One word resonates through my mind when movies suggest the existence of “the Other” or people exchange scary stories: fake. It’s fun to watch horror films and pretend there are witches, ghosts and monsters lurking about, but it’s just that — imaginary. While part of me wishes to believe in the mystical, logic wins the debate every time.
Yet, that doesn’t lessen my curiosity and enjoyment in exploring the thought of other dimensions. Who knows? With the right bit of proof, I could become a believer. So, when we heard about last weekend’s Spirits of Colorado Paranormal Convention in Cripple Creek, a coworker and I leapt at the chance to see supernatural evidence.
We prepared to be scared, shocked and even ready to question our biases. Perhaps we’d be like the skeptics in the horror movie that spout disbelief, only to get violently attacked by zombies in the next scene. The weekend promised a jam-packed schedule of paranormal activities and experts — or at least we hoped it did. Otherwise why make the two-and-a-half hour drive down to the secluded mountain town?
On the ride, the gorgeous scenery should have had a calming effect on us, but it felt too perfect. We saw few other cars and felt as if we were driving through a film’s opening credits sequence where ominous music plays and warns the protagonists to turn around. After countless twists and turns of the road, we arrived in Cripple Creek. Once an old mining town people flocked to in the 1800s to get rich, but nowadays it’s a casino town where handfuls of people mosey to with the same goal. Surrounded by deserted open space, any sightseeing only requires walking a few blocks in any direction.
And what is it about small towns that demand a ghost? As if ghosts have nothing better to do than hang around the place they were murdered… But following the mandate, Cripple Creek boasts a roster of spirits haunting various corners of the city. Spoiler alert: none of these ghosts were seen during our time there.
The convention was split between the Imperial Hotel and the Hotel St. Nicholas. Both are the kind of place where you project your own scary vibes by reading too heavily into the finer details: textured wall paper, ornate fixtures, flickering overhead lighting, and odd decorations like creepily detailed portraits of children and oversized trunks — maybe big enough to hide a body? Each shadow could hold meaning and each sound was a question mark. The radiators clanged, every floorboard creaked and thin walls enabled us to hear someone down the hall sneeze.
The eerie setting provided the perfect backdrop for us, ready and willing to be convinced. With various events and activities, the convention covered a plethora of topics from ghost hunting to the existence of Sasquatch. The attendees were eager to participate and spent breaks trading anecdotal ghost stories. (“Trust me, the Ouija board is not a toy.”) A smattering of big hats, head-to-toe black and the occasional cape or witch’s costume were seen throughout the crowd.
The schedule was packed with workshops for those who wanted to pick up some “practical” skills. There was one on dowsing, the act of using rods to locate hidden material such as gemstones… or buried bones. The rods can be made, as the demonstrator showed us, by the complicated process of clipping wire hangers into L shapes. Then, by taking one rod in each hand, special forces guide them to swing in directions hopefully leading to unmarked graves and hidden riches. Not an exact discipline, of course, but with some practice and patience, the presenter said a majority of us would be successful. During the hour session, some participants furiously took notes as if the big test was on Monday and they had to remember the specific instructions — hold wires approximately 6-8 inches apart, step slowly and remember to tuck in your elbows.
Finding dead bodies isn’t really my forte, but being able to read tarot cards is a fun party trick. In the tarot workshop, after being handed a deck, each of us was to decipher our own hand with some ambiguous directions. When translating your cards, it seemed whichever card you pulled could be interpreted as good or bad. This not so much proved the precise science of the readings, but helped confirm the bogusness of the practice. As the teacher went around the room and helped extract meanings, the class skewed closer to self-help than divination. (“Great things are in your future, if only you work harder for them!”)
The convention also featured an event with the “telephone to the dead,” a device Thomas Edison worked on in the last decade of his life, which can supposedly enable the living to contact the dead. To me it just looked like an old timey radio, but what do I know? After roughly 50 minutes of the allotted hour was spent explaining the machine, shockingly, there were only a few minutes left to test it out. But first, there were some brief aura readings where one woman was told she was wearing the wrong shoes because her chakras were misaligned.
Finally the box was turned on but, oh no!, the signal was very weak. Even with a stern talking to (“Come on ghosts, speak up!”), still no chatter from the undead. Eventually it sort of, kind of worked. But despite the presenter saying the telephone had delivered full sentences in the past, apparently these ghosts were more monosyllabic and could only be heard by him as he operated the machine. Can you say suspicious?
For the real doubters, there were also presentations of “irrefutable” evidence. The photographic proof of the existence of ghosts consisted of mists, orbs and bursts of light. Within these anomalies, supposedly, you could see eyes, a nose, mouth, and sometimes, if you looked really closely, you could even see old-fashioned garb. Funny. They just looked like basic, nondescript blurs to me. Now someone might point out several explanations for these phenomena — odd weather, dust in a camera lens, strange lighting or any of the other several logical explanations. Personally, I vote for the dusty camera lens.
As the day went on, it was hard to tell who was more out of sorts, the people running the events or the people in the audience hanging on every word. It felt strange to hear the passionate reactions from the crowd. Presenters would tell stories and the audience would collectively gasp.
“We were playing, then I saw the ghost boy kick the ball to my friend.”
“Ooohh.”
“The ghost called out my first, middle and last name.”
“Ahhhh.”
“The spirit passed through my hand as it crossed to the other side.”
“Wow!”
At all the events, in a shroud of solitude, we sat in the back raising eyebrows, nudging each other, sarcastically chuckling and occasionally yawning. Like a used car salesman selling a clunker to a first-time buyer, the audience took everything as fact and severely lacked any sort of questioning. It was almost too easy.
But it’s tough to argue with vague explanations, twisted logic and shaky reasoning including, “We communicated telepathically,” “The spirits told me so,” and “My intuition is never wrong; I’m just asking the wrong question or not asking at the right time.” There were never concrete answers for how or why, usually just a shrug and a, “I don’t know how it works; it just does!”
By the end of the day, the mystery fell and presenters seemed more like talented storytellers than paranormal professionals. And some crossed over the line into nonsensical babbling.
The events were fun if you don’t think too hard. If you do apply too much thought, some of the practices and people can venture into the territory of exploitative and corrupt. But they can tell a heck of tall tale.
As the convention came to a close, top hats got exchanged for baseball caps and cloaks for T-shirts and jeans. Sadly, I wasn’t turned into a believer, not even a little.
As we drove back to the real world, we conversed about pop music and television shows, with the convention just a distant memory of bizarre stories and fuzzy pictures, only slightly tinted with disappointment. Once a skeptic, always a skeptic.
