I've also collected some Vintage postcards from the MGM. The one with the restaurant information seems particularly rare from what I've been able to find.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Vintage Postcards of the old MGM/Bally's
I've also collected some Vintage postcards from the MGM. The one with the restaurant information seems particularly rare from what I've been able to find.
Objects from the MGM Hotel
One of the ways I'm able to tap into the energy of a place is to hold items that were somehow connected to the place I'm trying to investigate. This time I have taken it even deeper - I have a huge draw to this building right now. And so I've allowed things to come into my hands that have been touched by the MGM Fire... and some of these things pack an energy wallop.
An interesting note - these items arrived the same day two powerful Staurolite crosses arrived from Taos, NM
First, we have one of the old 1970's era chips that were in use at the time of the Fire. I definitely get energy from this, but fairly weak and diluted.
The second item, which I felt a little more juice from is a pair of keys from the 17th Floor. I chose these keys because no one died on the 17th Floor, and these are the ones that wanted to be with me right now.
I purchased them from an antique dealer online, and asked him about the history:
Another John. Another set of weird keys. Synchronicity. A quick google tells me that the Hotel Baker is listed as one of Illinois' most haunted places. Irritated I didn't know about this as I was driving from Des Moines to Milwaukee a couple of years ago. I would have stopped by.
The third item that arrived yesterday bowled me over the moment I slid the envelope open. What I have currently is a set of 11 X 14" photos that were framed and hanging in the building prior to a remodel. You can see the yellowing and frame lines around the edges. Hours and hours and hours absorbing the building.
They are unfortunately too large for my scanner so here's photos of the photos. For those of you that are able to read energy, I'm super curious what you feel about these. Two in particular about bowled me over when I saw them.
An interesting note - these items arrived the same day two powerful Staurolite crosses arrived from Taos, NM
First, we have one of the old 1970's era chips that were in use at the time of the Fire. I definitely get energy from this, but fairly weak and diluted.
The second item, which I felt a little more juice from is a pair of keys from the 17th Floor. I chose these keys because no one died on the 17th Floor, and these are the ones that wanted to be with me right now.
I purchased them from an antique dealer online, and asked him about the history:
Another John. Another set of weird keys. Synchronicity. A quick google tells me that the Hotel Baker is listed as one of Illinois' most haunted places. Irritated I didn't know about this as I was driving from Des Moines to Milwaukee a couple of years ago. I would have stopped by.
The third item that arrived yesterday bowled me over the moment I slid the envelope open. What I have currently is a set of 11 X 14" photos that were framed and hanging in the building prior to a remodel. You can see the yellowing and frame lines around the edges. Hours and hours and hours absorbing the building.
They are unfortunately too large for my scanner so here's photos of the photos. For those of you that are able to read energy, I'm super curious what you feel about these. Two in particular about bowled me over when I saw them.
(lol Big Pimping in this Suite)
(Is that Tom Jones in the middle?? lol)
I have three more things from the old MGM Hotel coming, and one is an absolute WHOPPER.
Why? Beginning research on Room 2115's Occupant and history
In the continual search for why Room 2115's energy reached out to David, we researched the man who died in that room, John F. Ashton.
The overwhelming feeling I get intuitively from him is that he doesn't want to be forgotten. Those 85 people died and led to safer laws that protect all of us in hotel rooms. Whether the hotel itself and the other souls that died inside is part of this I don't know yet, as of this writing I'm preparing our return. There is work that I have to do at the hotel that will become clearer as April approaches.
We are able to learn so much about John Frederick Ashton because he was an immigrant to the United States and his Petition for Naturalization is a matter of public record.
JFA became a naturalized citizen on 9/22/61. I was born on 9/22/77.
Dave: Age 36 (at time of incident)
JFA: Age 34 (at time of death)
Dave: DOB 11/27/74
Date of JFA's mother's sworn testimony on JFA's Naturalization Petition: 11/27/74
(Date is 2/3 down the page written in the margins)
In an old news video uploaded to you tube, a priest describes finding a "touching" scene of a room service worker that had just delivered and had his tray beside him: "It was very sad." He said he said a prayer for the man. I believe this has to be JFA as there's no other Room Service employee listed on the fatality list for the upstairs towers, where the priest was blessing bodies.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o8dRs1R6O0)
The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 of which MGM staff members belonged has a plaque dedicated to the fire victims at their headquarters. There are internet rumors of a small memorial plaque at Nosh Deli in Bally's near the employees only section, but if it is there its hidden. I plan on searching for it in April.
