Got Spirit?

Hotel is hardly haunted

Comments (0) By Joe Watson Thursday, Jul 14 2005

As a professional ghost hunter, Christopher Moon says he's been scratched, pushed, beaten, and suffered third-degree burns courtesy of some seething spirits who refuse to cross over to the other side.

courtesy of Christopher Moon

Christopher Moon

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Begins at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 16. Registration is $79 and includes a class, dinner, lecture and tour. Call 877-880-6232.

Hotel San Carlos, 202 North Central Avenue

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Obviously, this guy can't take a hint.

On Saturday, July 16, the Valley native -- and owner of Colorado-based Haunted Times Magazine -- returns to his old haunt, so to speak, to present "Ghost Hunter's University" at the spooky Hotel San Carlos, where Moon will teach participants the basics of "good ghost hunting" and "the use of technical equipment for real ghost hunting." And then he and his pupils will be looking for trouble.

"The majority of the time, I'm not scared [hunting ghosts]. Seeing what I've seen, I've become jaded, for the most part," says Moon, 32. "But there are certain cases that frighten me, and that's a good thing.

"If you're not afraid, you're dead."

Purportedly, there's no reason to fear the Reaper when playing Venkman at the San Carlos. Just a few harmless specters there, folks say, like the ghost of Leone Jensen, a 22-year-old woman who -- back in 1928, the year the hotel opened -- jumped to her death from the roof of the San Carlos because of a broken heart. Almost 80 years later, she supposedly still hovers about from time to time.

And then there are the four boys who drowned in a well in the late 1890s on the property on which the hotel would eventually be built. But they're not looking for revenge, either; just playing in the halls that weren't actually there at the time of their demise.

Moon says he and his Haunted Times crew will investigate the alleged apparitions themselves before getting their novice students in on the act with a two-hour tour that follows a "ghoulishly good" dinner for paying participants.

Apparently, you have to have an appetite for this sort of thing.