Today I decided to strike out on my own. It’s been a VERY busy few weeks and I’d be lying if I said my nerves weren’t frayed. It was time to seek out the peace of a good forest. And that’s what I did.
I’ve driven by the signs for this place many times and have had it on my list of to-do’s. The aforementioned sign is only about a mile up the road from the grave of Rhode Island’s last vampire Mercy Brown. And should a lovely hike through the woods and seeing a vampire grave interest you both things are very doable in one afternoon.
What I did not expect was that away from the super busy street I was wound down a series of increasingly sketchy looking dirt roads which are always a blast to drive down in the Prius. It was gorgeous though! I had worried earlier about finding parking because a lot of the trails I find only have parking for 2 or 3 cars and are on narrow ditched roads you can’t park aside. This was not to be the case. When I drove in I was the only one there and the parking lot was HUGE. And it was right before a sign reading, “DANGER unimproved road ahead. Pass at your own risk.” The Prius breathed a sigh of relief.
This place turned out to be such a gem. Here, well-hidden out in the middle of nowhere there was a series of well-marked trails. And it was so quiet! All I could hear were birds and crickets. This was such a needed break for me!
I took the Pond Loop or blue trail and was happy to find it was an easy well shaded hike with only a tiny incline here and there. The “pond” in question looked a lot more like a swamp to me but that’s OK. Swamps can be pretty too! And just beyond the swamp pond there was a little break away trail that led through a field and to a tiny little cemetery. Signs were posted that it was in the middle of a restoration project. There were only a handful of stones but wow were they nestled in some great scenery. What a wonderful place to spend eternity!
The rest of the trail remained easy and there was some more beautiful scenery. I sat on one of the several benches scattered about and just soaked it all in.
I don’t think many people know about this place (I mean I was the only one there on a gorgeous Friday afternoon) but that really just adds to the charm. If you happen to be in the area and need a little bit of nature you should totally go take an amble. It’s short, easy, and drop dead gorgeous. Happy travels!
Today was one of those lowkey days that we decided to stay in town and kick about for a bit. On our radar was a little antique store we’d yet to visit – Newport Antiques and Treasures which was a little place tucked away in a very pedestrian friendly part of town.
Upon walking in I thought this place might be swank, and some of it was – a glass peanut jar for $275 sat in a sweet wooden display cabinet – but this place also had a weird assortment of not antiques? Like a plush chicken I knew came from Tractor Supply less than ten years ago (I have two.) And a voodoo doll and then a little corner containing a terrifying partial ventriloquist dummy missing a jaw and legs and possibly hands too. It just gets creepier the more you look at it. And mixed in with those there were clear humor items that you might find in a tourist shop. It was all very quirky. But I liked it. I have a soft spot for shops that have their own personality.
Now this shop isn’t enough to go to Newport for on its own but there are several other antique shops in town Aardvark Antiques was a lot of fun and if you’re a history buff there’s a TON here. In fact we ended up doing a tour of the Touro Synagogue just a hop and skip away earlier that day.
Today started with delightful little detour. It’s not like we hadn’t already talked about going to check out the synagogue but it really wasn’t on the agenda until we started walking past it and realized tours were open today. They were $14 per adult and included a self-tour of their little museum which had some lovely audio/visual displays upstairs relating to the colonial history of the local Jewish community. I found them kind of cute in a way. A frail but intense child stood at each display soaking in every drop of information she could. I smiled. I used to be much like her.
We still had a few minutes before the tour began so we wandered around Patriot Park outside which was small but very well-manicured and full of gorgeous flowers. An oddly peaceful plot in the middle of so much traffic. In one corner there was two historical plaques – one was a letter written to George Washington from the Hebrew Congregation here at the time and the response of George Washington was on the other. In it he basically assured these people they’d be free from persecution here in this brand-new country.
The group before us had quite a few people. Our group was just us two and the intense child’s family. I think we were in there for about a half an hour but WOW, the lecture we received from the tour guide was VERY information dense. She didn’t just tell us about the synagogue she told us about the Jewish community who fled actual persecution, fleeing several countries in Europe, Africa, and South America before ending here in Newport, as well as who was around them – who were their allies, how many of them were here, who was their leader, what was the town’s response to them, what was their role in the revolutionary war? And the history of the building, its architecture, and history. We learned it was more or less built for free as someone went down to NYC on trade ships and requested free broken bricks to use as ballast which were then brought back to Newport and used to build the building. I loved the ingenuity of this!
