No RIP in VIP Room 13?
Brothel�s �haunted� room will be on Sci-Fi Channel show Wednesday
Forrest Hartman
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
10/23/2004 09:40 am

Haunted or not?: Danielle hams it up in VIP Room 13, a room rumored to be haunted, at the Moonlite BunnyRanch on Thursday.  VIP Room 13 will be one of the purportedly paranormal places discussed on a Sci-Fi Channel show air ing Wednesday. - Photo illustration by David B. Parker
Haunted or not?: Danielle hams it up in VIP Room 13, a room rumored to be haunted, at the Moonlite BunnyRanch on Thursday. VIP Room 13 will be one of the purportedly paranormal places discussed on a Sci-Fi Channel show air ing Wednesday.

HAUNTED BROTHEL?
�Proof Positive: Evidence of the Paranormal� will try to determine if the Moonlite BunnyRanch is haunted during its Wednesday night episode. The program will be shown at 8 and 11 p.m. on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Danielle, a leggy working girl at the Moonlite BunnyRanch, is no fool. When creepy things started happening in VIP Room 13, she cleared out.

�We�re always the first to get killed in a movie,� she said. �I�m not taking any chances.�

Rumors of a haunted room in this brothel have been floating about for years, said BunnyRanch owner Dennis Hof. On Wednesday, the television show �Proof Positive: Evidence of the Paranormal� will look into them. Hof said producers of the program, which is shown Wednesdays on the Sci-Fi Channel, contacted him earlier this year.

�We initially just said, �No.� We don�t want to talk about this,� Hof said. �We�re beyond doing the �Hard Copy�-�Inside Edition� kind of stuff. � We�re really much more selective about media things than we used to be.�

But, Hof said, he softened after learning that the creators of �Proof Positive� also created �Unsolved Mysteries.�

�We want to do business with the right people,� he said. �And the people who did �Unsolved Mysteries� are quality people.�

Hof even submitted to a lie detector test when talking about the supposed haunting. Whether or not the room is haunted, Hof said, it has an interesting history. It�s the same room, he said, where actor and politician Jesse Ventura had the romp he wrote about in his autobiography, �I Ain�t Got Time to Bleed.� Hof also said $4,800 was discovered hidden between the base of the sink and the wall during a 1992 renovation.

�The newest bill was like a 1963 or 1964 bill,� he said.

Over the years, working girls have told stories about everything from flickering lights and strange noises to heating problems, and Hof said those things continue despite attempts to resolve them. He said some girls think the ghost of a dead prostitute haunts the room, but he�s not buying.

�I�m an absolute nonbeliever,� he said. �I�m a real skeptic about a lot of things, so maybe I�m not the best one to judge.�

That�s where �Proof Positive� comes in.

�We have three segments in each show,� said co-creator Terry Meurer. �Of those three segments, one of them will test proof positive.�

Generally, that means the show�s experts can�t find any other explanation for the strange happenings being reported.

�Sometimes it�s a matter of not being able to disprove it,� Meurer said. �If we have credible people taking polygraph tests, and the majority of them pass, then we consider that a positive because they certainly believe what they�re saying is true. In the show, we�ve had some people pass their polygraph, and we�ve had some people not pass their polygraph.�

The program investigates the paranormal, and segments can focus on anything from space aliens to creatures like Bigfoot. But at the BunnyRanch, all the talk is about ghosts.

�It�s a very positive energy that�s in that room,� said Chantel Lace, a BunnyRanch prostitute. �I can feel it when I�m there.�

Lace said she is a Wiccan, and she likes working in the room.

�I�ve seen things like the lights flickering in there,� she said. �I�ve heard things when I�ve walked by � It�s nothing I�ve ever been scared of.�

Lace goes so far as to speculate that a past patron or girl might have considered the location a sort of heaven and decided to remain after death.

�If it was available, I�d (room) in there,� Lace said. �The supernatural cannot harm you.�

According to Hof, few of the BunnyRanch girls are that relaxed about VIP 13.

�We couldn�t get any girls to stay in that room,� he said. �So, we made a VIP room out of it.�

Although Danielle has a creepy feeling about VIP 13, she stops short of calling it haunted.

�Usually I�m like a skeptic,� she said. �I just remember one day I was partying in there � and all of a sudden the shower came on.�

She said she got up and turned it off, but it came on again about 20 minutes later and the maintenance crew didn�t have an explanation.

Shelly Dushell has only been at the BunnyRanch a month and a half, but she said she�s already had bizarre experiences in the room.

�I partied in here about four days ago, and I actually thought the guy was rubbing my shoulder, but he wasn�t,� she said. �I could�ve sworn I felt his hand on me. � When I turned around to look, he had his hands on the bed.�

Dushell said she also remembers a time when the mirror fogged up for no apparent reason and then just as quickly went back to normal.

�At first it gave me the creeps working in here,� she said. �(But), basically, I feel like if something was rubbing my shoulder there are worse things it could�ve done.�



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