The Echo Lake Inn is a historic Inn and, as a result, many guests (young and old) often ask if there are any spirits in the Inn. Rumors swirl and many a tall tale has been told regarding these mysterious and elusive beings.
This, however, is the one true story of a ghost at the Inn as related to me by 5 different sets of people stretching over a period of 22 years. In the coming weeks I will give you the full and factual story as relayed to me concerning this ghost at the Echo Lake Inn.
My first awareness of this presence was on a Saturday night in January of 1998. There were four young people having dinner at table 8 and, as I normally do, I went over to their table and asked them if they were enjoying their dinner. They said they were having a wonderful dinner and it reminded them of the days when, they were children years ago, their dad owned the inn. It was fun to hear their stories, however, one story was different.
They told me that one day, years earlier, their grandmother came rushing down the stairs from the 3 floor yelling about a ghost, a spirit, a something that had knocked her off her ladder. She had been in a room on the 3rd floor replacing the wall paper with a rich dark blue wall paper when she was knock off her ladder by something. She thought “well, maybe I just lost my balance”. A few moments later the same thing happened and now she was a little nervous. When this happened a third time she ran out of the room very scared and headed down the stairs yelling “there’s a ghost in room 31 and it knocked me off my ladder”.
The kids were laughing as they told me this. One of them chimed in “She’s so old, no wonder she fell off the ladder”, another said “she’d probably been drinking” and they all laughed. Given their age at the time of this story, their grandmother was probably only in her early fifties; far too young to be falling off a ladder!
Their father finished the wall paper job. Grandma never went back into that room!
When I first saw this room there was a beautiful little yellow chair in the corner. I always wondered why there would be a yellow chair in a dark blue room? Anyway, that’s part of next month’s story.
Until then ~
Laurence
Photo: Beltrami Studios