A baker named Don Feldman who was on duty that morning in the MGM was interviewed. He said that "he felt that staying behind to continue working wasn't putting himself in danger, because after all, it was the MGM and surely they would take care of the problem before it got too big" (http://classiclasvegas.squarespace.com/classic-las-vegas-blog/2010/11/21/thirty-years-gone-the-mgm-grand-fire.html).
Is this how John Ashton felt as well? Did he know about the fire as he took the room service order upstairs? Is he angry that the MGM/Bally does not have an acknowledgement of the lives lost? Was he afraid of the fire and sent up to deliver anyway? Was John chosen to communicate the agony of the hotel because he was working? Did he feel stuck in his job like Dave and I both did back in 2009?
On his petition we are lucky enough to have a copy of his signature. Will this help us contact him again in April? Spirits don't just appear or interact on demand, nothing or everything may happen in the Bally hotel.
Less important coincidences: JFA born in Surrey, England
Surrey, England is where my Paternal family line originated
My father's name is John
The next major step in my research is this, which is on it's way:
The overwhelming feeling I get intuitively from him is that he doesn't want to be forgotten. Those 85 people died and led to safer laws that protect all of us in hotel rooms. Whether the hotel itself and the other souls that died inside is part of this I don't know yet, as of this writing I'm preparing our return. There is work that I have to do at the hotel that will become clearer as April approaches.
We are able to learn so much about John Frederick Ashton because he was an immigrant to the United States and his Petition for Naturalization is a matter of public record.
JFA became a naturalized citizen on 9/22/61. I was born on 9/22/77.
Dave: Age 36 (at time of incident)
JFA: Age 34 (at time of death)
Dave: DOB 11/27/74
Date of JFA's mother's sworn testimony on JFA's Naturalization Petition: 11/27/74
(Date is 2/3 down the page written in the margins)
In an old news video uploaded to you tube, a priest describes finding a "touching" scene of a room service worker that had just delivered and had his tray beside him: "It was very sad." He said he said a prayer for the man. I believe this has to be JFA as there's no other Room Service employee listed on the fatality list for the upstairs towers, where the priest was blessing bodies.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o8dRs1R6O0)
The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 of which MGM staff members belonged has a plaque dedicated to the fire victims at their headquarters. There are internet rumors of a small memorial plaque at Nosh Deli in Bally's near the employees only section, but if it is there its hidden. I plan on searching for it in April.
A baker named Don Feldman who was on duty that morning in the MGM was interviewed. He said that "he felt that staying behind to continue working wasn't putting himself in danger, because after all, it was the MGM and surely they would take care of the problem before it got too big" (http://classiclasvegas.squarespace.com/classic-las-vegas-blog/2010/11/21/thirty-years-gone-the-mgm-grand-fire.html).
Is this how John Ashton felt as well? Did he know about the fire as he took the room service order upstairs? Is he angry that the MGM/Bally does not have an acknowledgement of the lives lost? Was he afraid of the fire and sent up to deliver anyway? Was John chosen to communicate the agony of the hotel because he was working? Did he feel stuck in his job like Dave and I both did back in 2009?
On his petition we are lucky enough to have a copy of his signature. Will this help us contact him again in April? Spirits don't just appear or interact on demand, nothing or everything may happen in the Bally hotel.
Surrey, England is where my Paternal family line originated
My father's name is John
The next major step in my research is this, which is on it's way:
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
The Room: Bally Hotel - Part Two
The room where Dave had an experience in 2009 was on the 21st Floor. It is important to note that my husband is uncomfortable with the whole situation and will not look at anything about the fire. It's too upsetting for him. I'm on the other end of the spectrum... I feel compelled to keep digging. Every day I find a new nugget that brings the tragedy into focus and why he was chosen into a clearer understanding.
Here's what it looked like on the outside the day of the fire. Our room did not have a balcony, so the occupant smashed the window out. I was able to verify this by watching many videos on you tube and taking stills when paused, counting floors. "The Chemistry of Fire" is the one that confirmed beyond a doubt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EOVMysDM0I).
It was likely this decision that cost our room's occupant his life, as smoke was invading the hotel not only from the inside vents in the rooms but back in through the windows. The occupants that blocked doors and windows with wet towels and stayed inside are the ones who survived.
From the Fire Investigation Report - A list of fatalities by floor:
Here's the faceplate to room 2068, where two people died. Note the embossed brass room plate that was normal for the time. Room 2068 contained cases 1941 and 1942, a married couple, Vincent James McKinney and Ethel Dorothey McKinney. They were ID'd from their California Driver's Licenses. They were in body bags 56 and 57. Our room was case 1940 and had the remains removed in body bag 55, so these photos are as close as we can get inside.
