
He takes her as his mistress.
She takes over pretty much politically and kind of masterminds what he should be doing within the government.
And she's a young kid at this time.
Right.
Got a photo here of her.
I mean, she was a stunning lady.
So, how does she end up in Grass Valley? Well, after a relationship with the king of Bavaria went bad, she left Europe and came to America and traveled around quite extensively, and ends up in the gold country, because there's a lot of gold and a lot of money to be made here.
All right, Chris.
So, how does she wind up at the Holbrooke giving this guy a beating? She performs at the Holbrooke.
And Henry Shipley, who is a newspaperman here in the gold country Okay.
And he has been reprinting articles that are very bad about Lola Montez.
And so she trots on down to the Holbrooke and takes a bull whip out and gives him four lashes across the face.
Wow.
Okay.
The beating made national news.
All right, so, what happens to this guy Shipley? He never does get over being humiliated by Lola Montez.
He ends up in Sacramento.
He drinks himself to death, literally, because he downs a whole bottle of strychnine.
- Okay, so, he commits suicide.
- He does.
So, what happened with Lola? Lola dies in 1861 in New York in her late 30s, and she's impoverished.
AMY: I'm seeing the woman who rules with the iron fist again.
Out there, she was very overwhelming in her energy like bigger-than-life kind of person.
It seems she's crying.
Somebody says she was tormenting herself.
She's a mess.
Obviously, something happened.
There's a male.
Oh, had to put her in her place.
Too big for her britches.
It was because she really was, like, too powerful.
People really, like, listened to her, and people respected her.
There's something with the right of her head.
Man Right side Yeah, I think these guys really [bleep.]
with her, man.
I saw dozens of dead people during my walk.
But the group harassing the living in the hallway had me the most concerned.
There was a man on the left who was, like, climbing up the wall.
And then there was some crazy-looking woman standing in front of the door.
Another guy was charging towards me.
Amy, is this what you saw? Yes, this is what I saw.
STEVE: Now that Amy and I have completed our investigations, we're ready to reveal our findings to each other and our clients for the first time.
Well, Amy, this is a very special investigation.
This hotel is the heart of the city, but because of the activity here, it's in danger of shutting down for good.
Now, for the past five years, Ian has owned and run the hotel, but he can't go on like this.
Terri has worked here for seven years.
She's had a lot of experiences.
The same with Kelly.
She's a local who used to work here, but she considers the Holbrooke a home away from home.
So, now that I told Amy just a little bit about what's going on with you guys, I'm gonna ask her to describe her walk for us.
AMY: When I got here, I was seeing the town being decimated over and over and over again, almost like it came in waves.
And I saw people coming, and that was good.
Like, people were excited.
They're happy.
It would be built up, and then it would just be, like, decimated.
And then there was fire.
The ground was, like, sinking or something.
STEVE: Well, it's probably a good time to give you a little history about Grass Valley.
In the mid-1800s, this town was the heart of the gold rush, and people were coming from all over the world looking for fortune.
Now, in 1851, this place was opened up as the Golden Gate Saloon.
Now, just four years later, a huge fire ripped through this town.
The building was burned to the ground.
But when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt as the hotel.
Now, in 1860, 1862, 1873, huge fires leveled this town again destroying just about everything.
Okay.
Amazingly, though, the hotel survived each of those other times.
1879, a couple named Holbrooke brought the hotel and named it after themselves.
Now, I got a picture of it back then.
1896, there was another fire, and the Holbrooke was one of the only buildings - left standing again.
- Hmm.
IAN: I didn't know about all the fire history.
It sounds like this hotel is a survivor, but there's something here.
AMY: When I walked in, I was overwhelmed.
Obviously, there's a lot of dead here.
Now, I'm on the main floor, and I went into the long peach hallway.
That was probably not a good place for living people to be in because there are a lot of dead people in that hallway.
Some of the other dead have put these different dead people in there.
The reason why they're put in that hallway is because they're mentally unstable.
So, let me get this straight.
The normal dead people are putting the nutty dead people in a corner.
- Yes.
- Wow.
Because they're mentally unstable, the living might have some experiences there, like seeing, perhaps, like, dark shadows, feeling movement, possibly feeling touched.
When I was walking through the hallway, I usually carry a tray.
And the tray was knocked out of my hand.
I had it up like this, and I felt as if somebody just pushed it up, and it just toppled out of my hand.
And that's happened to me three times, so Okay.
And it's always been right there in that hallway, so You know where that hallway leads? That leads to my office.
There's something about the feeling there.
When I first took the hotel over, within 48 hours, the ceiling collapsed in that office.
That's kind of weird.
And then now I'm wondering if there's something more going on.
I did a sketch of what I saw.
STEVE: I mean, it looks like a scene from a mental ward.
Oh, my! I can't believe I have to walk through that 20 times a day.
I can't believe that they were here when I worked here.
There's times when I feel anxious, like energy is being sucked out of me.
AMY: That makes sense, because the other thing that I got was a sense of extreme panic and feeling overwhelmed with anxiety.
