Rami Ungar The Writer

As many of you were probably aware, I drove out to Marietta, Ohio for the Hidden Marietta Paranormal Expo. The expo took place at the Historic Lafayette Hotel, a beautiful historic hotel that is also purported to be haunted. Since I was going to be at a hotel anyway, I didn’t want to get up early on a Saturday to drive out to the expo, and I knew its reputation, I decided to stay the night before the expo and see if anything happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can confirm that the Historic Lafayette Hotel is indeed haunted.

First, let me tell you about the hotel. It is a beautiful place that words can’t do justice. You step inside the building, and it’s like stepping through time: there’s all this gold and bright colors and mahogany and you almost expect to see people in Edwardian dresses and suits smoking cigars and discussing President Roosevelt or something! There’s a giant steering wheel from an old steamboat on the ceiling, a grandfather clock, and so much more scattered around. I was enchanted from the moment I stepped in!

Now, there are a few places in the hotel that are supposed to be haunted. One is the third floor, which is where I stayed. The other is the basement, where the spirit of a little boy named Thomas is supposed to hang out. (There might be more, but I didn’t have a chance to learn about them.)

After getting settled into my room, I went down to explore the hotel. During the course of my journey, I ran Carita and Viva, two of the folks who run Hidden Marietta and the expo, as well as Jeff and Caitlin, two more vendors. The latter two would become good friends of mine over the weekend and we would hang out quite a bit. Anyway, Carita and Viva gave us a short tour of the hotel, starting from the ballroom where the expo would be and going around the first floor. We then all decided to meet in the lobby and do a bit of ghost hunting at 7 PM.

Well, 7 PM arrived and I arrived in the lobby. Carita and Viva messaged to let us know they may not be able to make it due to prepping for the expo, so I ended up hanging out with Jeff, Caitlin and the hotel staff. And yes, the staff had LOTS of stories to tell. They’ve seen shadow figures and other things while working in the hotel.

Around 8 PM, we decided to go up to the third floor and see if we caught anything. Jeff and Caitlin had a lot of their own equipment, including an EMF meter (measures changes in electromagnetic energy), a paranormal puck (has an electronic dictionary in it that spirits supposedly can manipulate to answer questions), and an SLS camera (maps figures like certain video game systems do, so any figure without a person attached to it might be a spirit). So, for the first time in my life, I got to work with paranormal equipment I’d only seen on TV before! The result was the below video.

Pretty cool, right? We mapped a spirit using the SLS camera, and got some interesting answers on the paranormal puck device. Also, if you’re wondering why I said Jeff and Caitlin’s nicknames are “Wolf and Roses,” it’s because the spirits they’ve encountered in the past have called them that for reasons I’m not going to get into.

After that testing session, we kept trying to get some responses. And that’s when things got very weird and very funny.

So the spirit had us call for a dog, which may have been a demon dog; we heard the words “help” and “shit” on the spirit box (you can hear them too if you listen closely), and after we’re joined by that family, the spirit lets us know someone’s ORDER of pizza is on its way; it’s a great DEAL; and it’ll be here in a TICK! Yeah, that was hysterical.

We messed around in the hallway for a little bit longer, and the only thing I remember getting is that the puck at one point said “TOP” and “JESUS.” This will be relevant later.

At some point we moved on to using my dowsing rods in my room, and that was when things got really scary.

Yeah, so whatever we were communicating with in my hotel room was not a friendly spirit. Remember when I said the spirit said “TOP JESUS?” Well, possibly that was the same spirit we encountered in my room, and it would make sense for something malevolent to say it’s stronger than Jesus. And after I stopped recording, Caitlin started laughing uncontrollably. It was kind of scary, and she said later she had no idea why she was laughing! I think at that point I pulled the rods out of Caitlin’s hands to break the connection. Quite possibly, something was laughing through her.

Yeah, after that, we did a cleansing energy ritual to make sure I could sleep that night. And thankfully it worked, because I slept comfortably that night and none of us had any scary dreams that would indicate an evil entity was trying to attach to us. I still needed a beer from the hotel bar and then a few prayers to my higher power before I felt entirely calm, though.

And that’s the last time I do ghost hunting without first creating an energy barrier around myself!

That’s the last video I took that night, and we wrapped up our ghost hunting afterwards. To say the least, it was an experience. We laughed, we got freaked out, and we got some good evidence on camera. I’m glad I was able to do it, and I am glad I was able to do it with Jeff and Caitlin beside me.

Also, I’m going to note here that while we were waiting for Carita and Viva, I did stop in the basement for a brief moment. Let me tell you, that basement may be warm to the point of balmy, but it gave me the creeps! Maybe it was how odd that floor was laid out, but I had chills being down there and quickly went back up.

I’m going to leave it at that, Followers of Fear. To say the least, the Historic Lafayette Hotel is an active location and if you go there, you’re probably going to experience something. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my video of the Expo. It was a lot of fun and there were plenty of cool booths there, too.

Also, check out Jeff and Caitlin’s game, Killers the Card Game! It looks like a ton of fun, and if you think you can find someone to play with, you should. You can buy it from here: https://linktr.ee/killerstcg

Until next time, Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and remember, ghosts know when your pizza is arriving!