REAL ESTATE

LOS ANGELES TIMES  June 12, 2000 BOOTH MOORE

Psychic Goes After Ghost Who’s Partial to Pricey Hotel Rooms

Imagine you’re the general manager of a chic boutique hotel with a pesky ghost who won’t vacate one of your high-priced villas. What to do? If you’re Rod Gruendyke of West Hollywood’s Sunset Marquis, you hire a medium and hold a seance . . . complete with red wine and tuna tartare.

“I’m a bit, um, embarrassed,” said the buttoned-up Gruendyke. Since 1991, he’s been at the hotel with the rock ‘n’ roll reputation. (It’s played host to President Clinton, Gene Hackman, Ozzy Ozbourne and, most recently, spooky couple Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton.) As far as Gruendyke knows, no one has died in the hotel since it was built in the 1930s, although plenty of guests have left on stretchers. (Too much partying.)

“This is not a publicity stunt,” hotel publicist Kelly Cutrone told the 13 seance guests, who included three reporters. We had gathered in a circle in the living room of Villa 2 South, a $1,200-a-night room with a balcony, rattan decor and, apparently, a ghost with a taste for upscale hotels.

“Rod has had a relationship with the spirit, and the hotel is about to undergo a major renovation,” Cutrone said. “Out of concern for the spirit [and I think probably a need for closure], he asked me to find a psychic.”

“Well, I don’t usually do ghost-busting,” said shiny-haired medium Justine Kenzer, 32, who wore a black tunic with silver embroidery.

Over the years, guests--including the girl band appropriately named Bewitched--have seen strange shadows and heard thumping in the villa, Gruendyke said.

The maintenance man won’t enter Villa 2 South by himself, and housekeepers have reported instances of towels left in one location that mysteriously show up in another.

But perhaps the strangest event involved Gruendyke’s children, then 8 and 6, shortly after he took the job.

“One morning after the family stayed in the villa, they said, ‘Daddy, you have the nicest staff! An old lady with gray hair came by and tucked us in last night.’ ” They said she was “like a grandmother,” in a blouse and long skirt.

Rubbing her hands together, Kenzer tuned in immediately. (She’s used to that; after all she does readings by e-mail from her Web site at https://www.psychicgirl.com.)

Gruendyke had said that an underground tunnel once connected a parking lot near his hotel to a gambling house on the other side of Sunset. The spirit, said Kenzer with her eyes wide shut, “is a young, beautiful woman who was killed by men, murdered and buried in that tunnel.” (The tunnel, said Gruendyke, was demolished long ago.) The poor thing was a starlet who “fell in with the wrong crowd” and was perhaps killed by someone she loved, Kenzer said.

“This may seem superficial,” said Cutrone, ever the publicist, “but was she in any films?”

“No, no. She wasn’t there yet,” Kenzer replied. “She was a starlet in training, but very beautiful.”

The mysterious old woman encountered by the manager’s children, said the medium, was a benign spirit who had come to protect them from the unhappy ghost.

Hard as I tried, I discerned no signals from the great beyond--no shadows, flickering candles, rustling bedclothes or knocking on the walls. I did hear a faint whistling. A sign from the spirit? 

With a small waving motion, Kenzer attempted to “heal” the spirit. She instructed the group to concentrate on the colors white and purple to help.

Did it work?

“I guess it depends on whether you’re a believer or not,” Gruendyke said. “Only time will tell.”

This story was followed up ten years later with a story that ran on FOX News where Rod publicly spoke about how much this changed the hotel and the lives of the employees.

Realtor.com Nov 13, 2015 

Gina Roberts-Grey

In a Time of Need, Some Home Sellers Resort to Superstition.

Getting a psychic intervention.

Similar to smudging, a psychic cleansing also clears away any lingering negativity from past owners of a property. If a home was marked by domestic abuse, unhappiness, anxiety, and so on, that emotional residue may be preventing a sale, some believe.

“Energy—whether good or bad—is absorbed by a home,” says Jusstine K a Los Angeles celebrity psychic and “healtor” (yes, you read that right). “Everything in the physical world is a reflection of what’s going on energetically around and within you. As energy in a home gets cleaned up, the state of the physical world naturally follows.”

A healing session run from $475 or more, but DIY cleansing techniques can also be effective. She recommends visualizing a swirling vortex moving through your home and capturing any negative energy in its wake. As you picture the vortex leaving your home, she says, ask guardian angels and spirit guides to leave behind positivity and light.

But, Jusstine K. cautions, unless you know how to identify and address the energy, you might not be able to rid it from your home on your own.

It all comes down to faith.