Room 130

 

It was 87 degrees today but the beach below the hotel was closed. It’s an active crime scene. A body was found yesterday.

The staff at the hotel today had a Halloween party with a pumpkin carving contest. One team carved the Room 130 Ghost. The front desk apparently gets calls from room 130 late at night. Room 130 was converted to the laundry room years ago and is locked after 4pm.

Last week, the fire alarm went off in one of the two hotel buildings at 2am. The alarms sound in each room until the fire department arrives to check it out and turn it off. The fire alarm was triggered in room 130. It’s a manual alarm that must be physically pulled down. The door was locked.

“Did you know the Lodge was built on the site of the original lighthouse?” the afternoon lady at the front desk told me. My eyes went wide. EVERYBODY knows the old lighthouse was haunted. The new one was built because lighthouse keepers and their families refused to stay in the old keepers’ quarters—lights moving around, etc. Construction on the site revealed old Native American remains in some sort of burial ground.

And speaking of construction, when the building was being renovated a few years ago, the contractors stayed in the same building as room 130, up on the fourth floor (that’s where we were the first week we were here). One day they pulled the staff aside and said, “Look, we really can’t let anyone else on the roof after hours. We can hear someone walking around on the roof above us and it’s not safe.” Of course none of the staff had been up there.

“It’s tricky,” Chris said the other day. “We WANT to be scared…but then we don’t like it.”

In other spookiness, Chris and I mailed in our ELECTION 2016 ballots today before driving up to our old neighborhood to trick-or-treat and chat with the neighbors! Chris was at sea the last two Halloweens, making this his first every Hallo-Woo-n with Wheezie Woo. She roars and chomps, so she was a dinosaur of course. And Isaac still declines costumes so he is a pilot again, like last year!

Eloise was more bold than Isaac when there was candy on the line. One house had people with their faces painted like skeletons. Isaac flat out refused to go up there, even with a parental escort. Eloise heard “candy” and charged right up ALONE, helped herself, then sprinted back to me, where she hid and stared at the (laughing) people.

“This is my favorite year!” Isaac said at the end of candy collecting.

“This is the best Halloween ever,” said Chris. “Trick-or-Treating WITH kids is more fun than trick-or-treating AS a kid.”

And we are candy all the way home to our haunted hotel. Happy Halloween!