Ghost Adventures Recap: “The National Hotel”

by Kimmie Chameleon:

Ghost Adventures Recap:
“The National Hotel”
Original Air Date (Travel Channel):
Friday March 30, 2012
Season 6 Episode 4

Location: 

This week, Zak, Nick and Aaron are investigating the National Hotel and Stonehouse Brewery in the former mining town located in Nevada City, California.

History: 

The National Hotel in Nevada City, California first opened its doors in 1857. Laraine Sheriff, desk clerk at the hotel, tells Zak that recently a visiting couple told them that their 5 year old daughter reported that she saw a woman in a really long dress floating a foot off of the ground at the foot of her bed in room 75. Laraine also tells Zak that over the years several guests have seen a little girl in the third floor hallway playing or skipping rope or even riding a tricycle.

The guys wander over to a bungalow just outside of the hotel where on May 14, 2007 a local drug dealer named Kevin McClure shot himself dead rather than face police officers just outside his room waiting to arrest him.

In town, not too far from the National Hotel is the Stonehouse Brewery that sits on top of a rumored underground mine. Mark Lyon, local historian and  guide of Nevada City Ghost Tours, tells the guys that during the 19^th century a mine there had a cave in. The laborers inside were Chinese immigrants that suffered from harsh bigotry during that time. The owner of the mine decided that it would be too costly to rescue the miners from the cave in and just decided to blow up the mine and bury the laborers alive.

Wanting to investigate this story, the crew visits the brewery where they meet the proprietor of the cave, Nikko Wu. She leads them inside where there is a narrow hole in the ground that leads to an underground tunnel. Nick and Zak decide that they will bravely explore the tunnel for an on-the-spot SB7 spirit box session in hopes of obtaining any evidence about the truth to the story. Zak expresses his concern for their own safety but begins the session anyway:

Zak: “Are you trapped down here?”
Reply from SB7 device: “Lost.” 

Zak: “Can you tell us how many of you died down here?”
Reply from SB7 device: “????” 

Zak and Nick make their way out of the tunnel and Nikko believes that the last response was clearly the Cantonese word for “six”.

“I need the big one.”

Investigating old mining towns have taught the crew that with so much history it is likely that a whole town can be haunted. Zak attracts plenty of attention in the small town because he believes that people are staring at his all black clothes and bright red shoes, but this is probably due to the fact that he is walking in the middle of the main street. They can’t help but stop inside a shop called “The Spirit House”. Zak purchases the largest wooden spirit house so that he can put it outside of his own house to attract unwelcome spirits that remain at his own home. Apparently Zak already owns a smaller spirit house and Aaron can’t help but to comment:

Zak: “I need the big one.”
Aaron: “’Cause he’s got a small one already. He needs a big one…You said it, I didn’t.”
Zak: “Go wait outside, Aaron.”
Aaron: “I was being technical.”
Zak: “This is a place of tranquility…and…and…and Thailand purification.”
Aaron: “But you need a big spirit house.”
Zak: “No, you’re bringing in your…your dirty, you know…Las Vegas humor in here and this is a purified spirit house.” 

Lockdown at Stonehouse Brewery

Aaron and Billy Tolley return to the Stonehouse Brewery later that evening to continue the investigation into the Chinese immigrants that are rumored to have been buried alive in the tunnel below. They decide that they are gonna go “ghost fishing”. They place a thermal camera and also a digital recorder onto a monopod and tie a rope to it so they can drop it down into the hole that leads to the tunnel underground.  They begin to ask questions but pick up no E.V.P.s. After Billy shouts that he will help the immigrants to safety you can hear a rock being thrown underground. They also complete a 360 degree thermal sweep and see no changes in any of the temperature readings until they see a faint purple mist float across the pink screen of the thermal camera monitor. They decide to pull up the camera and digital recorder and then hear some unexplained noises where they are standing. 

Lockdown at bungalow outside of the National Hotel

While Aaron and Billy are at the Stonehouse Brewery, Nick and Zak investigate the bungalow just outside of the National Hotel where the recently departed Kevin McClure committed suicide. For 15 minutes they do not receive a single voice response from the SB7 device. They run a sweep with the E.M.F. detector but pick up no changes in the electromagnetic field. While they are doing this, they do not know that back in the National Hotel in the third floor hallway, their X camera has picked up something. They had earlier placed a trigger object created by Gary Golka that is a teddy bear that has a Mel Meter/E.M.F. detector inside that light up and sounds when something gets extremely close to it. Well, the teddy bear signals that something has come close to it or is touching it, but upon review they are unable to pick up any orbs or E.V.P.s to go along with it. 

Lockdown at National Hotel 

Nick and Zak return to the National Hotel and enter room 76 where lights have been reported to sporadically turn on and off. Nick observes the closet light to make certain that it is not a faulty fixture. Zak gets out the SB7 device and begins to ask questions while walking around the room. When he approaches the closet with the hanging light bulb they hear:

Reply from SB7 device: “Light goes on.”

Nick then asks what room number the spirit would like them to go to but they do not receive a response from the SB7 device. They do, however, unknowingly get a response from a female voice in a different room captured by a digital voice recorder: 

Digital Recorder: “Twenty-two.”

At this time Aaron and Billy head over to the National Hotel to join Zak and Nick. Zak tells Aaron to go up to the third floor to try to capture some more evidence since Aaron makes wonderful ghost bait. While up on the third floor he hears the floor creaking and a disembodied female voice whispering. He walks up to a door because he keeps hearing something behind it. He unlocked the latch and finds another door behind it that is locked shut…so he walks around to the other room it is connected to and when he walks in he sees that the door that was just locked shut is now open! Aaron quickly uses his walkie talkie to ask for Zak and Nick to meet him up in the room. Zak and Nick were downstairs on the ground floor investigating two glass doors that have been rumored to open on their own in the bar area. When Zak and Nick reach the third floor to join Aaron they believe that it is odd that they were just downstairs asking a spirit to open the glass doors, but a door on the third floor opened up instead. 

Zak wants to try one last time to make contact with Kevin McClure in the bungalow so they make their way over there again. They all feel a cold breeze enter the room and suddenly the SB7 device tells them, “It’s coming” in a distinctively female voice.

Quotable Quotes:

Zak to Nick and Aaron:  “Everybody in this town is probably looking at this guy wearing all black with these bright red shoes walking in the middle of the road…Like, ‘That damn tourist’.”
Nick to Zak: “Well, you ARE walking in the middle of the road.”

Zak to Us: “I’m not talking to air…I’m not talking to air.”