I learned recently that I will never ever bait a ghost again!
For Valentine's Day, I did one of my Priceline tricks, was bidding on a 4-star in the Triangle area. Ended up getting The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill for $60. Having never even stepped foot in it before, I did some research online, and saw that it was possibly a bit haunted by a doctor who liked to play pranks.
So Valentine's Day we arrive in the early afternoon. At check-in, I joked with the Hotel Clerk about the hotel being haunted, and asked for a haunted room. She mentioned that was primarily the king suite on the second floor (which of course, we weren't going to get for $60), but she put us on the second floor, room 228.
We go up to our room, walk in, and again joking, I said "Okay, Doctor, here I am, have fun with me". Of course, there was no response. We went about our day. Had lunch in the restaurant. Walked around Chapel Hill. Had a very pleasant day and evening. Went back to the hotel, watched some tv and went to bed.
I slept soundly until, of course, I had to wake up to go the bathroom...which is an every night thing for me...so routine, that I've got it down pat in that I try to barely open my eyes, and wake up as little as possible. I might add that I was especially exhausted due to having just finished working a LOT of hours that week for our Radiothon for Duke Children's Hospital.
Anyway, I go the bathroom, and am washing my hands in the sink when I realize that my reflection in the mirror appears to be a lot closer than it had earlier!
I open my eyes wider, suddenly more alert, and realize that a round make-up mirror (that I hadn't even noticed earlier was in the room) was now directly over the sink. Hmmm...okay, maybe my husband moved it for some reason? So, I push it back to the wall (noticing that it's not that loose, it took a little force to push it back). Went back to bed, where my husband was snoring. Normally, I'm not the kind of wife to wake a sleeping husband, especially since he had had a terrible time sleeping the night before, but I was just uneasy enough to want to know for sure that he had moved that mirror. Woke him up. Uh, no, he hadn't moved it. And, of course, he goes right back to sleep, leaving me to ponder this, and now slightly more uneasy. I look around the dark room, but don't see anything unusual, nor do I feel anything unusual. Start to go back to sleep, when all of a sudden, I feel three very distinct taps on the top of my head! Wake up my husband again, and ask why he just tapped me on my head. He said he didn't, and showed me where his hands were. Under pillows, and nowhere near my head. There was no way he could've done it even accidentally! He mumbles something about me holding on to him, goes back to sleep, and I cling to him, looking all around, knowing this isn't going to be easy to get back to sleep. I might add that I looked the clock when I came back to bed from the bathroom and it was 3:20. Wide awake, I see 4:30 go by. Sometime after 4:30, I do manage to get to sleep, but went into one of those nightmare dreams, where you know you're dreaming but you're scared & want to wake up but can't. Managed to wake myself up from that, and decided to give up on sleeping. Husband was still sleeping well though. Good for him! (cough) Anyway, now I'm looking around the room, and I see a dark shadow over near the closet. The closet is painted white, and slides open from the left and from the right. Before we went to bed to watch tv, my husband had opened the left side, hung up a shirt, closed it. I had opened the right, hung up a shirt, noticed there was one robe in the closet, and asked my husband if he wanted it. Being the smart guy he is, he had said, "no you can have it". So, I had closed the closet, and put the robe on for television watching.
Now, I'm laying there wondering what that dark shadow is that I'm seeing, that I swear wasn't there before I had fallen back asleep. There's no way I'm getting up to look, nor am I waking my husband for a third time, so I laid there pondering this one. I knew I wasn't really seeing a figure there. Logically it looked like my husband's dark shirt, but I couldn't figure out how I could be seeing it, since I knew that closet door was shut. Sometime around here, someone stuck the bill under the door, like they usually do at hotels. And eventually, as it got lighter in the room, I could see that, sure enough, I was indeed seeing my husband's shirt, and somehow that closet door had opened! When we investigated it, it was not easy to move those doors, plus they were noisy. I can only assume it moved when I went back to sleep, or I would've heard it.
We also checked around the bed to see if there was anything that could've tapped the top of my head. No, not unless pillows could suddenly do it. When finally awake, my husband said he had gotten up before I did in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and had noticed the make-up mirror moved out slightly at that time, but had thought I had done it. I had him show me where he saw it, and it was not out as far as I had seen it. He also said that when I woke him that first time, he was actually dreaming that he was looking into that round mirror and that an old man's face was looking back at him.
When we checked out of the hotel, I mentioned to the Clerk (same one who had checked us in), that she could add room 228 to haunted parts, told her the story, and she said she'd add it to "the list". Uh, what else is on that list??? She said, mostly sightings of possible moving dark shadows. I'm just glad I didn't actually SEE something move.
Anyway, it wasn't a restful night. I learned that I won't joke about ghosts anymore, and I sure as heck won't invite them to have fun with me!
The only other possible ghostly-encounter I've ever had was years ago, on the Battleship in Wilmington, when I got to go along on an actual real Ghost Hunt with some pros. We only heard a couple things that night that were unusual. Plus cameras in different parts of the ship that they set up, all turned off at the exact same time, even though they had plenty of battery power. But nothing touched me or made me uneasy that night!
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