So about our 21st Floor room. From the Fire Report:
Our faceplate in 2009:
1980 photograph - actual room number unknown, but this is the general style of room that 2115 was back in 1980:
And again, room 2115 in 2009. The light anomalies become more interesting when you realize they are in the general vicinity of where the yellow couches in 1980 were also located.
The Fire Report breaks down the list of fatalities from the Medical Examiner. Occupant of 2115 was found "Inside Room 2115- extended position on couch covered with blanket" per page VIII-9 of the Fire Report. Our occupant in room 2115 is Case # 1490 throughout the investigation. His name is John Frederick Ashton. He was 36 years old. He was an employee of the MGM who was delivering room service when the fire broke out. He was ID'd by his MGM ID card in room 2115. He was one of 7 employees that died in the blaze. You can see he died from smoke inhalation and CO2 poisoning, his levels of CO2 are unbelievably high.
So, was my celebrating a vacation by sitting on that blue couch with my giant daiquiri a trigger for John? Was I accidentally mocking what happened to him on the couch in that room? Is that why the next day he reached out to us? Was his personality similar to my kind, laid back husband?
Hallways outside rooms in 1980:
Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of hallway in 2009. Here's an interior shot of the deli area in 1980 where the fire started, near we had high weirdness looking for the steakhouse in 2009:
The rest of the deli shots are basically just ashes, but this one you can see some color and what it generally looked like. The reason the fire went up so fast is basically all of the fabrics and decorations in the casino were flammable. Lots of cellulose. The tiles literally melted and dropped on fire fighters' heads as they tried to put out the flames.
Here's some hallway shots from the fire report of the Casino that I found particularly haunting. The parts that survived were protected by a few sprinklers. It shows how effective they would have been in they had been in the entire hotel.
The halls used to be lined with MGM movie stars.
Through the Fire Investigative report and other sources, I have researched what restaurants were open at the time of the first fire call at 7:17am on 11/21/80. John Ashton had to have been delivering Room Service from the Orleans Room Coffee Shop as it was the only restaurant open at the time. His path would have been a short and direct one in the opposite direction where we were headed when we experienced our high strangeness incident and were lost in the hallway. Essentially we just reversed his path on our way down.
Here's the map from the Fire Investigation showing location of Elevators to North tower and up to Room 2115 from the Orleans Room. it also shows fatalities on the Casino floor.
One thing I haven't mentioned until now is that The reason I asked about blue uniforms at the MGM in the 1980s. When I tried to connect to his energy before going back to Las Vegas, I kept feeling two things - as absurd as it is, I kept hearing "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" - from Clerks, one of my favorite movies, and something is important about him wearing blue or navy. This is one of the reasons I want to know what the room service uniforms looked like - the hotel interior is red, so I'm not understanding where blue comes from, unless its from the blue couch I was sitting on.
Here's what it looked like on the outside the day of the fire. Our room did not have a balcony, so the occupant smashed the window out. I was able to verify this by watching many videos on you tube and taking stills when paused, counting floors. "The Chemistry of Fire" is the one that confirmed beyond a doubt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EOVMysDM0I).
It was likely this decision that cost our room's occupant his life, as smoke was invading the hotel not only from the inside vents in the rooms but back in through the windows. The occupants that blocked doors and windows with wet towels and stayed inside are the ones who survived.
From the Fire Investigation Report - A list of fatalities by floor:
Here's the faceplate to room 2068, where two people died. Note the embossed brass room plate that was normal for the time. Room 2068 contained cases 1941 and 1942, a married couple, Vincent James McKinney and Ethel Dorothey McKinney. They were ID'd from their California Driver's Licenses. They were in body bags 56 and 57. Our room was case 1940 and had the remains removed in body bag 55, so these photos are as close as we can get inside.
So about our 21st Floor room. From the Fire Report:
Our faceplate in 2009:
1980 photograph - actual room number unknown, but this is the general style of room that 2115 was back in 1980:
And again, room 2115 in 2009. The light anomalies become more interesting when you realize they are in the general vicinity of where the yellow couches in 1980 were also located.
The Fire Report breaks down the list of fatalities from the Medical Examiner. Occupant of 2115 was found "Inside Room 2115- extended position on couch covered with blanket" per page VIII-9 of the Fire Report. Our occupant in room 2115 is Case # 1490 throughout the investigation. His name is John Frederick Ashton. He was 36 years old. He was an employee of the MGM who was delivering room service when the fire broke out. He was ID'd by his MGM ID card in room 2115. He was one of 7 employees that died in the blaze. You can see he died from smoke inhalation and CO2 poisoning, his levels of CO2 are unbelievably high.
