HOT TRAMP, I LOVE YOU SO: A PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION AT A HAUNTED HOLLYWOOD LANDMARK

 

The historic-and haunted- Chateau La Fontaine, Hollywood, California

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. Look for our forthcoming book, “Walking The Tarot Path” in 2016.
 We’ve created this blog to share our knowledge and to connect with the vibrant worldwide metaphysical and paranormal community. We hope it’s as fun for you to read as it is for us to write…Enjoy!

On the evening of January 10, 2016, we had the opportunity to do our first paranormal investigation of the New Year. Our hunt took place at a Hollywood landmark, the beautiful Chateau La Fontaine… and for the first time ever in many years of doing paranormal investigations, one of us came home with a spirit attachment. We blame this on David Bowie… but more about that later!

 Noted architect Leland Bryant designed the historic Chateau La Fontaine in the 1930’s; the building has been home to a number of celebrities- and spirits- in the decades since it was built.  For years, the place has been  acknowledged as being notoriously haunted. A current resident called us to investigate her apartment because there was a lot of paranormal activity going on: whispering, objects moving, and cold spots. She also said that she felt totally “creeped out” when she went to her storage locker in the basement.

 The apartment owner and her adult son accompanied us during the hunt. As we worked, the son took photos on his iPhone 6 as per our instructions: take two or three sequential photos of each spot, to see if any anomalies were present in the images. All our equipment was in use during the investigation: we had a  Rempod, K2, EVP recorder and an EMF meter and an Ovilis. 

We got lots of hits in the apartment itself … listen to this EVP we took in the hallway, and you can hear whispering:

 https://soundcloud.com/kim-burch/evp-at-la-fontaine-in-apt-hall-whisper

When we were in the basement, we investigated in a hallway that was very heavy with weird, dark energy. Crystal was in the midst of doing a session with her dowsing rods when she suddenly said, 

"I feel like there's someone behind me!"

  None of us noticed anything unusual, but the apartment owner’s son snapped these pix on his phone sequentially. Both photos, taken seconds apart, appeared about the same… but look carefully at the second one- there is definitely something behind Crystal, and there was nobody else-or at least no other humans-in that hallway.

 

 The first photo from The Chateau's basement

 

The second photo from the Chateau's basement-look at Crystal's left shoulder

 Here is the second photo blown up. but otherwise un-retouched or altered. As you can see, something is hovering around Crystal’s left shoulder.

 

Seriously...What The *BLEEP* is that?  We'd  love for you to comment on this photo!

  After more investigating, we finally called it an evening and headed home to Pleasant’s house. We figured we’d smudge each other off and do some energy work- the way we always did after an investigation-before hitting the hay.

 But the moment we walked in the door, we heard the news on the radio that David Bowie had died.

 Instantaneously, both our phones started blowing up with texts about it. In disbelief, we Googled it, hoping it was a hoax. Soon, we realized it wasn’t. Both us are lifelong hardcore Bowie freaks …we were absolutely devastated. In between bursts of tears and expressions of total denial, we combed the Internet for more news. Finally, we went to bed. The next day, both of us were still very upset, and pretty much useless. The day after, Crystal left to go back to her home in   California’s Central Valley.

 The reason we’re giving you this personal post-investigation timeline is because about a week later, we both noticed that things were getting a little cray-cray in our respective houses; in both places, objects were going missing and  electronics were malfunctioning. Oddly, neither of us realized that these phenomena had anything to do with our investigation at the Chateau.

 At that point, a friend of Crystal’s teenage daughter casually asked if their house was haunted. The very next day, Crystal, her daughter and daughter’s two friends saw objects literally flying out of cabinets on their own. 

Only then did it dawn on us that because of David Bowie’s death, we’d completely forgotten to do our regular post-investigation cleansing rituals!

Luckily, we’re both experienced in banishing negative energy and chasing away “hitchhiking" spirits, so we took care of things immediately. However, we were both horrified that we’d forgotten to protect ourselves after the investigation.

 We are both “clean” now, but we want to make sure you stay safe after your investigations, too. 

So here are some post-investigation tips:

CLOSE DOWN YOUR INVESTIGATION

 You wouldn’t leave a dinner party without saying goodbye, right? Well, you gotta get closure on your paranormal investigations, too. Politely bid adieu to any spirits you encountered but make sure to let them know that under no circumstances are they welcome in your home. Respectfully ask to stay right where they are. Mention that you had a good time interacting with them and thank them, but that they need to stay put, they can’t join you as you leave.