I learned not just about the history of the Jewish community here but also about the entire political climate. I didn’t have any idea that the Pilgrims and Puritans were separate groups of people! Or that Baptists are American grown and came from the Puritans. It was explained Puritans were people who were formerly attendees of the Church of England who felt their religion needed to be tweaked to suit their standards while the pilgrims were former members of the Church of England who were like no, we can’t live with a little tweaking, we need to completely separate from the church, found our own and settle our new colony so we can ramp up the level of religious fervor to our content without the state (The Church of England) telling us no. So, the first people for a separation of church and state weren’t people looking for a place where people could practice any religion, they were looking for a place that people would only practice their religion by their far stricter rules. They sound like the most insufferable kind of know it alls… but whatever. This is America.
Then came this group of refugees that happened to be Jewish, around 200 of them, who settled in Newport and apparently impressed themselves upon the established population as not a threat. Somehow. Honestly don’t know how they managed but I guess they got along OKish by befriending Christian religious leaders at the time. Then the American Revolution came and Newport was so heavily occupied that British soldiers more or less destroyed the entire town – but the synagogue still stood because someone had suggested it should be used as a hospital for said soldiers in an attempt to keep it safe. The bid worked. But the congregation didn’t last much longer. Over time they dispersed or died off. It wasn’t until the modern era where it was reclaimed by a different Jewish population who still run it today as a synagogue.
Obviously, the lecture had a lot more details about specific people and their roles as well as more precise dates and whatnot but that was the gist of it. My brain was reeling, but that’s what I like about going to different places like these. This is a story I would have never known otherwise. I would highly recommend checking this place out if you’re into local history, colonial history, or Jewish history, it checks off all these boxes and was well worth the visit!
We had been meaning to check out the little aquarium in town but time has a funny way or eroding old ideas. However, today was the day we finally ventured to this little aquarium next to the bay. And it was so worth it!
We weren’t sure what the parking situation was but were happy to be told upon driving in and asking that part of the parking lot was sectioned off for the aquarium and free. So that was our first nice surprise. Admission was $9 for an adult and this place was… a little strange to figure out how to get in. We had to follow a bunch of signs through corridors before we found the ticket booth.
Inside we learned that this aquarium was basically an education center that housed various marine life and animals mostly from the bay but also in freshwater habitats nearby. The place was tiny but packed in every nook and corner with aquariums and displays. I was a little taken aback when the first thing I saw was a tank with three cowfish (labelled Buffalo Boxfish) in it. We have cowfish in New England?! Yes, but no, a guide answered. These were in one of several tropical fish tanks maintained at the aquarium where tropical fish dragged out of the bay found a refuge rather than freezing to death in the winter. Why are there random tropical fish in the bay? The answer was a bit hazy but basically, they’d got severely lost at some point in their life and washed up here in this cold gray hellscape where if they weren’t accidentally fished and then donated to the aquarium they’d just eventually freeze to death and die. There was quite a few of these “orphans” and I was surprised by the variety – they even had a puffer fish!
From here we were welcomed to the first touch tank. A guide handed us a periwinkle and told of about what sounds like the first issue we had with feral animals or rather non-native species. The little varmints apparently ate most of the plant life in the bay and left it permanently altered. We also got to hold a hermit crab and a welk. The welk was really weird. In the tank next to them there was an orange lobster whose life had been saved because he was such a bizarre color. He already looked cooked! Lobsters are generally brown.
As we made our way through the rest of the aquarium several guides gave us super in-depth information about their little section. We got to pet a stingray, a dog fish, a disabled horseshoe crab who was a permanent resident, and even a piece of seaweed which was rigid and not at all slimy. Blew my mind. We got to see their shark breeding program – so many baby sharks and developing eggs! We also met a series of octopuses who were REALLY good at hiding, some sea horses (we have sea horses in new England?! Apparently!) and a tank full of adorable shrimp. Later we’d get to the freshwater tanks and see several species of turtles and frogs. The snapping turtle was found wandering lost in the bay and I found his lack of direction just as endearing as his extra toes. You guys, there was a POLYDACTYL SNAPPING TURTLE. How great is that!
