Combing under the 30-foot-high marble dome encasing Jimi Hendrix’s grave, ghost hunter Ken Arnold scans AM/FM radio frequencies with his SB11 Spirit Box. Nothing but static fizzles from the device speaker.
No signs of Jimi arise. No purple or purple adjacent haze of violet or boysenberry. No one ’scusing themselves to kiss the sky. No voodoo children.
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There is opium incense though, cobra wisps slithering over flowers and offerings to Jimi: letters, guitar picks, crystals, a naked woman lighter, a half-smoked joint, one intact turkey wishbone, some condoms, and a dental retainer. A few feet away, lipstick kiss marks dot an etching of Jimi’s face on smooth imposing rock.
The polished gray granite facades gleam somber, offset by bright burnt orange chrysanthemums and rows of hot pink petunias jigging against the steely, sunless day.
“Scanning radio waves with the Spirit Box creates an energy field spirits can hold onto to communicate,” Ken says, patrolling the tomb with a K2 electromagnetic field meter in one hand and a Mel-Meter EMF temperature gauge in the other.
Ken, laden with gadgets, proceeds carefully through the space, searching for signs of Hendrix or astral vibrations from the Stratocaster guitar statue at the center of the hub. Ken lets his gear guide him like a water diviner’s forked stick, walking gingerly as if moving through a dream he doesn’t want to disturb.
“Can you hear me, Jimi?” He asks out loud, “Are you here?”
Fifteen overcast miles southeast of Seattle, the grounds and grass of Renton, Washington’s Greenwood Memorial Park are well trimmed and kept. Moss-tufted mausoleums overlook a lotus garden and pagoda pond. Jimi’s regal tri-pillared gazebo is mobility-friendly. Renton Technical College sits catty-corner to the cemetery site, and there’s a McDonald’s across the street for those who need a shake after paying respects.
“When we’re investigating a place, we ask the spirits questions. We ask, is there anyone here that will communicate with us? Do you know you are dead?”
Ken runs a team of Seattle- and Tacoma-based paranormal investigators who identify as the Puget Sound Ghost Hunters. He always needs fresh batteries. Ken’s assistant Kaz Numora inspects the dental retainer. It’s a used, acrylic, orthodontic retainer with curved wire to wrap around front teeth resting next to the intact wishbone.
“Spirits need energy to communicate. They’ll use light bulbs, cameras, wiring, whatever. I replace all batteries before an investigation.”
Kaz asks Ken if he should hold the Spirit Box upside down with his left hand the way Hendrix played guitar.
“No,” Ken replies. “You wouldn’t be able to read levels that way.”
The thing Ken never wants to do is provoke an unhappy spirit.
“We aim to identify and help spirits move on, if that’s what they need. For people experiencing paranormal activity, we offer free confidential consultations. We research location histories for all who lived and died there. If you’ve got a ghost or a negative spirit, don’t piss it off. One of our team members is also a Christian minister. A spirit we were investigating called her by name and said, F U b*tch. We’ve learned nothing’s guaranteed when you’re probing this turnstile world of come-and-go souls.”
Hovering over Hendrix’s headstone with his multicolored K2 meter, Ken repeats, “Jimi, are you here? We’d love to talk to you.”
A quiet billows out with the incense as Kaz and Ken float around the oval. Jimi is staying silent.
“Some say spirits are afraid to go to the light. They may have unfinished business. Some say spirits might not know they’re dead. I’m not in this for money, I’m in it to help,” Ken declares. “I’m naturally drawn to it. If we are able to establish communication with a spirit, we want to build their trust. When our meters go off with readings, and we start getting EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), it’s a rush.”
Inside Kaz’s head, “Voodoo Child” spins. She wonders how long lipstick lasts on the granite. Did the retainer come straight out of a person’s mouth? Did someone just plop it down?
Looking up she notices “Voodoo Child” lyrics are laser etched into the big slab before her.
“If I don’t meet you no more in this world
then I’ll meet ya on the next one.
And don’t be late.”
Kaz digs through her bag for something to leave Jimi as an offering but finds no meaningful trinkets, and she has no dental devices. There’s a pack of Dentyne, but leaving a stick of mint gum feels uncool. Her grandmother’s jade necklace hangs around her neck, but Jimi isn’t getting that, sorry. She’s only a casual Jimi fan.
Kaz also has no lipstick and doesn’t want to kiss the stone where the other kisses are. So she closes her eyes, stands on her toes, spine stretched, and aims three kisses up to the sky. One for Jimi. One for the retainer plopper. And one flies through the atmosphere’s trapdoor to the volume knob on Cassiopeia’s sound system.
Turn it up, Jimi. Don’t be late.
A thin breeze exhales across the plots, making the petunia petals wave. Kaz drifts with it toward the energy field from Ken’s Spirit Box. Her shadow seems to flicker there…not there…there. She steps cautiously in case the ground vanishes beneath her feet.
Growing up in Des Moines, Washington, Ken Arnold got the paranormal bug as a child due to his repeated encounters with the ghost of a man named George who had died in the house where his own family lived.
“I’d see the shadow of a figure on the wall,” Ken says. “There’d be footsteps. Pool balls would move in the basement. Once, my friend and I saw George on the porch looking through the window. He was gray haired, sort of bald, and bent over with his hands on his knees grinning at us. Then he stood up, faced left, and floated off.”
