The Santa Fe Public Library's Main Library at 145 Washington Avenue has hosted plenty of author talks, film screenings and civic meetings. On the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2026, it will host something a little different: a professional ghost clearer, telling stories about the spirits she says she has sent packing from homes and businesses around Santa Fe and far beyond.
The event, "Ghosts, Spirits & Energies — Oh My!," runs from 5 to 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public. It is billed as the fifth library talk by Jane Phillips, a certified medical intuitive and self-described paranormal energy clearing specialist who has been in the business for more than 18 years. According to the library's announcement, she has cleared over 600 homes and businesses, and countless individuals, of what she calls lingering spirits, disruptive energies and other "unseen guests." The hour will include true stories from her clearing work, an explanation of how and why energies attach to places, and time for questions from the audience.
Phillips is not a newcomer to public attention. Her practice, Ghost Busting Paranormal Investigations, has been covered by The New Mexican, the Santa Fe Reporter, KOAT-TV, Architectural Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Vox, and she has appeared on The Daily Show with Michael Kosta in a segment about Santa Fe's paranormal real estate activity. A 2014 New Mexican feature, "Local ghost whisperer sends dark energy packing," followed her through a cleansing of a house on Santa Fe's south side, describing her working a pair of dowsing rods "like a gunfighter working a pair of six-guns" as she moved from room to room to clear what she calls discarnate energy. The family in that house said they had been dealing with strange energy for several years.
Her route into the work was unconventional. Before taking up energy clearing, Phillips spent three decades in the mortgage industry in Minneapolis, Minnesota, including 20 years as a commissioned loan officer. That background helps explain the specialty she has become best known for: working with real estate agents to clear properties that are on the market. On her website she describes the service as a kind of energetic detailing, the same level of care you would expect from having a car detailed. A home that feels "off" to buyers, she argues, may be carrying residue from a divorce, a foreclosure, a death on the property, a lingering illness or proximity to a cemetery — and that residue can be cleared.
Her practice is broader than the haunted-house stereotype. Phillips says she addresses portals, vortices, mirror portals and what she describes as land trauma embedded for thousands of years, and that she collaborates with what she calls the Devic and Nature Spirit realms to restore balance to a property. She works remotely from her office near Santa Fe, using tools such as Google Maps, Realtor.com, Zillow and Redfin to view properties and complete clearings wherever they are. Her website lists work across the United States and internationally in London, Mallorca, Brazil, Vietnam, Ukraine, Australia, Mexico and Peru. A clearing, according to her site, may take two to five hours and includes up to three individuals living or working in the space, with a per-person charge for additional people.
She has also been candid about how she does it. In a frequently asked questions section cited in news coverage, she writes that she can feel the energy of a ghost or spirit, that they occasionally talk to her, that she uses a dowsing rod to confirm her intuitive hits, and that she sees ghosts and spirits with her third eye, or mind's eye. Vox's 2021 feature on haunted real estate quoted a Santa Fe real estate agent who said she spends hundreds of dollars each time Phillips comes to clear a home.
For anyone curious about the work without hiring her, the library talk is the low-stakes way in. The library notes that the program is a talk, not an investigation, and that questions are welcome. Accommodations such as translations, ASL interpreters or other disability needs can be arranged by emailing [email protected] or calling 505-955-6786.
The Main Library itself has a long history in Santa Fe. The city bought the building in 1964 and began municipal ownership of the public library system that continues today, making the Washington Avenue building one of the city's enduring civic institutions. It is also, for one hour in late October, a fitting venue for a conversation about what else might be sharing the room.