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| Glamour Ghouls: Pleasant and Crystal posing on a hearse before investigating Hobbs Grove |
Welcome to The Divination Nation blog!
We are Pleasant Gehman and
Crystal Ravenwolf, a duo of divination divas, “spiritual sisters from
another mister”. We’re life-long Tarotistas, obsessed with all things esoteric
and paranormal. We’ve been doing paranormal investigations together since 2009,
exploring public and private sites that are reputed to be haunted.
We hope this blog is as fun for you to
read as it is for us to write…Enjoy!
Unless you’ve been under a rock- or tombstone, as the case may be - you know
that Halloween is big business. In California alone, there are more than twenty-five
large scale haunted houses and Halloween attractions… and that’s not even counting the corporate
giants like Disneyland, Universal Studios and Knott’s Scary Farm. So when we
were contacted about doing a paranormal investigation at Hobbs Grove, one of
the top Halloween attractions on the West Coast, we jumped at the chance.
Located in the heart of California’s San Joaquin
Valley in the rural hamlet of Sanger, for the past fifteen years the former
walnut plantation has thrown it’s creaky doors open as a Halloween theme park
every October. Social media director and “spokes ghoul” Maverick Cadaverick
reached out to us because the hundred or so actors and seasonal workers have experienced
true paranormal phenomena for years.
Since 2014, when several vintage stretchers and an autopsy table, were acquired
from Wolfe Manor in nearby Clovis, the paranormal activity had escalated. A tuberculosis sanitarium in the 1930’s, for
decades, rumors of gross negligence and patient abuse circulated. Extremely
haunted, Wolfe Manor was a beacon for psychics and paranormal investigators,
featured on television shows Ghost
Hunters and Ghost Adventures.
Maverick was concerned that the medical items were filled with residual
negative energy... not to mention the recently acquired coffin that had been used
to transport a body from Mexico to the USA.
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| A Hobbs "resident" |
He also sent us several pages
worth of the employee’s reports of paranormal
phenomena, including apparition sightings, odd sounds, cold spots, disembodied
speaking and singing voices and general anomalies, like objects disappearing.
Hobbs Grove features three distinct
attractions: The Haunted Forest, a Haunted Hayride and a Haunted House built
into a large barn. We wanted to explore all
of it, especially after reading the worker’s reports, which were chilling.
On the first night of his job
in the forest, one actor was so entranced by the hologram he saw- a legless half-man
floating in the air wearing a 1930’s suit- that at the end of his shift, he
marveled over the holographic technology to his co-workers. After some uncomfortable glances exchanged by
the rest of the crew, someone finally pointed out that Hobbs Grove didn’t have any holograms!
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| One of the many sights in the Haunted Forest |
Then there was the time an
employee on the Hayride went to one of the park’s trailers to get firewood, and was met
with an ominous low growl, even though there were no dogs, coyotes- or even
humans- in sight. Another worker
reported seeing set disembodied of legs and feet running across the rafters in
barn- and actually heard the apparition’s footsteps. Still a third noticed a uniformed security
guard enter the room where he was working.
The guard, who’d appeared to be human at first, turned transparent and disappeared
through a solid wall. And there was the
legendary evening when Hobbs was at full capacity and ground to a complete halt because
of "legit" supernatural activity. Several
veteran performers in the Haunted Forest witnessed a large cable spool rolling
through the woods by itself. The
actors-many of who had been working there for years- were so freaked out they immediately
evacuated their posts en masse. The
entire park full of hundreds of customers had to be shut down while the actors-
who all steadfastly refused to return to the forest-were reassigned and a new
crew was sent in.
