It’s one thing to like spirits of one kind and there’s a lot of us that do, but it’s another thing to encounter a different kind of spirit...a restless one from the other side...in an old relic of a hotel from bygone days long since gone...along the Florida coastline in an old town undiscovered by the tourists, and even ignored by the cockroaches, there are rumors of strange happenings that have been reported by visitors to this particular hotel...a sad, sagging structure surrounded by a parking lot that resembles the surface of the moon with its large rocks and craters...I know personally of one person who had the misfortune/adventure of staying there one rainy night, complete with thunder and lightning and a wind that howled mournfully across the bay like a tortured soul...he had drove to an area near that not to be named town to look at a motorcycle he was thinking of buying...he had just started back home when the weather got ugly fast...not wanting to chance having an accident (since his license was already suspended anyway) he stopped and found a room at a bayside motel that was rated the #1 hotel in town because it was the only hotel in town...it was an eerie looking place with dirty white drapes on the windows but he didn’t see where he had much choice...he checked in and everything was uneventful until in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, he was awakened by the frightening sound of the squeaky doorknob to his room being turned by person or persons unknown...he reached for something to defend his life with...the best he could do was a Gideon’s bible that was in the nightstand...he thought that maybe he’d finally found a use for it...he silently crept over the what was supposed to be carpet to the ramshackled door and yanked it open...expecting to find someone there...but to his surprise, there was no one there...he looked down the dark hallway...dark because half the hall lights were burnt out and the ones working were only aglow in a dim yellow light...he looked and saw or heard nothing...he closed the door dumbfounded, flummoxed, and befuddled...he was sure he heard the doorknob turn several times...he hadn’t been drinking or hallucinating...after a sleepless night full of nightmares, he went down to the front desk at first light and he told the clerk about what had happened...the clerk replied ‘Oh’...well this was certainly a most casual attitude about what had happened…”Is that all you got to say?” he exclaimed...the clerk then went on to explain that such occurrences were commonplace and that it wasn’t a big deal...he then related an old story on how there was an old crusty sea captain that had been brutally murdered nearby many years ago by a former crew member of his who happened to be staying at that hotel...the story goes that the dead captains spirit was seeking revenge against his killer...and that jiggling doorknobs, audible footsteps in the hallway, and a knock on the door in the early morning hours were not unusual...nobody had actually seen a ghost, but there were plenty of nervous guests who had heard all of the above and had been scared out of their skulls...some asked for other rooms, some asked for their money back, and some just got the hell out of there as fast as they could without asking for anything.
