My Night in a Haunted Hotel

Tags: death, Denise Lescano, ghost whisperer, Ghosts, grief, hauntings, healing, love, medium, Psychic, psychic medium, spirit, spirits,

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I never thought in a million years that one day I would be a “Ghostbuster!” My life truly, is stranger than fiction. I loved the movie “Ghostbusters” as a kid as everyone did at the time, but had no idea one day I would actually have the job. Funny how life goes isn’t it?

As are all of my stories, and has hard to believe as that may be for some….this is a “true story.” And so it is, I just returned from two days in Orlando staying in a haunted hotel. This is not my first haunting job and I am certain it won’t be my last. Over the years of doing my work as a medium I have had many many calls regarding haunting experiences. I write about one of my favorite stories in my book The Messenger, in the Chapter titled “A Haunting Message.” I also post from time to time here on Facebook about various haunting jobs I am commissioned to work on. There is also a page on my website www.deniselescano.com where I answer many common questions about hauntings. I love haunted places (yes, i know I am strange) and just recently stayed a few days and overnight in a Haunted Buddhist Monastary on Mount Hiei, in Kyoto Japan called Enryakuji. The small hotel was for visiting monks, so it was just me alone and a few hundred monks! A very interesting experience I will write about in another note. It was THE MOST haunted place I have ever been and I did not find out why until after I left. Riding home on the train from the mountain back to Tokyo I did some research online and found out that in the 1500’s in feudal Japan, 30,000 people were brutally slaughtered there over a few days by a samurai warlord, between battling samurai clans and Buddhist sects. 3,000 monks, their families, and civillians including women and children all living on the mountain. I cannot wait to return their on my next trip to Japan! There were a LOT of spirits still roaming around that mountain.

Ok back to this story, Orlando is about a 2 1/2 hour drive my home in Naples, FL. I was hired to go to a hotel and make the haunting acitivity stop and remove the spirits who were hanging out there. Initially a woman called Lee, my office manager and assistant, and gave her a little bit of information regarding what had been going on at the hotel. She explained that her brother had recently purchased the hotel and they were currently rennovating it. It was in the toursit district around Disney and they planned to open the hotel in a few weeks. She said, that as they got closer to the opening the spirit activity was increasing and that several of the hotel staff had had experiences and were becoming increasingly afraid to be in the hotel. The owner was concerned the activity would affect the business and also that he may lose his employees. The owner a middle aged man was running the hotel with his sister. The woman told Lee that the housekeeper had seen the spirit of a woman dessed as a housekeeper pushing the house keeping cart down one hall, and that she had no feet. A middle aged maintenance man went running from the hotel early one evening, terrified and actually crying after “someone” had pushed him against a wall and held him there so that he was unable to move or speak for several minutes. He was shocked and horrified to find no one there when he was free to finally turn around and look. The security man reported seeing the spirit of an older woman walking through the lobby. Lastly, the house keeper reported several rooms and areas of the hotel that she did not like to clean because they were scary. She said that she often would feel as though she couldn’t breathe or speak when she went in them and then would feel very tired and drained after leaving. I spoke to the housekeeper and manager seperately and explained to both, that they were especially sensitive and clairsentient. I also educated them on their abilities to feel spirits and how to protect themselves. They then shared with me even more about what they were able to sense and feel excited that I did not think they were craxzy, believed them and even more so, was able to validate and help them.

Many hauntings I can actually resolve by phone, as more often than not, the spirits are attached to a person not a place. I simply speak to the spirits and communicate to the person what needs to be said and then with my helpers on the spirits side of life (of which I have many) we pursuade the spirit to move on to their home on the spirit side of life …which they always do. To this date, I have not had a haunting that I have received a call back on, the spirits always go home. In a few more rare instances the spirits are actually attached to a place. Some people prefer that I come to the home or place that is being haunted, and in those instances, they have to provide my accomodations. In this case, they offered for me to stay over night in the hotel. For many this would be a scary idea, for me this is an exciting idea!! A haunted hotel in my book, is a bonus! I was asked to come after 6pm and after all the workers had left as the owners did not want the workers to know why I was there and what I was doing. The hotel was still not open and one wing was still under rennovation so there were many contractors and construction workers also there working and a few had already been scared half to death. They did not want to make matters worse by them finding out I was there.