We set our ghost hunt for the nights of
Friday, August 8th and Saturday August 9th, 2015. The first night, we invited veteran
paranormal investigators Jan Acosta and Keri Foss- Jastztremski along to hunt
with us. Highly respected in the paranormal community, the mother and daughter
team are known for their knowledge, site research, no-nonsense investigative style
and meticulous evidence collection. Jan is
affectionately known as “Mom”, because she’s mentored several ghost hunters over
the past couple of decades. On the Saturday, we (The Divination Nation) taught
Paranormal Investigation 101 at The Cosmic Corral in Hanford, and brought the
students to Hobbs that evening for fieldwork. On
each night, we brought an arsenal of paranormal equipment, from low-tech (divining
rods) to state of the art high tech devices. We were armed with EVP (electronic
voice phenomena) recorders, EMF detectors, which show changes in the
electromagnetic field by lighting up; and a REM pod, a device
which emanates it’s own electromagnetic field through a miniature antenna. When the instrument’s field is entered by
objects- or an energy source, such as an entity- the Rem Pod lights up. Mom also brought an Ovilus, a machine that has a dictionary-like database of words
programmed into it with thousands of different verbs, adjectives, nouns,
adverbs, for spirits to use to communicate. The way it works is that during an
investigation, an intelligent spirit will make itself known in a way that
modifies the environment, and can convert these alterations into the words
contained in the machine. We also had a camera person
film each night of investigating.
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| Hobbs Grove residents in the Doll Room |
Both nights were nothing
short of insane; in all our years of
ghost hunting, it’s hard to think of a place that’s more active… we all agreed
that Hobbs Grove probably topped even The Queen Mary!
The first place we were drawn to was the barn,
a large structure that includes the green room for the Grove’s performers, and
is also the location where many of the employees heard footsteps coming from the
loft. As soon as we went inside, we heard
odd noises and felt the temperature drop. The sounds were so constant that we
turned on our equipment right away, while Maverick texted the employees who
were onsite, threatening to fire them if they were playing practical
jokes. They weren’t.
Originally a little skeptical
that a Halloween attraction could actually be legitimately haunted, once all our
devices were going off the charts, Keri quickly changed her mind. She
recalls:
“
I thought to myself, ‘We’re investigating
a Halloween Haunt to see if it’s haunted?
This ought to be interesting… Who would believe this one?’ Well, I do now! Upon
our arrival, I felt many spirits lurking, trying to check us out. A gentleman
by the name of Robert was the first to join us for the evening, openly chatting
with us, somehow knowing he could be heard as he joked with us and even
flirted!”
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| Lens flares...or orbs? Judge for yourself! |
Our Rem pod was lit up like a Christmas tree,
and Keri’s diving rods swung to and fro, answering yes/no questions, which were confirmed by
what “Robert”, was saying into the Ovilus.
While Maverick and another employee named Chris watched in amazement, we
carried on a conversation for about ten minutes. Then Robert stopped talking;
the room was cold though, the rem pod was still shining, and we could sense he
was still there. We tried for a while to cajole him back into the conversation,
but he was silent, so we started packing to move to another location. Keri put
her rods away, Pleasant turned the rem pod off and put it back into the bag,
but then it lit up again.
Mom chided,
“You
need to turn that off!”
Pleasant held up the Rem pod, showing that the
switch was indeed off; Mom raised an eyebrow and said it must be
defective. The batteries were then removed, but the lights on the device
stayed on… and didn’t finally shut off until hours later, after we returned home. Since we could all feel that Robert was still
with us- and the cold spots and rem pod seemed to confirm it, Crystal resorted
to a fun and silly last ditch effort to get him to speak again.
Tossing back her hair and arching her back,
she joked in a seductive voice,
‘”What’s
the matter, don’t you wanna talk to a couple of hot chicks?”
The
Ovilus immediately sprang into action, it’s robotic voice declaring,
“MOM’S HOTTER!”
After a moment of disbelief, we all laughed
so hard we were literally crying. It
soon became apparent that Robert’s comedic
tour de force was his last communication, so we decided to investigate the Haunted House.
Constructed with a maze-like interior, the Haunted
House features all sorts of gory scenes, and a giant room packed from floor to
ceiling with legions of dirty, uber-creepy baby dolls; many missing glassy
eyes, hair or limbs. It’s pretty widely acknowledged that dolls make a terrific
hiding place for spirits- for some reason, entities are attracted to them.
Though the doll room was heavy with energy, we didn’t get as many hits as we
expected, but there was so much activity around the stretchers from Wolfe Manor
that Mom urged Maverick to “get rid of those things now!”
