Investigation The Palmer House
Sauk Centre Minnesota is known for being the home of writer Sinclair Lewis. Noted by the large mural on the back of the Palmer House Hotel, the street the hotel sits on is Sinclair Lewis Avenue and his gravesite it just about a mile and a half away at Greenwood Cemetery.
The Palmer was originally called the Sauk Centre House until a devastating fire in 1900 burned the establishment down to the ground. In 1901 Ralph & Christena Palmer built the Palmer House Hotel as it now sits. The Palmers lived in the hotel along with their 2 children and Christena’s uncle. Sparing no expense, the Palmers made the hotel first class, with running water and electricity. Ralph Palmer also raised hunting dogs and kept the dogs in kennels in the basement at times.
The hotel now boasts more modern amenities when it underwent a pretty extensive reno in 1993. The original hotel housed 38 small rooms with only 1 common bathroom on each floor. Now there are 19 rooms, each with their own bathroom. (You can look on their website to see the exact floorplans of the hotel) The basement is still the basement – and what you would expect…eerie and expansive. You can pretty darn easily get turned around down there, especially in the pitch dark! In the main area where you can see the exposed rock that was the foundation of the Sauk Centre House. The rocks are heavily charred still to this day from the fire. Along with some of the rafters above. There is no firm proof that anyone died in the fire – people have speculated of course, and it would make sense with all the paranormal activity that is very frequent. It is also the place that Kelley (owner) was told by a psychic to dig….and what did Kelley find?? Bones. She dug with a kitchen spoon till she found enough to put in a small box, left the box downstairs to run upstairs….came back and the box along with the bones were gone. Could have been the spirits of the Palmer hid them away knowing that Kelley was trying so hard to get the hotel open by a certain date, and finding bones would have totally stopped the process.
The very first paranormal event was held at the Palmer in 2008 – and Dave Schrader was right there. Dave has been coming to the Palmer for many years and has a wonderful relationship with not only Kelley and her staff, but the spirits as well. We got his name several times on our equipment and the Necrophonic App during our solo investigations. The respect and love that Dave has for the Palmer is so evident and it is 10000% catching. We can’t WAIT to go back.
The first night of investigations were split up with 3 teams: Team A with Dave in the main floor café area, Team B with Dalen Spratt in the basement, and Team C on 2nd & 3rd floor with Kevin Swanson. We got to be the first team to go down to the basement. We headed into the side room where the bones were found – got a few responses on the Necrophonic. Mind you – this night we both decided to just let the “pros” use the equipment and left ours in our room, planning on breaking everything out on Saturday night for the free roam. It was fun and interesting to focus on Dalen, Dave & Kevin and how they investigate and what they like to use. Dave is old school – he LOVES his recorder (which we need to be better at using!) Dalen is an APP guy, he uses the Sonos App and of course Dave had him download the Necrophonic (see the video on our page of that hysterical situation) Kevin is a tech guy – he had an SLS set up all night in Raymond’s Room, and had other pieces of equipment. Next was the main room then the ‘Snowman Room’ – let me tell you. Seeing a large animatronic snowman sitting in a basement in the dark is a tad bit unnerving. Especially when its been noted he likes to move…even though he has no power to him. We really just listened and paid attention to what others were hearing, feeling. Next up was the 2nd & 3rd floor. The kids room on the 3rd floor (close to our room) we had already had an experience in with someone playing with cat balls and Michelle feeling/seeing a little girl. We watched the SLS for a bit, had a nice chat with Kevin then headed to the main level to sit with Dave and go over EVPs. All in all a really nice night, relaxing and just getting to know people. There was evidence caught and reviewed – which made us really really be excited for Saturday night.
Saturday was the Graveyard Shift day. Dalen has a great YouTube show where he goes to graveyards and connects with spirits. It’s a great concept and its very ‘attainable’ – just basically your time/money to travel with your phone, recorder and that’s it. The encounters he has had are amazing and scary. Michelle and I decided to hoof it to the cemetery – people thought we were crazy. 1.5 miles in about 40 degrees and a nice balmy Minnesota wind. That’s freaking SHORTS weather in MN!!