All and all we got QUITE the lesson from the various guides and learned that the center will be moving soon to a location 7 times the size. We will be back when they do! All and all it was a great little place to check out and my only lament is there were no lump suckers which are my favorite local marine fish but who knows maybe they’ll get some after they move! And hey, if you’re here in the winter the Save the Bay people also do seal tours.
After extracting ourselves from Candy’s Curiosities we decided we still had some umph to go explore yet another shop. That’s when my travel companion decided on something I probably wouldn’t have – Mike’s Estate Services. I mean what does that even mean? In the country we have barn sales… you know people who go to estates, buy lots of things from dead people’s homes, and try to resell them in their barn… was Mike’s some sort of city equivalent of this? YES. Yes, it was.
But I’m not knocking it! Because this place was HUGE and it had EVERYTHING. So much luscious furniture in every conceivable style, all old so made to last. And each tag read a whole story about coming in, being priced, and then going down in price every consecutive month they were there. This resulted in some really nice furniture being sold at some damn decent prices! Most that I saw seemed to hover between $600-1,200 but these were ornate antique pieces probably worth a lot more. Should I ever be lucky enough to find myself a homeowner I am coming back here!!
And upstairs there was a bunch of wall art for every decor as well as kitchen supplies, dishes, a healthy dose of probably haunted dolls, brand new looking cloth luggage cases, a few books here and there, lots of orphaned but still very handsome chairs, and even some grandfather clocks and rocking chairs. There was something for everyone here. And if you happen to need something to furnish your new home I HIGHLY suggest this place!
Candy’s Curiosities was A TRIP. We had NO IDEA what we were walking into and quite frankly I don’t think anyone would. Earlier on that morning my navigator and travel companion had come up with the idea to go to Candy’s to which I giggled, “I hope it’s better than Cookie’s” (which was such a hilariously unnerving experience that it’s gone a little viral this week.) Anyway…
The word oddities could mean anything especially when it is in a shop’s title. That’s more or less bait for weird looky-loos like yours truly. Even better it wasn’t that far away so off we went! It was an easy shop to find but from the outside it looked tiny. I parked in an equally cramped parking lot and skipped inside where we found ourselves deep deep down the rabbit hole.
I’m not going to lie, this shop is not much bigger than a walk-in closet but it was totally worth it! This place is PACKED with weird trinkets, old horror movie memorabilia, vintage Halloween decorations, a Gothic clothing rack, some dubiously strange used books. It was a little bit of everything and every nook was filled which meant that we were stuck like flies on a sticky trap just staring. Under domes there were sculptures made of bones and googly eyes, there were dried chicken and raccoon feet, and some dried toads for good measure. My companion found himself lost in a bucket of vintage humor postcards while I looked through black and white photos of funerals and natural disasters in the area. Eventually I’d find myself wrist deep in a tub of pins and well… I came home with one that was of a conjoined skeleton.
I also brought home a magnet that was an actual casting of a design on a one of the local slate cemetery stone’s – a death’s head (winged skull) which are my favorite! I was DELIGHTED when I got home and found out that it came with a business card from The Gravestone Girls who created it and on the back of that a whole history of the stone the image was taken from. So neat!
The shop owner was friendly too and packaged my new treasures in a laboratory sample bag. What a clever idea! Anyway, I would highly suggest this shop to other fellow freaks, geeks, and goths. It was absolutely goddamn delightful.
Fort Wetherill was another one of those finds that I kept having suggested by search engines and AI but nothing online made it look that impressive. Still, it was only a few miles away from where I was staying that day so it made sense to go check it out.
To get to this place you have to wind through a bunch of sweet little neighborhoods reminiscent of European villages. There’s more trees though. And by the time you get there it’s a big park with a ton of parking and no one there. There was literally one other car.