So, was my celebrating a vacation by sitting on that blue couch with my giant daiquiri a trigger for John? Was I accidentally mocking what happened to him on the couch in that room? Is that why the next day he reached out to us? Was his personality similar to my kind, laid back husband?
Hallways outside rooms in 1980:
Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of hallway in 2009. Here's an interior shot of the deli area in 1980 where the fire started, near we had high weirdness looking for the steakhouse in 2009:
The rest of the deli shots are basically just ashes, but this one you can see some color and what it generally looked like. The reason the fire went up so fast is basically all of the fabrics and decorations in the casino were flammable. Lots of cellulose. The tiles literally melted and dropped on fire fighters' heads as they tried to put out the flames.
Here's some hallway shots from the fire report of the Casino that I found particularly haunting. The parts that survived were protected by a few sprinklers. It shows how effective they would have been in they had been in the entire hotel.
The halls used to be lined with MGM movie stars.
Through the Fire Investigative report and other sources, I have researched what restaurants were open at the time of the first fire call at 7:17am on 11/21/80. John Ashton had to have been delivering Room Service from the Orleans Room Coffee Shop as it was the only restaurant open at the time. His path would have been a short and direct one in the opposite direction where we were headed when we experienced our high strangeness incident and were lost in the hallway. Essentially we just reversed his path on our way down.
Here's the map from the Fire Investigation showing location of Elevators to North tower and up to Room 2115 from the Orleans Room. it also shows fatalities on the Casino floor.
One thing I haven't mentioned until now is that The reason I asked about blue uniforms at the MGM in the 1980s. When I tried to connect to his energy before going back to Las Vegas, I kept feeling two things - as absurd as it is, I kept hearing "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" - from Clerks, one of my favorite movies, and something is important about him wearing blue or navy. This is one of the reasons I want to know what the room service uniforms looked like - the hotel interior is red, so I'm not understanding where blue comes from, unless its from the blue couch I was sitting on.
But why did John F. Ashton choose David to connect with? Thousands of people stay in this room every year and no one on the internet has mentioned anything other than the 16th-23rd being haunted in general. Was it actually John, or was it residual energy of the hotel? Was is something else entirely that Dave tapped into? Did it tap into Dave because I was shut down and refusing to pay attention?
2009 Photos
Now here's the room. At first I didn't think anything of the light anomalies due to the sun and the glass coffee table. What is interesting though is that I have a photo of our Paris room a year earlier which has a similar coffee table and set up and I don't get the orbs. Again, typically I don't put any thought into "orb photos" in general, but given the strange events in the hotel and this particular room I'm giving them a second thought.
Here's the untouched original, Canon point and shoot digital camera, with Flash - I still own the camera and am going to attempt to recreate in the room this April, even though I'm sure the coffee table with the glass will be long gone.
Here's the same photo, with filters:
Monday, January 21, 2019
High Strangeness at Bally's Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada - Part One.
This is a long and ongoing story/investigation that is still unfolding. Recently after my second loss of important journals and papers, I decided the universe is prompting me to keep the important stuff in a second location.
My husband David and I eloped to Las Vegas in 2008. My dream is to go to Paris but as I was marrying a single dad, the closest we could come to Paris was to honeymoon at the Paris hotel and casino in Las Vegas. We had a wonderful wedding and a great time. It was the first time in Vegas for us both. Immediately we were wanted to return to Vegas for our first anniversary. My parents were married in Vegas in 1976, so I've always felt drawn to the city. My father was there a lot.
When I travel I like to take photos of everything, but one of the weird things I take photos of when we go on vacation somewhere special is the room number on the plate outside the door, a photo of the actual room we stay in, and a look out the window if its a high rise.
We weren't able to get back to Vegas in April 2009, but we were able to get back there in August when my mother in law took the kids for a few days. We really liked the location of the Paris but decided to stay somewhere else. I had my eye on the Flamingo because I'm a huge history and true crime buff, and I heard Bugsy haunted it. Ultimately we were on a budget and decided to stay at Bally's, which is linked to the Paris and next to the Flamingo. I knew nothing about Bally's except that we walked through, it was clean, where we wanted to be and cheapest in the area, so I booked. I have used personal journals and Facebook to accurately retrace our steps leading up to our high weirdness.
I always think its important when you're reached out to or contacted, to examine not only the entities contacting you, but why they may have chosen you. So basic biography information that may be applicable:
I was 31, working for a large corporation in the marketing department. I was making goo d money but the job was sucking the soul out of me, and my priorities were all fucked up. I was into Louis Vuitton, Chanel and chasing general show-off bullshit. I was caring for my father who was ill with Lewy Body Dementia and dealing with the VA, caregiving, Medicare etc. My uncle who was like a father to me passed in January that year and I was deeply in mourning. I was on medication and in therapy for depression and anxiety. I was overweight and lost. I've since gotten much healthier.
