So, yesterday I stayed in one of those huge, old, rambly, Victorian historic register-type places. The minute I walked into the lobby I felt like I had entered the epitome of a haunted house. I kept waiting to step on to one of the cars of the Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride. My imagination started running rampant and my now free-roaming imagination was ravenous. So I fed it. I talked to hotel employees about “the house ghosts” which of course, there were many. I talked to one employee, the ancient elevator operator, who had worked at the hotel for 39 years, and while he was talking ghost stories, I kept questioning to myself whether perhaps, he was actually one of them.
As I sat by the pool, I lapped up all of the internet stories about the ghosts that inhabit this particular abode. There were pictures of ghost chasers sitting in the dark in trepidation, their eyes glowing green, as they waited for lights to flicker, or for glasses to mysteriously fall to the floor and break. There were tragic love stories that make ghost stories all of the more intriguing and beguiling. Several rooms in the hotel are booked way in advance of Halloween – the rooms that are known to have a particularly large amount of ghostly sightings. I giggled and glee-d over all of these fun stories as I watched families splash each other and everyone bustling all around, enjoying summer fun.
This was all fun and games during the light of day. But hadn’t I forgotten something? I am the world’s worst scared-y cat. I am as jumpy as a cricket. What the hell was I thinking feeding my mind with all of that gobbly-goop when I needed to get a good night’s sleep? In the middle of the night, I woke up, my heart pounding because I thought I heard the sounds of strange wind chimes. I started going through my memory files to see if any of the ghosts announced their presence with wind chimes. The idea that the sound was just exactly what it was, wind chimes, seemed sinister-ly impossible, in my fear-frozen mind. I started the count-down, praying for time to move quickly and to get me to the light of morning.
Today, I am headed to a more modern abode. Unless it was built on an ancient burial ground, I don’t figure it to be a ghost hunter’s paradise. One thing is for certain, I won’t be doing any research of that possibility, on the internet. I have learned my lesson and a major point of this trip is to get good rest.