I was not expecting this place to be so massive! Or so taken over by trees. It’s not that old – at least not compared to some of the other forts I have visited for this blog. Fort Wetherill was commissioned during World War II to protect the bay and as a sister fort to Fort Adams – which I haven’t gone to yet but I am sure I will at some point. It’s in complete disrepair now. For the most part it looks like it’s being eaten by a jungle of weeds. Many areas are fenced off from going inside but there are parts you can still go inside or even on top of the fort for some spectacular views of the property and the ocean.
We spent a good chunk of time just wandering around the structure like lost rats. The graffiti was something else. Hilariously someone commented to me that they love the graffiti in New England because you can always read it. And it’s true! We lack the highly stylized fonts of the west coast. In addition to this it was oddly cerebral. Although there were the usual tags there was also some pretty decent art – including a chimp dressed in a gnome cap. And someone had taken the time to hang bizarre vaguely medical looking paper flyers like they may have done in the early 1900’s. It added a certain… ambiance.
I really enjoyed this place. It was a great place to spend the afternoon and probably had some hiking trails too – we just didn’t go that route on this particular day. I don’t know why this isn’t a more known destination although maybe it is and we were just there on an off day. Hard to say as I did also get some responses about other people having loved this place in the past. All and all it was well worth the trip and I think would make a fantastic outing for photographers.
Back at the North Burial Ground it was my companion’s turn to pick a tour and he decided upon the HP Lovecraft tour. HP Lovecraft did indeed live in Providence RI but he is buried elsewhere, in the Swan Point Cemetery, so what this tour had to offer was a bit of a mystery. Still, we parked in our usual spot and ambled in – this time finding ourselves behind the visitor’s center where there was a HUGE memorial to the Armenian Genocide. How we had missed this before… is just testament to how much we weren’t paying attention because I mean this thing is MASSIVE and definitely worth a look if you are already here.
After that distraction was put aside we finally got to business. First up was finding the stone of Clara L Hess who was a classmate of HP Lovecraft although she apparently had quite the illustrious life all on her own as a reporter and editor of the Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin.
Next up was Chester Pierce Munroe – who likely bonded with HP Lovecraft when they were both pups, daring each other to eat paste. OK, so you can’t prove the latter part of that but that’s how I’d like to imagine it. Truth be told they met when they were very young at school and remained chums throughout the rest of their days. Munroe was a working class man and although there’s rumors of him writing a book or several he was unable to get anything published. Not really surprising considering the politics of the day.
Addison P Munroe was another childhood friend although information on him seems a little scarce. Good news is if I remember right his stone was really close to the last one and also had his wife’s name on it who I guess also garnered a small acquaintance with Lovecraft.
James Tobey Pyke was apparently a big influence on his neighbor, a 14-year-old Lovecraft, whom he encouraged to write poetry. Pyke was a poet himself as well as a minister at one point. He apparently had pretty frail health but still insisted on working for his income despite being from a fairly well to do family. Eleanor Francis Pyke was James’ wife who also adored poetry and managed to raise a poet son, growing up alongside the neighbor’s boy Lovecraft.
Samuel Brenton Mumford was a successful local businessman that was one of the first investors to own a part of the Providence Athenaeum which would later become a favorite haunt of Lovecraft’s. In addition to this it was his former home which HP Lovecraft would later spend the last few years of his life.
Cyrus Butler was the Providence’s own Scrouge McDuck kinda character. In life he was obscenely wealthy and really not terribly keen on sharing that but even so he was one of the original investors helping to build the Providence Athenaeum – an institution that he also gave a large donation to after his death. He also bequeathed 30K to build The Rhode Island Hospital for the Insane post humorously. It still exists although it’s called the Butler Hospital and has nothing to do with Lovecraft as far as I can see. Also isn’t it wonderful millionaires can get redemption even after death?! Must be nice!
So ended the Lovecraft Tour. Below are photos of the stones mentioned and a bunch of others that distracted me with thier uniqueness or beauty. It’s a lovely cemetery to explore!
