Live Ghost Hunting Inside Hotel Monteleone: Did the Ghost Apps Know Something We Didn’t?

New Orleans has no shortage of ghost stories, and the historic Hotel Monteleone might have more than most.

Children running through hallways. A mysterious businessman who appears to be in a hurry before suddenly vanishing. A maid who supposedly keeps cleaning rooms long after her death. Strange activity around the elevators. Guests reporting cold spots, footsteps and the feeling that someone is watching them.

So after exploring the rooftop pool and the famously haunted 14th floor during our first live investigation, we decided to try something a little more controlled.

This time, we stayed inside our room at the Hotel Monteleone, surrounded ourselves with ghost-hunting equipment and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The funny thing?

While almost all of our physical equipment sat there doing absolutely nothing, our ghost apps had plenty to say.

Names.

Warnings.

A supposed drowning.

A mysterious maid named Victoria.

And eventually one of the strangest phrases I've ever heard come out of one of these apps:

"Haunting is cheaper than therapy."

Apparently the ghosts have jokes.

Or the app does.

Let's investigate.

Live Ghost Hunting From Room 450

For this livestream, we were staying in Room 450 at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans.

Our room was actually more like a small suite, with a bedroom area and a separate sitting room. That gave us several places to position equipment and cameras without having to constantly move everything around.

And I brought a lot of equipment.

Probably too much equipment.

But if you're going to sit in a supposedly haunted hotel room waiting for dead people to talk to you, you might as well bring toys.

We had:

• EMF meters
• A spirit box
• Cat balls
• A REM-style cat pod
• A flashlight experiment
• A sound meter
• Temperature monitoring
• CO2 monitors
• A compass
• A motion detector
• A laser/grid light
• A static electricity experiment
• A small sound-activated recorder
• Walkie-talkies
• Cameras
• Spirit Talker

Basically, if a ghost so much as sneezed in our room, I wanted something nearby attempting to measure it.

Why I Monitor CO2 During Ghost Hunts

One of the least glamorous pieces of ghost-hunting equipment I use is also one of the most important:

A CO2 monitor.

It doesn't flash dramatically when a ghost enters the room.

It doesn't spit out mysterious words.

It doesn't tell me a demon named Gregory lives in the bathroom.

It measures air quality.

High concentrations of carbon dioxide can contribute to headaches, fatigue, dizziness, confusion and other uncomfortable sensations.

Those symptoms don't automatically explain paranormal experiences, but environmental conditions are worth checking before deciding something supernatural is happening.

If someone tells me:

"I walked into this room and suddenly felt dizzy, confused and uncomfortable."

My first thought shouldn't necessarily be:

Ghost.

It should be:

What's happening in the room?

During this investigation, our environmental equipment wasn't showing anything alarming.

So at least CO2 wasn't trying to haunt us.

The Static Electricity Ghost Experiment

I also had one of my stranger experiments sitting out.

It's a little balance device intended to react to static electricity.

The idea isn't that I believe ghosts are definitely made of static electricity.

We don't know what ghosts are.

We don't even know whether ghosts exist.

But paranormal investigators often associate alleged manifestations with electrical or electromagnetic changes, so I like experimenting with different ways of detecting environmental changes.

There was one major complication.

The air conditioning.

A slight breeze can move lightweight equipment.

And that's exactly why context matters.

If something moves while an air vent is blowing toward it, I can't ignore the vent and announce that Casper just walked through my hotel room.

During the livestream, the little static detector did move occasionally.

But I was also walking around, and there was moving air in the room.

Interesting?

Sure.

Evidence of a ghost?

No.

The Physical Equipment Was Almost Completely Silent

What surprised me most about our stay at the Hotel Monteleone was how incredibly quiet the building was.

This is an old hotel.

It's busy.

There were plenty of guests staying there.

I expected normal hotel sounds.

Pipes.

Doors.

Elevators.

People talking.

Floorboards shifting.

Air conditioners turning on and off.

But our room was remarkably quiet.

The REM pod didn't do much.

The cat balls mostly sat there.

The EMF meters behaved normally.

The motion detector didn't suddenly activate.

Our flashlight experiment wasn't producing convincing responses.

We didn't hear obvious knocks or footsteps.

It was almost suspiciously boring.

And I mean that as a compliment.

Quiet environments make unexplained noises much easier to analyze.

Unfortunately, they also make terrible ghost-hunting television.

