Spirits, ghosts and demons are stars of paranormal convention next week in Santa Paula

Ventura paranormal investigator Heather Woodward sat in one of the rooms at Santa Paula's Glen Tavern Inn, her eyes closed, her pen moving across a sheet of paper.

Her sister, Sarah Woodward of Ojai, sat next to her asking questions as Heather's pen looped and scratched.

"Who is this? Can you give me your name?" Sarah asked.

The pen in Heather's hand moved, but there were no legible words.

"Are you the lady in white?" Sarah tried again.

"Yes," Heather's pen wrote.

"Are you French?" Sarah continued.

"Yes."

"Pretty?"

"Yes."

The pen kept moving.

"Sex," it wrote. "Mistress. Lover. Tall, dark, handsome. Mustache."

There was more.

"Killed. Miscarriage. Bled to death."

The session was an example of automatic writing, in which the spirit of a dead person allegedly communicates through a living person, or medium. In this case, Heather believed she was channeling a French perfume saleswoman who supposedly died during the 1930s in the Glen Tavern Inn. Before the session, Heather had explained that she goes into a trance while the spirit uses her hand to write.

Automatic writing is just one of dozens of paranormal practices that will be discussed and explored during the 2007 South Coast Paranormal Convention on Friday and Saturday at the historic inn.

Other workshops will include discussions on paranormal sound phenomena, enhancing psychic abilities, the use of technology to document the paranormal, two seances and an all-night investigation into the spirits who may have never checked out of the Arts and Crafts-style inn.

The convention is sponsored by a Southern California group of paranormal investigators who call themselves The Real Deal. Heather, the founder of group and lead organizer of the event, said the location choice is no accident. Those who believe in all things otherworldly say the inn is exceptionally haunted.

"It's like spook central," said Ventura County historian and ghost hunter Richard Senate, who will speak at the convention.

Senate said that "any older hotel worth its salt is haunted" because of the number of human beings who pass through, but, according to believers, the Glen Tavern has some supernatural geography that makes it the perfect storm of opportunity for paranormal activity.

"There's a theory that there are ley-lines,' which are a grid of spider web energy lines that span the Earth," Senate said. "The theory's been around since the turn of the century. These are energy lines people feel. It's where we build shrines and places of worship because they just feel good."

Senate said he once marked out Ventura County's ley lines according to the location of Chumash shrines, modern churches and spots considered especially haunted.

"All of the ley lines ran right through the lobby of the Glen Tavern Inn," he said.

Another theory is that the inn's reputation may be the result of the colorful people who have stayed there since it was built in 1911.

"All kinds of dynamic individuals have stayed there and as such have left energy behind," Senate said.

Santa Paula historian, artist and author John Nichols has another theory.

"We've lived in Santa Paula 31 years," he said. "When we first moved here, it wasn't haunted. And then somebody along the way — one of the former owners, I think — got the idea that a ghost would be a good marketing device. So they went to Central Casting and got a ghost."

They never checked out

Glen Tavern night innkeeper Susan Gallagher is among those who say the ghostly happenings are all too real, although she stressed that the occurrences are not frightening — just intriguing.

"It's not a scary place," Gallagher said, leaning against one of the overstuffed couches in the tavern's carpeted lobby. "It's very warm and inviting."

One of Gallagher's more memorable experiences was when the piano at the bar began playing by itself.

"The next day, a lady came in," Gallagher said. "She had a forlorn look on her face. She came in and said: My father died. I came here because he used to like to come in here and play the piano.' "

The other ghosts at the inn are rooted further back in history, or in myth, depending on whom you talk to.

A few years ago, the kitchen was undergoing some remodeling when someone found a 1920s-style bowler hat there, with what looked like a bullet hole through it.

Many, including Senate, believe the hat belonged to the Glen Tavern's most famous ghost, Calvin.

"According to one story, he worked on Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show," Senate said. "He grew his hair long and had a goatee and a beard."

After the show ended, he did what a lot of out-of-work actors did and came to Hollywood to try to find work. He was too old to fit Hollywood's image of the virile cowboy, Senate said, so he was hired as a wrangler whose job it was to make sure all the horses used in movies and shows were saddled. Calvin was among many actors and film crew members who stayed at the inn when on location in the 1920s.

Although Nichols doubts Calvin ever existed, he did confirm that Santa Paula was a very busy place during the silent film era. It is conceivable some crew members stayed at the inn.

Room 307

According to Heather, who led a recent visitor through the inn, the third floor was a hotbed of gambling, prostitution and bootleg liquor.

"Here's the mother lode of all rooms: 307," said Heather, pausing outside a room at the end of the third-floor hallway.

Heather, who has written a book called "The Ghosts of Glen Tavern Inn," said she believes much of the gambling took place in the notorious Room 307, along with a lot of other human drama.

It was in 307 that Calvin reportedly took part in regular poker games, Senate said.

"When the crew was paid, they always played poker and he always won," Senate said. "One day he was playing cards and they found him cheating. In the ensuing scuffle, the guy got shot."

