Day 39

 Let me finish this thing already!!

On the day we were supposed to leave Sedona I sat by the pool and had one more  prickly pear margarita and just breathed.  Mark, the man that was serving me, asked where we were headed next.  I might have frowned and said something about having to go hang out with my children again in Tucson with my in-laws.  And so he said, "You guys really should go check out Jerome."  And I said, "Great!  Where is it and can I have anotha?" 

He told us about the restaurant the Asylum, which is attached to a haunted hotel called the Grand Hotel.  You can see it here in this photo- it's the grandest building in Jerome.  I got on-line after Mark recommended we stay there and I saw that there was NO vacancy.  But we decided to go anyway.

Jerome turned out to be an amazing hill top village pollinated by retirees and artists.  I think the town now only holds about 400 people but at its height it was a booming mining village.  They took billions of pounds of copper and some gold and silver too but after the mine closed in the 50's the town became a ghost town.

Before we found the Tex-Mex place Mark recommended we eat at, we decided to just see if the hotel had an open room after all. And low and behold it DID.  Not only did we get the last room but we got the room right across the hall from the most haunted room in the hotel!  We decided not to go up to the room yet, but rather to walk into town first to enjoy this little gem of a restaurant. 

 It had very funky decorations.

 Very cool art.

 And an awesome tin ceiling that reflected the changing lights. 

Okay, so maybe we imbibed in a few of these but, damn, were they good.  However, we were not drunk which makes what I'm about to tell you even more real.  We made it back to the hotel and had a nightcap at the Asylum.  At the bar we met some ghost hunters who were at the hotel trying to capture any paranormal activity.  We were told the hotel was the third most haunted hotel in the world.  It originally was a hospital and that 10,000 of the miners and their families died in the hospital in a 25 year period- mostly because of black lunge disease.   The bartender told his stories about "seeing" people that weren't there and the night person at the front desk told us his stories of the elevator going up and down when no one was in it.  He even mentioned the one time he was sitting at the desk late one night and the heavy front doors to the hotel opened outwards.  Cacacarazy. 

So as we prepared to enter our room I really started to get a little nervous.  I mean I wasn't scared because I knew I wouldn't get hurt but I didn't know what I would do if the faucets turned on by themselves in my room, as I was told they sometimes do.  Paul Bunyan expected to "feel" something in the old elevator but we experienced nothing on our ride up to the third floor.

When we stepped out of the elevator we could see where the ghost hunters had set up their cameras outside the hotel's most haunted room.  You can barely see the cameras in this shot but they're there.

 

Now, the room was very basic and had all the same plumbing in the bathroom from the hospital's day and age.  I think the bathroom freaked me out the most, which is why I wanted to keep its light on all night.  Paul opened the windows because the room was super hot and the radiator was on for some reason despite our attempts at turning it off.  

I believe I fell right to sleep that night but I was in and out of sleep most of the night because of the noises that the ghost hunters were making in the hallway.  The drapes in the window were moving slowly because of the heat emanating from the radiator but there was no breeze.  My brain was watching the bathroom window for reflections but I saw and heard nothing.

And then.  Then something incredibly wild happened.  At once, I felt a hurricane force wind enter my body from the left side and move rapidly toward the right pulling me, my facial muscles and my breath with it.  It was only a few seconds but afterward I realized that something was inside me.  I sat up and look around.  I made sure there was still no wind outside and I made sure I was okay.  When I laid back down I contemplated waking Paul but realized that he, being half asleep, wouldn't believe me.  I also wanted to think about what just happened to make sure what just happened really just happened because I was having a hard time believing it too.  I laid awake until I could see the first glimpses of sunlight hit the mountain behind us.  And then I finally fell asleep.

I was glad Paul believed me when I told him the next morning that a ghost entered my body in the night.  Needless to say it was a very "moving" experience.  One that I'll never ever forget.