The North Burial Ground in Providence Rhode Island is a very large cemetery that merits a lot of exploration. Previously we had tried to check out this cemetery one fine afternoon only to realize that it closes at FOUR PM. This is by far the earliest closing hours for a cemetery we have ever come across so that initial visit was literally just us jogging through it for 30 minutes. And it’s HUGE with a ton of ornate and often bizarre slates and more modern stones running up to the current day. On this particular misadventure we learned there are a bunch of self-guided tours ranging in topic that can be obtained online.
So we went back and the first tour we tried was the women’s history tour. I wasn’t real sure what we’d find on it – as it was hobbled together by the local college – but we checked it out anyway. Fortunately there was a map and it wasn’t nearly as bad as some other cemetery maps I have attempted (and failed) to read. There were twenty women of note to see which I have listed below. And if you’re here just to look at pretty cemetery photos feel free to scroll to the gallery at the very bottom of the page.
First up was Eliza Brown Gano Rogers (1800-1877) Born to a pastor into wealth and great social standing Eliza first married a prominent manufacturer Joseph Rogers before finding her calling in life. She was to devote herself to the wellbeing of marginalized women. Along with fifteen other women of good standing in Providence she was integral to the creation of The Home for Aged Women which sought to aid the unmarried, widowed, and homeless elderly women of Providence. This project was so passionate an issue that she had raised the funds, built the organization, and opened the doors only two months after having discussed the issue. Today it still exists and is called the Tockwotton on the Waterfront.
Phebe A Hathaway (1822-1886) was up next. She was an ardent defender of the temperance movement as the vice president of the Women’s Christian Temperence Union. She remained a teacher for the entirety of her life and never married nor lived long enough to see the inevitable downfall of her cause.
Hope (power) Brown (1702-1792) was known as being the mother of Providence because she bore six children (five sons) who went on to become the intensely influential Brown family. Born into high standing her sons would grow up to be shrewd businessmen in iron ore, the China Trade, and the Slave Trade. They also founded Brown university. She died at the grand old age of 90.
Avis Binney Brown (1731-1807) was a wealthy widow in her elder years which allowed her in 1800 to co-found the Providence Female Charitable Society. Its aim was to help needy women and children by giving them food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities.
Caroline Ashley (1824-1884) was born to some of the original families of Providence. She was a teacher but was more well known for her work in the Providence Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. She was a fierce abolitionist and a suffragist.
Freelove Whipple Fenner Jenckes (1751-1780) was known for being a member of the Daughter for Liberty which was a group of women who encouraged everyone to buy local products and boycott British goods to strengthen the colonies. Sadly, she did not live to see the resolution of the Revolutionary War.
Lucy Haskell (?-1812) was the wife of Charles Haskell a black revolutionary war soldier. They were married only ten months before she died at the age of 31. Her husband would go on to own a house that probably was destroyed during the Hardscrabble Riot of 1824 that followed a few months after his purchase.
Christina Bannister (?-1902)– was one of those women you couldn’t keep down. She was of mixed African American and Native American descent but despite the obstacles this would have caused her she still managed to accomplish more in a lifetime than most! She started a series of hair salons which doubled as information centers on the Underground Railroad. She fought endlessly for the rights of former black Civil War soldiers and disenfranchised working black women. As president of the Boston Colored Ladies Sanitary Commitee she helped raise funds for disabled veterans and their families. She even married what was one of the most prominent black artists of the day – Edward Bannister. She helped establish the Home for Aged Colored Woman which she would sadly become a resident of sometime later after leading a life of poverty and gaining dementia in her old age. This however only lasted eight days before she was tossed to the state asylum in Cranston for being “violently insane.”
Sarah Helen Power Witman 1803-1878 was probably the most eccentric woman on this list. She was among many things a poet, a suffragist, and beloved figure among the intellectual elites. She even caught the eye of Edgar Allen Poe who asked for her hand in marriage. This is not really that surprising when you learn of her frail Gothic charm. She was a spiritualist who claimed she could speak to the dead and wore and eclectic outfit always topped with a veil which she never lifted, not even to eat.
Martha Aramian 1934-2014 – Martha was born to Armenian immigrants who had fled Turkey after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Here she became a prominent member of the community creating the Armenian Heritage Park and monument which you can see to one side of the cemetery (it’s HUGE, ornately carved and impossible to miss.) Dedicated to the 1.5 million who lost their lives in the conflict and those that survived them.
