Coffee Break [14/10/24]

14/10/24 Hannibal 33

Let’s hear about your haunted house experiences. When I lived in Pittsburgh my friends and I frequently traveled to a restaurant in Butler County with a reputation for being haunted.

Innumerable media reports from all over Western Pennsylvania account on the haunting of the Harmony Inn. Several witnesses have reported seeing a little girl in a white dress roaming the upstairs of the Harmony Inn and furniture has been rearranged without human intervention. Customers have also reported feeling a significant warm temperature inflection at certain periods of the day, although it seems to occur more frequently at dusk. Although employees and customers are often frightened by the unexplained images, everyone reports that their encounters have always been friendly.

It had good food and a great bar, and they put up with our drunken shenanigans. Unfortunately, we never felt any ghostly presences.

Would you spend the night in a haunted hotel, buy and live in a haunted house? I’m good for a night or two but have seen too many movies about demonic spirits wreaking havoc on unsuspecting families.

I’ll be busy most of the day. Talk amongst yourself and I’ll check in when I can.

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33 Comments

  2. …I’ve been to a few places that clearly should be haunted…& those were eerie enough…but no actual eldritch shenanigans I could report

    …ruined scottish castles feel like ghosts would be perfectly in keeping, for example…but despite having wandered around a slew of the things over the years…no dice

    …but places where something terrible happened like…where the culloden version of the red wedding went down or whatever…the knowledge of events in the past kind of hangs in the air in the sense that you can’t help be conscious of it…which is sort of like the dead hanging about?

  3. There’s an old mansion near me which has been an inspiration for the design of fake haunted houses, but I’ve never heard of any reports of ghosts in this mansion.

    However, there is a creepy old pet cemetery out back.

    • The closest thing to an experience I had was at the Hemingway House in Key West. Took some pictures throughout the house. It has some very cool chandeliers. Took a couple of pics of his office, and of the pool afterwards. Through the camera they all looked normal but when I downloaded them the office pics were weird and blurry. I asked a ghost tour operator if the Hemingway House was haunted and he said only the office. 🤷🏻‍♀️

  6. I really hope ghosts aren’t real because the idea of something cognizant being trapped in that state makes me sad.

    Signed, my atheist self thinking about decades spent annoyed at people staying in your bedroom after your mansion became a trendy bed and breakfast.

  7. If I could score Mia Farrow’s character’s apartment in the Dakota from “Rosemary’s Baby” for a good price I’d jump on it. A little Satanic history should be no impediment to the devoted Manhattan house hunter.

  9. After my best friend and neighbor died in Chicago, our dog (who was her dog before she got sick) started barking manically at our closet.  When I got up to look at who she was barking at, I saw my friend as clearly as if she were really standing there.  She was gone a second later, but that gave me some chills, let me tell you.

    • The one supernatural experience I’ve ever had was after my father died. I was putting my daughter to bed — she was four or five, I think — and she looked at me and said, “Don’t be said. Papa says he’s with his mommy and daddy now.” I said, “He told you that? Honey, have you talked to him?” She didn’t answer, just kind of laughed and rolled over and went right to sleep. She’s never done anything like that again.

      I’ve had “premonitions”  where I knew something was wrong, but I’ve come to believe that it’s just recognizing a lot of subliminal clues that your conscious mind doesn’t pick up on. And then suddenly you realize something’s very wrong. The few times it’s happened to me it’s overwhelming — a sense of danger. I couldn’t ignore it. One time it actually made me dizzy.

        • Oh, I agree. Like I said, other than my daughter, I think mine have logical explanations. One of my premonitions came true. I was riding my bike home from school with my little sister, and she was being a brat and dashed off ahead of me over a hill. I knew something was wrong and took off after her. When I crested the hill there was a car stopped and a man standing by the driver’ open door and she was stopped about 10 feet away on her bike. He saw me and jumped in the car and took off. He was exposing himself to her. My theory is that I probably heard the faint noise of the car stopping and the door opening, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

          The time it made me dizzy I was at a gas station with a very pretty girl (who was dating my friend, so nothing going on — I was giving her a ride home) and the gas station attendant (they had those back then) walked over to the car. I got a horrible feeling and the world spun for a second. I said something about sorry, forgot my wallet and left quickly. I deliberately took a couple of wrong turns before taking her home to make sure we weren’t being followed. Nothing happened, but later I learned this guy was an arsonist — set fires in dumpsters all over town. He had a politically connected grandmother who covered it up. I still don’t understand why I freaked that time — something about his appearance? The way he was staring? I don’t know.

          There have been a few more times but how can you prove something was wrong? You get spooked, you leave, nothing happens. Was there a reason? If you stayed would something have happened? I don’t know but when it happens I just go with it.

  10. We stayed at a very old mansion in the English countryside that was actually the servant’s or caretaker house for a castle when my dad was still in the military.  My father’s friend was living there with his family (he was also a Marine).  They had found a hidden passage in this house that went upstairs to very strange bedroom that they theorized was where they  hid some family member that was mentally challenged.  Not sure how they came up with this.  Anyways, in the middle of the night my mom woke up hearing a scream and even though they had closed the bedroom door it was open.  The house had no breezes & everyone said they had not opened the door.  My father’s friend finally said that they were told the place is haunted and had similar things happen all the time.  It was years later when I asked my dad why his Marine friend was based in the middle of the English countryside far from any military base.  He finally told me that his friend was the other half of the nuclear codes, they hide the other person so both sets couldn’t be compromised together.

  11. That book has the stupidest ending. Oh, she inherited money from an uncle and goes off to marry blind, disfigured Mr. Rochester now that he’s single again because the crazy wife died burning the house down.

    Girl ran right to a thousand red flags.

  12. eh…i wouldnt intentionally pick a haunted hotel to stay at

    figure 1 of 2 things will happen

    1 : nothing…cept ill get annoyed at the other guests taking every creak and groan an old place makes at night as a haunting whilst leaving me feeling oddly ripped off

    or 2 : a haunting…. which doesnt sound like a good nights rest to me

    neither of which are things i really look for in a hotel tbh

    but tbh….in my experience whenever things are haunted…people just mean they are old…..and we have some old old things here

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