Ghost Chaser
By Judith Broadhurst

It's a sunny afternoon, a day so clear and carefree that even the clouds are lying low. Right now, they look like puffy, pure white cushions stacked atop the rim of hills and mountains along the craggy California coastline. Come nightfall, they'll drift out toward the sea again, and shroud the San Francisco Bay area in eerie fog, as always.

At night, the fog conceals Seal Cove, a short stretch of windswept sand about 25 miles below San Francisco, down state Highway 1, an officially scenic route known locally as the Pacific Coast Highway. Back in Prohibition days, bootleggers docked their boats in that hidden cove to unload cargoes of booze for the speakeasy that stood on the bluff above. Some kind of tavern has been on that spot as long as anyone around here can remember. In 1927, Frank Torres rebuilt it as Frank's Roadhouse, a white stucco building with a curved front, shaped like the prow of a ferry boat drydocked there so they could keep watch for feds sneaking in from the sea.

The roadhouse still looms over that chilly cove, but today it's a seafood restaurant called Moss Beach Distillery, in honor of the reputation of rum running. The recent remodeling added wide expanses of windows and a Mexican tile terrace overlooking the cove, which provides such a spectacular panorama of the Pacific that it draws tourists and locals at sunset, year-round.

Today, as they near Moss Beach, a village of 3,000 souls, Lloyd Auerbach and his entourage turn down a rugged, winding road, guided by a sign that reads: "Moss Beach Distillery: Food, Views, Ghost." It's the "ghost" part that lured him here, not the view nor food. Auerbach's a parapsychologist who investigates paranormal phenomenon, or what even many of his professional colleagues call a real-life ghostbuster.

The Ghost's Story

In its speakeasy heyday, the roadhouse was popular with politicos and vacationing movie stars, and reverberated with live music. Legend has it that it was also a secret rendezvous for the handsome rogue who played piano nightly and a lovely young flapper married to one of the bootleggers or to a railroad machinist, possibly one in the same, depending on which rumor you prefer. This classic saga of a love triangle gone wrong ended, so they say, with her being stabbed to death down on the beach, in the cove. Thus she became The Blue Lady, the ghost that has haunted this place since.

The Blue Lady is the primary suspect in a long string of incidents without explanation: cases of wine that got stacked against the door of the wine storage room, from inside, blocking access; doors that repeatedly slammed shut and locked the owners out; chairs that turned flipflops; and a computerized cash register that dated an entire day's transactions back to 1927, the year Frank's Roadhouse opened. Everyone thinks of her as a mischievous, benevolent spirit, but there are contradictory variations on her story.

No matter, because the legend that lives on is that she now haunts the restaurant and the cove, wandering while she waits for her lover to appear for their evening tryst, or perhaps out of guilt for the young son some say she left behind. Those who've seen her say she wears a blue dress. Sometimes a torn and bloody blue dress, mind you, or sometimes one that's elegant instead, but almost always blue.

The Ghostbuster's Story

Although Auerbach's master's is in parapsychology, his undergrad degree is in cultural anthropology, so he thinks of himself as an anthropologist, too. Anthropologists are trained to observe only, never to interfere, so he isn't here to chase The Blue Lady away nor to bother her in any way, really. Except....

Except, because he's so set on maintaining his credibility as a professor of parapsychology at Rosebridge Graduate School of Integral Studies, and among his peers as a researcher, and he's so genuinely committed to establishing greater credibility for psychic phenomenon, he feels compelled to approach this onsite psi investigation, as they call it, as a scientist. Yet, at age 48, he has long been frustrated that funding for psi research goes almost entirely to those who conduct contrived experiments in academic labs.

"That's why I don't work full time in this field," he says, with some bitterness. "There's not enough money. Most of the money has gone toward lab research, not spontaneous case investigation. As a result, researchers have had to do field research more as a sideline."

And as a result of that, he's forced to keep his day job as an insntructor and consultant for Nexis, the online research database outfit, so he can afford to spend a mere 20 hours or so a month — for free or about 200 bucks a shot, max — doing what he considers real research, in the real world.

But because he approaches this ghostbusting business as a scientist, even though he doesn't intend to disturb her, he came here to challenge The Blue Lady to reveal herself in some way that will give him objective evidence that she actually exists as an unearthly entity.