I've been being treated for anxiety and depression.
Mm.
That's something that can happen from being here.
I have a huge investment here, inside of me.
It's a huge investment.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
That's tough, yeah.
[Sniffles.]
STEVE: Anything else? There was some other weird guy, a dead guy.
His name is Paul.
And one of the places he likes a lot is the storage area in the kitchen.
I think he might have had some mental illness, as well.
He'll lash out and touch people.
He'll take things.
He'll hide things.
He would like to burn things and/or has burned things.
And from what you were telling me, now I'm kind of concerned that he's a little bit more dangerous than what I initially assessed about him.
His main goal is to get rid of the living.
STEVE: I mean, the guy she's describing doesn't match up with anybody I found in my research, but a lot of what you're saying matches up with what they're experiencing.
At first, I thought it was just I was kind of losing it.
I mean, honestly, it doesn't make any sense.
Stuff will go missing all the time.
STEVE: Now, you said this guy can get physical.
Terri, tell Amy about the falls you've taken.
Once was out here in the lobby, but in the kitchen both other times.
Yeah, I was pretty bruised up.
I still have pain from that fall.
AMY: The next thing that I saw was a female.
And she was in charge here, and she ran this with, like, an iron fist.
In life, people listened to her, and she was very influential.
And men here did not like this.
They wanted to put her in her place.
There were a couple of men, very specific men, one Hank and one Gerald, that really had big issues with her.
There was a lot of pain in her head.
I think that occasionally, she might look like a fawn apparition.
And she tries to talk to people, and when she's trying to talk to them, they'll feel heat, and they'll get very hot.
So, Kelly, didn't you have voices trying to talk to you? At the front desk.
TERRI: I've heard my name called, just walking through the hall, and I hear my name.
And I ask everybody who called my name, but nobody knows.
- That happens to you, too? - Quite often.
It may be a shot in the dark, but a woman did come across in my research that could possibly fit the bill, a woman by the name of Lola Montez.
Now, she was probably one of the most fascinating characters I've ever come across in my research.
She was born in Ireland between 1818 and maybe 1821.
Nobody's really sure.
By the time she was 16, she was a famous dancer.
She became very famous throughout Europe and had tons of high-profile men after her.
She wound up coming here to America and ended up dancing here at the Holbrooke.
Now, you mention a guy named Hank.
Well, a guy named Henry Shipley wrote articles about her in the local newspaper that weren't very nice.
She didn't take this too well.
She came right here in this saloon and whipped him.
- Oh, goodness! - I got an article here about it.
Now, she caught him four times across the face with this whip.
Holy [bleep.]
This guy was so embarrassed by what happened to him that he eventually committed suicide.
That's how embarrassed he was by it.
Oh, wow! What Wow.
I've got a photo of her.
Is it possible that might be who you might have seen? Actually, yeah.
I feel very connected to this person.
I don't know.
Maybe that's why this place is my home away from home.
So, what else? When I was upstairs, I encountered a lot of residual information and a lot of different dead people.
I went into one room, and I saw a male trying to strangle a woman with his bare hands.
And then I saw, unfortunately, another woman in a room drinking some morphine.
You know, finally, I just kind of had to just stop, because it was just too much.
Living people would go through, possibly seeing some of the dead walking through their rooms at night.
Also, people might feel really dizzy.
I was getting that consistently through the building.
And some people, obviously, might have physical experiences.
So, Amy, obviously, we're getting to the heart of why we're here, and the problem with the hotel.
The upstairs is obviously where the guests stay.
IAN: Yeah, one gentleman was in room number 3, laying in his bed, and he said just, suddenly, there's a whirlwind with all the windows closed, doors closed.
He came down here.
He was white as a ghost.
He said, "I'm leaving.
This place has got problems.
" I spoke to one of the employees who saw a kid run out of here.
It turned out the kid felt like he was being massaged by something on the bed, which was kind of freaky.
Wow.
This place is pretty damn active.
How would being around all these dead people in this place affect somebody like Ian and Terri that are here all the time? That exposure over a long period of time would cause some emotional and mental disorders to develop.
Employees could suffer breakdowns, and then some physically could be harmed.
Not good.
You told me you thought this place destroyed your marriage.
I think it had a big, big hand Hmm.
In my breakup of my marriage.
It's changed my personality.
It came down to a point where I was very short-tempered.
I had a relationship with someone who worked here, and he changed.
The relationship went to crap.
Does what they're saying make sense to you? Yeah.
I've done a lot of hotels.
Maybe 5% are as active as this.
I don't want you to lose your sanity, and I don't want to lose mine, but I think that if we give up on the Holbrooke, then we'll be giving up on the entire town.
STEVE: So, Ian, now we know why your employees have been so scared to be here alone.
We know why your guests have been checking out in the middle of the night and why your relationships are falling apart.
But we still don't know if you can safely keep the Holbrooke's doors open.
So, for that answer, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy.
Sometimes, there are places that are just so extremely active that, literally, it would take a town of various practitioners and many years to completely cleanse and remove the dead and the residual energy.
