THE SQUIDLANA

Want to hear something creepy? It is a story about what we refer to in the hotel as 'The Squidlana.' This particular encounter happened one excessively spooky night. Remember the word 'thumbs'.

I wasn't going to talk about this, but I guess I will. I have been working on a movie project for a celebrity out there whom I will not name. The screenplay (not Wintergrave) takes place entirely in the hotel. For the sake of reference I'll call it GHOST PROJECT. That may end up being the name. Maybe something will come of it. Maybe not. We'll see. It is just a side project.

So, two days ago, for the full moon, I had the night free to sit down and begin carving out the GHOST PROJECT screenplay. I was glad to have the time. I knew it would pound out fast. I am actually incorporating some of the stories and supernatural situations from here in the hotel.

It was afternoon, and I was typing and thinking the material I was writing was particulary creepy, when all of a sudden all the lights went out and the computer shut down. I ran out back and there was a Penelec guy who'd just turned off the electricity for the entire building. What are you doing? I demanded!

Apparently, even though I'd mailed in the electric bill, something had happened and they said they had to shut it off. This was crazy, I thought. I offered to pay him again, thus paying double, but he said it would take 24 hours to have someone else come back out and turn it back on. So, we would have to spend the night in the hotel with NO ELECTRICITY whatsoever.

In the past I've gone on record saying the hotel seemed to do things that affected people's lives and projects. So I joked to myself that maybe the building was making itself creepy for an evening while I worked on a creepy screenplay.

We were using candles. I decided to work on GHOST PROJECT in the Monkey Room. I had all these candles burning and the door closed behind me. The energy this night was really creepy. Perfect, I thought, for writing a creepy screenplay. But, I have to stress, in the hotel this night it seemed extra creepy.

The Monkey Room is across from the Canopy Room. I closed up the Monkey Room so I was inside it alone with the door closed.

I have to say that the energy of the building was intense this night. It had a "deep" uneasiness about it. I was noting how extreme the air seemed and sharpness of visuals, shadows, prickly crawl along the skin, etc., before what I am about to tell you happened. The groundwork was laid for something to leap into this imaginative landscape. The creepy volume was being turned up.

If nothing else, this room sure served as a pocket of creepiness to summon an unsettling movie script. The Monkey Room felt electric. The air seemed to be perfectly lit by the candle-glow, as if in a movie set...or some quintessential private time in hotel history that one was getting to enjoy in the moment. Very full moon.

The Canopy Room, across the hall, was just a dark yawning mouth of "don't come in here".

I think this season we'd already been making jokes about a female "thing" in the Canopy Room we were calling "The Squidlana". If not, the phrase was surely in our hotel vocabulary after this night. Here goes:

Around 1 AM I heard something awful! It sounded at first like cats howling in pain, and then I realized it was Renee waking up across the hall and screaming, running out into the hall on the second floor. I dashed out to meet her. She was trembling and crazed.

"I just saw something!" She screamed. "I was on the floor and something crawled over at me and grabbed me. It put a clammy cold hand on my arm and clutched me."

She was shrieking about something in Room #4, the room next to the Canopy Room.

"There was someone on the floor next to me," She was saying. "I saw her. And when I screamed it moved. It moved so fast, and then I saw her standing in the doorway. She was suddenly standing in the doorway. The overriding sensation I was aware of was that it was sinister."

I asked her how she was sure it wasn't just one of the cats.

"Because it had THUMBS!" She cried out, "Thumbs are the giveaway! Something just grabbed my arms. A clammy cold hand. It was just like when Steve described it grabbing him!" She went on to describe it further as its movement reminding her of that thing that climbed out of the well in the movie The Ring. She called it "cellar-dweller" like.

The building was still pitch black and silent and the energy was rocketing creepy. So we left to go for a car ride for an hour to just get away.

In the morning, I have to admit, the energy still felt oppressive and annoying, even in full daylight. It was the kind of sensation like when you are trying to read and someone is standing directly behind you and you can't concentrate because of it. I was trying to sleep and found it overwhelming. Yes, I was sufficiently bothered myself by potential spirits, for once, so much so that I almost left the building to go outside and finish sleeping in peace in the car! I even questioned if I wanted to continue with this screenplay if it was going to "summon" and effect the energy of the hotel to this degree, as I pictured it happening until I was done with the screenplay. But then suddenly it changed, like a switch being thrown, and that energy lightened. The electricity eventually was turned back on too in the morning.

Dylan Fornoff, another person staying in the hotel, was completely creeped out as well. He eventually left and spent the next two days at his parent's house.

(I have to laugh because a visiting friend named Joe Bob was here about two weeks ago, and he tried sleeping in every room on the second floor, and then finally gave up, choosing to sleep two nights in his car so certain was he that something was around him and touching him. I made fun of him that weekend. Nothing ever bothers me here, I'm part of the place now and enjoy being the current host, and I always laugh when people run from the ghosts they believe they see here. But I have to admit the place even spooked me yesterday. I think it was the screenplay GHOST PROJECT that was summoning it. I do. And Renee, well, she got the full thumbs of it.)

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LATER...

For anyone out there reading this, there is something genuinely creepy about rooms #3 and #4 in the hotel. People who have no idea about the place will step into these rooms, the Canopy Room #3 in particular, and just start saying things.

One psychic last month walked through the hotel and gave us wonderful details of her impressions.

Recently a ghost hunting group came and said some crazy creepy stuff about what they believed they saw in the Canopy Room. Mainly, they said there was some female-like thing on the bed on all fours growling at them. (It was an interesting visual to claim, if nothing else, as they did not know about the above thumb-Squidlana story.)

There are several details from many different visitors I could mention but I am trying to hold back on them so as not to influence future ghost hunters and guests who like to inspect the place with no prior images. But for anyone who has already hung out in the Canopy Room you probably already have a taste of what they mean. The Canopy Room, the Monkey Room, and The Micheal Dennison Suite, this trio of rooms on the second floor, have some kind of heightened energy thing going on in that across the boards everyone seems to have some similar experience...they say, "Something is creepy about this room."

Now try spending the entire night here in this hotel in pitch black silence with no electricity and something 'else' in the building for some real fun...

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Dr.Ipps writes:

Wow... That is utterly creepy, Blair! Nifty synchronicity at work with the power going out right at that moment, too.

Really looking forward to browsing through Wintergrave when next we meet up! Good luck on the screenplay.

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Renee writes:

New Spook! More super-creepy energy in the building last night. I think it's safe to say a new haunt has somehow joined us.