It was our anniversary and only the second time away together from the children.
Ever.
The hubby had planned everything … and amazingly without slipping up to me and revealing the destination of where we would eat, play and stay.
He was especially proud of the hotel. He’d picked it with me in mind because of my love of historic buildings.
I was so excited when we pulled up to a sleepy, quaint Floridian town called Cedar Key. We found a spot to park and made our way to the old, historic building that was to be our home from home.
The Island Hotel.
It was a building that looked like it had been around and then some. Bursting with crumbling character from its wooden columns to its stern corners to its wrap-around balcony, it was a building that as soon as you set eyes on it, you just knew it had a story. Or two.
To be built in 1859? And, still standing? In hurricane ravaged Florida?
Yes, this old hotel had been around.
We were checked in … the old-fashioned way with pen and paper and then shown to our room. #29. It was a huge en-suite room with a four poster king bed. We didn’t really pay too much mind to it as we dropped our stuff and headed out to explore the island and grab some lunch.
After finding a spot to eat, we went back to the hotel to rest up a while. Sitting on the balcony, we got to chatting with some other guests of the hotel whose first question to us was “had we seen any of the ghosts yet?”
Woah, what? We turned and looked at each other in shock and asked what on earth they were talking about. After being directed to a hotel dossier on the history of the building, we soon knew all its stories. It was originally built as the town’s general store, but also served as a customs house, post office, speak-easy, brothel and a Union HQ during the Civil War before it eventually became a hotel, restaurant and bar.
This history actually intrigued me more than the fact that apparently13 ghosts had been spotted there. That was until night fell and another blooming visitor delighted in telling us that our room … #29 … was actually the most haunted room in the whole hotel.
Not sure what to expect that night, I tried to drink enough alcohol to chase away any ghostly apiritions that might appear in our room. I also refused to sleep with the lights off and woke my hubby up to accompany me to the loo for that middle of the night wee.
But, nothing.
I’ll admit it was kind of creepy, but absolutely nada ghosts appeared.
And, then it happened.
Something.
The following morning after getting ready for breakfast, my hubby closed the closet door and a second later, it popped open. So, he closed it again. And, it popped open once more. I started kind of freaking out saying it was the ghost which my husband immediately shrugged off saying it was just the door frame. To prove it, he put his full body weight against the door to close it properly and immediately felt some kind of force pop the door back open. I could see he was visibly shaken as I watched the blood drain from his face and his eyes grow wide as saucers. To say we high-tailed it out of there was an understatement, but not before I got him to pose in front of said closet.
We’re not really sure what happened, but we’re sure it was something not of this world. You have to laugh though so ever since, we joke about the incident as the time the ghost in our room was trying to come out of the closet.
This post was inspired by this week’s writing workshop over at Josie’s blog Sleep is for the Weak.
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