This is one of those places.
And I know it's not really what y'all want to hear.
STEVE: It sounds like you're saying they can't get rid of the dead here.
Frankly, it would take, really, years.
IAN: That's not at all what I expected, to be honest with you.
No.
Not at all what I expected to hear.
AMY: Here's the thing.
Typically, what ends up happening to these kinds of places is that, kind of, the dead win in the end.
Most of the locations that have been like this either end up getting torn down, or they sit vacant.
They're, like, literally run out of business.
Yeah, I mean, that's just not an option.
I got to come up with something.
I got to keep this place open.
It actually is kind of breaking my heart.
She's like another one of my kids.
I have never felt as strong about a place in my life.
That's horrible.
I mean, I've got to come up with an option here to make this place successful for the town.
AMY: If this were my place, I would leave, because there's nothing you can do to make it totally safe.
But if you're really determined to stay, there are things that you can do to protect yourselves.
Here's a bag of black salt.
Take some of this, sprinkle it in approximately the four corners of the building.
And what that's gonna do is just kind of build an energetic wall of purity to keep the dead out.
The other thing is is to utilize stones.
Okay, we have black tourmaline, and we have selenite.
It protects you specifically from the dead.
You would carry those stones all day.
Here's the problem.
None of them are long-lasting, so this would be a daily type of ritual.
So, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm gonna take precautions, to start with.
I'm not gonna give up.
My concern is for the living here who are consistently here and your mental well-being, because I've seen people, you know, undertake tasks like this and kind of self-destruct.
Instead of the building being torn down, you might be torn down.
This place being boarded up would be a travesty.
I'm gonna give it a good, good try, anyway, - the old college try.
- STEVE: Yeah.
Good.
AMY: I wish I had better news for Ian.
The dead inside this hotel would literally take years to remove.
But with the precautions I gave him, Ian will at least have a fighting chance of keeping the doors of his hotel open.
And I heard summoning.
It's almost like I was possessed.
It scared me, made me jump.
The injuries make him unrecognizable.
He's getting his face bashed in.
The tray was just thrown out of my hand.
It would be like cutting out my own heart.
It's really bad.
They're gonna [bleep.]
kill me.
There's a dark presence.
My name is Amy Allan.
These things, they're freaking out.
They're from hell.
I see dead people.
They were being hunted.
I speak to dead people.
They were setting people on fire, burning them alive.
And they speak to me.
Her neck got broken.
But there's only one way to know if my findings are real.
I hear a gunshot.
I rely on my partner.
I'm Steve Di Schiavi.
I'm a retired New York City homicide detective.
Something's not right here.
And I know every person, every house, has secrets.
It's not safe here.
It's my job to reveal them.
Are any of them buried on the property? They're all buried here.
But Steve and I never speak We never communicate during an investigation.
Until the very end I can't do it no more.
When we uncover if it's safe for you to stay Holy [bleep.]
Look at this.
Or time to get out.
It does not have a happy ending.
Something kills people here.
I'm in Grass Valley, California, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento.
I got a call from a guy who bought an old, historic hotel and said it was the worst thing he's ever done.
He says the paranormal activity there is so bad, it's attacking his guests, scaring his employees, and he even blames it for causing his divorce.
He says if we can't find a solution, he's gonna have to shut the place down.
MATTHEW: Before Amy arrives, I clear the area of any leading information.
Photographs and artwork can influence her findings, so it's important that I cover or remove them all.
When I'm finished, the location will be ready for tonight's walk.
AMY: This town is very active.
Everybody is yelling.
This is a long time ago.
Dirt roads.
There were a lot of tragedies here.
And people were angry about them.
They're pissed.
They're [bleep.]
pissed.
There's lots of chaos here.
Ooh.
STEVE: Well, Ian, it's good to finally meet you in person.
When we spoke on the phone, you sounded like you were at your wits end with this place.
IAN: I still come in every morning, like, "What's gonna happen today?" I've had guests check out in the middle of the night, say, "I can't stay here.
It's too scary.
" I have employees that are afraid to go to parts of the building alone.
It's stressful.
I'm tired of it.
Now, you mentioned on the phone, there was a lot of activity here.
Give me an idea what you're talking about.
I have people hearing noises.
I have objects moving around.
People are being physically touched.
I've even had people say that they were being sexually assaulted.
- Guests? - Guests.
It's not just here and there.
It's consistent.
Ian, you mentioned on the phone that this place may have even destroyed your marriage.
I mean, what did you mean by that? After I took over the hotel, my marriage really started falling apart.
It changed my personality.
I've talked to people that have worked here and managed and owners in the past, and they said the exact same thing.
It's like, "It ruined my marriage.
" I feel like there's something in the air here, something in the energy.
I see people acting in ways that they normally wouldn't be acting.
Why are you holding on to this place? You know, I love it.
I still love the Holbrooke.
It's the centerpiece for Grass Valley.
Have you done anything to try to figure out what's going on? I've had three different paranormal groups come in here over the last four years.
