Clarion Inn Investigation

Location: Columbus, Ohio

Date: Friday night, August 23, 2002

Moon phase: Full

Solar Activity: geomagnetic storms, M class flares

Investigators present: Hillary M., Shonda A.

Equipment: Olympus C-3000 digital camera, Kodak DC280 digital camera, RCA digital voice recorder, Sony digital video camera with Nightshot, Pentax PC-550 35mm camera, Extech EMF meter, Olympus 2000 Digital Voice Recorder, Sony Digital-8 Handycam, Extech IR thermometer

History: Unfortunately, we don't know much about the history of the hotel at this time.

Investigation: We arrived at the hotel at 10:10p.m., and spent a short time speaking with the nighttime manager, who showed us around the kitchen and conference rooms. The employee who sets up the meeting rooms has been complaining of cold spots, things being moved, and even apparitions for some time. As far as we know, this is the only person to experience anything here. To be quite honest, we expected to spend only an hour or so taking readings and pictures, before deeming the hotel "not haunted". As it turns out, we were in for quite a surprise.
Once we were left alone in the kitchen, we set down our stuff, and I headed to the bathroom (having been on the road most of the day), which was right around the corner to the back of the room. When I was done, I came out to the kitchen and Shonda went into the bathroom. As I was setting up the equipment in the kitchen, I saw someone come around the corner from the back hallway and bathroom. I thought this was Shonda, and began talking to her about what we should do first. When I looked up, there was no one there. When Shonda came out, I asked her if she had come out a minute ago, but she didn't know what I was talking about. Shonda and I were alone in the kitchen, conference rooms and back hallway the whole time we were there, with the exception of someone briefly entering the kitchen later in the investigation to retrieve a cart.
I decided to brush off the strange experience, and Shonda and I went to set up our cameras in each of the two conference rooms. I also set a recorder in the back hallway behind the conference rooms, then we headed back to the kitchen for an EVP session. Once we came back to the kitchen, Shonda said that she felt very uncomfortable, but wasn't sure why. I had begun to feel the same unexplainable uneasiness almost immediately upon entering the back hallway.
At 10:40, we began our EVP session in the kitchen. We found it almost impossible to get believable pictures or EMFs readings because of all the large appliances and highly reflective metal. At 10:43, my batteries went dead, although I think it was natural, as I was using my LCD screen frequently throughout the day, which tends to drain batteries quickly. At 10:48, Shonda's camera stopped working. It would not take pictures, or even turn off. She tried changing the batteries and the CompactFlash card, but still the camera would not work at all. Shonda continued to voice her discomfort, and wanted to move along quickly.
At 11:05 p.m., we went into the small conference room to turn off my video camera and attempt an EVP session. We sat at opposite sides of the room. Mysteriously, Shonda's camera began functioning again with no problems. Immediately upon turning off the lights and sitting down, I got an orb on the wall. In the second picture, the orb was further down the wall, toward Shonda. Then the orb was gone. At 11:10, I turned on the lights, walked across the room and sat next to Shonda. At 11:15, the fluorescent light above us began to rattle violently, helping us decide to move onto the second conference room.
Immediately upon entering the room, Shonda went to turn off her video camera. She was surprised to see that it was already off. It wasn't turned off. The camera was still in "record" mode, and the infrared extender was switched to the "on" position, but yet the camera and infrared were not working. She insisted that the camera had been recording when we left the room. She had even double checked. Perplexed, we decided to start taking pictures, and immediately, we began to get orbs. By this time, my SmartMedia card was full, and I needed to go back out to the kitchen to get another one. I could tell that Shonda was hoping I would want to leave, but I felt that things were just getting started, so I asked her if she minded if I go change cards and we come back to spend some time in the large conference room. She agreed, but did not want to stay in the conference room alone. I have spent hundreds of hours investigating with Shonda, and she is a highly skilled investigator. I have never seen her react to a site this way, and I am convinced that she was picking up on some kind of residual emotions.
At 11:20, we returned to the large conference room and began an EVP session. We obtained several moving orb shots, and a possible EVP. At one point, Shonda was near tears, and explained that she had an overwhelming feeling that we should not be there. Several minutes later, I asked Shonda to take my picture, because I got an extremely strong feeling that someone was standing behind me. Sure enough, her picture revealed a bright orb just inches behind my back. At roughly 11:45, we left the premises.

Conclusion: We went into this site expecting to get few positive results. By the time we completed our investigation, we were sure that there was a presence in this hotel, which seemed to prefer the large conference room. This presence, although not shy, did not seem to welcome us. We would like to research the history of this site, and perform another investigation there sometime in the future.

Submitted by Hillary Murdoch