Ken’s Mom suggested speaking to George, and being nice to him, asking him how he was. And Ken’s been talking to ghosts ever since.
Glancing across Greenwood Memorial Park, Ken tells a story about PSGH’s 399th investigation, at a Tacoma house built in 1910. The ghost-hunters were contacted by the owner of the home who was doing a remodel of the upstairs bathroom. They reported voices, and the sound of someone walking up the stairs, even though no one else was in the home.
PSGH team member Terri found that at some point, the house was purchased by a woman named Ida, who was a member of the Washington State legislature.
Ida had a 24 year-old niece—her name was May, and she married a man named Dennis, who was 26. Dennis and May moved into Ida’s house, and within a year, their marriage started to show signs of failing. Ida got Dennis a job as director of state transportation, even though he had no experience, and he worked long hours.
One weekend, Ida took May on a trip to Battle Ground, Washington, about 130 miles away. Dennis stayed home to work, and was found later by a caretaker dead in his bed.
Police believed it was a murder, because of the way the body was positioned, carefully tucked into the sheets. They suspected Dennis’s sister, but couldn’t prove anything. The death was labeled a suicide by an overdose of ether. There was a weird bowl on the floor.
“For our investigation of the Tacoma house,” says Ken, “I was there with my wife Donna who is our case manager, Terri, and Terri’s daughter Janette. It was hot—about 90 degrees inside the house. I was wearing shorts. We were upstairs getting solid EMF readings, and all the sudden my legs got ice cold.
We decided to put four chairs downstairs and sit in the dining room to try to communicate with Dennis through our Spirit Box.” Ken said they were able to establish a solid connection, and that the following back-and-forth took place:
Ken: “Were you murdered, or did you commit suicide?”
Dennis: “Go away.”
Ken: “I’m not going anywhere, Dennis. I’m here for you. I need to know how you died.”
Dennis: “Murdered.”
Ken: “OK. Thank you. Who murdered you?”
Dennis: “Go away.”
Ken: “I’m not going to go away, I need to know. Who murdered you?”
Dennis: “May.”
Ken: “OK. Did you love May?”
Dennis: “Yes.”
Ken: “How old was May when she died?” (Ken knew the answer.)
Dennis: “Shut up.”
Ken: “What was that?”
At that moment Ken reports that the right rear leg of his chair was pulled up and lifted to the left, sending him crashing down to the hardwood floor.
“It felt like I was slammed to the ground without anyone touching me,” says Ken. “The leg of the chair shattered like glass. Pieces were found 30 feet away. I thought I’d broken my arm.”
As Ken was coming to his senses, getting on his hands and knees to stand up, the story of how Dennis was murdered popped into his head. Later, at Shari’s Cafe & Pies, Ken revealed to his team the information that came to him in the house.
“Ida and May conspired to kill Dennis,” said Ken. “The day May supposedly left for Battle Ground, she returned to the house after Dennis went to work and hid with the ether in a compartment behind the wall in their bedroom. When Dennis fell asleep that night, she crept out and smothered him with it. Then, she and Ida left town.”
Ken would like to return to the location for another investigation. He has some unanswered questions.
Speaking of potential murder, Kaz wants to ask Jimi if he was murdered by his notorious mob-tied manager, Michael Jeffery. But she doesn’t want to upset the guitar god’s spirit, per Ken’s warning.
While Hendrix’s official cause of death in 1970 was ruled asphyxiation due to barbiturate overdose, rampant rumors have since swirled that Jeffery orchestrated it. According to lore, Hendrix was suing Jeffery for embezzlement and was planning to sever ties. And Jeffery had supposedly taken out a secret life insurance policy on Hendrix.
Alleged reports of paramedics pumping six liters of red wine from Hendrix’s lungs, despite his blood alcohol level being near zero, raised suspicions he was forcibly drowned by “waterboarding” with wine.
Adding to suspicion, Hendrix could have been perceived as a threat to the U.S. government by financially backing the Black Panther Party, and speaking out against the Vietnam War. So there were, potentially, folks who wanted Jimi gone.
Beyond the alleged mob ties, Jeffery was supposedly connected to British intelligence as well. Three years after Hendrix’s passing, Jeffery died in a mid-air crash between a DC-9 and another aircraft over France. His remains were never found. Jeffery was supposed to report to a London court the next day to defend himself in multiple lawsuits over his embezzlement, money laundering, and fraud.
Since Jimi isn’t talking, Kaz decides to keep the murder questions to herself.
Ken ventures back under Hendrix’s grand dome and hoists out a few last ditch attempts to communicate with Jimi. The paranormal gear isn’t picking up signs. It seems Mr. Hendrix is choosing to remain mum.
“In an environment like this, there’s some noise contamination. People talking and passing through the site. It can be hard to register readings and audio,” Ken says, packing up equipment by his car in the Greenwood Memorial parking lot. “My wife and I have a theory that when a spirit is not responding, maybe they’ve moved on. Maybe Jimi’s onto his next life. Maybe he’s selling ice cream somewhere. Or he could be a leaf on a tree. We’re just trying to collect evidence. Jimi wasn’t here today. You never know. Maybe next week he will be.”
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