He was 34, working at a TV repair shop and going to school for an Accounting degree in the evenings while I held the homestead down with the kids. His ex-wife is mentally ill and we were spending thousands of dollars on attorneys trying to keep his children safe. We were happy with our relationship, but things were challenging everywhere else to say the least. We also just had purchased our first home together. Photos taken by us.
Upon arriving to Bally's, I used the old "$20 sandwich trick"(I'm sure it's at least $50 now) and asked if there was a room with a nice view upon my arrival. She had one with a nice version of the pool on an upper floor in the North tower and we happily took it. I took a photo of the door plate as well, but I'm not going to publicize our room for now.
The first night we were at Bally's (8/29/09) we got in late but were ready to blow off some steam. Immediately I went over to the Paris to get one of the gigantic Eiffel tower daiquiris that I saw on our last vacation, I was after the plastic Eiffel tower. It's now in our bedroom at home holding change. This blue couch is inside our room at Bally's:
We wandered around and had some drinks and ended back up at the room afterwards. As you can see, the mood was quite festive. Here's Dave going up the entry to Bally's.
First night was completely uneventful. The next morning we woke up and went to the wax museum and had some fun with the employees there (we were the first ones there in the morning and I had fun posing with the creepy stuff and the employees) and then we walked around the strip for hours.
We were having the time of our lives being our weird selves. We wandered around all day and dropped into bed happily exhausted.
8/30/09 was a normal day, as much as you can be normal in Las Vegas. We drank heavily, so if anything weird happened we were oblivious.
8/31/09 was the last full day in Vegas, and we had tickets to see Andrew Dice Clay at the Riviera. This was to be the highlight of our whole vacation, as we are both hugs fans of the Dice. That evening a few hours before the show, we decided to go back to the room and shower and change, as we were covered with desert and sweat. As I was leaning over in the mirror putting on my makeup, Dave began to become restless and said that he didn't feel well.
He began pacing and complaining that his chest hurt and he couldn't breathe. Lying down did not seem to help him. He felt extremely anxious with chest pain for about half an hour and couldn't stop coughing and pacing. It was to the point where I was getting ready to get into the rental car and drive him to the Urgent Care. He was arguing that he was fine, gasping in pain as he tried to breathe, when it suddenly seemed to pass as quickly as it came. His chest felt bruised to him from all of his coughing, but he could now breathe. He seemed confused and lethargic and wanted to lie down to take a nap.
Dave does not take naps, so I watched over him as he dozed. He never has had anything this happen to him before (or since), and by the time he was feeling better we missed the Dice show. We were bummed but decided to make the best of the evening anyway. He still wasn't 100% so we decided to stick around the Bally/Paris area. We took the elevator down to the casino level as I wanted a steak from the steakhouse. Neither of us had been drinking this day as we had plenty the night before.
We had been in the hotel complex for three days, and as I said before spent a lot of time in the Paris/Bally complex a year ago so we knew the area pretty well. Inexplicably, somehow from getting off of the elevator to the short walk to the steakhouse we got utterly and completely lost.
Dave was still feeling loopy from his experience before and things just started to feel weirder. For fifteen minutes we looped around and around the same hallways, lost. It got to the point where I started uncomfortably giggling after noting specific items in the hallway (room plaques) etc that seemed to be repeating. I made a joke about being in the Stanley Hotel. We simply could not get out of that hallway for fifteen minutes for some reason. What was even weirder was that this entire time we were looping around the hallways of the Bally we didn't run into another single person. If you've ever been inside a Casino in Vegas you know how strange this is.
Finally after taking the same turns we took again and again we managed to get out of the hallway and found the steakhouse. You can see here on the map, the elevators are close to the steakhouse, and there's no reason it should have taken us that long to get there. You can see the elevators from the North Tower and the steakhouse (blue):
I thought Dave was going to kill me when we finally walked up to the entrance and I got a chill and looked at him and very honestly said "I don't want to eat here anymore."
"What?" Dave said, totally exasperated. I was the one that wanted a steak, he doesn't even like steak.
"I don't want to eat here anymore. Let's go to the Flamingo. This place is weirding me out."
Even then Dave knows that if I say I need to get out of somewhere that I need to get out, and so we left out the front entrance. I instantly felt better leaving Bally's and we spent the evening in the Flamingo gardens before heading back to our room to sleep. There was only a feeling of peace at the Flamingo. Nothing else weird happened the rest of the trip and we got on our flight the next day with no problems. We just chalked it up to a weird day and a bummer end to the trip.
