Floating in the air in the center of the room was a cloud of what appeared to be smoke. The strangest thing about it was that it did not dissipate but seemed to retain a pyramidal shape, except for a somewhat rounded top.
At first I was afraid that something must be on fire, but I checked and nothing had been left on the stove. For a little while I just stood there watching, almost hypnotized. Then I edged up closer and blew at it just as hard as I possibly could. I finally managed to blow it away. But in a minute or two, it came back again in exactly the same shape.
As I watched it hover there, it began to vibrate. And as that smoky form moved back and forth, I began to tremble and could feel every hair on the back of my neck stand straight up. I don’t know when I have been so frightened. I knew I needed some help, so I hurried and got the dishwasher.
“Annie, there’s smoke here in the dining room.”
“There’s nothing burning.”
“I know, but what’s that?” I asked, pointing at the pyramid.
“There’s been a lot of people in here smoking.”
“Not today. Not a living soul has been in here. It’s not like smoke after people leave a room. I just blew this away, and it came back in the same shape.”
“Don’t tell me that! I was just in here and fanned it with this towel, and it went away and returned the same way,” said Annie. And then she said, “I know what that is, but I don’t want to say it, so we’ll say it together.”
“G-h-o-s-t,” we both said, in shaky voices.
Then do you know what we did? We ran.
That was the first experience with our ghost, and, to the best of my knowledge, the spirit never came back in that form. During those first months that we were open, there was a customer who came to the hotel cafe regularly, a tall woman with piercing black eyes and straight, iron-gray hair that she wore in a large, soft bun at the back of her head. I remember her well.
She had studied life after death and the supernatural and religious aspects of the afterlife. A very serious, scholarly lady she was, with all sorts of degrees. Sometimes we talked a little about ghosts when she was here and I wasn’t busy, and I made no bones about what a fright the shape in the old dining room had given Annie and me.
“I’ll be glad to help you find out who it is,” she offered.
“No, thanks,” I said.
But she insisted on giving me her card just the same. “In the event you have any problems, I will be glad to come and help you.”
Of course, my reaction was, what could a puff of smoke do?
As time went on, our dining room was completed. We had very nice flatwear and attractive placemats, and we put candles on each table. Let me tell you, there was a real thrill of accomplishment when we had it all ready for our first guests. There was just one problem, though, and it was so incredible that we didn’t know what to do about it: Except for those at one table, the candles proceeded to light by themselves.
We tried leaving the dining room and locking the door after us, but when we came back in, the room was aglow with light. All the candles were burning. We managed to get most of them to stay out, but there was always one table where they would come back on, and that was the one right in the center of the room. This was the area where I had first seen the ghost.
Of course, it was vitally important that none of our guests see this strange phenomenon. One night we were expecting the prestigious Historical Society from Stanford University. Since they had made reservations for a dinner party, we were going to make sure all the candles did not relight by themselves: If any guests left early, we would not extinguish the candles at their tables. Moreover, we decided that after everyone was gone, we would simply remove all candles from the dining room. That should solve the problem.
But our troubles were not over. Shortly before our guests were to arrive, there was the most awful odor in the dining room, and I didn’t know what in the world to do. Have you ever heard that spirits sometimes have an odor accompanying their presence?
Well, I rushed over to the hardware store, got a lamp with an aromatic candle in it, and proceeded to burn it in the dining room. In a few minutes the odor was completely gone, and I was so thankful, for everything smelled just wonderful. Everyone enjoyed a lovely dinner, and they lingered, drinking coffee and talking. Finally, after the last guest had left, after midnight, we removed the candlesticks and locked the door. The next morning I came down about five-thirty to fix breakfast, and the entire hotel smelled like frankincense and patchouli oil, sickeningly sweet.
When I unlocked the door to the back room, the candles were burning once more. They had been moved from the top shelf of my grandmother’s buffet to the bottom shelf, and they were burned completely down to a tiny flame. That’s when I called the lady who had offered to come if I needed help.
The hotel had burned down once, and by now you can understand that I was quite alarmed. I began to feel that this hotel was more subject to fire than most. We arranged for the woman who had studied the supernatural to come Saturday night at ten o’clock. I felt so silly even then that I remember joking, “It needs to be night, and I must have a black cat under the table.”
When