They had video and audio recording.
What did they tell you? They say there's a lot of activity, but no one's ever told me to do anything about it.
They're more interested in just trying to see what's here.
I want some answers.
I don't want to walk away from this place.
AMY: I think there's a living person that is doing something very bad here.
And I heard summoning.
And I do see people doing, very specifically, EVP stuff.
You mean investigations and stuff? Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if they're formal or just something that these owners or whoever are doing on their own time, but whatever it is, there's an obsession.
Now I'm hearing obsession.
STEVE: So, what's going on back here? My equipment in the kitchen is always breaking.
We'll buy brand-new equipment.
It will fail within a few weeks.
You sure you don't have an employee here who's trying to get even with you for something and breaking [bleep.]
It's possible, but I've seen equipment installed myself, and it's failed with a week for no reason.
Now, is anything else going on? I've had furniture move around in rooms.
I was staying in room number 9.
Okay.
When I went to bed, I saw where the chair was.
I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, the chair had moved to a completely different spot in the room, and I tripped on it.
- Now, were you alone? - I was alone.
- You could have broke your neck.
- Yes.
The chair moving in your bedroom upstairs when you were staying over, I can't explain that.
But the rest of this stuff, the electrical and all that it's an old building.
You think this is all paranormal? There's no logical explanation for these events that are happening.
I want people to be safe and happy here.
I'm hoping you can help me.
AMY: There's an aggressive male here.
He's very, very hyper.
And I hear "Paul.
" I am gonna say that he's mentally ill.
He likes it in here.
It feels more comfortable for him.
He likes little spaces.
He is aggressive, but it's when he feels like he's being cornered.
He kind of lashes out.
I do see him touching people.
The things he'll do is, like, hiding things, breaking things, stuff like that.
So, how long did you work here? KELLY: Approximately two years.
I was a front desk agent.
From my understanding, it looks like Ian saved this hotel.
How important is that for the city? It's very important for Grass Valley.
The Holbrooke is basically the heart of this town.
There's so much history, and everybody loves this place.
Ian was telling me that he thinks whatever's going on here is responsible for his marriage breaking up.
You think whatever's here has an effect on relationships? Yes.
I've seen a few relationships that were really, really strong break up.
There's something here that doesn't want you to be happy.
Now, when you worked here, did you have any experiences? I've actually seen a shadow figure a very tall shadow figure ln the kitchen twice.
Now, describe the shadow figure.
How did it look to you? Tall and dark.
It was definitely taller than me, over 6 feet tall.
And dark You couldn't see through it.
Okay, is there anything else you've experienced? I couldn't count how many times this happened, sitting here at the front desk, and I would hear my name and feel a presence.
And they would, you know, call my name, and I was, "Can I help you? Oh, there's nobody there.
" Are you sure it couldn't have been somebody that came in from outside? Absolutely.
No one gets in without me noticing.
- The doors are locked.
- Okay.
AMY: There's a woman, and she is a force to be reckoned with.
She's in charge, you know, with an iron fist.
She's trying to talk to people.
It bothers them.
She touches them, and it's burning.
It's hot.
It's hot.
It's so hot.
And then she's got, like, this whole white mist thing going on.
The living see her kind of as a full-bodied apparition, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, and sometimes being very forceful.
What is she trying to tell people? She's in trouble.
She needs help.
STEVE: So, Andrew, I understand that you actually work here.
ANDREW: Yes, sir.
I used to also live here.
- You lived here? - Yeah.
- For how long? - For about seven months.
- Okay, what do you do? - Now I'm maintenance.
I used to do everything from front desk, night audit, fill in for bartending.
So you basically know the whole building.
In and out.
Okay.
Now, you've experienced some stuff.
Oh, absolutely, yes.
Okay, what can you tell me? I've seen shadows and shadow figures, one with a hat that was down in the kitchen.
It was a dark figure, and you could tell there was something there, and it scared me.
Made me jump, like you or somebody was right next to me and I didn't know it.
And you were alone in the kitchen.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Is there anything else going on? We get a lot of complaints from guests.
Okay, like what? I've had guests check out in the middle of the night, complaints of noise above their roof when they're on the top floor, and there's nobody up there, or the temperatures changing, or their doorknob keeps rattling.
It's an old building.
I'm sure there's some quirky things going on, but that's pretty drastic.
I had a family that checked in about 3:00 in the afternoon, and husband and wife left the son upstairs in the room to take a nap.
They were eating downstairs, and he came barging into the saloon, asked for the car key, stayed in the car.
He would not come back up to the room.
Did you find out what happened? We ask him what was going on.
He said he felt something massaging, like, his legs or his back.
And knowing nobody was in the room, he just jumped up out of the room and was not going back.
Wow.
That would have scared the hell out of me, I think.
It's almost like it's malicious in a way.
AMY: I think that there's something dangerous here.
And someone's just [bleep.]
choking bad.
There's a guy strangling a woman with his hand.
He's, like, just holding her down.
Real strong.
