Heather Woodward didn't mind unexpected attendees popping in at the meeting she organized last summer. In fact, she actively encouraged convention-crashing. After all, even if her surprise guests didn't pay, they also didn't run up her F&B charges or require extra rooms, since they didn't eat, drink, or even sleep.
These guests? Ghoststhe spirits of dead people, who communicated through the paranormal investigators attending the first South Coast Paranormal Convention, held July 20-21 at the Glen Tavern Inn in Santa Paula, CA.
Spooking the SkepticsSite selection was a snap; Woodward chose the property because "it's rumored to be one of the most haunted hotels in California." The historic inn, built in 1911 when Santa Paula was a booming oil town, once attracted the likes of Harry Houdini and Carole Lombard. Guests of less repute frequented the third floor, known for gambling, illegal drinking, and prostitutionand not a few murders, whose victims may have lingered behind.
Psychic site inspections were a convention highlight, with groups of 30 going room to room, checking for "cold spots," electromagnetic fields, and other signs of paranormal phenomena. "We had a few nonbelievers who tagged along, and by the end of the investigations they were spooked," says Woodward. Her own sister, a "hard-core skeptic," left an interactive seance wondering if the dead weren't trying to contact the living after all.
The Medium with a MessageWoodward, a tarot card reader and medium herself, says it wasn't difficult to switch from seances to gatherings of the fleshly, thanks to her background in public relations and marketing. That experience explains her knack for attracting publicityshe got two local newspapers and a TV station to cover the convention.
Alas, it was attention the hotel didn't relish: "After one local paper did a two-page story on us, the manager yelled at me," Woodward recalls. "She said she didn't want to offend the 'church ladies' hereeven though she herself had recently been interviewed on a TV show for psychics." And despite paying a deposit four months in advance, Woodward had trouble getting the property to honor her room block. "We ended up with eight fewer rooms than we deserved and had to scramble to find last-minute accommodations," she sighs.
Woodward says it was a mistake to have bundled hotel and conference fees together. "I'd never done it that way and thought it'd be a nice perk, but it's not worth the trouble. My advice is, let attendees deal with the hotel part themselves." All the accommodations issues wound up costing Woodward $1,700 extra, but she still insists the endeavor was a success: "If it hadn't been for the hotel, we would have broken even, which is excellent for a first-year convention of this size. Even being short a couple thousand is still very good."
So she'd do it again? "We're thinking about it," she admits, "but we're looking into a more established venue. Somewhere they're not afraid of church ladies!"
Originally published November 01, 2007For more ideas, tips, and tools for better meetings and events,
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