Moving
outside, we encountered with an extremely negative entity that was hanging
around a cottage near the barn. Keri
recalls,
“Over the years, I’ve found that if human spirits were
hateful, spiteful, rude, abusive drunks or…any other “expletives” while they
were alive, they’re the same in death. Meet George, a chauvinist pig spirit,
who tried to give Crystal attitude. He showed his true colors, belittling and
cussing at her. Crystal told him off and had quite an interesting argument with
him for a while. Only after standing her ground to leave her and us alone did
he back off!”
After our encounter
with George, well after midnight, we called it a night because we had to be up early
to teach our Paranormal Investigation 101 workshop. At the conclusion of class, we reminded the
group that often, during the course of a ghost hunt, there’s a whole lot of
“hurry up and wait”, and sometimes, the spirits just don’t want to come out and
play…but thankfully, we were wrong.
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| Our Paranormal Investigation 101 workshop attendees pre-ghost hunt on Saturday night- that's "spokes ghoul" Maverick Cadaverick on the left, holding the lantern |
Even with a large group, things got insane almost from the moment we set foot on the property. Hobbs
had hired a professional videographer to come along and document our entire
hunt. Initially, he claimed in an
offhand way that he didn’t believe in ghosts, and though he was acting very
professionally, it was apparent he thought the whole thing was a bit childish
and silly.
As the sunset, we trudged into the forest, with Maverick in
the lead, holding an antique glass gas lantern. Our first stop was the “Redneck Camp” on the Haunted Hayride route, a
collection of five hideously trashed vintage trailers. It was the location where
an employee had reported the growling sounds, and we figured it was a great
place to start our investigation. The
students all got out their equipment, and all of us started getting hit
immediately. Pleasant set up the rem pod, and it lit up right away. As various investigational devices were
activated and crystal got out her divining rods, Pleasant asked,
“How do you guys like being here, in the middle of a
Halloween Haunt?”
Right away, an Ovilus
answered, “It’s perfect!”
Many of the students had Spirit Boxes, and all of them were talking
simultaneously. Crystal turned to find the photographer, to make sure he was
getting all the activity on film, and he was no where to be found… until he was
spotted far away down the path, actually running away! When she caught up, he
was white as a sheet, telling her breathlessly that he’d felt as though someone
had dumped a bucket of ice water down his back.
“I’m outta here,” he cried in a panic, his
camera slung over his back, sprinting towards the parking lot, “I can’t do
this!”
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| Investigating at the "Redneck Camp" on the Hobbs Grove Haunted Hayride route |
We went on to
investigate the Haunted Forest, where we stopped several times, to set up for EVPS
and Ovilus sessions, all of which were documented by our photographer, who
fortunately hadn’t flipped out from all the paranormal activity. Crystal and a
few others spotted a large black Shadow Person darting behind a tree, and where
everyone got many more hits at the various sites, which were a maze of spooky
cottages and junked automobiles, all covered with vines and wild over-growth.
One of the many
spirits we encountered and communicated with was a little girl, and later,
Maverick confirmed that many employees had reported seeing a small female child
dressed in 1930’s clothes roaming the property, or had heard children laughing
when none were present.
All in all, both evenings of paranormal
investigations at Hobbs Grove were so active, and so full of evidence, that we
are still going through our EVP
recordings and the film footage, because there are so many hours worth of
documentation.
As Jan “Mom” Acosta
says:
“The creep factor was overwhelming at Hobbs… I would love to go back there. I don't think a
Hollywood script could have written that scenario!”
#
If you’re in
Central California during the Halloween
seaon, check out the faux (and real!)
spooks at Hobbs Grove:
We’d LOVE to connect with you!
Visit our website to book workshops, Tarot
readings, or have us come out for a paranormal investigation: www.thedivinationnation.com
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDivinationNation?fref=ts
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TarotAlimah
To find out more about Pleasant or request
a reading or healing session, click here: http://www.pleasantgehman.com/
For more on Crystal’s background, or
request a reading or healing session, click here: http://crystalravenwolf.com