Living people are experiencing this, like, little snippets of past events all over the place.
[Door creaks.]
Some chick's [bleep.]
crying.
She had a [bleep.]
fight with some guy.
She's drinking morphine.
You know, somebody's who's in this room, they would hear her crying.
They would hear the pacing, you know? They would feel like they're having mental breakdowns.
[Bleep.]
[Gasps.]
MATTHEW: What's going on? Whatever is here makes the living [bleep.]
insane.
I don't even know how anyone could stay here.
There are just so many dead.
STEVE: So, how long you been here? TERRI: Over seven years.
Okay, so you were here before Ian even bought the place? - Yes.
- Okay.
Any experiences you can't explain? When I was working graveyard, I would get up from my desk and go do something, and then on my way back, I would see somebody sitting in my chair.
So I'd look again, and they'd be gone, so Now, you said you worked the graveyard shift.
Did you have the doors locked? Yes.
I always locked the doors for my protection.
What about a guest? No.
It was too fast for it to be a person.
Okay, so, anything else? I waitress now, and a few times, I would be walking with the empty tray going to the dining room, and the tray just, with force, was just thrown out of my hand.
That's happened three times.
So, where does this usually happen? Back here in the hallway.
It happened more towards the kitchen.
Did it feel like a hand came up and smacked it or Exactly.
It felt like somebody just went underneath and just popped it right out of my hand.
Okay.
That's interesting.
It scared me.
So, you've had a few things.
Anything else? Yes, I've taken three very bad falls in this building since Ian has taken over.
I fell out here in the lobby once with a wine glass in my hand cut my hand.
Another time, I fell in the kitchen, and that was a hard fall.
I really hurt my hand.
I had bruises all over the place.
And then another time, I slipped, and I went and told the cook, I'm all, "This is dangerous.
It's like ice there," you know? And he's testing it with his feet, and he said, "No, it's not.
It's not slippery at all.
" That's strange.
These falls, now, is this uncommon for you? I've only fallen in here.
I don't usually fall.
I'm not clumsy.
I don't know if that's paranormal, but you've had stuff just pop out of your hands.
- Right.
- So it's not out of the realm that somebody may be trying to make you fall, either.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Okay.
This hallway is not a good place to be if you're a living person.
These dead people who have issues are running amok doing a lot of, like, weird physical [bleep.]
here.
This is not a good hallway to be in.
It's very bad in here.
Ohh.
I feel sick, sick.
STEVE: Considering Ian's owned the hotel for five years, he really doesn't know much about it.
So I've reached out to a local historian, who says it's actually a miracle that the Holbrooke's still standing today.
STEVE: So, Hilary, do me a favor.
Will you just start from the beginning with this place? When was the hotel built? It was built in 1851, as the Golden Gate Saloon.
Did it flourish as a saloon? Yes, for several years until the fire of 1855, where most of the town was burnt down.
So, what kind of damage are we talking about in this fire? - Over 60 acres.
- Wow! Over 300 buildings were destroyed, including the Golden Gate Saloon.
Okay, so, obviously, they rebuilt.
Yes.
They rebuilt, and then they added the lot next door, and they called it the Exchange Hotel.
When did it become the Holbrooke Hotel? January 1, 1879.
Daniel and his wife, Ellen, Holbrooke bought the hotel for $12,000.
I have a photo of Daniel Holbrooke.
They renovated it and reopened it as the Holbrooke.
Nothing's really changed.
No, that's the nice thing about that hotel.
So, now they have the hotel.
How's it work out for them? Unfortunately, four years after they bought it, Daniel Holbrooke passes away in the hotel.
In the hotel? Yes, and here's a copy of his obituary.
And they have his funeral at the hotel a couple days later.
What happens with the hotel? Well, Ellen takes it over, and she runs it for the next 23 years until her death in 1906.
And I have a copy of her obituary here.
She also dies in the hotel.
Now, you mentioned on the phone that it was a miracle that the Holbrooke was even standing, still.
What did you mean by that? Well, after that big fire of 1855, there were four more major fires that devastated Grass Valley one in 1860, 1862, 1873, and 1896.
But, somehow, the Holbrooke was left standing.
How close of a call was it for the hotel? Well, in 1860 and 1873, everything within 100 feet of the Holbrooke burned down.
So, for some miraculous reason, this survives.
- Right.
- Okay.
AMY: There were a lot of tragedies here, but then good stuff.
Good things coming in waves.
So, it's like good, good, good, and then [bleep.]
decimation.
You know, I'm seeing, like, buildings I don't know, burning.
The ground goes under, buckling.
It's [bleep.]
chaos.
[Gasps.]
Frankly, I don't know how there's still, like, a [bleep.]
town here.
So, you've got a hotel and bar operating for over 150 years.
I got to think there's some violence there.
I called the Grass Valley police chief, and he said some cases come to mind that will definitely help my investigation.
STEVE: So, what were you able to find out? Well, the first mysterious death was a suicide.
And that occurred April 17, 1927.
And the gentleman's name was John Henry Martin.