Zouvart Seloian Alexanian (1909-2006) was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 as a child and ended up immigrating to the US in 1931 with her new husband. Their family owned and ran the Gaspee Restuarant in Providence for many years.
Sarah C. Durfee (1838-1915) was a somewhat wealthy heiress who served as president of the Women’s City Missionary Society. The goal of the organization was to reform the destitute and help uneducated girls and women to get respectable employment and homes.
Sally Goddard(1792-1872)– was a prominent member of the Providence Ladies Anti-Slavery Society and served to further her abolitionist message with pamphlets, lectures, and anti-slavery fairs.
Rhoda Carver Barton (1751 -1841) – was a mother of many. Nine to be exact. Starting with a pregnancy that overlapped her wedding day and running through many years of raising her brood almost by herself as her General husband fought several wars and served a good deal of time in prison – apparently only coming home briefly to sire more children. She died at the age of 91 – probably thoroughly exhausted.
Kady Southwell Brownell (1843-1915) was a woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. When her husband enlisted to fight in the Civil War she insisted on coming too and was one of a remarkably few women recorded to have served active combat duty during the Civil War as a sharpshooter during Bullrun (Sharpsburg) and New Bern. Perhaps even more scandalously she was said to be as good with her sword as she was with the rifle. After coming home she pursued a career in acting but eventually died in destitution. She wouldn’t have even had a memorial if it weren’t for her husband fundraising from friends and acquaintances.
Annie Smith Peck (1850-1935) was what could be best described as an adventurer. She was an archeology and Latin professor who loved to spend her free time climbing South America’s deadliest peaks. She raised the money for each expedition on her own and hiked out of pure spite with the men who thought they knew better. She was after all also campaigning for the right for women to vote.
Natalie Curtis Burlin(1876-1921) was at her essence an archivist. She campaigned for the rights of the indigenous people and after winning some favor with Theodore Roosevelt she then spent a good deal of time on reservations recording the cultural practices of several tribes which she published in two books. After this she moved onto publish two more books about “negro folk songs” before moving to Europe to spread the word about the cultures she was studying.
Sarah Goddard (1700-1770) and Mary Katherine Goddard (1738-1815) Two sisters who were integral to the running of Providence’s first newspaper. Sarah ran the shop and her sister Mary became a journalist, typesetter, and printer. Eventually they’d run the business on their own as Sarah Goddard and Co. Mary served as the postmaster of Baltimore Maryland from 1775-1789.
Eliza (Cranston) Cole (1793-1891) – just lived to be very goddamn old. Outliving both her husbands and her only daughter (who lived to be 80!)
Alice (Smith) Page (1733- 1772) is another illustration of the bleak reality of early colonial life. She married at the age of 20, bore ten children, and only saw four of them survive into adulthood before dying just short of her eldest son’s 19th birthday.
I have been spending time in Newport for a few years now and although it’s known for its mansions, I had never been to any of them. So I pitched the idea that maybe we should at least look into that… and as luck would have it this happened to be just the right time of year to make a boring old mansion exciting. Why? Because it’s spooky season! And some of these mansions are supposed to be haunted. Why not go on a nighttime tour?? To one of them that the locals seemed to think was actually haunted.
That’s how we ended up at Belcourt taking a tour hosted by a documentarian who lives there on the weekend. We did learn a little bit about its history but if I am to be very frank my eyes were pretty glassed over. I just… can’t seem to muster any interest whatsoever in the dramatic lives of the long dead super wealthy. SORRY. All I got out of this is it was built at the end of the 1800’s, used to have an attached stable, and was basically used as a building for extravagant parties after a woman won it in her divorce.