Before I met with the hotel staff, when I first arrived I drove around the parking lot of the hotel and sat in my car “tuning in” to the hotel. I immediately began to pick up quite a bit of information which I wrote down on a tablet so I wouldn’t forget. Once inside, I met with the staff and told them before they told me anything, that I would like to share what I have already received. I like to do this first, so that I can perceive intuitively without any information in my memory that people tell me, which may bias or color what I am picking up intuitively. Once I share my initial thoughts, I then allow the people to to add too what I have already said and validate my information if they can. This helps me form a very strong intuitive link first, before my logical mind steps in and beigns to put things to gether into ideas and theorys.

These were my initial first impressions right from my notes:

I saw the buidling in the 1970’s, not as it was now. There was two buildings that formed an L shape and a small pool in the middle. Both buidlings are 4 floors and there are 195 rooms. Today there are two more buildings, a pool house and larger lobby area, and larger pool that were all added later, in the last ten years as I did not see them there in the 1970’s. The surrounding area, which now has hotels, was completely empty. What is now a small resort style hotel for vacationing families going to Disney, was then in the 1970’s a seedy kind of sleezy motel next to the interstate for truckers and passers by. I also picked up a very sleezy element of street level crime, drug dealers, prostitutes and weapons trafficking as well. I could intutiviely smell the inside of the hotel, before the new owner had rennovated it and I was aware it was nasty. All original carpets and drapes and walls, and it smelled musty and old and just dirty.

I saw three owners, the first owner owned the building for 15-20 years or so, then two owners who only owned it for roughly 5-7 or so years each, then the current owner.

The initial owner had a jewish last name and was an organized crime boss. I saw drugs, especially cocaine and guns being trafficked from Miami, stopping at the hotel and being dropped off, then going on to Las Vegas and a casino…again this was in the 70’s and 80’s time period. The hotel was not only a drop off point for the Orlando area but also the hub for central FL traffficking, the hotel itself was also being used by the mob as a money laundering front.

Next I hear a “rape, a murder and a “suicide” in that order…and I knew that these were the events that were connected to the haunting. I saw prostitution activity happening on the 4th floor in building one.

I shared all of this with the owner, his sister and the general manager. Between them they were able to confirm the building was built in the 70’s, the state of the hotel when the owner purchased it was exactly as I described, dirty and smelling bad. The manager was able to confirm the three owners and the time frames I connected with them. No one knew of the criminal history, but the manager was not surprised based on the fact some of these things were happening now in a motel across the street. Lee, my assistant who was also with me, was able to confirm that this area in the 1970’s was not a good area at all and it would be very likely all of these things would have been happening then in this area as she and her husband spent a lot of time in Orlando in the 70’s-80’s. This particular part of Orlando really did not become a family resort type area until after Universal Disney was built. Before Universal it was quite a surly area which was confrimed by Lee.

I shared that there were two areas of the hotel I was very drawn too with particular dark/heavy energy and that I wanted to walk through there and go in to some of the rooms. (Dark means nothing more than a “lack of light” -not evil and very low frequency energy) They gave me a master key and I proceeded to walk every floor around the entire hotel and stop and enter areas I felt drawn too…alone. Yes, I prefer alone so that I can really tune in without the interference of other people’s energy and… fear. It was about 7pm and no one was in the hotel but me, the owners and a few staff and my very courageous assistant Lee!

The first two floors in both building for me felt very clear and no activity there…the hotel staff confirmed that there was no activity reported there as well. The third floor had a few spots that seemed “foggy” for lack of a better word, just meaning there was some sporradic lower level energy in a few areas, but nothing distinct or stong that I felt I really needed to look into further. They just felt to me like areas with lingering energy from the other areas. ALL the activity to me felt like it was on the 4th floor….and it was.

First I walked building one’s 4th floor, as sitting in the parking lot there were 3 rooms all next to one another I felt strongly drawn too. It was here, in the 70’s-80’s I saw street level prostitution. It was in the back of the hotel, which at that time would have faced an empty lot and the interstate. It was not visible, and hidden from the incoming road and by trees from the interstate. This wing was completely gutted, the rooms were gutted down to concrete floors, the studs of the wall frames with no dry wall. Many of the doors were open and swaying in the breeze…offering a great “haunted” spookiness LoL…which I noted and enjoyed. As I walked down the hall it was now dusk, and there were no lights and the parking lot was empty and the energy there felt heavy, dark (not evil) but just on a very low vibration.