Meanwhile, Spirit Talker Would Not Shut Up

Our physical equipment might have been sleeping, but Spirit Talker seemed perfectly happy to participate.

Early in the session, the app produced the word:

"Inspiration."

I jokingly asked whether we inspired the ghosts.

Then it gave us a name:

Gregory.

That was more interesting because I had asked for a name.

So naturally, I followed up.

Was Gregory the businessman supposedly seen around the hotel?

No clear answer.

That is where these apps become tricky.

A word appearing after a question can feel incredibly meaningful.

But we have to ask:

How often does the app generate words?

How large is its database?

How often would a random name appear anyway?

Would I have considered "Gregory" meaningful if I hadn't just asked for a name?

And most importantly:

Can we verify Gregory independently?

Until we can, Gregory is simply a word generated by an app.

Sorry, Gregory.

Then It Said "Pool"

The next interesting word was:

"Pool."

Now that caught my attention.

We had just investigated the Hotel Monteleone's rooftop pool during another livestream because guests reportedly hear ghostly children around the hotel.

So "pool" seemed relevant.

Then things got even more interesting.

The app eventually produced:

"Drowned."

Pool.

Drowned.

That's exactly the kind of sequence that can make a paranormal investigation suddenly feel compelling.

Did someone drown in the Hotel Monteleone pool?

I didn't remember finding that in my research.

And I said exactly that during the livestream.

We would need to look it up.

That's important.

If an app tells me:

POOL
DROWNED

I don't want to immediately create a ghost story around it.

I want to ask:

Did this actually happen?

If historical research later reveals no documented drowning connected with the pool, those words become much less impressive.

And even if someone did drown there, we would still have to determine whether that information could somehow have influenced the app, us, or the interpretation.

Interesting clues are not the same thing as evidence.

Meet Victoria, Our Possible Ghost Maid

Later, another name appeared.

Victoria.

Since one of the Monteleone's reported spirits is associated with housekeeping, I immediately wondered whether the app was trying to connect Victoria with the hotel's maid legend.

So I asked.

"Are you Victoria?"

"Are you the maid?"

"Are you still cleaning rooms?"

Nothing happened with the physical equipment.

No objects moved.

No REM pod response.

No cat ball activation.

The room remained aggressively clean, but it had been clean when we arrived.

So unless a ghost is secretly working in coordination with Hotel Monteleone housekeeping, I can't give Victoria credit.

Still, the conversation became entertaining.

At one point I asked whether she was essentially cursed to keep cleaning the hotel forever.

Because if I'm stuck doing housework after death, that sounds less like an afterlife and more like a supernatural labor violation.

The App Got Dark

This is where Spirit Talker started becoming much more dramatic.

We received phrases including:

"Cursed."

Then:

"The lady attacks people."

Later:

"The others mean harm."

These are exactly the kinds of phrases that paranormal apps often produce that can dramatically change the mood of an investigation.

Suddenly you're no longer sitting in a comfortable New Orleans hotel room.

You're sitting in a room with a dangerous ghost.

Except...

Were we?

Nothing around us supported that idea.

No equipment reacted.

We didn't feel threatened.

Nothing moved.

Nobody was touched.

Nobody was scratched.

Nobody was shoved.

Nothing remotely aggressive happened.

That's why I don't like allowing an app to dictate the story of an investigation.

If an app says:

"THE OTHERS MEAN HARM."

and absolutely nothing harmful happens, I don't think we should spend the next hour acting like we're trapped in The Conjuring.

The scary phrase is evidence that an app generated a scary phrase.

That's all we know.

Dracula Joined the Investigation

At some point things got even stranger.

The app produced something that sounded like:

"Bram Dracula."

We assumed it might be referencing Bram Stoker and Dracula.

Then came:

"He thrives on fear."

Well...

That's delightfully spooky.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with the known ghost stories of the Hotel Monteleone.

Unless Dracula secretly booked a room.

Which, honestly, New Orleans would be exactly where I would expect him to vacation.

But this is another good example of why we need to resist creating connections where none exist.

Random spooky words sound meaningful during a ghost hunt precisely because we're already in a spooky environment.

If Spirit Talker had produced the same phrases while I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot, would they seem paranormal?

Probably not.

Context changes perception.

The Flashlight Finally Did Something

Eventually, one of our flashlights appeared to activate.

For a moment, that looked potentially interesting.

Then I noticed another problem.

The battery seemed weak.

We had used the equipment before, and I wasn't sure I had fully charged it.

