Former California Cops Now Busting Ghosts

(Sept. 30) -- Ever since William Jimenez was 11 years old, he could see dead people. He would see them walking down a sidewalk, inside a house or standing along the side of a road.

"At first it scared me to death," said Jimenez, 60, a retired detective. "Sometimes I'd see the whole body and other times just part of it. They'd be wearing clothes from the time period in which they died."

Jimenez says he eventually learned to see his talent as a gift and has parlayed it into a ghost-hunting business along with two friends who are also retired investigators with the California Highway Patrol. The skills they used to bring suspects to justice are now utilized in determining whether buildings are haunted and, if need be, ridding them of unwanted spirits.

To date, Paranormal Investigative Technology has investigated about 100 sites including an abandoned ghost town, a fire station and individual homes.


"We were trained by the government to investigate," said Jimenez, who also worked dignitary protection guarding the governor and any head of state visiting California. "We were crime scene investigators and had to duplicate what happened. If someone got shot, you want to know which angle the bullet came in. With ghost hunting, we treat it like a crime scene. The ghost is the suspect. Want to know why he is there, how long he's been there and the purpose of being there."

Over the years, team members say they have been choked, thrown to the ground and pushed, and even suffered medical issues. They say most of the spirits they encounter are just seeking attention and are not evil, but it doesn't make it any less frightening.

"I still get scared," Jimenez admitted. "When you die, you take your personality with you. If you were a drunk, you're a drunk ghost. If you were a killer, you're a killer as a ghost."

The Beginning

Jimenez started his business as a hobby. When he met fellow CHP investigator Glen Mayernick in 2001, the pair decided to team up as ghostbusters on days they weren't working. It wasn't long before one of their superiors found out about their unusual pastime and ordered them to stop.

"Officers around us were afraid and bothered that we would talk about dead people, so they snitched us off to management," Jimenez said. "Management wanted to do an investigation to see if we were doing it for profit and on state time. I told a lieutenant that this is discrimination. We go ghost hunting; it's a hobby. You have people who go dune buggying and horseback riding, that's their hobby."

When the pair retired a few years ago along with a third investigator, they were free to seek out ghosts full time. At one point they were approached by two different television networks who wanted them to star in ghost-hunting shows. Jimenez said he declined after being told to embellish their findings to make the show more dramatic.

"They wanted us to pretend to be thrown against the wall and stuff like that," he said. "We try to debunk a lot of things; we don't take it for granted when someone says they see a ghost."

Haunted Navy Base

One of their biggest investigations has been the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station outside Los Angeles. Built in 1942 to aid in World War II, the facility includes a theater where USO shows were held. Most of the hauntings have taken place in that theater and in a now-defunct hospital nearby that includes a morgue in the basement.

Numerous people have seen a dark-haired woman in a nurse's uniform and hat roaming the halls of the hospital, said Jeff Hathcock, president of the Theater Guild and Southeast Civic Light Opera, which holds productions at the theater.
"There have been multiple sightings by many people; I've seen her three times myself," Hathcock said. "So many people have seen her and describe her in same way. One Iraqi war veteran bailed out of a window and said, 'I'm not going back.'"

Hathcock says the nurse will shut lights on and off, close and lock doors, and make a racket when rock music is played in the building, only to quiet down when '40s music is substituted.

Over at the theater, apparitions have been more plentiful:

• A man in a projection room and on a balcony where a murder occurred earlier this year.
• A World War II-era sailor sitting in the back row.
• A black, smoky form in an aisle caught on film, and
• A pair of feet walking several inches off the ground behind a large wagon that was on the stage as a prop.

Jimenez and Mayernick said they saw a seat flip down as if someone was sitting in it.

"A lot of times the ghosts are curious," Jimenez said. "When we go to a location, we talk to them, tell them we're not there to bother them. We want to learn about them, and that puts them at ease."

Mayernick is more of a skeptic and handles the forensics. He is in charge of documenting their visits with photos, video, tape recordings and heat sensors.

While reviewing pictures from the base, he noticed the smoky apparition and also saw a white theater mask in the upper left-hand corner of a mirror. Neither of these was seen by the naked eye, so he went back to the theater to shoot the areas again, and they were not replicated in the second shot.

"I went through FBI training for forensics," Mayernick explained. "So when I look at stuff, I think, what do I have? I eliminate other sounds, voices, dirt on a lens, light. Then I say, 'I can't explain it, I don't know what it is.' For several years I've been doing this, I've seen some really strange stuff that I can't explain. That's why it's paranormal; there is no scientific explanation for it."

Other Investigations

Other investigations include a California fire station where a firefighter was being choked and a house where a rod-shaped light was flying around the room.


Then there was Calico Ghost Town, a county park in the desert on the way to Las Vegas where gift shop clerks were frightened by unexplained shadows, whispering, and items that would move by themselves.

"We did a five-year investigation where we would go out every week," Jimenez said. "We went through every building and outside the town in the mines. Acres and acres. Hundreds of ghosts are still there. We told them that they were dead and a lot of them knew, but they said, 'We like it here.'"

Both Jimenez and Mayernick say they were knocked to the ground in different instances while investigating the mines. Jimenez said one of the episodes involved a spirit who was a miner cheating his partners out of a stash of gold and thought the group would snitch him off.

Jimenez said he communicated with the miner that they weren't there to harm him and established a type of truce with the spirits not to bother the employees.

Then when Mayernick started going over the evidence later, he found something equally as bizarre. The tape was sent to the Smithsonian Institute, where a linguist said the language was an ancient Mayan dialect and the translation was, "Come closer, I want a better look at you," Mayernick said.

Thriving Business

Word of mouth and police connections have turned Paranormal Investigative Technology into a thriving business that now includes Mayernick's daughter, who also has the ability to communicate with spirits, Mayernick says.

It's taken a toll, since four out of the five members now have back and neck problems after dealing with some locations that have had some particularly nasty spirits.

"I'm the only one who doesn't, so I'm kind of waiting for the shoe to fall," Mayernick said.

The group doesn't take any money but says they conduct their investigations in order to help people -- both living and dead.

"The living have entities in their houses, and the dead want to find eternal peace," Jimenez said. "Many times we've found the dead are lost spirits, confused, scared, and they need a guide to show them the way to the light. And that's us. Others choose to stay behind."

Some things the group won't handle including something like an abandoned prison where the spirits aren't affecting anyone, or anything involving demons.

"You have to be specially trained to deal with demons; they can make you miserable the rest of your life," Jimenez said. "I tell (clients) they need to get a demonologist or a Catholic priest. I've never encountered a demon.

"Usually ghosts are just defending their territory," he added. "A lot of them just want to scare you, they don't want you around. Only about 1 or 2 percent are just evil."