…As I look in to the rooms, and enter them, scenes begin to play out in front of me. Street level prostitutes, their john’s, two pimps, a lot of drug use, and unfortunately a lot of violence directed towards the women. I see a black women first and then white and hispanic women as well. I would equate the feeling as to what one would feel walking in to a slum area of a city where one is witnessing these very things. I work with law enforcement, and often on a lot of criminal casses, many organized crime cases, and especially those in FL…so, unfortunately I am quite accustomed to this tyoe of energy and what I am seeing. The spirit of the housekeeper, I become aware, is the one who is showing me these things. I feel her standing next to me. As if I were in “A Christmas Carol” and the ghost of Christmas past is showing me the things that once were. The spirit of the housekeeper seems solemn and a bit sad and I feel that is partly because of the things she witnessed while working here. She also tells me that she slit her wrists, not in the hotel, but later in life, because she was heartbroken and alone in her life. She says she often vists the hotel as she is drawn to the sad energy there. Once I left building one she disappeared. My spirit guides tell me the housekeeper has a home on the spirit side of life, has crossed over many years ago, but when she heard I was coming to the hotel she volunteered to meet me and be a tour guide of sorts and show me around. I thanked her and moved on to building two.

I would like to remind you again, that this is actually a true story :)…. I told you my life is stranger than fiction!

I am still on the 4th floor and there is a walk way that connects building one and two, on each floor at the corner of the “L” shape. As I walk across the “bridge” walkway, my eyes lock on to the hotel room door directly across from me which is room “431.” I can feel a strong, heavy and dark (not evil) energy coming from that room. I stop in front of the door and look at it a minute. There is a dragonfly on the door. It begins flying all aound the door but never leaving it, it stops and sits right on the number. Dragonfly to me symbolizes the spirit form. So, I take that as validation. I also know it is very common and easy for spirits to be able to influence insects and small animals, and get them to behave in ways to catch our attention. Spirits talk about these things ALL the time in readings, bringing validation to loved ones that they were trying to get a sign through to them letting them know they were there through a bug or a bird, dog or cat or whatever.

I open the door and walk in alone. I am at the far end of the hotel, facing the pool and everyone else is in the pool house. This wing is finished with and the room is equipped with furnishings and bed linens. I turn on the light switch on the wall and the light comes on and immediately goes off. I do this half dozen times and the light continues to turn on then go off. Irritated now, I leave the door open and turn on a floor lamp, it stays on. A middle aged man, middle to late 50’s in spirit form begins speaking to me. Hi sistting on the bed. He appears a bit over weight with dark hair. The room I see him living in is messy and he is a bit of a hoarder. He tells me he lives here. I am aware that he lived in the hotel for many months…not just a short week long stay. He tells me he was an “accidental suicide” which I know means an accidental overdose. He tells me he had addiction problems and financial problems and at the end of his life was not working and on disability. He OD’d on a lethal cocktail of alcohol, barbituates in the form of pills and other prescription pills. He gives me the names of “black beauty’s-speed and valium”. Unfortunately in my many years of work with sudden death, homicide and suicide I it seems I have become quite an expert on drug addciton and drugs and all the criminal activity that surrounds them. He had no family that he was in contact with, a loner, recluse and hermit. He was very anti-social. His mother had disowned him because of his money and drug problems. He had no one, and wanted no one in his life. He is the one that pushed the maintenance man against the wall. As he did in life, he pushed everyone away and wanted to be left alone. He was nice to me though and just talking very matter of factly. I was not afraid of him at all. I felt sorry for him. My body is a channel for energy, unusual energy and spiritual energy, so I use it to bring a lot of light and love in to the world from the spirit side or “Heaven,” if you prefer. As I bring the light in to the room, I see his mother standing in the distance on the other side of “the tunnel” often described by people in near death experiences. This is when he tells me what his mother had said to him, that she never wanted to see him again and that he was a “piece of shit as far as she was concerned.” That made me sad to hear. No matter how badly we get off track in life or what we do, what a horrible thing to hear from your own mom I think to myself. I said, “well, she is here now and she is very very sorry for saying that and she wants to see you now and wants you to come home”. He put his head down and “feels” sad. I tell him she says “She is sorry for a lot of things, very sorry. Please come home” So, hearing this and knowing she “wanted” him to come home, he got up from sitting on the bed with me…and walked into the tunnel to her. Yup, just like in the movies. Then he is gone, and the tunnel is too. The light stays. I stand there a few minutes and spead the light around to clear out the room from the lingering energy that is there. I walk in the rooms on either side and do the same. The rooms feel clear to me and light now.