Even if that happens, he insists he won't claim it's proof. "It's very hard to quantify what we observe, to show results," he says. Data is just data, not proof.

The Ghostbuster's Entourage

He arrives with two assistants and a psychic in tow. The assistants, both women, are parapsychology grad students at Rosebridge. One's about to finish a more traditional master's in clinical psychology; the other is already a licensed anesthesiologist, now studying for a master's in parapsych.

Their sole duties today are to carry and aim two magnetometers — handheld metal boxes with needles and numbers — plus read and record results. These are the same kind of devices contractors and engineers use to detect electrical conductivity or other structural elements in buildings. Auerbach believes that ghosts may emit magnetic waves, too, but he repeatedly explains the usual use of the magnetometers and why that can, therefore, give readings that mean nothing whatsoever related to ghosts.

The psychic is Annette Martin. Auerbach says he sees her as a human instrument -- just one more way to alert him to possible paranormal phenomenon that he should check with instruments, or to lend some degree of validity to whatever he might find with any measurement device he uses.

It was C|Net's suggestion and connections that enabled him to borrow the most sophisticated, most expensive high-tech gizmos he'll use today, though: the infrared camera and the Raytek gizmo that looks like a ray gun and shoots laser beams, both of which detect heat, basically. C|Net, the computer network online and on TV, wants to tag along, because they need a hook on which to hang a segment about how those gizmos work. Or don't. Or could.

Auerbach's dad was a producer for NBC-TV news, so he sees himself as "from a media family," thus it all sounds like a great idea to him. He's been so good at getting publicity for so long that he teaches media communications at JFK University, where he also taught parapsych until they cut it from the curriculum. Auerbach does many interviews and frequently cooperates with the filming of investigations of places people suspect are haunted. He doesn't get paid for investigations for shows like the C|Net segment or ones on "Haunted America" or The Discovery Channel. He doesn't like doing them much, either. Although today's isn't, such shows are usually completely staged, with actors in costumes and scripted dialogue, and he steps in only for the on-camera interview. "I feel like a prop sometimes," he says, looking down at the floor, rather shamefaced.

He does the shows, he says, for two reasons: He hopes it will get people to take paranormal phenomenon and psychic abilities more seriously, and he hopes that maybe, just maybe, it will lead to funding for the Office of Paranormal Investigations, in Orinda, California, which he founded and directs.

Auerbach's a dark-bearded, stocky guy of average height. In his late '40s and getting bald. But more attractive than that sounds, when it's all put together, more because of his intensity and intelligence than his appearance alone. Because of his spirit, you might say. He sometimes seems driven because, even though he's calm, sane and reasonable in person, he maintains a frenetic pace, juggling his full-time job with periodic teaching, speaking, psi consultations and investigations, even serving as an expert witness in court cases, occasionally. For extra money and just the fun of it, he also performs as a magician some weekends. He feels it helps him avoid being tricked because he can tell how tricks work.

Over dinner, he happens to mention that he's thinking of starting a Haunted Restaurants Association, which would involve installing special visual and sound effects in restaurants he had investigated and found worthy, or at least possibly worthy, of the name. When questioned about the effect of that on his credibility as a scientific researcher, he scoffs. "Aw, they said that about the magic shows too, but those have actually increased my credibility with people in the field." Some of his colleagues agree with him; others diplomatically refuse to comment.

Setting the Scene for the Investigation

C|Net's credibility can't hurt, although this is definitely a reciprocal deal. The TV crew tromps in toting so many cases and cords that they fill a whole dining room: cameras, lights, an IBM Thinkpad notebook computer to run some of it, with cryptic graphs showing on the screen, once it's all hooked together. It takes most of the afternoon just to set up all that complicated equipment, then the crew has nothing to do for hours, until the dinner crowd comes and goes.

It turns out the only reason we had to show up so early is to just so the TV crew could get set up in time to roll right after the dinner customers leave, after dark, because TV viewers expect ghosts to show themselves only at night. Balderdash, says Auerbach. Ghosts show up in daylight or darkness, depending on their own agendas.