We didn't really think about it much at all. Which, over the last ten years I have learned, is pretty typical after experiencing high strangeness.
When we flew back home, Dave did go to the doctor, and ended up being diagnosed with a pulled muscle in his chest from coughing and had to wear a brace around it for four weeks. The photos we took in Vegas went into the album, and that was another vacation in the books.
I went back to Vegas in 2011 but nothing weird happened at Bally's. I stayed at the Hard Rock and felt a hundred years old instead.
2019
Ten years later my sister (by heart, not blood) is getting married in Las Vegas. In planning our next journey, I decide to look up Haunted locations in Las Vegas, as in the last 5-8 years especially I've been deep into paranormal research and investigation. I've had too many weird experiences in my life and notice high strangeness all around me and I'm in tune now to the shit that matters, instead of Louis Fucking Vuitton.
Before a few months ago I had no idea that Bally's used to be the MGM Grand. I had no idea that the MGM Grand had a fire on November 21, 1980 and 85 people died. The fire started in a restaurant on the Casino level, in the old Deli, which is a stone's throw from the hallway where we looped lost for fifteen minutes looking for the steakhouse.
As soon as I saw an old black and white photo of the Old MGM tower in flames I knew exactly what happened to Dave the night we missed the Dice show. The irony of course is he's interested in the paranormal, but nowhere the level of obsession that I am. I'm the seeker. The reasons he was chosen to have an experience become clearer the longer I research this fire.
I have combed over the fire report probably thirty times. I've watched every video I can unearth. As soon as I began researching I couldn't stop. I still haven't stopped. The information and the synchronicity of things - dates, numbers - there's so much. 85 people died in the fire and over 650 were injured. There are over 2000 rooms in the North Tower. We stayed in one of the 17 where someone died.
What I've found will absolutely blow your mind. I promise I'm going to share it all. First we have to go back our 2009 hotel room in Bally's this April. It also is complicated because the person that died in the hotel room that we stayed in still has living family in the Las Vegas area, and the last thing I want to do is bring any more suffering to an already agonizing situation for this family.
The fire report can be found here:
http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/fire/Documents/MGM_FIREInvestigationReport1980.pdf
A video overview of the fire can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o8dRs1R6O0
Ultimately, a number of reasons caused this fire, but it boiled down to greed. The MGM was too cheap to put in sprinklers and smoke detectors that would have literally saved everyone when the wiring was faulty.
(Greed...much like someone chasing acceptance through material items...much like the woman who was lost in the halls back in 2009...)
If you're a legitimate paranormal investigator in the area, we will be back 4/19-4/21. 4/19 and 4/21 are basically dedicated to boots on the ground research and back to the room with equipment this time. I'm always willing to share all the materials I've found ahead of time. I'm putting this out there and on Twitter because if someone else is supposed to go on the next leg of this journey with us, you'll find us. This entire case has just been about synchronicity, so I'm letting it come to us.
What I'm really needing from anyone that wants to help:
1. I need information on day to day operations for room service and what it was generally like in the morning. Ultimately, I'd love to talk to anyone that worked at the Hotel, especially in the Coffee House or any of the food service operations at the MGM at the time of the fire.
2. What did the room service uniforms look like? Were they navy?
3. Where can I get a copy of a driver's license from Clark County, NV in 1980? I'm looking for height/weight on a specific person and possible recent (pre-death) ID photo. I DO NOT WANT TO DISTURB THIS PERSON'S FAMILY FOR THIS INFORMATION. I have found family on Facebook and I will NOT disturb them in any way for the sake of our investigation. It is simply to verify an ongoing theory.
4. I have a photo in the room with light anomalies. I generally think orb photos are bullshit, but given the activities in the room and lack of orbs in other room photos I took on the same camera (digital) it makes me wonder. In addition, the anomalies are in the area of the room specifically where this person was found after dying from smoke inhalation/CO2 poisoning. Anyone that's an expert in this area, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the photo.
My husband David and I eloped to Las Vegas in 2008. My dream is to go to Paris but as I was marrying a single dad, the closest we could come to Paris was to honeymoon at the Paris hotel and casino in Las Vegas. We had a wonderful wedding and a great time. It was the first time in Vegas for us both. Immediately we were wanted to return to Vegas for our first anniversary. My parents were married in Vegas in 1976, so I've always felt drawn to the city. My father was there a lot.
When I travel I like to take photos of everything, but one of the weird things I take photos of when we go on vacation somewhere special is the room number on the plate outside the door, a photo of the actual room we stay in, and a look out the window if its a high rise.