He was a wealthy miner and a gambler.
Okay.
Martin was found here dead in his hotel room at the Holbrooke.
Do we know how this guy killed himself? Yes, he slashed his own throat.
That's unusual.
Yes.
Here's a death certificate.
I've been in the business for 34 years, and I've never experienced anyone cutting their own throat.
- I've seen it once.
- Yeah.
Did we have any idea why he did it? No.
But I do have a suicide note that he left.
In the note, he says he was being shadowed and followed.
That's strange.
So, it sounds like this guy might have been hallucinating about something.
That's what it appears.
Okay.
What else you come up with? The second one was 1909, and it involved a former bus driver of the hotel named Cyrus McMath.
- Okay.
- He was downstairs in the bar, drinking one night and very intoxicated, and he got into some kind of beef with the owner.
Frank DeMaine was his name.
He was 76 years old.
Here's his picture.
Okay, so this guy's the owner of the Holbrooke at the time.
Correct.
McMath starts beating DeMaine.
And his son, Louis, is upstairs, hears about this, comes down, and tries to protect his father, and gets in a fight with McMath.
Well, McMath loses, and he gets pummeled.
Really? Witnesses report they can't even identify who McMath is because the injuries make him unrecognizable.
Okay, so what happens next? He's still conscious, and he's taken home, but he dies shortly thereafter at home.
AMY: I'm seeing, like, another guy.
He's getting his face bashed in.
I'm literally seeing men's boots, the bottom of their shoes, coming down on my face.
And that hurts.
And then these two guys picked me up, and they're dragging me, 'cause I can't even walk.
This is [bleep.]
up.
This was creepy.
I'm thinking, "Oh [bleep.]
They're gonna [bleep.]
kill me.
" If you need us to investigate unexplained activity in your home, go to the "Dead Files" page at travelchannel.
com.
Click on "Help me, Dead Files" to submit you story, and we'll help if we can.
STEVE: So far, I've uncovered several deaths inside my client's property and multiple fires that devastated the city of Grass Valley.
But I need to see if there's anything else.
Searching through old records, I find an article about an exotic dancer named Lola Montez.
Turns out she brutally beat a local newspaper man inside the hotel.
I'm on my way to meet with a local author who said Lola Montez traveled the world, and wherever she went, violence followed her.
So, Chris, you mentioned on the phone this Lola Montez was quite a character.
But let me ask you a question.
Was she from Grass Valley? She was not.
She was born in Ireland between 1818 and 1821, and she was raised in India.
She was quite beautiful from a very young age.
She becomes this great dancer by the time she's 17, 18 years old, and starts to develop what we know as the spider dance today.
Okay, so, what the hell is a spider dance? Part ballet, part interpretive dance, pretending as though she was caught in a spider web.
And as she's spun around, the opportunity to be able to see some thigh or maybe the dress coming up a little bit higher than the thigh was something that was very real and the audience thought was risque.
And, certainly, men would come to see this.
Lola Montez's dance is so titillating that she gains the attention of King Ludwig of Bavaria.
He takes her as his mistress.
She takes over pretty much politically and kind of masterminds what he should be doing within the government.
And she's a young kid at this time.
Right.
Got a photo here of her.
I mean, she was a stunning lady.
So, how does she end up in Grass Valley? Well, after a relationship with the king of Bavaria went bad, she left Europe and came to America and traveled around quite extensively, and ends up in the gold country, because there's a lot of gold and a lot of money to be made here.
All right, Chris.
So, how does she wind up at the Holbrooke giving this guy a beating? She performs at the Holbrooke.
And Henry Shipley, who is a newspaperman here in the gold country Okay.
And he has been reprinting articles that are very bad about Lola Montez.
And so she trots on down to the Holbrooke and takes a bull whip out and gives him four lashes across the face.
Wow.
Okay.
The beating made national news.
All right, so, what happens to this guy Shipley? He never does get over being humiliated by Lola Montez.
He ends up in Sacramento.
He drinks himself to death, literally, because he downs a whole bottle of strychnine.
- Okay, so, he commits suicide.
- He does.
So, what happened with Lola? Lola dies in 1861 in New York in her late 30s, and she's impoverished.
AMY: I'm seeing the woman who rules with the iron fist again.
Out there, she was very overwhelming in her energy like bigger-than-life kind of person.
It seems she's crying.
Somebody says she was tormenting herself.
She's a mess.
Obviously, something happened.
There's a male.
Oh, had to put her in her place.
Too big for her britches.
It was because she really was, like, too powerful.
People really, like, listened to her, and people respected her.
There's something with the right of her head.
Man Right side Yeah, I think these guys really [bleep.]
with her, man.
I saw dozens of dead people during my walk.
But the group harassing the living in the hallway had me the most concerned.
There was a man on the left who was, like, climbing up the wall.
And then there was some crazy-looking woman standing in front of the door.
Another guy was charging towards me.
Amy, is this what you saw? Yes, this is what I saw.
STEVE: Now that Amy and I have completed our investigations, we're ready to reveal our findings to each other and our clients for the first time.