First Signs of an Invisible Presence

Sure enough, before the restaurant opens for the evening, while the crew is milling around outside or downstairs, something strange happens upstairs, in the empty lobby. The hostess goes in and out as she sets up the reception desk for the evening, so she's the one who notices and darts into the adjoining room, calling in a stage whisper, "Loyd, Loyd, come here!" Several of us see it too and move in for a closer look.

A Tiffany-reproduction chandelier in the foyer swings to and fro, at a rate of about two seconds in each direction, in an arc that doesn't diminish and slow to a stop as it normally would. This continues for roughly fifteen minutes. Twice during this mesmerizing movement, observers touch the chandelier as they exclaim, "Look!" So it's hard to tell if the motion is real, imagined or manipulated. Yet the sweep of the arc is so steady, for so long that you can't help but wonder if....

An Unexpected Dinner Companion, Perhaps

Later on during dinner, Annette Martin, the psychic, gets goosebumps and tells us all that she feels The Blue Lady beside her and hears her talking to her. The needle on the magnetometer does, indeed, oscillate a bit. But Auerbach concludes that the extent of the movement isn't sufficient to indicate a ghostly presence.

After that's settled, while we're still waiting for the dinner customers to leave, it's too tempting not to push him about why he pursues ghosts with such a passion. His explanations of his boyhood fascinations with Greek myths and science fiction don't add up, because other children go through those phases without growing up haunted by the very idea of ghosts.

The more you talk with him, the more impossible it becomes not to believe he's sincere, precisely because of his boyish enthusiasm and that he simply is so sincere. Or obsessed, or all of the above. It would be easier to write him off as just an artful, articulate self-promoter, as some do, until you ask him, for perhaps the tenth time, why — why really — does he do this?

Is it, deep down, that he's looking for proof that there's life after death? Well, no wonder he's so serious about it, if that's the reason. He reacts like that's overstating the case.

"Growing up Jewish, as I did, you don't hear much about life after death. I don't think there is a hell, nor that there's a heaven. I have no clue. There could be another plane of existence, or it could be just our perceptions. Anything I speculate about gets into either religion or science fiction and..." he trails off, as if to say, "...and you know how futile it is to try to discuss either of those."

Then he bounces back. "Even if I had proof, here's the one piece impossible to prove: for those who don't stick around, where do they go? And wherever that place or that state of being is, here's what's important: how do we communicate with it?"

The Medium Steals the Message

After dinner, we're all sitting around downstairs, on straight chairs turned every whichway, in a room adjacent to the terrace, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the cold cove. The sun has set, long since, and Annette Martin has been recounting her life story as a psychic for most of the past hour: "When I was seven years old..." It's like being backstage before a concert. We're just killing time, waiting for the last of the dinner customers to leave, so the show can start.

Then in struts some short, skinny, late-20s guy with slicked-back wavy hair who starts glad-handing all around. "Hi, I'm RYAN! Hi, I'm RYAN," he says to each and every person in as much of a booming voice as he can muster, as though we should all feel privileged to be able to say, ever after, "I met RYAN!" Among Auerbach's small group, clustered in the corner, nobody has any idea who he is, nor why he has made such an entrance. It turns out Ryan is the "talking head," or on-camera "talent" who holds the mic to Auerbach's and Martin's mouths and asks the questions that the producer, hidden off-camera behind him, prompts him to ask.

Finally, a male voice shouts, "Head 'em up, move 'em out," and the herd of 13 people — most of them part of the C|Net TV film crew — file up the stairs to the empty dining rooms.

"There! Over there!"

First, we all head into the front dining room, the one with the curved window where the psychic tells us she sees the piano player pounding away, grinning at the crowd, in his brown-and-white checkered suit and bowler hat. She sees people dancing too, she says. First it's dancers performing, in a floor show. Then, no, just couples, just people dancing.

She gravitates to a round table in the corner, explaining to Auerbach and the grad students that she thinks she senses something there, maybe even The Blue Lady herself looking longingly at her lover. For the next 20 minutes, various people aim various gizmos at the table, but nothing even mildly suspicious shows up on any of them. All of us, including Auerbach, seem at a loss for where to try next.

Then, "There! Over there!" says Martin, as she points through the window to the next room, and we all move that direction, dragging along gizmos, large and small, like some giant amoeba dragged down by mechanical attachments.