And it was indeed… lavishly decorated which is what gave me the first heeby jeeby of the evening as we drove through the big iron gates and were surrounded on both sides by two huge iron horses. Being nighttime this creeped me the hell out. Small confession: I find the uber wealthy terrifying. Coming from poverty I know all too well that if you cross a super wealthy person the wrong way you can easily be disappeared. A lesson I learned while accidentally wandering into some swank rich person’s event at the Grand Canyon once. The look one of those rich assholes gave me was reminiscent of the look a wolf gives a limping lamb. Had I not been escorted by another man at the time I am not so sure I would have not been disappeared myself. Think about it – these people have so much money they can pay off anyone – witnesses, body collectors, whatever they need. This is why we’ve never had a billionaire serial killer arrested in the US. Don’t think it’s because they don’t exist. And iron gates? Holy crap does that bring this whole idea home – that no one really knows what goes on beyond them.
Luckily there were no murderous rich bastards around on this particular evening. In fact the crowd here seemed a nice mix of locals and tourists of various classes. I was excited to see what was here, although I didn’t’ really expect it to be mostly in the dark! Only the bare minimum of lights were on – but this was often because there just wasn’t any – having relied mostly on sunshine to light it up during the day. We were some of the first to show up – me without my camera, again. I don’t know where my brain has been this week, on vacation I suppose. Luckily, I still had my cellphone.
I noticed a copper chopper (say that five times fast!) sitting astutely under a chandelier in the darkened ball room. What… is that? I had to look it up later. It’s The Liberty Bike, built by the American Chopper guys with pieces from the Statue of Liberty taken during restoration. It must have been visiting? No one said anything about it but it did have its own trailer outside.
As we waited we noticed the receiving room was filled with giant mirrors. Confession number two: I don’t feel any warmer or fuzzier about mirrors than I do about rich people. AND WHY ARE THEY SO BIG?! Of course we were told one of them was haunted with orbs so we all lined up to take selfies in it as one does with a giant haunted mirror…
After this the actual tour started. Our host was energetic and clearly passionate about this place. He led us into a library that was supposed to have a poltergeist or an imp of some sort as books from it would randomly walk off and be found in other strange parts of the property – like the front lawn. Or perhaps if you were really unlucky something would occasionally pitch books at guests’ heads. I decided that if I should die and get stuck as a ghost it would be an amusing job to haunt a library and do much the same.
From here we were taken out to meet the strange throne-like chair that was supposed to be some sort of conduit to the spiritual world. We each sat in it to see if we could feel anything. I felt something – but it wasn’t ghosts – it was just a feeling of “I COULD BE KING!” You know, being as it looked like a throne… Another woman claimed it was colder in the chair and she could feel a breeze, but I was standing next to the chair and felt the same chilly draft sooo…. I’m not really convinced. This may have also been the same woman claiming to smell ghostly cigarette smoke which turned out to be my companion… who smokes.
Obviously, we all had to go through that door to go to the next room which was absolutely empty as far as people were concerned. This room didn’t need a ghost to be creepy because the walls and ceiling were adorned with faces. Whhhhhhhhy, just whhhhhy.
We’d eventually find our way to a bedroom with a big old ornately carved wooden bed that screamed “fuck off and get out of my room” in grumpy old white man. I was slightly confused no one else seemed to feel this but then again – that is my life, isn’t it? Just stumbling into random things and noticing things others don’t.
The bedroom was attached to a bathroom which we all had to wander through because it had a primitive shower that looked like a torture cage lit up by red lights to make a bathtub of doom. Very catchy.
After this we entered what I can only describe as a misplaced medieval European Cathedral complete with sweeping arches and stained glass from the 15th century. And a church organ. And some suits of armor… annnnd a weapon’s case which held an ax that would “sometimes dance around the room on its own.” It must have been filled with stage fright on this particular night.
Then we got to go upstairs and look down into this weird cathedral room from the big openings in the wall which…. did not have anything preventing people from just falling right out of them into the room below. No guards, no glass, just a big gaping tilted foot-level hole big enough for a body to trip through. But perhaps that’s what the little squatting monk statues were doing – making sure no one did. One of them looked like Bill Murray. I pondered about that for a moment. Comedy gargoyle? You never know.
And that was the tour. Filled with reportedly 14 or so ghosts with intensely vague backstories annnnnd some magic rocks on the outside of the building. Mmmmkay. It was a really fun little night adventure and I would recommend it to most people who love spooky season as much as me but be forewarned THERE ARE MIRRORS AND CHERUB FACES EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE.