There is one more spot in building two I need to see, so I walk down the hall round the corner towards the back of the building and still on the 4th floor. As I turn the corner I immediately “feel” it. The energy shifts and the darkness here is so dark it actually feels evil. Now let me say and be clear, not like an evil entity or spirit is here…but I feel that something very dark and evil happened here. Next to the stairwell there is a door open and swaying in the wind. Yes, I swear it is…not making this stuff up!! I look inside and it is a concrete block room with no windows or paint. it looks like a storage room and there are appliances in it, microwaves and coffee makers. My sense is other things were stored here…maybe a body or drugs or something rather sinister. This was remember at one time, a mob owned hotel. I continue to walk to the back of the buliding and I stop at the two rooms on the corner, next to one another. I know something really bad happened here, I can feel it. I turn around and look over the railing which over looks the parking lot, then a small drainage canal and then some trees lining the interstate. It’s dusk and gretting darker. Before I enter the rooms, I decide to walk down the hall, rooms on my left, railing and parking lot on my right. Half way down the hall, intutively I see a body to my right, lying just outside the parking lot next to the canal. It’s a woman. Then she is gone. This whole back area feels bad, heavy, dark and quite menacing actually. Im not afraid but intrigued and go back to the two rooms on the corner. It helps to remember, I will remind you again, that I do a lot of work with homicides and organized crime, so I am quite used to seeing these types of scenes. My attitude about these things at thist point, is much like a detective or cop. I am rather detached and unemotional about it at this point, seeing it as much as I do. I just have the unique ability to be able to interivew the deceased which comes in quite helpful!!

I walk in the two rooms on the corner. They are half way finished, have new carpet and furnishings and fixtures, but the mattresses are still covered in plastic and it has not been cleaned. There are some workers tools and a bucket of spackle in the floor. Intutitively, I begin to see a scene play out. I see 4 men, two men staying in each room. They are not nice men, violent men. There are guns on the tables and they are smoking and drinking. Three are hispanic and speaking in english with accents and one is white. The white one has a lot of tattoos and they all feel like they have been in prison and are criminal element. TV’s are on. First they are all in the corner room. They leave, to go out to a bar or something, and then come back late with a girl who is drunk and looking to “party” which I know means she wants to do drugs. She thinks she is coming back to do cocaine with them. I think to myself, stupid girl. The white man and hispanic man take her in the second room from the corner, the other two men go in the corner room and it looks like to sleep. She is “with” the white man. She is attractive, thin, with long dark hair approxiamtely in her middle 20’s to early 30’s. He lays out some lines of coke on the table by the window, and they all snort some. The white man starts kissing her and trys to push her on the bed, she resists, he starts hitting her and rapes her. The hispanic man follows and rapes her. This is the last thing I “see”. Then I see her body in the parking lot again. Then I see the spirit of the house keeper again who is now standing to my right in the room, showing me all of this and she points to the body in the parking lot. The spirit of the murdered girl is not here in the hotel, she has since crossed over to the spirit side a long time ago and I am told has no interest in comng back to this place. I can understand why, which is why the housekeeper is here showing me. The two men I am told are still alive. One is in prision one is not…neither man was ever caught for her murder. I then see the white man with his hands around the girls neck and I know he strangled her in the bed. They are not connected to the organized crime that once owned the hotel. They are just passing through and are driving a stolen car, they paid cash for the room. They are degenerates, dirt bags and street level criminals. The are the cockroaches and parasites of humanity…they make me sick. They are why I sometimes carry a gun. Although I am not afraid of spirits, I am afraid of people…I see too many of these scenes and I know that people do horrible things to other people. I have a gun with me this weekend. I am staying alone with Lee in a hotel that is not open yet and Im in a strange area, yes this is why I often carry a gun. I am often in areas that are not nice places to be, investigating all sorts of criminal activity. I have never felt afraid of a spirit, not once, not ever…but people, they scare me. I feel sad and disqusted. There are no spirits here haunting this part of this wing, there is just an “energy imprint” and impression of horrible energy. It is the energy of violence, ignorance, violation, victimization and brutality. I call in my spirit helpers and angels and ask them to help me fill this space with light. I begin moving around the rooms and hallway to fill the space with the energy of healing, light, love and compassion to clear out the energetic memory of what happened here. I say a prayer. It takes awhile and when I am done it is dark.

