This is no lie. Chris and I are staying in a haunted house, and we can't sleep.
We're in Calistoga at a Bed & Breakfast called The Elms. We drove up from Monterey (where we attended Chris Barton's wedding yesterday) and we didn't arrive until 6:45 p.m.
We pulled up and parked in front of the large white Victorian, walked through the iron gate and approached the front door. There was a white envelope taped to the door that said "Strimbu party." We plucked it off. It contained 2 keys, and a note that said our room was on the 3rd floor. It also had a phone number to call "in case of emergency." Check in time for the Inn is between 4-6p.m. and there's complimentary wine and cheese. We had missed that, and apparently the owners weren't around.
It's a huge house with about 7 bedrooms, but the hotel manager told us that only one other room was to be occupied. It was incredibly quiet inside the hotel, and doors to all the unoccupied rooms were open so we peaked into a few of them.
Up on the top floor in our room, the weathered books on the book shelf included a box set of The Chronic(wah)les of Narnia, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and California Hauntspitality: A Ghostly Guide to Haunted Inns, Restaurants, and Taverns. Of course, I picked this one up, and immediately thumbed to the page for Calistoga. And of course, there was the name of our hotel, the only haunted place listed for Calistoga, California.
"Oh my god!" I said, handing the book to Chris before reading the entry, in an attempt to avoid freaking myself out.
"Don't tell me this place is in that book," he said, and immediately started reading the page I had open. "Wow."
"Should I read it?" I asked.
"I don't know if you want to see it," he said.
Of course, I had to read it. And now I can't sleep.
Here's what it said:History:The house was built in 1871 by A.C. Pallmer, who was the first circuit judge in the area. He and his bride went to Europe on their honeymoon. While in France, they picked up the seedlings to the French Elm trees, then came home and built the French style Victorian. The Elm trees are now the tallest and oldest elms in the Napa Valley. There were originally eight "great" Victorian houses built in Calistoga; The Elms is the last one standing today.
Spirits: The owners assume that a couple of their spirits are A.C. Palmer and his wife... There is a room on the third floor called "Blithe Spirit," and since the owner has been there, she has always felt like someone or something is in the room. One day, one of the maids was vacuuming that room, and the vacuum turned off. The maid walked over to chack the plug, and the vacuum turned back on. This happened three times. La Chambre, which was the original master bedroom, has had two incidents occur since 2001. One night there were guests sleeping in there and the overhead light came on by itself. One of the owners was sleeping in there in November 2001, and the same thing happened to her. Again in mid-November 2001, one of the owners of the house was alone on the third floor. As she came down the stairs, she could hear running water, She proceeded to walk into La Chambre, and the faucet in the sink was turned on. No one had stayed in that room for two days."
After reading that passage, we just had to look around inside "Blithe Spirit," the empty room that was our nextdoor neighbor on the top floor. It was similar to ours with a different color scheme (blue walls, red bed) and a larger bathroom. On our way downstairs to leave for dinner around 8:30 p.m. we had to look around inside La Chambre, which had its light on. It is a beautiful room with hardwood floors and a giant wooden mirror. The bathroom is gorgeous and spacious, with a claw foot tub. We climbed down the long windy staircase and there was old fashioned music playing downstairs in the empty parlor on the first floor. "Was that on when we arrived?" I asked.
"Yes, I think so," he said.
"I wonder if it stays on all night."
posted by Jess at 12:24 AM