That introduces another normal explanation.

Ghost hunters frequently use flashlights that can be manipulated by slightly loosening the battery connection or changing how the electrical contact behaves.

The problem is that temperature changes, battery strength, loose contacts and normal electrical behavior can also make these lights turn on or off.

So before I call that a response, I need repeatability.

Can I ask a question and get it to activate?

Can I repeat that several times?

Can I eliminate battery issues?

During this session, I couldn't.

So I'm putting that one in the:

Probably equipment behavior

pile.

The Temperature Dropped

Our temperature also dropped slightly during the investigation.

It went from approximately 72 degrees to around 68.

Cold spots are one of the most common things people associate with ghosts.

But this wasn't a sudden isolated cold spot.

It was nighttime.

We were in an air-conditioned hotel room.

The temperature changed gradually.

Four degrees under those circumstances isn't particularly strange.

If one tiny section of the room suddenly dropped 15 degrees while every surrounding sensor remained stable?

Now I'm interested.

A hotel room becoming slightly cooler during the night?

Not so much.

Sometimes cold air is just cold air.

The Creepy Ice Cream Truck Music

There was one genuinely strange little mystery during our Hotel Monteleone stay.

We repeatedly heard music that sounded like an out-of-tune ice cream truck.

We mostly heard it from our room.

Several times, we went outside trying to find the source.

We couldn't.

At one point, we heard it while we were near the Creole House restaurant, but we still couldn't figure out exactly where it came from.

Now this is the kind of thing I enjoy.

Not because I think we discovered a ghost ice cream truck.

But because it was genuinely unexplained to us at the time.

Cities create weird acoustics.

Sound can travel between buildings.

Music can come from cars, boats, restaurants, street performers and places much farther away than you would expect.

New Orleans has music everywhere.

So there are plenty of normal possibilities.

But we never identified the source.

And that's okay.

I don't need to turn every mystery into either:

PARANORMAL

or

DEBUNKED.

There is a perfectly respectable third category:

We don't know.

The mysterious creepy ice cream music remains there.

"Take a Left"

At one point the app told us:

"Take a left."

The problem?

We weren't walking anywhere.

We were standing inside the hotel room.

I joked that if I actually did go left, I would end up in the other room.

Was that what the app wanted?

Maybe.

But this demonstrates another problem with open-ended paranormal apps.

Almost any phrase can eventually be made relevant.

"Take a left."

There's something to the left.

"Behind you."

There's always something behind you.

"Bathroom."

Most hotel rooms have one.

"Bed."

You're in a hotel.

"Door."

Also unsurprising.

Human brains are fantastic at finding connections.

That ability keeps us alive.

It also makes paranormal investigations complicated.

A Nanny in the Bathroom?

Then the app gave us another strange phrase:

"Nanny in the bathroom."

Naturally, I looked toward the bathroom.

No nanny.

Living or dead.

Again, it sounds spooky because we're conducting a ghost hunt.

But without corroborating evidence, it is simply an interesting app response.

If the motion detector in the bathroom had activated at exactly that moment...

If another independent device had produced "nanny"...

If a camera had simultaneously captured something unusual...

Then I would become much more interested.

That didn't happen.

Asking Better Questions

One thing I tried during the livestream was asking questions that were harder to answer randomly.

For example:

"What color am I wearing?"

That's more useful than asking:

"Are you here?"

Why?

Because a yes-or-no question gives random output a very high chance of appearing meaningful.

If the app says "yes," we count it.

If it says "here," we count it.

If it says "watching," we might count that too.

But asking for a specific observable fact creates a narrower target.

What color am I wearing?

What's my name?

What object am I holding?

How many people are in the room?

Specific questions give us something that can actually be scored.

Unfortunately, we didn't get anything convincing.

The Equipment Versus the Apps

This may have been the most interesting part of the entire live investigation.

The apps were incredibly active.

The physical equipment was not.

Spirit Talker gave us:

Gregory.

Victoria.

Pool.

Drowned.

Cursed.

Warnings.

Ghostly conversations.

Meanwhile:

The REM pod sat there.

The cat balls sat there.

The EMF meter behaved normally.

The compass behaved normally.

The motion detector behaved normally.

The environmental meters behaved normally.

That's important.

If an intelligent entity were actively communicating with us through an app, wouldn't it be interesting if it could also interact with something else?

That doesn't mean it necessarily could.

Again, we don't know what ghosts are.

But independent corroboration is much stronger than one device producing an interesting word.