Well, Amy, this is a very special investigation.
This hotel is the heart of the city, but because of the activity here, it's in danger of shutting down for good.
Now, for the past five years, Ian has owned and run the hotel, but he can't go on like this.
Terri has worked here for seven years.
She's had a lot of experiences.
The same with Kelly.
She's a local who used to work here, but she considers the Holbrooke a home away from home.
So, now that I told Amy just a little bit about what's going on with you guys, I'm gonna ask her to describe her walk for us.
AMY: When I got here, I was seeing the town being decimated over and over and over again, almost like it came in waves.
And I saw people coming, and that was good.
Like, people were excited.
They're happy.
It would be built up, and then it would just be, like, decimated.
And then there was fire.
The ground was, like, sinking or something.
STEVE: Well, it's probably a good time to give you a little history about Grass Valley.
In the mid-1800s, this town was the heart of the gold rush, and people were coming from all over the world looking for fortune.
Now, in 1851, this place was opened up as the Golden Gate Saloon.
Now, just four years later, a huge fire ripped through this town.
The building was burned to the ground.
But when it was rebuilt, it was rebuilt as the hotel.
Now, in 1860, 1862, 1873, huge fires leveled this town again destroying just about everything.
Okay.
Amazingly, though, the hotel survived each of those other times.
1879, a couple named Holbrooke brought the hotel and named it after themselves.
Now, I got a picture of it back then.
1896, there was another fire, and the Holbrooke was one of the only buildings - left standing again.
- Hmm.
IAN: I didn't know about all the fire history.
It sounds like this hotel is a survivor, but there's something here.
AMY: When I walked in, I was overwhelmed.
Obviously, there's a lot of dead here.
Now, I'm on the main floor, and I went into the long peach hallway.
That was probably not a good place for living people to be in because there are a lot of dead people in that hallway.
Some of the other dead have put these different dead people in there.
The reason why they're put in that hallway is because they're mentally unstable.
So, let me get this straight.
The normal dead people are putting the nutty dead people in a corner.
- Yes.
- Wow.
Because they're mentally unstable, the living might have some experiences there, like seeing, perhaps, like, dark shadows, feeling movement, possibly feeling touched.
When I was walking through the hallway, I usually carry a tray.
And the tray was knocked out of my hand.
I had it up like this, and I felt as if somebody just pushed it up, and it just toppled out of my hand.
And that's happened to me three times, so Okay.
And it's always been right there in that hallway, so You know where that hallway leads? That leads to my office.
There's something about the feeling there.
When I first took the hotel over, within 48 hours, the ceiling collapsed in that office.
That's kind of weird.
And then now I'm wondering if there's something more going on.
I did a sketch of what I saw.
STEVE: I mean, it looks like a scene from a mental ward.
Oh, my! I can't believe I have to walk through that 20 times a day.
I can't believe that they were here when I worked here.
There's times when I feel anxious, like energy is being sucked out of me.
AMY: That makes sense, because the other thing that I got was a sense of extreme panic and feeling overwhelmed with anxiety.
I've been being treated for anxiety and depression.
Mm.
That's something that can happen from being here.
I have a huge investment here, inside of me.
It's a huge investment.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
That's tough, yeah.
[Sniffles.]
STEVE: Anything else? There was some other weird guy, a dead guy.
His name is Paul.
And one of the places he likes a lot is the storage area in the kitchen.
I think he might have had some mental illness, as well.
He'll lash out and touch people.
He'll take things.
He'll hide things.
He would like to burn things and/or has burned things.
And from what you were telling me, now I'm kind of concerned that he's a little bit more dangerous than what I initially assessed about him.
His main goal is to get rid of the living.
STEVE: I mean, the guy she's describing doesn't match up with anybody I found in my research, but a lot of what you're saying matches up with what they're experiencing.
At first, I thought it was just I was kind of losing it.
I mean, honestly, it doesn't make any sense.
Stuff will go missing all the time.
STEVE: Now, you said this guy can get physical.
Terri, tell Amy about the falls you've taken.
Once was out here in the lobby, but in the kitchen both other times.
Yeah, I was pretty bruised up.
I still have pain from that fall.
AMY: The next thing that I saw was a female.
And she was in charge here, and she ran this with, like, an iron fist.
In life, people listened to her, and she was very influential.
And men here did not like this.
They wanted to put her in her place.
There were a couple of men, very specific men, one Hank and one Gerald, that really had big issues with her.
There was a lot of pain in her head.
I think that occasionally, she might look like a fawn apparition.
And she tries to talk to people, and when she's trying to talk to them, they'll feel heat, and they'll get very hot.
So, Kelly, didn't you have voices trying to talk to you? At the front desk.
TERRI: I've heard my name called, just walking through the hall, and I hear my name.
And I ask everybody who called my name, but nobody knows.
- That happens to you, too? - Quite often.
It may be a shot in the dark, but a woman did come across in my research that could possibly fit the bill, a woman by the name of Lola Montez.
