Paranormal activity in Spokane? What ghost hunters found in three historic downtown buildings

Immediately after stepping inside the Montvale Hotel’s Room 310, Jennifer Von Behren said she sensed a female spirit.

Fellow paranormal investigator Kika Morelan took out a vintage audio recorder that is no longer in production and routinely sells on eBay for more than $1,000.

Morelan said this Panasonic DR60 can pick up the voices of ghosts.

“We are in Montvale Room 310. My name is Kika. If there is someone here with us, can you please say ‘hello’?” Morelan said while recording, pausing a beat before continuing. “Can you give us your name?”

Ghosts are everywhere, the local ghost hunters said during an outing with The Spokesman-Review, and downtown Spokane is no exception.

Founded by Morelan two decades ago, the Spokane Paranormal Investigation Group can get as many as five calls a day come October – their busy season. Morelan, 63, estimates she has conducted at least 200 investigations.

She moved to Washington from Finland when she was in her 20s. A retired electrical business co-owner, she treats her ghost hunting as a full-time job. The Spokane Paranormal Investigation Group has an official business license and general liability insurance.

Von Behren, 48, is not officially part of the Spokane Paranormal Investigation Group, but she has accompanied Morelan and the other three members on investigations when she can for the past 10 years. Von Behren claims to be a medium, able to see and communicate with ghosts, and Morelan uses devices sensitive to electromagnetic fields to attempt communication herself – though the tools are not always accurate, she said.

“She’s a medium, and she’s always been a medium,” Morelan said of Von Behren. “I research. We are paranormal researchers who investigate anything mysterious, paranormal, unnatural thing using equipment, since we’re not psychics.”

Being a medium is like taking the five senses and “kicking them up a notch,” Von Behren said. A Coeur d’Alene mother to three boys, she described herself as a “serial entrepreneur,” having owned shops, selling “telepathy decks” of cards and hosting one-on-one “spirit readings” professionally. She said she can tell how many ghosts are in a building just from seeing a picture of it.

“Yeah, so, real people that really do this stuff, most of us want to help people, and then this is like a fun side thing,” Von Behren said about touring “haunted” locations. “And it does help people, too … because then they understand why things are going bump in the night. Is it a good entity? Is it something that needs to go away? So that’s what we do.”

A lot of times, the calls Morelan gets are people who just need a listening ear.

“Most of the calls we get are people that have issues with the paranormal and they have nobody else to talk to, because everyone is going to think they’re crazy,” she said. “So we listen a lot of times. They just need somebody to listen – and, we can handle things over the phone with the distant readings.”

Trying to convince people that ghosts exist is not on the priority list for the pair.

“We’re not here to convert anybody. You believe or you don’t – we don’t care one way or the other,” Morelan said. “We’re just researchers.”

That did not stop them from getting giddy about a walkthrough of one of downtown Spokane’s iconic hotels – the Montvale.

The Montvale

Built in 1899 by Spokane Judge John W. Binkley, the Montvale has functioned as an apartment building, a brothel and a youth hostel until Expo ’74, before shutting down for 30 years. Under developer Rob Brewster, the hotel reopened in 2005, and today, the ground floor is occupied by pubs and cafes while the upper two floors are hotel rooms.

Room 310 was the first stop, picked by Montvale manager Zachary Neighbors because of complaints from guests.

There was no clear response after Moreland started recording, but Von Behren said the ghost was answering the questions.

Morelan unloaded her backpack of other ghost detection tools – an electromagnetic field-detecting call bell, music box, light and two flashlights, unscrewed just far enough to turn off but be turned back on by the slightest touch.

“Is your name Katie? Ring the bell for ‘yes.’ Or Caitlin?” Von Behren asked.

The bell, across the room from them, rang.

Von Behren “translated” that the ghost “Caitlin” had been killed in the street outside the Montvale around 60 years ago. It is not immediately apparent whether a woman named Caitlin was actually killed in the streets in front of the hotel. Von Behren said that the ghost likes to “mess with the TV” and make things move to “freak people out” in Room 310, along with the room next to it. The bell rang intermittently as she spoke.

Somebody died in the room in the past two years, Neighbors said, and guests in the room have complained about the lights turning on by themselves in the past.

In Room 203, Von Behren and Morelan repeated the procedure. Von Behren said this room also was haunted : a male ghost reporting he died of a heart attack. A handheld electromagnetic field detector spiked once or twice, and the field detecting light changed colors. Neighbors said he did not know whether anyone had died in the room.

The Montvale basement is largely used for storage; an old shower room, bathroom and remnants of an underground pool remain. In a dimly lit corner, home to dozens of pipes, is a standalone chair Neighbors never moves because “I feel like it is somebody’s.”

