Here's another incident of mine. People have asked me that with my experience with the demon in my childhood how I'd dare go into a known "haunted" location. I always answer that I'm not afraid of much and it seemed like an interesting adventure at the time.

Back in 2013 when I first started dating my current girlfriend we got onto the subject of her nursing ghost stories. Of course her confidentiality requirements don't allow her to discuss much that is work-related, but she was able to tell me enough that it stoked my desire to fulfill one of the items on my bucket list: to take a real ghost tour with authentic ghost investigators just like on the TV shows.

So, in Las Cruces, New Mexico there is an old hotel that dates from the Old West. It's been a hotel, a bank, a brothel, and other things during its history. It's a historic landmark and a local ghost investigator society is allowed to charge customers to accompany them on a genuine ghost investigation. So I paid the money and we showed up for the "tour". It's the Amador hotel and is currently being restored to its original floor plan and is right now closed to the public.

It's important to note that one of my trademarks is that I wear an Australian slouch hat (looks like the classic movie green safari hat with puggaree). On this particular evening, the sun had gone down and I decided to leave it in the car for the ghost tour. To most people it looks like a "green cowboy hat" if you're not familiar with the old Tarzan movies. I was the only one in the group to wear such a hat to the tour, even though I left it in the car. This will become significant in a while, you'll see.

During the ghost tour, we were invited to silently walk through some of the corridors on the ground floor of the hotel. I have a "gift." I can walk into a haunted building and sense if there is an evil presence there. While walking in one of the corridors, I definitely felt the presence of something totally evil that did not want us there. Others in the group noticed it too.

As the evening progressed, the ghost investigators did the usual "parlor trick" of placing a flashlight on a table with the head mostly unscrewed, so that the "spirits" are supposed to answer questions by turning the flashlight on and off. They did this through several questions. At one point, they tried to contact the spirit of a famous local murder victim. The murder was never "officially" solved, although a book was written by a man who claimed to have solved the murder. He claimed that a man who lived with his mother was the killer and the investigators had totally missed it. So at one point during the "contact" session with this murder victim, members of the audience were allowed to ask the spirit of the deceased girl some questions. Most asked about the political intrigue surrounding the murder, etc. When it became my turn to ask, I asked if she had been murdered by the the guy with the two dogs who lived with his mother. The flashlight flashed once for "yes". This is something that probably was not faked because unless you've read that author's book you would never believe the murderer was someone other than the people named in the official narrative. Had the ghost hunters somehow been willing to fake the answer to that question, they almost certainly would have had the flashlight stay in the "off" position for a "no" answer.

The investigators also made it a point to tell us that the spirits in that hotel like to mess with electronic devices. Several just wouldn't work right during the tour. This will become significant toward the end of my story.

The ghost investigators contacted the spirit of a little girl who made a toy move. At one point a flashlight left in an adjacent room turned on so brightly that it lit up the adjacent room like a huge spotlight was turned on! We went back into that room and there was the lowly Maglite sitting on the table. No spotlight. When people started asking the child ghost questions like, "What's it like on the other side?", the spirit suddenly shut up and didn't want to talk anymore. Can't reveal there's a Heaven and Hell, kid, is that the deal?

As we went upstairs, no one was left on the ground floor, and yet we saw one of the flashlights turn on and stay on as we ascended the stairs.

On the top floor, the ghost hunters contacted a prostitute that had lived in the hotel. As they asked the spirit questions, several women felt their hair getting brushed by something invisible. The ghost hunters just laughed, and said, "She doesn't like women for some reason." At this point they asked the spirit, "Is there any man in this room you do like?" The spirit answered audibly through one of those spirit boxes, "COW...BOOOOOYYYYYEEEEEEEE." Remember I had left my safari hat in the car, and how I had described it as looking like a green cowboy hat to a lot of people?

There were several more minor things like cold spots and more women getting their hair brushed, but eventually the evening ended and my girlfriend and I went to our separate homes.

Days later, my girlfriend frantically called me one afternoon to ask if I had experienced anything strange at my house. I said, "No, why?" She explained that a radio she left in her daughter's room had turned on spontaneously while her daughter was in school. Upon inspecting the radio, we found that the alarm was turned off, and the switch was set to "manual", meaning you had to move it to the on position with your hand.

A few nights later, as I was lying in bed, I was awakened by the sound of the carbon monoxide alarm going off. Note that this was the time of year when it was still too warm to have the furnace on. There should have been no source of carbon monoxide anywhere in the house. Later that night, I felt the same evil presence above my bed that I had felt in that hallway of the old hotel. I saw what looked like an indistinct black shape moving across the ceiling. Quickly I shouted at it, "In the name of Jesus Christ you were not invited into this house and I command you to leave."

Neither my girlfriend or I have had another incident, but we don't go on ghost tours anymore, either.