Now, she was probably one of the most fascinating characters I've ever come across in my research.
She was born in Ireland between 1818 and maybe 1821.
Nobody's really sure.
By the time she was 16, she was a famous dancer.
She became very famous throughout Europe and had tons of high-profile men after her.
She wound up coming here to America and ended up dancing here at the Holbrooke.
Now, you mention a guy named Hank.
Well, a guy named Henry Shipley wrote articles about her in the local newspaper that weren't very nice.
She didn't take this too well.
She came right here in this saloon and whipped him.
- Oh, goodness! - I got an article here about it.
Now, she caught him four times across the face with this whip.
Holy [bleep.]
This guy was so embarrassed by what happened to him that he eventually committed suicide.
That's how embarrassed he was by it.
Oh, wow! What Wow.
I've got a photo of her.
Is it possible that might be who you might have seen? Actually, yeah.
I feel very connected to this person.
I don't know.
Maybe that's why this place is my home away from home.
So, what else? When I was upstairs, I encountered a lot of residual information and a lot of different dead people.
I went into one room, and I saw a male trying to strangle a woman with his bare hands.
And then I saw, unfortunately, another woman in a room drinking some morphine.
You know, finally, I just kind of had to just stop, because it was just too much.
Living people would go through, possibly seeing some of the dead walking through their rooms at night.
Also, people might feel really dizzy.
I was getting that consistently through the building.
And some people, obviously, might have physical experiences.
So, Amy, obviously, we're getting to the heart of why we're here, and the problem with the hotel.
The upstairs is obviously where the guests stay.
IAN: Yeah, one gentleman was in room number 3, laying in his bed, and he said just, suddenly, there's a whirlwind with all the windows closed, doors closed.
He came down here.
He was white as a ghost.
He said, "I'm leaving.
This place has got problems.
" I spoke to one of the employees who saw a kid run out of here.
It turned out the kid felt like he was being massaged by something on the bed, which was kind of freaky.
Wow.
This place is pretty damn active.
How would being around all these dead people in this place affect somebody like Ian and Terri that are here all the time? That exposure over a long period of time would cause some emotional and mental disorders to develop.
Employees could suffer breakdowns, and then some physically could be harmed.
Not good.
You told me you thought this place destroyed your marriage.
I think it had a big, big hand Hmm.
In my breakup of my marriage.
It's changed my personality.
It came down to a point where I was very short-tempered.
I had a relationship with someone who worked here, and he changed.
The relationship went to crap.
Does what they're saying make sense to you? Yeah.
I've done a lot of hotels.
Maybe 5% are as active as this.
I don't want you to lose your sanity, and I don't want to lose mine, but I think that if we give up on the Holbrooke, then we'll be giving up on the entire town.
STEVE: So, Ian, now we know why your employees have been so scared to be here alone.
We know why your guests have been checking out in the middle of the night and why your relationships are falling apart.
But we still don't know if you can safely keep the Holbrooke's doors open.
So, for that answer, I'm gonna turn it over to Amy.
Sometimes, there are places that are just so extremely active that, literally, it would take a town of various practitioners and many years to completely cleanse and remove the dead and the residual energy.
This is one of those places.
And I know it's not really what y'all want to hear.
STEVE: It sounds like you're saying they can't get rid of the dead here.
Frankly, it would take, really, years.
IAN: That's not at all what I expected, to be honest with you.
No.
Not at all what I expected to hear.
AMY: Here's the thing.
Typically, what ends up happening to these kinds of places is that, kind of, the dead win in the end.
Most of the locations that have been like this either end up getting torn down, or they sit vacant.
They're, like, literally run out of business.
Yeah, I mean, that's just not an option.
I got to come up with something.
I got to keep this place open.
It actually is kind of breaking my heart.
She's like another one of my kids.
I have never felt as strong about a place in my life.
That's horrible.
I mean, I've got to come up with an option here to make this place successful for the town.
AMY: If this were my place, I would leave, because there's nothing you can do to make it totally safe.
But if you're really determined to stay, there are things that you can do to protect yourselves.
Here's a bag of black salt.
Take some of this, sprinkle it in approximately the four corners of the building.
And what that's gonna do is just kind of build an energetic wall of purity to keep the dead out.
The other thing is is to utilize stones.
Okay, we have black tourmaline, and we have selenite.
It protects you specifically from the dead.
You would carry those stones all day.
Here's the problem.
None of them are long-lasting, so this would be a daily type of ritual.
So, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm gonna take precautions, to start with.
I'm not gonna give up.
My concern is for the living here who are consistently here and your mental well-being, because I've seen people, you know, undertake tasks like this and kind of self-destruct.
Instead of the building being torn down, you might be torn down.
This place being boarded up would be a travesty.
I'm gonna give it a good, good try, anyway, - the old college try.
- STEVE: Yeah.
Good.
AMY: I wish I had better news for Ian.
The dead inside this hotel would literally take years to remove.
But with the precautions I gave him, Ian will at least have a fighting chance of keeping the doors of his hotel open.