Sometimes Ghosts Find You …
When Peggy and Grover Moseley purchased the run-down Groveland Hotel in 1990, they didn't know a ghost named Lyle was part of the deal. The couple, who had retired in Groveland, California, a historic Gold Rush town in the Sierras, paid $340,000 for the near-abandoned 1849 property, and began to notice that things were amiss when they started cleaning up the hotel.
"We realized we weren't really alone," recalls Peggy, who eventually spent about $1.5 million to fully restore the two-building hotel and restaurant, a California Cultural Landmark. "Things kept happening that were too strange, like buckets of paint would get turned over and things would get moved--just subtle things you couldn't put a finger on."
Then a long-time local resident told them about Lyle, a miner had who lived in the hotel and died in 1927--in his bed with a box of dynamite underneath it. Guests have witnessed strange happenings in "Lyle's room," and Peggy says almost every employee of the hotel has had "some kind of experience." Lyle has been confirmed by psychic Sylvia Browne, and recently ghost hunters from the NorCal Paranormal Institute found a second ghost in the restaurant. "They found significant temperature changes, really cold spots," says Peggy. "Then down in the restaurant, there was a lot of activity. They said it was very magnetic and would almost knock you over."
Content Continues Below
Peggy plans to put the film from the investigation on YouTube to promote the hotel. She's fully embraced Lyle and uses him for marketing. "People are either uninterested or they're excited about the idea that they're gonna get to be where there might be ghost activity," says Peggy, who also hosts murder mysteries at the hotel and a Halloween celebration in Lyle's room. "It is our most popular room--and our most expensive single room."
And Sometimes You Need to Give Ghosts the Ol' Heave-Ho
In a nice way, that is. When Andrea Hess hears about a person or place haunted by an entity, her first instinct is to help the spirit get back to where it belongs.
"I clear attaching entities--departed loved ones who are still attached to people or places, and also earthbound spirits [like] ghosts and poltergeists," says Hess, who runs her "intuitive consulting" business, Empowered Soul, from her home in Tempe, Arizona.
Hess, who has worked as an opera singer, massage therapist, yoga instructor and certified life coach, fell into this work after receiving a reading herself. She decided to go through training and offer the service as a supplement to her life coaching business.
"As it turned out, my readings became the heart of my business," says Hess, who averages 20 clients a month and mainly finds them through word of mouth and her website. "I'm the first to volunteer that I have the strangest business in the world. I'm like, 'I'm a perfectly normal person, [and], oh yes, I'm a psychic.'"
But despite having a profession that's difficult to explain at dinner parties, Hess finds it very rewarding. "If someone has just died and they keep popping into our consciousness, and we feel their spirit all the time, they may be asking us for help. And so a big part of my work is helping those souls transition because they're stuck here," says Hess, who also offers an intensive course in intuitive consulting for those who want to become psychics, too. "It's bizarre work, but it's rewarding because it makes such a difference in people's lives." And in their afterlives.
Page
1 | 2