Click here to read the amazing history of the Baker Hotel
THE BAKER HOTEL INVESTIGATION REPORT
October 4-5, 2002
Tonya from GHOULI and I arrived at the Baker Hotel at around 9:00 p.m. Friday. The building is absolutely huge and very ornately decorated. According to the history, it cost $1,250,000 back in 1929, so you can only imagine the details and the beauty in there. We met the folks from the RIP team in Texas and the Dagulf’s Ghost team members as well. After getting all of our stuff ready and meeting everyone, we were on our way.
There were 12 people in the hotel that night and we had three walkie-talkie radios in order to keep in touch with each other since the building is so big. At one point, a group consisting of Heath, Keith, and Karen had gone upstairs to look around and Tonya and I were downstairs in the Brazos Room, along with the five RIP members, which was the base camp area, and we had a radio. Chris and Darien were out on the patio, and Chris had one of the radios. We heard some chaos on the radio and started talking to the group that was out – they said they were on the 7th floor. Then we heard a young girl’s voice saying, “Help! I’m on the third floor…” We heard this several times and thought it was one of the other girls. It took a minute to figure out where everyone was and who all had radios, but when we realized none of us were on the third floor; we all went to check it out. Of course, there was nothing there.
The other strange thing that happened with the radios was while Keith and I were upstairs in the sky room, a/k/a the ballroom. We had all gone up there and after a while, everyone went down to other floors except Keith & I. We were taking pictures and talking when the radio went off. Tonya and Chris had the other two radios. We heard them and we replied, but they weren’t talking to us. They had heard a girl’s voice saying something and we did, too, and Keith asked them to repeat what they had said. Now, when this started, it got kind of chaotic because we were trying to figure out who was where, etc. Once again we realized the voice was not someone from our group. We heard it say, “Quiet!” about three or four times. We thought maybe it was some kids that picked up on our channel and were messing around, but quickly dropped that idea as a) it was two in the morning, which did not make it entirely impossible, but b) it was a girl’s voice and she wasn’t responding to our questions or having a real conversation with us, and c) no one knew where we were to mess with us and the references to being quiet and being on the third floor were references to what we were doing, not a fluke deal. The kicker is that later on the drive home, I was talking to Tonya about it and said, “That was so weird when that girl’s voice kept saying, ‘quiet!’” She asked me, “What are you talking about?” I told her the story and she said that’s not what they were hearing at all – they heard the same voice saying, “I’m playing with Stephanie” or “My name is Stephanie” or something along those lines. We were all on the same radio channel and hearing different conversations with this “person”.
When Keith and I went downstairs from the sky room, we got to the 6th floor and smelled a very strong cigar smell. We followed it down to the 4th floor and called Chris and Tonya and the others on the radio to tell them we were smelling it. In fact, Keith got a little choked up. When Chris came running and we went back up, the smell was gone and it had been, like I mentioned, very strong.
At one point about five of us were going up the stairs (did I mention there are a lot of stairs at the Baker?) and turned onto the 5th floor hallway. We all heard the sound of broken glass being moved – like the sound it makes as you sweep it up or something – not like a window being broken or glass being stepped on, but kind of a tinkling noise. We stopped immediately and looked at each other and yes, everyone concurred that they, too, had heard the noise. After a moment of letting our hearts calm down a bit, Heath started walking down the hallway a bit. Tonya and I both had our video cameras on and I was looking in her window and saw a white misty mass between her and Heath and she also said, “There is something between us in the hallway.” I was looking in my camera but did not see the white mass in mine; instead I had bouncing orbs of light following Heath down the hall. When we played the video back downstairs, it was very clear and bright. When I replayed it home later, it was either gone or looked like a reflection. But anyone that saw it that night will attest that it was not a reflection.
As far as actually seeing anything, that was all I personally witnessed. We heard several strange things, such as the radio interference, the glass noise, and there was a time on the third floor that we heard what sounded like a woman screaming from far away somewhere in the building. Three of us heard that at the same time. One of the other groups said they also heard a woman screaming on the second floor.
The Baker is a place where there are several different smells associated with the “beings” that are there and of those, I personally smelled the cigar smell and the burnt rubber smell. Others attest to smelling a cologne smell and some different odors, but they were not as prevalent that night as they had been on other visits.
I took several pictures while at the Baker, and I must admit, I was as much in awe with the architecture of the place as I was excited about the investigation. In all the pictures I took, I did not get anything strange or “paranormal”. Some of the people that used digital cameras got a lot of orbs, so it’s hard to tell if they were paranormal or if it’s just that digital is more sensitive than 35mm and picks up all the junk in the air. I am not saying the pictures they got are not paranormal, but my personal theory is that if there really is something there, it ought to show up on 35mm as well. And I say that because I have had weird things show up on 35mm, too. However, some of the pictures they got on digital are very interesting and there are some very prominent orbs that I don’t think can be ruled out. For example, Keith took some pictures in the ballroom and there were several orbs in one. He took another picture one minute later of the same area and there were none. It’s hard for me to believe that that much dust would settle in such a short amount of time.
We are planning another trip to take place in a few months and I can’t wait to go back. I had been told that the Baker was addictive, and I concur. Once you are there, you fall in love with it and can’t wait to be there again. Even with all of the history of haunting, it is a very comfortable place to be. It is heartbreaking to be in the midst of such grandeur and watch it falling apart and being vandalized. It’s kind of like watching an old friend going through a bad time and you just can’t help. You may think that is a strange outlook on it, and before I went I really didn’t understand what the big deal was, but now that I have been there, I can see where it is very easy to get a personal attachment to the place.
On an investigation, we try not to base anything on the “feeling” level and try to keep it rather scientific, however, there were a few times you got the feeling that you just shouldn’t go down a particular hallway. Could have been nerves, could have been the dark, could have been it was a just a good idea not to go down there. What were the things we heard? We’ll probably never know. Maybe it was Virginia jumping to her death from the 14th floor, maybe it was one of the children that used to run the hallways, maybe it was our over active imaginations. But last I checked, it’s not typical for groups of folks to imagine screaming at the same time…