Ghost hunters look for paranormal at Shaffer Hotel
The town of Mountainair may be more populated than you think.
Some residents have continued to occupy the town even after their death.
The Duke City Paranormal Research Society has investigated various locations in the town, particularly
The Shaffer Hotel, on several occasions including a ghost investigation in late September. During its investigations, the team has recorded electronic voice phenomena, or EVP, and has verified the presence of entities that cannot be seen but can be detected using electronic field detectors.
It is said Clem “Pop” Shaffer who built The Shaffer Hotel in 1923, still wanders its lobby and halls and has a preference for the Abo Suite. Other guests might also be lingering there as well.
According the to hotel’s Facebook page, it accommodated railroad travelers and workers. Shaffer decorated the building with graphics inspired by Native American designs and built the furniture and fireplaces, as well as a concrete fence west of the hotel.
“We were asking questions and said, ‘Are you with us, Pop Shaffer?’ and our K2 meter, which is one of our electronic field detectors, started going off,” said Ed Sather, lead investigator and tech supervisor for the Duke City Paranormal Research Society, about his experience in the Abo Suite. “We must have had a 10-minute session where we asked for ‘yes’ answers on questions, and if it’s ‘yes’ get close to the meter.
The thing went crazy for about 10 minutes with answering questions.”
A room on the hotel’s first floor is where Sara Sather, director and lead investigator of the Duke City Paranormal Research Society, experienced something unexplainable. One of the women on her team began feeling ill and left the room with another team member. Sara Sather and another woman remained in the room.
“The energy was heavy while all of us were in there,” Sara Sather said. “As soon as they left, the air just totally changed. And we were sitting on separate sides of the room, and we each starting feeling like the air was moving, hitting us in the face. It was like it was moving around us.”
The Duke City Paranormal Research Society joined the Southwest Paranormal Investigation Team from Grants, the Texas Spectre Detectors, and religious demonologist Leon Wilkes, for an investigation of the Shaffer and two other, undisclosed, Mountainair locations in late September.
The teams were under waiver to not disclose two of the locations investigated where they experienced some interesting encounters.
One of the teams received a strong response off an electronic field detector from something they could not see after finding an open Bible on a table and reading several verses from the book. Some investigators heard moans, whimpers, whistling and a couple “really loud bangs.”
“There was a child’s voice a couple times in this one location and supposedly not far from this location there was a young boy who was 9 or 10 years old, I believe, who was killed in an accident,” Ed Sather said. “When Sara’s team was doing this in one building, one of her sensitives started getting cold on her legs, and she had known about the boy, so she says, ‘Is there a little boy here with us?’ and she bent down to kneel and all of a sudden both her cheeks were cold, like the little boy was there and put his hands on her cheeks, she thought.”