 Next, make a circle with your team, discussing plans to check in with each other during the next few days to make sure everyone is fine and that no entities followed them home.  If you were hunting at a private residence, include the humans who live there, too. Cleanse each other with sage, which, by the way should stay in your car during a hunt, because spirits hate it- sage actually repels them!  Take turns smudging each other before you leave the investigation site.  Fan the smoke up and down each other’s bodies, covering everyone thoroughly. If anyone in your group does energy work, have them pull any negativity off the other members.

 WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET HOME

Keep a watchful eye open in the hours and days after your investigation. Check for any signs of spirit attachments.  If you’ve brought home a hitchhiker, your energy level, general health and also your emotional wellbeing might be affected. In the week or so after your hunt, if you find yourself feeling under the weather don’t jump to conclusions; rule out the mundane first.   For example, if you’ve got a headache, are you sure you drank enough water during the investigation? And when was the last time you ate a full meal?  If you’ve come down with the sniffles and were hunting outdoors, it could just be hay fever! If you’re lacking energy, again, be sure rule out every day circumstances. For instance, have you been putting in over time at work, or been really busy?  Do a “lifestyle check” just in case.  If you’re condition is worsening, definitely check in with your team to see if anyone else is having similar physical or mental/emotional symptoms.

If things start to seem really off, or if you see any signs of paranormal activity in your house, you need to do a full cleansing, pronto.

We always keep our doors and windowsills salted to deter unwanted spirits, but we’re especially careful about this before going on an investigation.  We sweep up the old salt, dispose of it and replace it with fresh salt.  This ensures that in the event of a “hitchhiker” following us home from a hunt, they won’t be able to get inside our houses.  We also scatter it around the parameters of our yard, and in our cars. No paranormal investigator should ever be without salt!

It’s a good idea in general to cleanse your home about every two weeks. A simple way to cleanse is to light candles and burn sage and candles while asking for positive energy to come into your abode. You might want to add in supplemental cleansing methods based on your spiritual preferences, too. For example, we know people who keep holy water in their houses, some like to have Palo Santo - a type of wood that has spiritual and cleansing effects much like sage- on hand to burn for house purification.

MAKE A CONTINGENCY PLAN

Reach out to your team members  and better yet,  a mentor, psychic medium or healer if you sense that your energy field has been compromised, or feel as though you’ve picked up an attachment on your hunt.  If you are having obvious health problems, be sure to consult a medical doctor, too. Watch for signs of depression, mood swings or anything that could be paranormal activity in your residence. Making sure to protect yourself- before, during and after-a paranormal investigations will allow you to stay healthy mentally, physically and emotionally, plus it’ll enable you to remain committed to doing your paranormal research. 

 And finally… RIP  David Bowie, we adore  you...

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Crystal and Pleasant as vintage fortunetellers...photo by Maharet Hughes

We’d LOVE to connect with you!

Visit our website to book metaphysical and occult workshops, Tarot readings and healings, or to 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

A GUIDE TO GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS,SHADOW PEOPLE... AND OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF THE PARANORMAL

 

Photo taken by Pleasant during a paranormal investigation onboard the RMS Queen Mary, 2011

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 created this blog to share our knowledge and to connect with the vibrant worldwide metaphysical community. Aside from Tarot, we practice many other disciplines, including Reiki, pendulum divining, dousing, crystal work, mediumship, house cleansings, and more. We read for clients, write, lecture and teach together as well as working solo. For years, we’ve worked as professional belly dancers, and since 2009, we’ve been doing paranormal investigations as a team, exploring public and private sites that are r haunted.  Currently, we’re working on our book, “ Walking The Tarot Path”.
We’d love for this blog to be relevant for metaphysically-inclined peeps at every stage of development from e beginners to professionals, our posts will range from basic concepts and info that many of you are undoubtedly familiar with, to interviews, how-to’s and reviews on events and products.
We hope this blog is as fun for you to read as it is for us to write…Enjoy!

 You never know what you might encounter on a paranormal investigation…or in your own house!