We weren't able to get back to Vegas in April 2009, but we were able to get back there in August when my mother in law took the kids for a few days. We really liked the location of the Paris but decided to stay somewhere else. I had my eye on the Flamingo because I'm a huge history and true crime buff, and I heard Bugsy haunted it. Ultimately we were on a budget and decided to stay at Bally's, which is linked to the Paris and next to the Flamingo. I knew nothing about Bally's except that we walked through, it was clean, where we wanted to be and cheapest in the area, so I booked. I have used personal journals and Facebook to accurately retrace our steps leading up to our high weirdness.
I always think its important when you're reached out to or contacted, to examine not only the entities contacting you, but why they may have chosen you. So basic biography information that may be applicable:
I was 31, working for a large corporation in the marketing department. I was making goo d money but the job was sucking the soul out of me, and my priorities were all fucked up. I was into Louis Vuitton, Chanel and chasing general show-off bullshit. I was caring for my father who was ill with Lewy Body Dementia and dealing with the VA, caregiving, Medicare etc. My uncle who was like a father to me passed in January that year and I was deeply in mourning. I was on medication and in therapy for depression and anxiety. I was overweight and lost. I've since gotten much healthier.
He was 34, working at a TV repair shop and going to school for an Accounting degree in the evenings while I held the homestead down with the kids. His ex-wife is mentally ill and we were spending thousands of dollars on attorneys trying to keep his children safe. We were happy with our relationship, but things were challenging everywhere else to say the least. We also just had purchased our first home together. Photos taken by us.
Upon arriving to Bally's, I used the old "$20 sandwich trick"(I'm sure it's at least $50 now) and asked if there was a room with a nice view upon my arrival. She had one with a nice version of the pool on an upper floor in the North tower and we happily took it. I took a photo of the door plate as well, but I'm not going to publicize our room for now.
We wandered around and had some drinks and ended back up at the room afterwards. As you can see, the mood was quite festive. Here's Dave going up the entry to Bally's.
First night was completely uneventful. The next morning we woke up and went to the wax museum and had some fun with the employees there (we were the first ones there in the morning and I had fun posing with the creepy stuff and the employees) and then we walked around the strip for hours.
We were having the time of our lives being our weird selves. We wandered around all day and dropped into bed happily exhausted.
8/30/09 was a normal day, as much as you can be normal in Las Vegas. We drank heavily, so if anything weird happened we were oblivious.
8/31/09 was the last full day in Vegas, and we had tickets to see Andrew Dice Clay at the Riviera. This was to be the highlight of our whole vacation, as we are both hugs fans of the Dice. That evening a few hours before the show, we decided to go back to the room and shower and change, as we were covered with desert and sweat. As I was leaning over in the mirror putting on my makeup, Dave began to become restless and said that he didn't feel well.
He began pacing and complaining that his chest hurt and he couldn't breathe. Lying down did not seem to help him. He felt extremely anxious with chest pain for about half an hour and couldn't stop coughing and pacing. It was to the point where I was getting ready to get into the rental car and drive him to the Urgent Care. He was arguing that he was fine, gasping in pain as he tried to breathe, when it suddenly seemed to pass as quickly as it came. His chest felt bruised to him from all of his coughing, but he could now breathe. He seemed confused and lethargic and wanted to lie down to take a nap.
Dave does not take naps, so I watched over him as he dozed. He never has had anything this happen to him before (or since), and by the time he was feeling better we missed the Dice show. We were bummed but decided to make the best of the evening anyway. He still wasn't 100% so we decided to stick around the Bally/Paris area. We took the elevator down to the casino level as I wanted a steak from the steakhouse. Neither of us had been drinking this day as we had plenty the night before.
We had been in the hotel complex for three days, and as I said before spent a lot of time in the Paris/Bally complex a year ago so we knew the area pretty well. Inexplicably, somehow from getting off of the elevator to the short walk to the steakhouse we got utterly and completely lost.
Dave was still feeling loopy from his experience before and things just started to feel weirder. For fifteen minutes we looped around and around the same hallways, lost. It got to the point where I started uncomfortably giggling after noting specific items in the hallway (room plaques) etc that seemed to be repeating. I made a joke about being in the Stanley Hotel. We simply could not get out of that hallway for fifteen minutes for some reason. What was even weirder was that this entire time we were looping around the hallways of the Bally we didn't run into another single person. If you've ever been inside a Casino in Vegas you know how strange this is.
Finally after taking the same turns we took again and again we managed to get out of the hallway and found the steakhouse. You can see here on the map, the elevators are close to the steakhouse, and there's no reason it should have taken us that long to get there. You can see the elevators from the North Tower and the steakhouse (blue):
I thought Dave was going to kill me when we finally walked up to the entrance and I got a chill and looked at him and very honestly said "I don't want to eat here anymore."
