This story a part of the True Ghost Stories page on Obiwan's UFO-Free Paranormal Page. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from Obiwan and/or the original author!
From: -REMOVE-jlc99@mail.idt.net (Jamey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Haunted Motel
Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 08:40:12 GMT
Well, I finally decided to post one of my personal accounts. I think I'll start with this one, which actually happened to my family before I was born. As some of my family is a bit touchy when talking about this, names will be changed, but the place will stay the same.
After moving to California in the late 60's, my mother and her then (now late) husband, Dan, decided to purchase a small motel by the beach. This motel housed approx. 20 - 40 units, as well as a small built-in house for the owners (mom and Dan.)
At the time, Mom and Dan had 4 children. Two boys, Carl and Andy, ages 15 and 2, respectively, and two girls, Beverly and Anne, 13 and 11. All of them lived in the house, which had plenty of space for them.
Well, the strangeness began around 6 months after moving in. Guests would sometimes complain of 'bad wireing' causing things like tv's and lights to come on, or of the footsteps in the room above. The wiring was quite good, as Dan was an electrician as a hobbies, and would check over the wiring after the complaints. As for the noises upstairs, more often than not they were just guests upstairs. But on occasion, they would check the registry to find that no one had been in that room, the night in question.
For about the next 2 years, this continued along with a few other strange (but dismissable) phenomenon. Lost items which would reappear... doors which were supposed to be locked found opened... cold spots in the summer, all of which was usually explained away as the wind, or a bad memory. (This is Carlsbad California, though... in the summer it can top in the 100's.) One room, I believe it was room 22, had a habbit of attracting bad people for some reason. I don't know if this had to do with the ghosts, but it was the room you could count on things being broken in by check out time. ;)
The strange things were beginning to happen more often by the time that Andy was 4 years old. The above said occurrences seemed to happen more often, and the real strangeness began now...
One morning while mom was fixing breakfast, Andy came wandering sleepy eyed out of his room carrying something. With the usual "Mornin' honey" mom greeted him, and proceeded to ask him what he was carrying.
Presenting a small tin soldier to mom, Andy said "The little man gave me it, mama." The soldier was (I am told) of the type that children would have played with about one hundred years ago, heavy and solid. It showed signs of ageing, according to my mother. She would know, she went on to own an antique shop after the motel was sold.
Well, after questioning the sleepy 4 year old (a feat in itself,) my mother was able to find out how he claimed to have gotten the toy. He said that a little man who sat upon his closet shelf gave him the toy, saying that it was a 'gift.' This part of the story usually makes me snicker more than anything, because my brother still claims to remember the incident clearly, and says that the man looked like a 'lepricon.' Well... the family is part irish... hehehe. Anyway, he claims the man was wearing a suit, and looked like a normal man, only small and kind of 'sparkley.'
There can be no doubt that the soldier existed, as it was in the family for about 8 years... no one knows what happened to it since. As for the little man, was he real? If so, what was he? If not, where did the antique toy come from?
Nope, that's not the end, I'm not letting you all off that easy... if you read on, we'll get to the good part.
Out in the garage of the house, Dan had a small workshop complete with workbench, and various power tools. On the top of the workbench there was a old radio. You all know the type from the 50's, with about 5 knobs on them, and a polished aluminum face. Well, this one was just like those, but for one thing... the knobs had an odd way of just flying off. There was one time when Dan and Andy were both in the workshop, and claim to have seen the knobs hover in the air for about 30 seconds before shooting off across the room.
In the workshop, oftentimes things like wrenches and saws would disappear only to show up again a few weeks later... it seemed to get a bit more activity than the rest of the place did. One winter day, (I believe that it was in January,) Dan was working in the shop, making a few odds and ends out of wood for around the house. He heard a voice, which almost shouted "I'm going to get you where it hurts!" This left him shaken, as there was no one around to have said that, and it was not a voice he recognized. He decided to make his way into the house. Putting his tools away, and walking outside he found something that left him terrified. The grass, which had just been watered within a half hour previous, was on fire. It was a small patch of grass, about 2 feet square which had caught fire... in the perfect shape of a heart. Now, as strange as this sounds, my entire family swears that they saw the charred grass later, and that it was shaped exactly like a heart. Dan quickly put the fire out, and went inside nervous as hell.
A few weeks after this happened, Dan died. He had a heart attack while at home.
This is about the end of the strange happenings, and things seemed to settle down a bit after his death. What happened we might never know, but I do have one last thing to add to the story.
My mother decided to find a psychic who might help her find out what had happened, a few years after all this had come to pass. What the psychic told her was that there was an old sea captain who had been buried under what was now the front steps of the motel approx. 100 years ago, and that he was the spirit who was haunting it. After this my mother did research, checking public record and the like, and confirmed that a sea captain by the name given her by the psychic had lived in Carlsbad around the time, and that he had died when the psychic said he did. My mother never got the nerve up to dig up the front steps, but she believes it. Personally... I think the psychic might have just been a fake, and familiar with public records. But it is still interesting.
Well, that's the end of the story, if you have any questions please feel free to ask me. Post them here, or mail me. Just make sure you take out the -REMOVE- in my e-mail address, it's just my handy anti-spam shield. Hope you enjoyed this, all, and now I am out of here... till I decide to post the story about the Vodun (voodoo) statue my grandmother brought back from Haiti, and what I and other have seen it do...
Jamey
PS. Sorry for such a long post!