Some of my siblings and I went ghost hunting! It’s tremendous fun, especially if you don’t find anything.
We stayed a night at the Lemp Mansion. It was beautiful and eerie. We had a great time exploring the place at night after the lights went out and everyone was gone. They really set you up for ghost hunting there. The staff lock you in and leave at nine. You get to be alone, and if you’re lucky enough to schedule a night without any other guests, you really will be alone. Unfortunately we had a couple of rooms with other guests that night, and they were loud and constant talkers! But they didn’t leave their rooms much.
We went exploring, it felt pretty dumb, because the stairs and doors were creaky… not just eerie creaky, but cringy LOUD creaky. We got to be the ghosts for the other guests once because the door was so loud, they heard it and called, “hello?” And we crept away. I actually didn’t get why my siblings did that to them… maybe because it was nice to let them believe in Santa. Or maybe it was because we didn’t want them to find us four grown-ass idiots tiptoeing around the mansion in our socks and jammies. We did a lot of sneaking around those people, that was probably the silliest and most fun of everything. They never caught us! As far as we know. They were pretty drunk. At one point a guy walked by, and my sister and I stood still in a dark corner as our only defense, and he never saw us. It was crazy.
Our room was the Lavender Room, haunted by the Lavender Lady, and also by Billy Lemp who was a playboy in life and a nasty shower-peeper in death. My sisters and I tried to lure him out in the bathroom by flashing him but he didn’t manifest.
The bathroom was magnificent. It had a giant bay window, a marble bath, a shower with a built-in spot-free lateral rinse, and extra space enough to perform several backflips. It was excessive, but hey, excessive bathrooms are what money’s for, amirite?
My ghostiest moment: when I was alone in this bathroom pooping, the overhead light came on, then after about ten seconds it turned off again. Maybe Billy was a coprophiliac? They didn’t mention that in the brochure. I, er, finished up, then tried the light. It was one of those lights on a dimmer switch which shouldn’t be on a dimmer switch. If you turned the knob slowly through the low, medium, high settings, the light went: low, higher, lowest, bright, off. With much flickering in between.
The whole building’s electricity was on the fritz. Lights flickered weakly all the time. It started to remind me of Stranger Things. Their wiring must have been SUPER old. Why pay for expensive rewiring when it’s spookier for the guests this way?
Also, there were some brutal cold spots from the overhead AC ducts in consistent places.
When we went down to the basement, we got our worst scare of the night: the ice machine. We could hear it from around the corner. It said, “whirrrr whumpity whumpity BANG!!” *dead silence* “whirrrrr, whirrrrrr, whir-whir-bumpity thumpity kkkk clack rattle whirrrrr” and so on. The poor machine was choking to death on the flickering electricity. Once we realized it didn’t want to eat us, I pitied it.
There were an inordinate number of mirrors hanging on the walls. I had to wonder if the owners decorated it that way on purpose, to increase the suspicious photos and reflections we might see, or even just to give us a good jumpscare around corners.
It was beautiful though, it has a scary atmosphere, and we had tons of fun. I highly recommend it. I hoped I would see something, but in my heart I knew I wouldn’t. Still, we ate a lot of brownies and stuck close to each other nervously and felt like kids again on a great big sleepover. Go check it out, unless you’re a sensitive, then maybe don’t, because it’ll probably end like The Shining for you. I’m still not discounting the possibility of ghosts, and I definitely don’t want anyone getting scarred for life because I told them this place was delightful and unhaunted!
I like ghost hunting, especially if I get to do it with good people. Next time I’ll apply what I’ve learned and catch me that big ten-point ghost I’ve heard about, and get him mounted on my wall.
Sarah D. Silvey 