Many people are skeptics, but for every person who dismisses the paranormal as bunk, there’s another whose just had their first supernatural experience-and probably many more who’ve had brushes with the unexplained but don’t discuss it, fearing that their friends and family will think they’re crazy.

 In fact, we get emails and voicemail messages all the time from people who’ve witnessed something paranormal or anomalous. They describe their experiences and ask what possible explanation there could be as to what they witnessed or why the incident occurred.  One woman saw an Indian Chief in full regalia…cutting into the line ahead of her at a convenience store. She said that the moment they locked eyes, he vanished completely. She left the store, went into her car and hyperventilated for a while before emailing us. Another person recently asked Pleasant why there was a transparent mountain lion living in her yard.  We constantly are asked to do house cleansings for reasons ranging from “I feel bad energy” to “I hear weird bells in my apartment” to “My child refuses to sleep in her room because she’s scared- and she’s eighteen years old!”

  So here is a quick reference guide to some commonly experienced manifestations of the paranormal. Be aware that many of these manifestations can occur in tandem with each other.

Spirits: Basically a spirit is a sentient, self-aware being which is lacking a physical body. A spirit could be a deceased human or non-human, such as  an angel or demon.

Ancestral Spirits: An ancient spirit that follows certain familial groups wherever they go, often throughout generations.

Anomalous Lights: Often called “spook lights”, “ghost lights”  “fairy lights “or “will o’ the wisp”, anomalous lights can take many shapes and forms. Widely seen for centuries, there are many explanations for them, ranging from UFO or ghostly encounters to ignited swamp gas to foxfire, which is a bioluminescent light that discharges from rotting wood, usually seen in forests. However, these lights don’t always occur in the outdoors.  In 2010 and 2011 when we were leading paranormal investigations on board the extremely haunted RMS Queen Mary, many guests in the ship’s cabins mentioned they’d seen odd lights in their rooms which didn’t seem to be coming from any specific source, such as a porthole or electrical device or outlet.

Apparitions: A spirit or ghost that manifests itself in either full or partial human form. Sometimes an apparition can appear human, looking like a three-dimensional, living person; other times, it wills emerge-and stay- transparent or smoky. Once in a while, an apparition can be horrific, appearing horribly scarred, or as a disembodied head with glowing eyes or limbless torso.

Demons: A hostile or resentful entity, generally believed to be of non-human origin. Some call them fallen angels…others don’t care what they’re called, they just want them to go away!

Ectoplasm: Does spirits exude a viscous substance, or issuing from a  (human) medium in a trance, while the spirits being channeled gain "physical" form.   It can appear in various ways, from thin, wispy strands to gelatinous and paste-like. In the early 20^th century, when Spiritualism was all the rage and séances were common, many so-called “mediums” were fraudulent, using sleight of hand to produce  “ectoplasm” fashioned from surgical gauze, cheesecloth, animal organs, and even shredded newspaper.  This lead many to be skeptical of ectoplasm, and, like many other paranormal manifestations, there is not yet a scientific explanation for this phenomena.

Ghosts:  Many people use the word “ghost” and “spirit” interchangeably. While it’s not wrong to do this, if you want to get specific, ghosts are usually the disembodied energy of a deceased human. A ghost is a spirit that either hasn’t yet crossed over to the other side, or one that has either come back to visit, or decided to hang around the earthly plane.

Orbs: Appearing almost exclusively on still or video film, orbs are almost never seen by the naked eye, making them different those anomalous lights. The phenomena of orbs are a point of debate in the paranormal community, as well as outside it. While many believe that orbs are proof of spirit manifestation, there are too many logical or scientific explanations for these occurrences, such as dust or condensation on a camera lens, a lens flare, or a reflection from a natural source. 
 
Poltergeists: The German term poltergeist translates to “noisy ghost”. Some people think poltergeists are malevolent, others think they’re harmless tricksters, but one thing is certain- they’re quite powerful. Poltergeist activity is the kind that really makes you sit up and notice. It can include unexplained loud noises, such as footsteps; moving objects- items flying off shelves, doors opening and closing on their own; outbreaks of fire; objects disappearing and reappearing, floods, and electrical disruptions or malfunctions. Poltergeists can also cause physical things to happen to humans, such as skin pricks and scratches. Poltergeists are generally though of as haunting a particular person, rather than a general location. Often the activity is focused around an individual, usually a young person, such as a pre-pubescent child or teenager.

