Major League Paranormal Activity at the Pfister Hotel

Major League Baseball (MLB) players have reported a wide range of paranormal activity at the Pfister Hotel including object manipulation, electrical anomalies, and, most recently, the holy grail of paranormal phenomena, an apparition. Some have admitted to their experiences publicly and some have confided in others, who later leaked details to the press.

As reported in Sports Illustrated, in 2001, Adrian Beltre, then with the L.A. Dodgers, described several eerie happenings during his stay at the Pfister. First he heard knocking in the hallway and on his door, but upon investigation found no one there. Later, Beltre witnessed the air conditioning and the TV repeatedly switch itself off. When he went to bed, he was startled awake again and again by pounding noises from behind his headboard. Beltre resorted to taking a bat to bed with him for protection and reported that he only slept two hours over the course of his three-night stay.

MLB reports wouldn’t resurface until June of 2008, when Carlos Gomez, then of the Minnesota Twins, experienced something strange in his hotel room before a day game. First he heard disembodied voices. Then he witnessed some strange object manipulation. His iPod, which he had left on a table across the room, switched itself on. Static blared from it. He watched the iPod as it began vibrating wildly, shimmying towards the edge of the table. Gomez ran over to catch it before it fell to the floor. When he grabbed it, it switched to music and then back to static again. Gomez turned it off and placed it back on the table, only to see the iPod repeat the same behavior.

In May 2009, the Palm Beach Post revealed that whenever the Florida Marlins stay at the Pfister at least 4 players demand to double-up and share rooms for fear of the ghost. Later that spring, Brendan Ryan of the St. Louis Cardinals reported seeing a strange apparition at the Pfister. He said a “moving light” passed through his room, followed by a temperature drop that chilled him to the bone. However, Ryan eventually retracted his statement. Then in June of 2009, Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants divulged that one night during his stay he awoke at 3 a.m. and witnessed his hotel room door open and shut on its own.

In July 2009, an AP article included a story from Brewers visiting clubhouse manager Phil Rozewicz. A “rookie ballplayer” reportedly told Rozewicz that he had awoke in the middle of the night to discover the blinds and the window in his room were open. He shut the blinds and the window only to wake up in the morning and find them open again.

Then on July 6, 2010, Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants returned. He and teammate Edgar Renteria made news when they left the rest of the team behind to avoid reliving last year’s frights. They checked out of the Pfister and into the nearby Intercontinental.

C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers revealed the most detailed account of paranormal activity at the Pfister to-date. On June 15, 2010, during an interview on an ESPN radio show. C.J. Wilson said that he heard scratching on the walls of his room at the Pfister, which sounded like a key scraping down wallpaper. He also reported intermittent problems with his room lamp, which at one point began flashing wildly on and off “disco style.”

Other teammates experienced similar problems with the lighting and one was locked out of his bathroom. Colby Lewis awoke at about 1:30 a.m. and saw a frightening skeletal apparition in his room. He was so shaken up by what he saw that, according to C.J. Wilson, he spoke with the team chaplain about it the next day. Afterward, Colby Lewis didn’t show for a scheduled radio interview with ESPN and so far has not spoken publicly about his experiences at the Pfister. In all, according to Wilson, “4 or 5 guys had odd experiences on various floors.” He plans to blog about the strange events of that weekend at the Pfister on his website leftylefty.com.

There are most likely many more ballplayer experiences that haven’t been covered in the press. Unfortunately, no player has been formally interviewed by paranormal investigators, so many important details remain unknown. Escalating activity seems to beg for careful investigation.

We can’t expect proper reporting to become the first priority of MLB players. However, if their accounts are indeed genuine, hopefully they will come to realize the significance of their experiences. If such limited access to key witnesses continues, a rare opportunity to uncover the truth behind the paranormal could be lost.

~ by mkeghosts on July 13, 2010.