Yesterday’s Glasses – A Tale Of Intrigue

Photo courtesy Google Images.

When we first bought the Baer-Williams House, the previous owner told us some fantastic tales about “ghostly happenings,” that allegedly occurred in the home. Keep in mind, I’m a skeptic so I simply smiled and silently said, “Okay.”

The previous owner, bought the house in 2005, after his home in New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He’d always loved old houses and always wanted to run a bed & breakfast.

Anyhoo, when he bought the house it was just a house, albeit a pretty cool house, but not operational as a B & B. He began work on the upstairs bedrooms and a short while later opened for overnight guests. He started with two rooms, then added two more when they were ready, then two more and finally two more in the back section of the house, known as the gallery.

He named the rooms with a Gone With the Wind theme; thinking it apropos since his house in New Orleans was . . . literally . . . gone with the . . . well, you get it. The very back room, he decided to call the Mei Ling room; Mei Ling being the Chinese equivalent to Melanie, after cousin Melly in the film.

Photo courtesy Google Images.

The Mei Ling room was filled with a bounty of Chinese antiques, artwork and other furnishings. You see, the former owner had spent several years in the orient and had assembled quite a collection of Asian antiques. He wanted to decorate one room in an Asain motif.

 

Well, that’s when the shenanigans started. You see, people started losing their eye glasses. They’d wake up in the morning and – no glasses. At first it was explained as simple negligence or forgetfulness, believing that the missing eye wear would turn up down the road. After several instances of eye glasses going missing, the owner decided to do some deep searching, going so far as to tear out a portion of one wall and climbing to the roof to ensure the chimney was indeed completely sealed off.

Photo courtesy Google Images.

“It must be pack rats, a squirrel, a raccoon or some other critter getting in some way and making off with the shiny treasures.” Nope. Nothing in the walls, floors, ceiling or chimney. All the windows were way too hard for any creature to open.

Photo courtesy Google Images.

More eye glasses disappeared – 22 pair according to the story. As a last ditch effort to find the thief, he brought in a paranormal investigative team who set out one night with all their fancy, schmancy equipment. In the wee hours of the night, it was determined that something in the room was in fact “possessed.” Not the room itself, something in the room. It was hypothesized that one of the Chinese antiques was inhabited by an unfriendly spirit.

Piece by piece the furniture was removed; some items were sold, some given away, others simply moved to another part of the house. No glasses were found in the process. No more glasses disappeared after that. Problem solved. For the next several years, all eye wear remained in the room.

Enter the Rickrodes. The Mei Ling room was the first room we totally revamped when we bought the place. Top to bottom re-do. We painted, put in new furniture, new window treatments, rugs, bedding, etc. It was the first phase of our room make-overs. We renamed the room the General’s Room.

Original photo by P. Rickrode, February 2016.

Here’s where the really intriguing part of the story starts. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I cleaned that room after some guests departed. The final step in our cleaning process is to sweep, mop and vacuum the floors. The next day, we had a couple checking into the room. In the afternoon, I went upstairs to open the blinds, adjust the temperature and turn on lamps to welcome them on their arrival. Laying close to the baseboard near the door was a long skinny piece of black plastic.

“What in the world is that?” I know we cleaned the floors yesterday. Upon closer inspection I identified the object as this:

Original photo by P. Rickrode, October 2016.

“Well, that’s strange. How did we miss that yesterday?”

The next day, we cleaned the room again when the couple checked out. As before, another couple was checking in so I repeated the welcoming process later that afternoon. This time, laying right in the middle of the bed, I see this:

Original photo by P. Rickrode, October 2016.

“Okay. Hang on a cotton picking minute. There’s no way in hell I would have missed that this morning when we cleaned.” Something, or someone, is leaving me gifts having to do with eye glasses. And the arm we received today is very thin and wire. The piece from yesterday was thicker and plastic. Not 2 pieces of the same pair of glasses. Hmmmm.

Photo courtesy Google Images.

This something or someone was taking from the previous owner, but is giving to us, the new owners. Say what? This wouldn’t be so weird if the little gifts weren’t part of a pair of eye glasses. Or that they showed up in the same room where eye glasses allegedly disappeared in the past.

 

What say you readers? Any thoughts on the broken spectacles? I guess I should be grateful that the thief is returning items, but the whole thing is a little weird, don’t you think?

Stay tuned for more unexplainable encounters.

Word of the day: Kilderkin

Fun fact about me: I wear glasses, should I put them under lock and key?

Original post by Jansen Schmidt, October 2016. Original photos by P. Rickrode. Other photos courtesy Google Images.