3 Haunted Hotels for Halloween Night

I recently stayed in Room 35 of the Irma Hotel in Cody, Wyoming. Prior guests reported lights going on and off, being touched by an unseen hand, etc. Some claimed they saw the ghost of a Civil War soldier in dress uniform--but only half of him! Creepy. I didn't get to find out which half. It occurred to me the next morning that, had I seen a ghost, I would have had to change my entire belief system. So it was probably a good thing nothing happened.

But staying in a "haunted" room got me wondering what other scary places might be out there, waiting for a skeptic like me. You know, the one who laughs at her cringing friend as she opens a door and gets an axe in her head. These three places fit the bill and would make for unsettling lodging even without the promise of paranormal activity.

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At the top of my list is the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts. I remember skipping rope to this rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.

According to Wikipedia, "In reality Lizzie's stepmother suffered 18 or 19 blows and her father just 11 blows."  Still effective, but not as catchy. (A child reciting a ditty about parricide in this day and age would be whisked away to specialists, medicated and denied cutlery till she left for college.)

The house is now a bed and breakfast. Cuddle up on the sofa in the sitting room where Lizzy's father met his end. Take a nap in the John Morse guestroom, where Lizzie's stepmother was discovered. Play CSI, bring your Luminol and look for any blood that might have been missed. Of course, they've cleaned up the place since then but hatchet deaths are pretty messy....

Or stay in Lizzie's room. She continued to live at home after her acquittal but, shunned by the locals, I imagine she didn't get many trick-or-treaters at her door. It's worth noting that tours are conducted every day through most of the rooms. If you sleep in, it would be wise not to do so in the nude. You will be part of the show.

Why not wake early, hide your unmentionables and head downstairs for breakfast? You'll be treated to the same meal that Abby and Andrew enjoyed before being hacked to death: bananas, sugar cookies and jonny-cakes, flatbread made of cornmeal. Yum.

If it seems like the owners are cashing in on a gruesome double murder, it's because they are. They're in the process now of setting up the Ghost Cam Project, in which online subscribers pay to conduct "paranormal investigations" over web cams placed in the guest rooms. Hopefully, this will only go on when there are no corporeal guests in them.

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Next up is Marshall House, the oldest hotel in Savannah, Georgia.

This is a popular one. Even Fox News recommended it as a Halloween getaway.  The website mentions that it was built in 1851, served as a hospital for Civil War soldiers and later for victims of yellow fever. That alone might make it a repository of ghosts.

It's also quite posh and doesn't have shared bathrooms, web cams or tours popping in, unlike the Borden B&B. It's a nice place to kick back, enjoy some room service and order up a scary movie on pay-per-view.


Guests have claimed to hear children's laughter in empty hallways or woken up feeling pressure on their wrists as if someone is taking their pulse. That's nothing compared to what actually happened. During  renovation, workers found the bones of amputated limbs hidden underneath the floorboards and in the back yard. Eek, am I right? I guarantee you will not find that in the promotional literature.

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This last place qualifies as a hotel only because you can rent a room there. Or, more specifically, a cell. Karosta Prison in Latvia was built in 1900 and functioned as a military detention and torture center until 1997. Officers held here included tsarists, enemies of Stalin and deserters from the German Wehrmacht.

For only $16.00, "spend the night in a prison which is considered to be even more impressive than the Alcatraz in the USA, to sleep on a prison bunk or an iron bed, and to have a prison meal." Better than Alcatraz? Fancy!

If that sounds a little tame, book the Extreme Night. It'll cost you a little more, but for less than $25.00, you'll be treated as a prisoner all night--once you sign the waiver, of course. There are special rates for schoolchildren and seniors. They also do weddings. No, I'm not kidding.

Did I mention it's haunted?

Apocalypse No?

Here at Magick Sandwich, we enjoy a bit of name-calling as much as the next guy. Back at the end of May, when it appeared the Rapture hadn't happened, we wracked our brains to come up with a term that would adequately define the non-event.

In order to share our results with the world--and to try to look clever--we rushed off our newly minted moniker to the folks at Urban Dictionary. Then we waited. And waited. In the intervening months, we learned from that lovable old coot and Nostradamus wannabe, Harold Camping, that the Rapture had indeed happened and God had already chosen his flock.