Luckily my Iphone has a flashlight as this wing has no lighting as I walk down the hall and the stairs. I bump in to the owners, manager and housekeeper as I turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs. They are waiting there too make sure I am ok. I begin to tell them some of what I picked up everywhere and what I did. I ask if room 431 is where the maintenance man was psychicly attacked. The house keeper says YES!! I ask her about the rooms in the back and ask her if those were the rooms she didn’t like and she says yes!! I tell her about the murder and rape I feel happened there and she tells me that 6 years ago, a womans body was found in that very spot I had seen her. She did not know if she was raped, but I think it is safe to assume she likely would have been. She knew nothing more about the incident. The owners incidentally, knew nothing of the body until the housekeeper confirmed my story. Apparently the housekeeper had been there for awhile and new things the new owners had no knowledge of. The housekeeper was also able to verify that she heard, before she worked there, a man lived in the hoitel and had died in it. She was not able to verify what room he lived, but I knew and based on the fact that the owner was able to verify that was where the maintenance man was attacked I am sure he lived in 431.

In the dark, with my handy Iphone flashlight, I walked with the housekeeper to all three areas to make sure she elt ok in them now. The manager reported seeing the spirit of the housekeeper around the rooms that I saw the prostitution scenes playout on the 4th floor in building one. When the house keeper and I entered 431 at first she was apprehensive to enter. When she did she felt she couldn’t breathe and looked afraid. She put her hand up to say to to me “hold on” as she clutched her throat. She then took a deep breath and said “ok, I feel ok now.” She said “I feel like I have to say good bye” I said, “well the man is here now and he came to say good bye to you.” I said, “he liked you because you looked after his room.” He says, “he is sorry he scared you,” and then just like that he was gone. She immediately felt a huge relase and and said she felt much better. There was one room I did not notice, but dhe asked me to check. She said, she didnt like to go in the bathroom of this room. When I went in, what was now a shower, I was as a bathtup with a woman lying in it. I felt she fell asleep or passed out and dorwned in it. I did not see her spirit acutally, but the spirit of the housekeeper showed me the scene. The manager was able to verify that she “heard there was a drowning here” but she did not know any details. I suspect it was in this bathtub. I asked my spirit helpers to also clear out this area. The hiousekeeper felt better, just having that vaildation and knowing the spirit was no longer there. I feel the spirit of the housekeeper was also communicating with the actual housekeeper as she was was very sensitive and able to see and fell spirits like me.

So, all’s well that ends well. I returned to the pool room where I spoke to all the staff and owners about everything that I saw and what I did to clear the spirits and the old energy out. Then some family members of the staff and the owner’s appeared and I delivered a few personal messages to them from their loved ones on the spirit side of life. The owner’s business partner’s father and his and his sister’s grandmother and also their sister came through with soime messages. The owner’s niece, who had joined us in the pool house, had lost her father when she was 9 in a car accident and he came through with messages for her and she was now 14. I talked about a recent award she got in school and some other things and she began to cry…as did my assistant Lee!! Everyone was happy to know they had “happy-family spirits” there as well, and to know that their loved ones were watching over them and the hotel.

At this point it was late around 10pm and I was exhausted. Lee and I headed to a local restaurant for some food and margarta’s to celebrate another happy ending to a haunting and a very interesting day! When we returned at midnight we were greeted by the armed night security man who I was happy to see, since we were the only one’s staying the night in the entire hotel. He assured us he would keep an eye on our room and made me put his number in my cell phone in case we needed him. I am happy to report Lee and I slept soundly with no haunting activity to speak of and ironicly were were given room “134” in building two, which was the building that was most haunted.

So, as I always say…there was no evil spirit at this haunting. And just like an episode of Scooby do, our story ends on a happy note, not a scary one!! Every spirit has a story and the story’s are always about healing and closure…not evil. People are evil, people do evil things, but evil is a “human condition” – NOT a spirit condition. I will follow up with everyone in a week or so and have instructed them to contact me if any activity perists. I do not expect to hear from them.

I will post a few videos about this trip, so make sure you check them out as well on my facebook and youtube pages.

Just another day in my very interesting life…..

2 Comments

2 Responses to “My Night in a Haunted Hotel”

  1. Janet Gardo says:

    This was very interesting. I believe every bit of it too. I have a bedroom in my house I feel dark energy in. Like something maybe happened before in there. Not a murder but maybe a rape or someone got into a big fight?

    You sound very good. I may have to get a reading soon! Thanks!

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