So after my last fiasco with just getting the grey screen and spinning ball, I followed some instructions and removed all the 10.x folders in the kexts folder. This let me boot from OS X Install, where the installation completed successfully.
After install, I am getting a kernel panic immediately.
Attached is a screenshot of verbose mode and what's happening.
I have FakeSMC.kext, NullCPUPOwerManagement, and Ethernet kext in the Other folder.
Oddly, I am able to boot the recovery console, but just not boot into El Capitan.
Any ideas?