Senate tried to substantiate the story of Calvin through historical records but "couldn't find a dang thing."

"It's not uncommon," he added. "These fly-by-night movie companies didn't keep good records."

Nichols doubts it, even in light of the bowler hat with the bullet hole.

"You can punch a hole in a bowler hat with a pool cue," Nichols said.

He also doubts that a city like Santa Paula was in the 1920s would have put up with a hotbed of liquor, gambling and prostitution during Prohibition.

"This was a dry town in that day," Nichols said. "You're in a very rural, moral town."

Certainly there might have been poker games and prostitution going on, but Nichols doubts it was well-organized.

"You could probably go anywhere and find a poker game," Nichols said. "As far as prostitution, that's the oldest profession. Doesn't it seem logical a building full of beds might attract some prostitutes?"

Senate said she believes illegal activity was centralized at the Glen Tavern Inn by design. It was a way of keeping the activity contained.

"The top floor of the inn was pretty much reserved for illegal activities: gambling, drinking and prostitution," Senate said. "In those days law enforcement said, We can't stop this activity, so we'll kind of control it.'"

Ghostly gals of Glen Tavern

The paranormal convention will include two seances in different rooms at the inn, said Heather, who added that she and the eight-member Real Deal team have been researching the inn by going through and picking up impressions, testing those impressions with electromagnetic-field detectors and other devices, and looking up history.

One of the seance rooms, on the first floor, was supposedly occupied by a madam Heather calls "Pearl."

"We don't know her real name," Heather said. "She was of French descent. She wanted to be a star. She really liked her money and liked to count her money. She has a very hearty laugh."

Heather said paranormal investigators call her Pearl because they believe she was strangled by her own pearls.

The other seance will be held in another first-floor room supposedly frequented by a 1920s prostitute that Heather calls "Rose."

"Rose likes to open and close the doors," Heather said. "She makes the phone ring."

Heather and other members of The Real Deal say they have heard Pearl but have actually seen an apparition of Rose.

"Rose has a short bob, an olive complexion, dark hair," Heather said. "Pearl has a broader nose, red nails, red lipstick."

The perfume saleswoman that Heather believes she channeled through her automatic-writing session has been detected through smell, according to another member of The Real Deal, Chad Saunders of Ventura. Saunders said the overwhelming smell of perfume will sometimes permeate a hallway in the hotel.

"I want to say violets. It's very floral," Saunders said.

Other mysteries

Convention guests, who already number about 100, will tour the rooms thought to be the most haunted during an all-night paranormal investigation.

"We're going to do a full-on investigation," Heather said. "We've rented out all the haunted rooms."

Investigators will use tools such as the electromagnetic-field detector to detect paranormal activity. A smooth, steady rise in the detector means it's probably just picking up an electrical current, but a sudden spike could mean a brush with the supernatural, Heather said.

"If an EMF goes off, it's a ghost or spirits trying to communicate," she said.

Keynote speaker Chris Fleming, who appeared on the Biography Channel's "Dead Famous" series, will speak about pairing technology with human sensitivity, the primary theme of the conference.

"We're trying to bridge the gap between the technical investigation and the psychic investigation," Heather said. "I'm psycho-sensitive, but I do rely on my technical equipment."

Senate plans to speak about telling the difference between whether you're seeing a ghost or just picking up something called "house memories" or "retrocognition."

"When you go into a room and see a ghostly person or re-enactment of an event, you may not be seeing a ghost at all but a replay of an event from the past," Senate said. "The term house memory' means that houses are alive and remember things in a subliminal way."

One of Saunders' lectures will be on telepathy vs. empathy. "That's the difference between picking up on somebody's impression vs. the impression that is there," he said, "reading people vs. reading the place."

The truth is out there

Although a 2005 Gallup poll found three out of four Americans believe in some type of paranormal phenomenon, skeptics like Dr. Robert Todd Carroll scoff at all of it. Carroll, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and taught critical thinking at Sacramento City College from 1977 to 2007, runs a Web site called skepdic.com, which categorically addresses every paranormal phenomenon from A to Z.

A selection on ghosts, for example, suggests there is a naturalistic explanation for all ghostly activity, but often the details needed to explain it are not available.

"We must rely on anecdotal evidence, which is always incomplete and selective," Carroll wrote, "and which is often passed on by interested, inexperienced, superstitious parties who are ignorant of basic physical laws."

Heather said she keeps her investigative team balanced by including skeptics, like her sister, Sarah. Sarah said she believes there might be something out there beyond our understanding, but she needs more proof.

"The whole capturing ghosts on camera thing? I don't believe it," she said.

When her sister shows her photos supposedly of ghosts, Sarah is very skeptical.

"They say, Oh, look at this picture!' And I'm like, That's the light reflection,'" she said.

Nichols, too, said he is open-minded but needs more historical proof to back up the assertions. "Are you going to trust a dead prostitute or a live historian?" he said.