"What?" Dave said, totally exasperated. I was the one that wanted a steak, he doesn't even like steak.
"I don't want to eat here anymore. Let's go to the Flamingo. This place is weirding me out."
Even then Dave knows that if I say I need to get out of somewhere that I need to get out, and so we left out the front entrance. I instantly felt better leaving Bally's and we spent the evening in the Flamingo gardens before heading back to our room to sleep. There was only a feeling of peace at the Flamingo. Nothing else weird happened the rest of the trip and we got on our flight the next day with no problems. We just chalked it up to a weird day and a bummer end to the trip.
We didn't really think about it much at all. Which, over the last ten years I have learned, is pretty typical after experiencing high strangeness.
When we flew back home, Dave did go to the doctor, and ended up being diagnosed with a pulled muscle in his chest from coughing and had to wear a brace around it for four weeks. The photos we took in Vegas went into the album, and that was another vacation in the books.
I went back to Vegas in 2011 but nothing weird happened at Bally's. I stayed at the Hard Rock and felt a hundred years old instead.
2019
Ten years later my sister (by heart, not blood) is getting married in Las Vegas. In planning our next journey, I decide to look up Haunted locations in Las Vegas, as in the last 5-8 years especially I've been deep into paranormal research and investigation. I've had too many weird experiences in my life and notice high strangeness all around me and I'm in tune now to the shit that matters, instead of Louis Fucking Vuitton.
Before a few months ago I had no idea that Bally's used to be the MGM Grand. I had no idea that the MGM Grand had a fire on November 21, 1980 and 85 people died. The fire started in a restaurant on the Casino level, in the old Deli, which is a stone's throw from the hallway where we looped lost for fifteen minutes looking for the steakhouse.
As soon as I saw an old black and white photo of the Old MGM tower in flames I knew exactly what happened to Dave the night we missed the Dice show. The irony of course is he's interested in the paranormal, but nowhere the level of obsession that I am. I'm the seeker. The reasons he was chosen to have an experience become clearer the longer I research this fire.
I have combed over the fire report probably thirty times. I've watched every video I can unearth. As soon as I began researching I couldn't stop. I still haven't stopped. The information and the synchronicity of things - dates, numbers - there's so much. 85 people died in the fire and over 650 were injured. There are over 2000 rooms in the North Tower. We stayed in one of the 17 where someone died.
What I've found will absolutely blow your mind. I promise I'm going to share it all. First we have to go back our 2009 hotel room in Bally's this April. It also is complicated because the person that died in the hotel room that we stayed in still has living family in the Las Vegas area, and the last thing I want to do is bring any more suffering to an already agonizing situation for this family.
The fire report can be found here:
http://www.clarkcountynv.gov/fire/Documents/MGM_FIREInvestigationReport1980.pdf
A video overview of the fire can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o8dRs1R6O0
Ultimately, a number of reasons caused this fire, but it boiled down to greed. The MGM was too cheap to put in sprinklers and smoke detectors that would have literally saved everyone when the wiring was faulty.
(Greed...much like someone chasing acceptance through material items...much like the woman who was lost in the halls back in 2009...)
If you're a legitimate paranormal investigator in the area, we will be back 4/19-4/21. 4/19 and 4/21 are basically dedicated to boots on the ground research and back to the room with equipment this time. I'm always willing to share all the materials I've found ahead of time. I'm putting this out there and on Twitter because if someone else is supposed to go on the next leg of this journey with us, you'll find us. This entire case has just been about synchronicity, so I'm letting it come to us.
What I'm really needing from anyone that wants to help:
1. I need information on day to day operations for room service and what it was generally like in the morning. Ultimately, I'd love to talk to anyone that worked at the Hotel, especially in the Coffee House or any of the food service operations at the MGM at the time of the fire.
2. What did the room service uniforms look like? Were they navy?
3. Where can I get a copy of a driver's license from Clark County, NV in 1980? I'm looking for height/weight on a specific person and possible recent (pre-death) ID photo. I DO NOT WANT TO DISTURB THIS PERSON'S FAMILY FOR THIS INFORMATION. I have found family on Facebook and I will NOT disturb them in any way for the sake of our investigation. It is simply to verify an ongoing theory.
4. I have a photo in the room with light anomalies. I generally think orb photos are bullshit, but given the activities in the room and lack of orbs in other room photos I took on the same camera (digital) it makes me wonder. In addition, the anomalies are in the area of the room specifically where this person was found after dying from smoke inhalation/CO2 poisoning. Anyone that's an expert in this area, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the photo.
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