Story By: Chad Alan

 

"Something in the Water"

 

The Elms Hotel and Spa - Excelsior Springs, MO

 

The Elms Hotel and Spa doesn't look like the typical place the TAPS team has been investigating lately.  It's an old building, that is for sure, but it's rehabbed and swanky, and caters to the wealthy.  It has the look of a 4-5 star hotel, heck it's got a fancy lap pool inside the building.....a haunted lap pool where splashing occurs in areas where there is no one.  Rebuilt in 1912, after burning down in the late 1800's, Al Capone is said to have stayed there and wouldn't you know that the hotel served as a Speak Easy during the Prohibition.  People flocked to this area over the years because they believe the high and diverse mineral content of the springs throughout the city had healing powers.  Whether or not Dr. Oz would agree is a whole other story.  Of course many people were not healed of their diseases and died on the property.  With many running streams and rivers, along with the natural springs themselves, there is plenty of energy that spirits can feed off of to manifest themselves and scare the Xanax out of people.  Visitors are constantly reporting seeing apparitions, hearing deep voices and screams coming from the empty hallways, and witnessing white mists form in open areas.  Both female and male apparitions have been reported, with one tall man said to be eight feet tall.  TAPS not only gets to investigate the hotel but will be staying the night in the most haunted rooms on the property.

 

Steve Gonsalves and Dave Tango started their investigation in what is called the "Library Lounge" where "a gentleman in white is said to appear then disappear into the wall." What they found was possibly a mind trick game called "Peppers Ghost."  "Peppers Ghost" is a reflection in glass that creates the illusion of an apparition.  It's possible that somebody coming from the kitchen can cause a reflection off one of the big windows in the bar.  People also experience a strange feeling in the lounge and just don't find it comfortable.  Michelle Tate and Britt Griffith did find some high EMF levels in the lounge and thought this could be the reason people are feeling uneasy.  The lounge had also been renovated recently and that does tend to create paranormal activity. 

 

TAPS co-founder Jason Hawes and Steve headed to the spa, where items are said to be thrown at people.  They really tried to antagonize whatever spirits may be haunting the spa by calling them out for their mischievous acts.  A couple of different times they heard a deep male voice, followed by a females voice, which was then followed by a very eerie scream that stopped them in their tracks.  This scream was very audible to the viewers and it came from the room that Jason would be staying in that night.  They did experience a few other small things that made them think someone else was in room 500 with them. 

 

Amy Bruni and Adam Berry did their investigating on the fifth floor where a very large dark shadow figure was caught on film.  They set up their shadow detectors up and one of them went off, in an area where there wasn't one.  It seems that something might have been mimicking the sound of the device, which was later explained that this type of activity is very common in Poltergeists.  A loud growl followed by a howling sound came out of nowhere causing Amy to claim that she's never experienced something like this before. 

 

Michelle and Britt headed to the lap pool.  They did experience their shadow detector going off more than a few times but didn't have any additional activity.  They took their equipment up to the haunted fifth floor and their equipment continued to go on and off and some strange noise came out of one of the bedrooms.  Britt explained that they could be investigating a place for hours and their equipment never goes off so there was definitely some type of energy interacting with them.  The sound of a door handle being turned got their attention and then their equipment started making noises.

 

The team had plenty of personal experiences, and many of these were caught on either their video or audio devices.  Michelle spent the night in room 501 and during the night she seemed to get a visitor.  The camera in her room caught a loud bang and then tried to auto focus on something.  This only happened once during the entire night.  TAPS seemed to be pretty impressed with the paranormal activity in the hotel but did not feel there was anything the workers or visitors should be afraid off, which is really to say when you hunt ghosts for a living.   

 

Ghost Hunters is done for the summer, have a good one everybody!

 

Ghost Hunters airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Syfy. 

 

Check out the archive of past show recaps here!

 

(Image courtesy of Syfy)

 

Contact Chad Alan at [email protected]