vSphere | Virtual Machine that is neither powered on nor powered off

I had a very interesting problem with a VM for which I concluded being in a phantom state, that is a VM that is neither powered on, nor powered off. No matter what you try to do to the VM you always end up with error message that says:

The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state: Powered ON.

The thing is, that if you try to access the console, the machine is not powered on. Even more, if you open the VMRC you could end up seeing an error message:

Unable to connect to the MKS: The operation is not allowed in the current state.

So what should I do? I decided to hit the ESXi Shell. VMware has a pretty nice KB article and even a video on what to do when you encounter this problem:

ESXi 5.5 | KB 1014165

Connect to the host using an SSH client and try the steps described into that article. However if the VM still cannot be powered off than you must reboot the ESXi host in order to refresh the VM state.

If this happens too often then you must consider moving everything off that host, as this probably indicates problems with the host itself.