I'd rather have three different instruments detect something unusual simultaneously than have one app generate twenty spooky sentences.

"Haunting Is Cheaper Than Therapy"

Then Spirit Talker produced the quote of the night:

"Haunting is cheaper than therapy."

I have never heard it say that before.

I laughed.

Because that's funny.

If a ghost actually said it, congratulations.

You win the investigation.

But funny isn't evidence.

This is another reason I enjoy using these apps even though I'm skeptical of them.

They're entertaining.

They create conversation.

They can suggest questions.

They can occasionally produce strange coincidences worth investigating further.

But entertainment value and scientific reliability are very different things.

I'm happy to use them.

I'm just not ready to let them prove ghosts exist.

We Even Checked Under the Bed

Because I apparently remain psychologically eight years old, I eventually did something everyone has done at least once in a dark room.

I looked under the bed.

Nothing.

No ghost.

No monster.

No businessman.

No angry maid.

No creepy child.

Apparently Hotel Monteleone ghosts respect the sacred childhood rule that monsters belong underneath beds.

At least during our stay.

So Was Room 450 Haunted?

Based on this livestream alone?

I don't have evidence that it was.

The apps produced several interesting words and phrases.

A flashlight behaved strangely, but its battery condition gave us an obvious alternative explanation.

The temperature changed slightly but within a completely normal range for an air-conditioned hotel room.

Our environmental equipment didn't show anything dramatic.

Our REM pod didn't repeatedly activate.

Our motion detector stayed quiet.

Our cat balls mostly ignored us.

And nothing physically unusual happened in the room while we were live.

That doesn't mean the Hotel Monteleone isn't haunted.

It means this particular experiment did not demonstrate that it was.

There's a difference.

The Investigation Continued After the Livestream

The live ghost hunt wasn't our entire investigation.

We had already been recording EVPs.

We had run time-lapse cameras while we were out of the room.

We had recorded overnight footage.

After the livestream, we planned to switch to night vision and use the thermal camera while continuing our regular investigation.

And that's important because some things aren't obvious in real time.

A strange sound might appear during audio review.

Something could move in the background.

Two cameras might capture the same unexplained event.

Or we may review everything and discover...

nothing.

That is always an option.

Why I Like Showing the Quiet Ghost Hunts

Paranormal entertainment creates a strange expectation.

People think ghost hunting should involve constant activity.

Every five minutes:

BANG.

"WHAT WAS THAT?"

REM pod.

Scream.

Spirit box voice.

Shadow person.

Commercial break.

Real investigations usually don't work that way.

Sometimes you spend hours sitting inside one of New Orleans' most famously haunted hotels and absolutely nothing happens.

The live streams show that part.

They show the waiting.

The technical problems.

The equipment that doesn't activate.

The sounds that turn out to be the air conditioner.

The flashlight with a questionable battery.

And the app dramatically warning us about dangerous spirits while every physical sensor in the room calmly disagrees.

That's useful.

Because if I eventually capture something that genuinely does resist normal explanation, you know I didn't call everything paranormal along the way.

What Did We Learn?

For me, the biggest takeaway from this Hotel Monteleone livestream wasn't whether Gregory or Victoria were ghosts.

It was the difference between something that sounds meaningful and something we can independently verify.

Spirit Talker gave us a story.

Maybe there was a man named Gregory.

Maybe Victoria was a maid.

Maybe somebody drowned near a pool.

Maybe someone was cursed.

Maybe the ghosts really believe haunting is cheaper than therapy.

But until we can independently confirm those things, they're just possibilities created during an experiment.

The equipment around us told a much simpler story:

The room was quiet.

Very quiet.

And sometimes that's exactly what a ghost hunt looks like.

I'm okay with that.

Because I'm not trying to prove every hotel I visit is haunted.

I'm trying to find out whether there's anything there that I can't explain.

So far, the ghosts of the Hotel Monteleone remain firmly in my favorite paranormal category:

Maybe.

And honestly?

Maybe is a lot more interesting than pretending we already know the answer.

Have you ever stayed at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans?

Did anything strange happen in your room? Did you hear children, encounter the mysterious businessman, notice objects moved by the supposed ghost maid—or hear some creepy out-of-tune ice cream truck music that nobody could locate?

Tell me about it.

I especially want to know whether your experience happened before you knew the hotel's ghost stories.

Those are always the ones that make my skeptical little ears perk up.

Stay spooky, cats.