The Broken Lightbulb: A Spooky Tale

Here at the inn, I have a policy: if a room is not made completely up and ready for someone to check into it, I keep the door to that room either shut or locked until it’s ready to go. I don’t like snoopy guests – and they are, every single one of them – to peek in and see a dirty or unfinished room. I just think that’s unprofessional. I’d rather have those snoopy guests wonder what those rooms look like than for them to see an unmade bed or a vacuum cleaner sitting in the middle of the room or towels stacked on the dresser. Hey, my inn, my rules. I want to present it in its best light.

Anyway, a couple of nights ago we had some guests in Room 5 and when they left, we discovered a problem in that room. So, we decided not to make it up until we were done fixing the problem. Nothing major, but a problem none-the-less. It was actually a very silly problem, but my husband and I were pretty tired from 3 days in a row of cleaning every single room and feeding a dozen guests, so we decided to just let that one room go until the next day when we’d finish it.

As is my routine, I shut the door. Because we only had 1 room checking in, I decided not to lock the door, but to just keep it shut, assuming the new guests would assume that room was occupied and not open that door. All the other vacant rooms, that were made up and ready for check-in, had keys hanging from the locks. This room did not, so it looked occupied.

Now, when I DO lock the doors, I almost always put the keys upstairs in the laundry room so they’re handy the next day when I need to open those rooms up. The only way to lock my rooms is with a key because every room has a deadbolt. There are no doorknob locks. Every door has an antique knob (so no push-button lock) and a deadbolt. So, when I lock the rooms, I use the key, turn the deadbolt, and put the key in the laundry room.

The next day while I was finishing the breakfast dishes, my husband said he was going to go upstairs and fix the problem in that room. A short while later he came back downstairs and asked me where the key was because the door was locked. I told him that I hadn’t locked the door, but me being me, thought maybe I just didn’t remember locking it. So I told him that if I had locked the door, the key would be in the laundry room. He came back downstairs and said the key was not in the laundry room.

So, we started looking in all the places where I might have gotten distracted and left the key. Finally, after a few minutes, I told him to just use one of the spare keys, which he did. A wee bit later, when I went upstairs to help with the cleaning in that room, he told me that when he unlocked the door with the spare key he saw the other key sitting on the bureau INDISE THE ROOM. Um, what? How can that be? I would have needed the key to lock the door. It’s the only way to lock it. Hmmmm.

Then another peculiar thing happened. Let me explain: the “problem” with that room was a burned-out lightbulb. (I told you it was silly.) My supply of lightbulbs upstairs was depleted which meant one of us would have had to go downstairs and get a bulb from the downstairs supply cabinet. That’s when we decided to just leave the room until the next day because neither of us wanted to make another trip up and down the stairs. I told you, we were pretty tired from the previous 3 days.

Anyway, on this day, my husband had brought a new lightbulb upstairs. When he put the new bulb in the socket, it didn’t work. He tried it in the other light over the vanity (it’s a twin light bar) it worked. Huh? Strange. So, he left it there and screwed the old bulb that worked into the other socket. It didn’t work. Then he tried the bulb in the lamp on the bedside table. It worked. Not wanting to replace the lightbar we kept exchanging lightbulbs until we got a winning combination of 3 lit bulbs and called it a day. We finished cleaning the room and went about our business.

Later in the afternoon, we were both upstairs getting the rooms ready for check-in when my husband asked me when the lightbulb had fallen out of the fixture in Room 5. What? I haven’t been in there. And we just put it in there. But, sure enough, itty bitty shards of glass adorned the sink, vanity, and tile floor. Here’s the really weird part – the filament was still in the socket and when we turned the light on, it lit up. So, there was nothing wrong with the bulb or the fixture. Why did it blow out? Who turned it on or broke the glass? Why would a bulb explode from a fixture that was never turned on?

So, tick tock, time is running out before check-in, we replaced it with another bulb, turned it on and off a few times, and continued getting other rooms ready for check-in. Just because we got that “feeling” we checked that room again and sure enough, same thing. The filament was in the socket, lit up, but the glass bulb had shattered all over the vanity again. What the heck? Faulty bulbs?

Tired of trying to figure it out, my husband went to Home Depot and got a new light fixture, replaced it with the apparently possessed one and put two completely new bulbs in it. No problems since. Whew!

But it still begs the questions: who locked the door from the inside? And who turned the light on? Hmmmm. Perhaps Room 5 has a rascally ghost messing with us? What say you? Any explanations for these 2 unusual events? I’d like to think there was just a short in the light switch but . . . the locked door? I just don’t know.

I’ve got more exciting things planned for the rest of year that only my newsletter followers will know about. I promise you’ll only get 6 newsletters for the entire year, so I won’t clutter up your inbox. Here’s the link if you want to sign up and be the first to know things: http://bit.ly/JansenSchmidtNewsletter

Word of the Day: Xylophagous

Fun fact about me:  I’ve never been a trickster so I don’t appreciate having tricks played on me, even harmless ones.

Original post by Jansen Schmidt, August 2022. Images by Pexels, Google and giphy.com