A former judge, former aerospace engineer, former professional country music drummer … Best Friends employees come from wildly diverse walks of life, and in one case, a walk that has brushed up against the other side, as in the other side. Michelle Page, a caregiver in our bunny department, is a ghost hunter.
“It’s been a thing with me since I was young—I’ve wanted to prove there’s life after death,” she says.
Those whose guilty pleasure lies in documentaries about haunted places and the paranormal have quite likely seen Page in action guiding camera crews from the Travel Channel, the History Channel, and Fox Networks through places of notoriously scary repute. Page has traveled the country looking for (or sensing) paranormal activity, photographing the apparitions and recording the voices of those who supposedly linger on after death. She’s been through old hotels, ghost town saloons and inns, and former plantation houses documenting their presence.
“Mostly what you’re going for is an apparition,” Page says, describing what ghost hunters do. “I got a great photograph of a cowboy at an old saloon in Nevada and of a face at Myrtle’s Mansion in Louisiana. After the tour of the mansion, I went outside and looked in through the window, and there was a face looking back at me.”
She says one of the scariest places she’s been through is the infamous Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, Nev. As legend has it, a woman was chained to an old radiator heater in one of the rooms and left to die. She said that, when she visited, the “energy of the room was so bad” that a dog, who had happily wandered through the rest of the hotel with her and the dog’s guardians, could only stand outside the room and whimper, not daring to go in.
Page’s stint on television as ghost hunter wasn’t her first on the small screen, however. As a teenager, Page (nee Robinson) voice-acted in the Hanna-Barbera animated series, “Devlin,” about a stunt motorcycle rider named Ernie Devlin. Page played the voice of Ernie’s little sister Sandy, joining the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, the voice for Ernie’s little brother Todd. Page also had a voice role in the cartoon “Super Twins” before making a physical appearance as a gang leader in the Angie Dickinson television drama, “Police Woman.”
But it was during these informative years she was also learning something from her mother that would eventually have a profound influence on her choice of work.
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One more round for the house |
“A lot of the love I have for animals is because my mother took in strays,” Page says. “Every animal who didn’t have a home found a way to our house.”
Though Page’s acting career came to an early end with the birth of her two children, she carried on her mother’s legacy when she moved to a small town outside Las Vegas. There, she lived on two and a half acres—enough land to support a menagerie of chickens, horses, potbellied pigs, dogs, cats, and other animals who had lost their home. While she wasn’t serving cocktails and bartending at a Las Vegas casino (or off ghost hunting), Page was taking in animals others didn’t want, even driving home once from Las Vegas with a potbellied pig in the cab of her truck. Her home became a kind of informal sanctuary.
Page had never heard of Best Friends before moving to Kanab (the nearest town to Best Friends) with her husband about seven years ago. When she told a friend that she was moving here, her friend said, “That’s where Best Friends is! I’ve been a member for years.”
When Page landed in Kanab, she promptly applied for a job at Best Friends, hoping she would be able to work in the parrot department. She had fond memories of the cockatiels her family kept when she was child, and being around them again sounded like a good way to make a living. Page, of course, got the job, and until recently she’s helped the Parrot Garden evolve into one of the best parrot sanctuaries in the country. She’s now a caregiver in the bunny department.
“I love this job,” she says. “It’s just so peaceful.”
Page still finds time to hunt ghosts, and says she recently captured an image of one at a Kanab restaurant. Of course, there are those who might find Page’s claims and her ghostly pursuits a bit dubious. But it makes little difference to the animals she’s caring for—to them, she could just as well be a former head of state. Her past as a ghost hunter and a cartoon voice actor goes to show that animals are the great unifier, bringing together people from a host of different backgrounds and beliefs, even ones as unique as Page’s.
“Everybody has the same goal in mind,” Page says of her co-workers at Best Friends, explaining why she enjoys working at the sanctuary. “We’re here for the animals because we care.”
Written by Ted Brewer
Photo by Sarah Ause, Gary Kalpakoff and Michelle Page
As part of Best Friends’ 25th anniversary in 2009, our goal is to double our membership, so we can double our efforts to bring about a time when all companion animals have a forever home. What can you do to help? Give the Gift of a Best Friends membership to family and friends.