The graveyard was absolutely astounding. The main investigation with Dave & Dalen over Sinclair Lewis’s grave came first – but we weren’t picking up very much on him. So they fanned us out and let us go where we felt called. Michelle was immediately drawn to a large gravestone with the name Swift on it. But what was there was something smaller. Next to the large headstone was a small ground level plaque for a soldier – Robert. Using the Necrophonic (and NOT recording it on video or recorder…DUMB) we learned he wanted to come home, someone sang to us in a high childs voice. Robert was a WWII soldier and was killed in France – his body remains there all that was at the Greenwood Cemetery was his plaque. Later the group received messages from a little girl named Sarah that emotionally touched all of us. Anytime you have a child spirit that lingers it just hits differently. We walked back and prepared for the Saturday night investigation.
In between the 9pm start investigations we had a gallery reading, time with Kevin to go over equipment and several hours of just listening to Dalen and Dave talk about their experiences. Not only in paranormal, and their investigations – but also in dealing with the whole juggernaut of tv. Needless to say we won’t be looking to sign any contracts with BIG media anytime soon. To those people that think its staged – well, in a way you’re right. There is a plan, a script for pieces of the show and an idea of what they want to accomplish. But shit happens with spirits and sometimes it can take a day to get some good tv….other days it can take 7-10 days. Next time anyone sees Shane Pittman (#poorshane) ask him about the time on the Holzer Files he had to go underground in the train yard…..for SEVEN HOURS. TV is TV – you have producers and executives that WANT something. Jason Hawes has talked on his podcast about having actual evidence manipulated by a certain TV producer which caused a very unhappy team. But outside of the very select few – we both believe that paranormal investigators, spiritualists, mediums, ghost hunters…whatever you want to call us……we TRULY believe most are upstanding, moral people that just are looking for answers and want to share that with the world. Also the FOOD at the Palmer is outstanding, the help is AWESOME and its just a fun place to be.
So. Saturday Night. Basement. Just us. In a corner, no lights up against the sooty walls of the original Sauk Centre House. We had a few things happen, including 3 of us seeing a shadow figure pace between the boiler and the door to upstairs, but when we started getting these words on the GEC SpiritChat, we were so confused….. “Soldier” “Buried” “World War 2” Did someone die in the basement that was a soldier??? Then……”Robert” HOLY SHIT. Robert from the cemetery had followed us back to the Palmer. He just wanted to let us know he was there. After we gathered ourselves and said hello, everything quietly died down. So we decided to pick up and move to the Snowman Room. Then things got crazy. Instead of writing 4 paragraphs on what happened – here is a quick breakdown:
1. 2 people felt like ants were crawling all over them
2. The FREAKING SNOWMAN moved
3. Our Ghost Rempod from GEC was interacted with twice – with multiple people in the room
4. Catballs were touched 2 different times.
5. We had Dave’s name come through like 5 times – then he came into the room and they got quiet. We get it spirits, he is kinda a legend.
After all that, and me dusting myself off since I laid on the floor trying to get a good angle for the grid light… we decided to move one last time back to the main room of the basement. By this time it was fairly quiet, a lot of people had traveled back upstairs. It was a little hard with people walking overhead but it was PITCH DARK and the energy was a little different. We kept seeing flashes of light…small, bright white light. Now, it COULD be that it was light from the basement windows coming in, there was really no way to debunk it. More shadow movement, freezing cold spurts….and then my phone that I had very carefully (trust me, I mean CAREFULLY) put on the bar height next to me SHOT off the chair, under my chair and over to Michelle’s foot. THAT got our attention. But then nothing…..radio silence. Something telling us to go away. So we started packing up, the last thing to grab was the GEC Ghost Rempod and before we could grab it (and with this piece of equipment you HAVE to come into contact with it to set it off, it doesn’t react to vibration or movement around it) it went off. We just had said we were leaving because it was midnight and we didn’t want to get locked in the basement. I guess the spirits didn’t want us in there either!
That was the end of the night. On a side note, I didn’t mention this earlier but there was a full production crew at the event. Filming. We spent some time with them – which was fun, exciting, scary and a little overwhelming. But you know when you have 2 crazy ladies with matching sweatshirts hauling around 10 pounds of their own equipment…..you catch some attention. So. Fingers crossed for that!
