Hunting for ghosts in Hotel Libby

There is a certain shared purity when a group spends their Saturday night standing around in the dark, waiting for something unseen to go bump in the night. 

The pursuit of that unbridled fun — a combination of real wonder at what may come, a dash of self-aware absurdity and assuredness that nothing this enjoyable while sober can be bad — attracted a group of paranormal researchers to Hotel Libby during the weekend. Members of the Blackfoot Paranormal Investigations and the Valley Area Paranormal Research group gathered at Hotel Libby. 

Perched on the stairway to the second floor sat Gail Burger, project director of the Hotel Libby renovation project and daughter of the building’s owners, Ron and Candy Johnson.

“We’ve never had a team go through the place like this, so I thought it would be interesting,” Burger said. “I’m excited to see what happens.”

Made aware of one of Libby’s potentially most haunted locations by Karen Stevens’ “Haunted Montana” book series, the researchers contacted Burger through Facebook. 

The crew began breaking into investigative teams around 9 p.m. Kathy Schoendoerfer, founder of Blackfoot Paranormal Investigations, manned the command center at the hotel’s front desk.

“This is a very boring thing to do,” Schoendoerfer said behind a computer screen segmented into four quadrants, three displaying recordings of cameras placed on the building’s second and third floors. 

Led by Christian McCarthy, a self-proclaimed psychic medium, the Valley Area Paranormal Research includes McCarthy’s son, Christian Mathew, and his friends he met through 4-H. The two research groups began working together after Schoendoerfer and the elder McCarthy met on an investigation at the Hotel Lincoln.  

McCarthy picked up a few leads during his initial walk though Hotel Libby. Room 3, for example, has a window that opens on its own every three days. McCarthy believes this to be the act of a wandering woman, looking for attention from below. Burger, who shuts the window twice a week, has her own theory.

“This is a 114-year-old building,” Burger said.

At the end of the hall to the left on the second floor is a room that was boarded away until 15 years ago. When people examined the great beyond behind the boards they found a completely furnished room. They stripped the floor and found a peculiar dark spot.

Maybe that’s the blood of the man who died in this room, Christian Mathew hypothesized. The elder McCarthy believes an argument took place in the room, but no deaths. According to his senses, the argument had to do with ownership of the hotel.

Following their leads, the crews set up cameras over the mysterious dark spot and in front of the window. Another camera peered down the third-floor hallway.

“Every crew has a recorder,” Schoendoerfer, 59, said as the first hour wound down. “There has been a lot of evidence we have had throughout the years that we have had to discount because there was no video.”

Despite her belief in lingering energy from people who have passed, Schoendoerfer said she prides her group on its ability to debunk alleged hauntings. The recent streak of successful reality TV shows like Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters” made it acceptable to discuss the hobby, but she began exploring the paranormal as a child, before it was trending social interest.

“It was only five years ago when people were humming the Ghostbusters theme song to me,” Schoendoerfer said. “Now I get invited to places by owners who want their building to be haunted. It can add value. They get pretty pissed when I tell them nothing is going on.”

As teams regroup after the first hour of separation, Skylar Smith, an 18-year-old member of VAPR, reports being touched in the basement.

“We think it was a child,” Smith said. “It seemed like it was a little girl grabbing my back. I think she wanted a piggyback ride.”

Brandon Hendrickson, 17, was also in the basement. He did not feel anything.

Working rotations, Schoendoerfer assigns herself to the basement next. A journalist will be her only company.

Armed with a bouncy ball, a Denver Nuggets blanket and an audio recorder with headphones, Schoendoerfer and her partner eased down the steep stairs into the muggy-aired abyss. It’s quiet, but not eerily so. Bar music from next door can be faintly heard with the headphones and promises by other investigators to keep quiet upstairs apparently fell on deaf ears.

Still, sitting in the pitch black, asking ghosts to identify themselves, loudly, is a little creepy. Considering a kid might be in the midst, the bouncy ball is placed against a support beam. Any movement would be ghastly.

“If you are here, please let us know by tapping or knocking,” Schoendoerfer said.

It is that moment right after the request that heightens the senses. Listening for nothing becomes riveting. The same old surroundings look different— or do they— for a simple second. It is during this moment when Terry Sheppard’s quote rings.

“What else is there to do in Montana?” Sheppard asked.

Kendra Snell, Nancy Shannon, Sheppard and Schoendoerfer packed into a car on Sunday morning to return to Ovando, population 71.  

“I’ve never seen a ghost, but maybe spirits are real,” Sheppard said. “We made a road trip out of the experience. We enjoy learning the history of the places we investigate and it is a good opportunity to get together and meet people.”

No ghosts announced themselves in the basement. An hour later, sitting with the McCarthys and Tristian Smith, 15, around the mysterious dark spot, it was more of the same.

“We did an investigation in Kila,” the elder McCarthy said. “A man reported rocks being thrown in his bedroom, his dog going ballistic, a number of unusual things. We debunked his microwave. That just had bad wiring. But we set up a bunch of rocks on top of baby powder and when we came back there was a rock that had clearly been moved.”

Unfortunately, nothing that exciting happened in the room that was once boarded off. According to the groups, it’s a coin flip whether an investigation will turn anything up.

“I don’t even trust the shows anymore,” Sheppard said. “They can edit everything how they want.”

McCarthy said everyone can be a psychic medium. His son believed so, but his buddy, Smith, is not so sure. Asked if he thinks his friend’s dad has a special ability to communicate with the dead, he simply said, “No.” In fact, most of Saturday’s searchers said they have not seen a ghost. Instead, what unites these groups is open-mindedness and a willingness to be silly in the night.  

“I’m an energy addict,” Schoendoerfer said. “Your mind makes sense out of chaos.”