Residual Hauntings:  A residual haunting is the psychic imprint of a scene or situation, which is repeatedly played out; the witness of this type of phenomena is essentially peering into the past. It’s widely considered that these hauntings involve spirits that are generally unaware of any changes of time, date, dimension or surroundings.

Shadow People: A supernatural entity that appears as a solid black shape, often in human form but sometimes much larger.  Most who’ve encountered a shadow person say that they seem to emanate pure evil. There have been many reports of dark, shadowy figures-often wearing large hats- lurking in the corners of rooms and filling the viewer with dread and outright fear.

 Outdoors, shadow people seem to dart behind trees or peak around the side of buildings or structures. Shadow animals are spotted frequently too, moving in the peripheral vision of the people who see them.

 Other Types Of Paranormal Activity

As much as we might like for paranormal activity to fall into the visual sphere, in reality, there are many more instances of other types of paranormal activity. Each is as valid, and with the exception of auditory manifestations, the varieties discussed below are much harder for paranormal investigators to document.

 Auditory Encounters
These encounters cover a wide range of possibilities, including footsteps, doors slamming, whispers, moaning, tapping, clanging - you name it! It is often thanks to these sounds that our clients begin to accept the fact that something inexplicable is going on.  These auditory encounters could be attributed to poltergeists, but can manifest from other types of spirits as well.  Even if you’re not a ghost hunter per se, any recording device     (even a voice-memo on a smart phone) will help you validate your findings when dealing with an auditory encounter.

Scents
Sometimes, the only clue that something paranormal is underway comes from our sense of smell. Of course, getting a whiff of something other worldly may only be a small portion of an overall encounter- but many people- even skeptics- have smelled certain “phantom” fragrances, such as exotic perfumes or their late grandfather’s particular blend of pipe tobacco. These manifestations are often confined to a small area and do not seem to be coming from a specific source. Some people encounter whiffs of flowers while others meet up with horrific stenches like sulfur, decaying flesh and other vile odors.
 Before you think   your dearly departed Aunt Emma has come back to visit, look for natural causes such as sources of ventilation, air fresheners, septic tank problems, rotten food or an open trash bin before jumping to conclusions.

Tastes
While not as commonly reported as the other types of spirit manifestation, there have been instances of inexplicable tastes, ranging from - once again - pleasing to gross. These tastes may or may not be accompanied by actual solid materials that somehow wind up or manifest in the mouth - often after periods of sleep or rest. One sensitive we know says he tastes aluminum in his mouth when spirits are nearby.

Physical Sensations
 There are many physical sensations that can occur when a ghost or a spirit is around. Probably the most commonly reported are the “cold spots” that occur in a room-or even outdoors- when the temperature drops dramatically, as opposed to gradually…with no logical explanation. Many people get goose bumps, shivers down their spine, or feel the sensation that all the hair on their body- head arms and legs-is standing on end. Headaches, nausea, or the feeling that your energy is suddenly draining are common signs too. We’ve been on investigations where we-or someone accompanying us- has actually been touched and even pushed.

No matter what paranormal occurrence you see or experience, have faith in your own intuition.  We often ignore or mistrust our gut instincts, and try to explain away odd or  “weird” situations, refusing to believe that they could actually happen. Another thing to remember is that not all spirits are malevolent; many are actually benevolent, others even have a quirky sense of humor… just like we humans.  Use your judgment, same as you would for a living person.  And don’t be afraid to talk about your experiences- there are tons of other believers around and plenty of paranormal chat forums on the internet where you can share your experiences and people will take you seriously…giving yet another meaning to the phrase “we are not alone”!

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 Had a ghostly encounter?  Leave a comment here or please email us- we'd sooo LOVE to hear about it!  divinationnation@yahoo.com

Visit our website: www.thedivinationnation.com

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Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TarotAlimah

To find out more about Pleasant click here: http://www.pleasantgehman.com/

For more on Crystal’s background, click here http://www.crystalravenwolf.com

 LEARN TO CONDUCT PARANORMAL INVESTIGATIONS.... AND COME ON A GHOST HUNT WITH US!

  SAT. AUGUST 8, 2015 IN THE FRESNO, CA.  AREA
 All info is here: 
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