But He'd postponed their ascension and withheld the results. Did He do it out of concern for his faithful getting motion sick on the flight up to Heaven or was He just toying with them? Either way, it's helped Camping keep hope for death alive while filling his coffers. Camping's followers continue to give, though some must have the queasy feeling of spending one's life savings on a lottery ticket.

According to Harold, the world will end today. He's got a pretty bad track record thus far. I'm sure it's just a simple computational error. Or he could be batshit crazy. If tomorrow comes, we'll need a new noun to suit the occasion. We humbly submit our sobriquet, published just in the nick of time: no-pocalypse. This occurs when Judgment Day passes without incident. For example: I wish I could go to your no-pocalypse party but since the Rapture didn't happen, I have to do my homework. Bummer!

Of course, the most interesting words will be whatever Harold Camping is saying tomorrow. Stay tuned!

More from me:
Apocal-Update
3 Ways to Survive and Thrive on Judgment Day

Related articles:

Apocalypse, again: Camping says today's the day (cbsnews.com)
Harold Camping's Christian group expects rapture on Friday (upi.com)

Apocal-Update

They're back! 

It's that time again: the End of Days. Seriously, they really mean it this time.

To be fair, the date the world will end hasn't changed. It's the Rapture that was a little confusing. Remember when Harold Camping--an old geeze who, inexplicably, people pay attention to--said the Rapture would happen on May 21st, 2011? You know, it was the day that God's chosen ones would be whisked up to Heaven and dine on honeydew while the rest of us writhed in agony on an earth beset by fire, earthquakes, floods and general mayhem. Quite a few of those things have happened this year, though not with the gusto Camping predicted. The first problem he faced on May 22nd, 2011 was the fact that we were all still here, heretics and believers alike. But he cleared it all up two days later on Family Radio.

The Bible tells us that Christ has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God is a very compassionate God and while the law of God demands that there has to be punishment, it does not mean God is going to punish, and punish, and punish, and punish.

So the Man Upstairs is going to have mercy and compress all the suffering of the Rapture and end of the world into one day. He delayed the Rapture earthquake because He realized most of the damned wouldn't survive it and He wanted to make sure they all lived until the big reveal: the earth exploding in a fiery ball of doom! Maybe it could more properly be called End of Day? I imagine it will be like standing on the Death Star when Luke takes his shot.

Camping's followers spent their life savings and quit their jobs to travel around the country warning us to repent. They bought billboard space and festooned their front yards with signs. They marched around with colorful informational placards, handed out flyers, yelled at their neighbors. All about one specific date: May 21st, 2011.

And this was their thanks? A compassionate God? Many felt they'd been conned by the Almighty. After all their effort, they were still here, having to cope with their massive debt, their average kids, their crafting rooms bulging with unfinished scrapbooking projects. They'd need to refill that blood pressure/diabetes/high cholesterol medication they'd let lapse. How had this happened?

Luckily, Camping has an answer for them, too. God did come down to earth May 21st. But He did it quietly. So it was more of a soft Rapture, I guess. It was spiritual rather than physical, according to Camping. So those He marked for salvation that day didn't know it. Why? Camping says it's because if God had let people know it was a spiritual judgment, then "no one would have taken notice or feared God." Only because May 21st was declared as a physical Judgment Day did the world take notice.

Not to quibble with a prophet, but two things about this bother me. First of all, wouldn't anyone who was worthy have taken notice without the threat of violence? Wouldn't a spiritual judgment be enough? Is God trying to trick people into taking Him seriously? He sounds pretty insecure. Second, why would he continue to withhold knowledge of who is saved? Is He messing with the chosen or giving the rest of us false hope?

As for Camping, he told his followers to stop trying to save others after May 21s. Since judgment already happened, that would be useless. He said his goal until October 21st was to "feed my sheep." Apparently, there are millions who've unwittingly been saved and need his teachings. How can Camping do this when no one knows who is worthy? Writing him a check might help him divine an answer for you. And make it as big as you want. If the world ends, who's going to cash it?

More:
3 Ways to Survive and Thrive on Judgment Day
Paradise Postponed - Daily Mail UK
Harold Camping Quits Evangelism, Focuses Only On the Saved - Christian Post
Family Radio Redesigns Website with No Mention of Rapture - Business Insider
Rapture: Harold Camping issues New apocalypse date - BBC News