After a bit of futile fiddling around, it's the same: Nada. But Martin's attention is already elsewhere.

"My! She's all over the place tonight," Martin comments, in a rather giddy tone of voice. The rest of us shift around awkwardly, glancing sideways at one another or down at the floor or outside, into nothing. Hardly anybody looks anyone else in the eye, because we all know that no one has seen nor heard any evidence of The Blue Lady since we officially began the investigation. Yet.

We want to believe, really we do. Well, kinda. Mostly. Depending....

"Over here, I feel something over here!"

Following Auerbach's lead, we all traipse into the rear dining room, along the cliff side. The film crew's increasing impatience is palpable. Nothing significant has happened since they've been shooting, so what's there to show on their show?

"Over here, I feel something over here!" announces Martin, as she strides quickly to the far corner of the room, beside one of the windows that span the wall overlooking the cove and the terrace that hangs above it. Everybody eagerly surrounds her and Auerbach, just in case.

As we all crowd in, trying to hear what they're saying and get a glimpse, the heat-detector ray gun registers that corner as colder than the surrounding area. Theoretically, that could mean it touched upon a tunnel into the past, or at least something paranormal.

"Maybe it just means they need more insulation," mutters one of the skeptics. Auerbach, too, dismisses the significance of the ray gun's reading.

If It's Not a Ghost, What Is It?

Next, we all troupe into the kitchen, at the psychic's insistence, despite Auerbach's mumbled protests that there are too many appliances to get reliable signals. Someone in the crowd crammed into the narrow passageway gets excited about another reading from the ray gun. On closer inspection, that ray gun reading turns out to be from a refrigerator.

Finally, we all meander back into the main room, where Auerbach and Martin subject themselves to more questions from the talking-head guy (who is still being prompted by the producer, in the background). Toward the end, Auerbach seizes one last chance to make his pitch:

"If we find something and if it's not a ghost, let's figure out what it is," he urges. "Maybe it's something environmental, but if it's affecting human behavior, then we still need to find out what's causing it. We may not be happy when we don't find something that might help reassure us that there's life after death, but what we find could, just could, lead us to a major advance in mind-brain research."

Winding Down, Dispirited

It's now close to midnight, and people are starting to pass the ray gun around, casually shooting laser beams at one another. "Not at the eyes!" warns one.

Then, of course, we want to see how the Swedish-made infrared camera works, close-up. After reluctantly letting a couple of us look through the viewfinder (which makes images of people look, well, ghostly), the guy who has wielded it all night grumbles: "Our CEO says we didn't make this camera to photograph ghosts."

He's the West Coast regional manager of Agema, the company that makes the camera, so this whole thing is beneath him anyway, you understand. But they weren't about to let that $43,000 camera out on loan, even to C|Net, without one of their own along to make sure it was handled well and returned safely.

"I've got a flight out at 6 a.m. tomorrow for my vacation. My wife and baby are waiting in the car," he goes on grousing. "I've gotta get outta here." He's been here for hours already after all, so within minutes, he's gone.

The two grad students in charge of carrying around the magnetometers slipped out sometime in the last hour, unnoticed. The whole thing is winding down, dispirited. As he leaves, Ryan again goes around the room to each of those who have stayed the course, shakes hands and says, "Glad to have met you," and most of us find ourselves mumbling, "Glad to have met you, too, Ryan."

As he intended from the outset, every one of us remembers his name.

Ghost Eludes Ghost Chaser Again, End of Story

Ten tedious hours after he arrived, Auerbach concedes that the ghost eluded him, as all others have before. He's yet to see a ghost, himself, he admits. But claims he's not discouraged, because what he does is like being a detective on a stakeout, often with similar results.

For tonight, Auerbach and the TV crew give up, pack up and trudge out into the darkness, disappointed. But you know he'll be back to try again someday — one way or another.

"If I come back as a ghost," he says afterward, "my mission will be to really haunt and bug skeptics, especially the people who are the loudest attackers. I'll try to pull what Patrick Swayze pulled on Whoopie Goldberg in 'Ghosts,' where he kept her up all night by singing 'I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am,' and wouldn't quit until she accepted that his ghost existed."

Published in Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine, January 1998
Copyright © 1997, Judith Broadhurst. All rights reserved.