Sure enough, Von Behren said there were two men around the chair. Morelan set up her equipment, and the flashlights flickered on and off as Von Behren said that the ghosts were drinking buddies in life. One seemed to be a smuggler from the Prohibition era, she said, the other a flirty bartender.

It is rumored that alcohol was smuggled through underground tunnels in Spokane during Prohibition. Historian John Fahey told the Inlander more than 20 years ago that, while there were utility tunnels under downtown buildings, it is unlikely they were used for transporting alcohol.

Von Behren toyed with the idea of coming back with a bottle of booze and pack of cigars for the ghosts before leaving.

Morelan and Von Behren found a fourth ghost in a dark stairwell in the basement as well, one that Von Behren said had touched her hair. Neighbors also said that he has experienced the sensation of cobwebs on his head in the stairwell before, only to find nothing . This ghost was skittish, and Von Behren said it would not play with the toys. Neighbors led the group back to the hotel lobby.

The Davenport

The Historic Davenport hotel has long been regarded one of the must-visit haunted locations in Spokane for paranormal enthusiasts. Von Behren herself said she has seen several ghosts in the hotel, which opened in 1914. Like the Montvale, the Davenport had a period of abandonment from 1985 to 2000.

“This is where I met Bing Crosby,” Von Behren said, standing outside the Davenport’s Marie Antoinette Ballroom. It was his ghost she met, of course, along with Al Capone’s.

Crosby grew up in Spokane and began his professional music career partially in what is now the Bing Crosby Theater in 1925, but he also played with his band, the Musicaladers, at the hotel early on.

Capone’s brother Frank Capone visited Spokane in 1936, the Spokane Chronicle reported. It is unclear whether Al Capone himself ever visited the city.

The Davenport’s lobby was too busy for Von Behren and Morelan to search for ghosts, and while they sensed a spirit in the Hall of the Doges foyer on the second floor, they said it was quiet.

A handful of high-profile deaths have occurred at the Davenport Hotel, the most famous arguably the 1920 crash through the ceiling of Ellen McNamara. A 68-year-old visiting from New York City, McNamara mistakenly wandered onto the glass skylight over the hotel lobby, The Spokesman-Review detailed in 2005.

“While McNamara did medically expire in The Davenport, some at the hotel swear she never fully left the building,” the article states.

An employee at the hotel, Archie Gonia, 25, was murdered on-site in 1973, left beaten and strangled on Floor 12.

The history behind the “haunted” locations she visits and the ghosts she meets is a big part of the passion behind ghost hunting for Von Behren.

“History is fascinating,” she said. “So you get to see the history of the buildings, you get to see cool things like basements.”

The Review Tower

Built in 1890 for the Spokane Falls Review and currently home to The Spokesman-Review, the Review Tower is older than the Montvale and the Davenport. While many paranormal believers might agree old buildings tend to house a spirit or two, as far as recent memory serves, ghost hunters have never toured the tower.

Two ghosts were in the basement of the building, standing among archived newspapers and files, according to Von Behren. When Von Behren entered the storage room, she said it felt like water had been there before.

The basement of the Review Tower has flooded multiple times, damaging newspapers and causing mold growth.

Flashlights set up by Morelan flashed a few times, and the music box played briefly, though the electromagnetic field devices could be impacted by the basement’s pipes, she said.

Tenants live in some spaces of the building, and walking through the residential staircase, Von Behren said there were two ghosts. One, an agitated drunken man slumped in a corner, and another, a man who had been shot in the head. Morelan tried the audio recording device in the corner with the drunken ghost, her voice echoing in the empty stairwell, and for the first time of the tour the player picked up a very audible but garbled noise following her questions. Von Behren was not able to find the ghost who was shot.

At the very top of the Review Tower, Morelan laid out her sensors. Von Behren said that there was a teacher visiting, the wife of a former employee.

“She’s so cute,” Von Behren said. “She’s, like, sitting on the floor trying to play with everything, and she says, ‘This is fascinating.’ ”

Downtown Spokane is a hot spot for ghosts who like to party, Von Behren said. She said that the teacher in the tower was one such party animal. Ghosts are everywhere, though, she and Morelan said.

Morelan does not like big groups. She says that they distract from the paranormal activity, and so the Spokane Paranormal Investigation Group is not welcoming new members. Anyone interested in ghost hunting can get started on their own, though, Morelan said.

“You can read books. You can watch stuff online. They’ll teach you how to use equipment, how to investigate and all that,” she said. “You should always go with somebody.”

Von Behren said that she will lead public investigations because she knows “how to protect the entire group.” Spirits can be dangerous, after all.

“So sometimes when you go to do a ghost investigation,” she said, “you don’t want to go in somewhere and take somebody home with you.”