If you desire eight hours of continuous shut eye, I would definitely recommend you sleep in a haunted room. I’m not sure how much you will sleep, but if you do it correctly, your eyes will stay squeezed shut for hours on end.
I’m just peeling my eyes open from my first night in such a room and after realizing that I’m fine and none of my belongings have shifted, I can finally exhale after holding my breath since midnight.
To back up, I got myself into this little predicament because I’m staying in Connecticut for a bit with a lovely family that has danced in and out of my life for the last fifteen years. Upon arrival they had guests in their guest room. So they generously gave me reign of their third floor, enticing me with the mention of their gym also being located on this level. Ideal plan – especially when M told me about the ghost of the old woman who died in the house and now haunts the guest room, the real estate broker’s reticence about answering questions, the doors that continually are found open after being locked and closed, the strange presence at night and the fact that several guests, with no knowledge of the situation ask in the morning, “What the hell is going on with that room?” At which point I was ready to bolt for the door until M said, “Don’t worry, the third floor was built afterwards and she never goes up there.” Phew.
To be honest, ghost stories have always been merely scary stories to tell in the dark. There was that college break with MJ’s legendary ghost tales about William and Mary that prompted me to crawl into bed with my mom, but it has only been recently that I have put any weight into these supernatural stories…. it’s hard to argue when your friends have first hand sightings.
Fast forward to last night. K informs me that I am going to be switched into the now vacant guest room so they can use the gym at 4:45 am without waking me. And so the panic attack begins. There was clearly no way out of the room, so in the process of freaking the hell out, the debate became: to sleep with the light on or not? Light on: possibly see the ghost – or scare it away? Light off: allow the ghost to come? and then: do I change in the room? I don’t want the ghost to see me!
And so the best plan I could think of was to read until I was so tired that my eyelids could only be kept open by some heavy duty scotch – at which point I would turn off the light, close my eyes, hope for the best and refuse to open my eyes for the entirety of the night until the coast was clear in the morning. Kind of like the three year old who covers his eyes and because he doesn’t see you, you don’t exist!
It’s now morning and I’m very happy to report that the only sightings so far have been the little Hispanic men in cherry pickers appearing in my windows just shortly after waking as they trim the trees outside!
