It was a spooky October night in Philadelphia, a town rife with the ghosts of Revolutionary War heroes, homeless crack addicts, and the Dead Milkmen’s drummer. You can feel history and hauntedness just oozing like ectoplasm out of the ancient cobblestone streets of Olde City. Either that or it’s the slime from the steamy sewer grates boiling the garbage that never seems to get picked up. But where were we? Oh yeah, it was a spoooky night in the City of Brotherly Scares ’n’ Chills, and we were going on a ghost hunt.

Or maybe it can more accurately be called a ghost stakeout. There is a newish hotel here called the Ridgemont. In olden times (the 70s and 80s), the building was a shelter for abandoned children, teenagers, and runaways. It was called the Rainbow House, and it was founded by a man of the cloth named Father Gerard Hopper. Scared yet? The charity grew over the years to house around 6,000 kids. Still not scared? OK, let’s throw in the repeated charges of rape, molestation, and orphan abuse. Now we’re cooking with spooky gas!

The Vatican, wanting nothing to do with Father Hopper, transferred him to India, where there are absolutely zero orphans to abuse. Eventually the Ridgemont Hotel took over the Rainbow House building. The hotel, not unlike the Chelsea in New York, is a live-in sort of place. Charming, cozy, a little seedy and a little posh, it has reported ghost sightings just about every day.

Just a few months ago, a photographer and his assistant stayed at the newly renovated Ridgemont. After a few drinks in the lobby bar, they each retired to their bedrooms. The assistant’s room was on the fourth floor, while her boss’s was a floor above.

Upon walking into her room, she saw a strange girl sitting on her bed. “Get the fuck out of my room!” the girl screamed at her, over and over, “Get the fuck out of my room.” Totally pissing herself, the assistant ran up to her boss’s room and told him what happened. When he accompanied her back to her room, sure enough, it was empty. She told him she was still really freaked out and asked to stay in his room. No problem, he said, just grab your things and meet me upstairs. She packed her bags and went into the bathroom to collect her toiletries. In there, a different girl accosted her. “Get the fuck out of my room,” the second girl screamed as the assistant dropped her belongings and fled.

So we drove to Philly. We made a reservation to stay in a room on the fourth floor, and we walked around trying to talk to people and gather information. John, a young and polite worker at the front desk, told us about frequent noise complaints regarding children on the fourth floor. Debbie, part of the housekeeping staff, said that on two occasions she has seen girls dancing and playing on that floor. We spoke with a night manager, who wouldn’t give his name. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, “There are no ghosts here.” The time was 7:30PM.

Janice, head of the hotel’s accounting and a friend of a friend of ours, told us what happened when she stayed on the fourth floor. “We all get radios when we work here, to make sure that nothing goes wrong. One night, my radio suddenly turns on and I hear a girl screaming hysterically. There is a man on the radio who says, ‘We have a problem in 412. We need a cot; I repeat we need an extra bed.’ At the Ridgemont, we don’t have cots. Everyone who works here knows that. When I called in to see what the problem was, I got no response. It turns out that room 412 was vacant that night.”

A security guard by the name of Reggie told us that one night, all the guards were gathered around a security-camera video. “We have cameras in all the halls,” he said. The video of that particular night showed a spectral young girl crouched down in the corner. “It looked like she was hiding or something, just trying not to be seen. It was like all white, and it was fucked-up, yo!”

It seemed like almost everyone at the Ridgemont who would talk to us had a story. But we were going to find out for ourselves. The following is a log of the events that occurred during our night at the Ridgemont Hotel. The logs were taken every hour or so (which sounds like we took a shit every hour and is a joke that never stops being funny to us), starting at 10 PM.

10 PM
Alone. Awaiting the arrival of Thisbe, who went to get beer and cigs. Turned on HBO and checked out the bathroom, including behind the shower curtain. Hallways are dark. Very dark. It was actually quite hard to find the room number. Thisbe just came and noticed a smell of diarrhea in the room. “Baby diarrhea. Ghost diarrhea.”

10:30 PM
The door just opened on its own. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, however we were having trouble opening the door earlier because it had just been recently painted. That, and we’re hunting ghosts. Let the games begin!

11 PM
Thisbe takes a Coke from the minibar. The show on the Discovery Channel is about exorcism. Coincidence? You decide.

11:30 PM
Some friends stop by. We contemplate food. Ghost sushi or ghost Italian?

12 AM
We just ventured out into the hallway with a walkie-talkie while one of us stayed in the room. We went to another floor to check things out, and felt some heavy vibes. Turns out the bad energy was just a Eurotrash guy walking from his room to the elevator. Upon returning, Tim, who was alone in the room, reported that the door had opened on its own again.

1 AM
We ventured into the massive ballroom here, which was totally empty with the exception of some hanging lanterns. Some of the lanterns were rapidly swaying while others remained still. It was probably just the air conditioning, but still it was eerie. On the fourth floor hallway there is a definite energy shift and I feel lightheaded every time we go up there. Getting the sad, sinking feeling that nothing wants to reveal itself. Time to bust out Ouija!

2 AM
Ouija was being slow and we got bored. We put a voice-activated recorder in the fourth floor hallway and left it there for an hour. Upon its return, we hear sounds of girls screaming and laughing, as if partying. It may very well be… just that.

2:30 AM
We decide to go to the bathroom and play Bloody Mary. That’s where you turn the lights on and off really fast, turn around, and say “bloody Mary, bloody Mary, bloody Mary.” If you do it just right, you will see a ghost in the mirror. After three attempts, there it was: a ghost looking back at us. A ghost that looked curiously like the big orange blobs you get in your field of vision when lights go on and off a few times rapidly.

3 AM
Made our own Ouija board in a circle on a glass table. Thisbe felt lightheaded halfway through and had to lie down. The words spelled out were “save” and “pay.” Seriously. Obligatory Jewish-ghost jokes are made.

One of our walkie-talkies turns on and we hear people talking. Our other walkie-talkie isn’t even on. We listen to the crackly voices closely. Could it be teenage girls trying to contact us from beyond the grave? We listen. It sounds like security guards. It is security guards. They are on the same frequency as us.

4 AM
I fade in and out of sleep while Thisbe and our friend Brant Google furiously to find out more info on Rainbow House, teenage runaways, ghosts, and where to find the best chicken gyro in Center City Philadelphia.

5 AM
My nose starts bleeding. Is it a ghost, or is it allergies? I guess we’ll never know.

6 AM
Not able to fully sleep or fully stay awake, and becoming increasingly unscared, we decide to leave. We do not, I repeat, do not leave because we are “chicken.” As we gather our belongings and venture into the unseasonably cold hallway, the baby diarrhea smell is back. Mysterious. We check out at the front desk and tell the guy we were too freaked out and had to leave, just to see what he’ll say. “What’s up with all the ghosts you have here? I guess you must get a lot of complaints, huh?”

“Ghosts?” he says. “No, not really.”

Findings: Ghosts are more scared of us then we are of them. That must be why we didn’t see anything. We’ll just have to try again. On Halloween. At midnight.

DEB SCOTT & THISBE