Only One Room Vacant

Well that time of the year has rolled around again, one of my favorite holidays "Halloween". So yes you have guessed right, as years past I wanted to share things that I have found while search on GenealogyBank.com that fit within the spirit of Halloween. So here we go with the first article  on a haunted room at the inn.  On election night would you sleep in a haunted room at the inn?

Printed Saturday the 14th of August 1875 in the Stoughton Sentinel out of Stoughton, Massachusetts 

A room in the principal part of a country town had reputation of being haunted. Nobody would sleep in it, and it was therefore shut up; but it so happened that at an election the inn was chock full, an there was only the haunted room unoccupied. A gentleman’s gamekeeper came to the inn, exceedingly fatigued by a long journey, and wanted a bed. He was informed that unless he chose to occupy the haunted room, he must seek a bed elsewhere.

“Haunted!” exclaimed he; “stuff and nonsenses! I’ll sleep in it. Ghost or demon, I’ll take a look at what haunts it.”

Accordingly, after fortifying himself with a pipe and tankard, he took up his quarters in the haunted chamber, and retired to rest. He had not lain down many minutes when the bed shook under him fearfully. He sprang out of bed, struck a light (for he had taken the precaution to place a box of Lucifer matches by his bedside), and made a careful examination of the room, but could discover nothing. The courageous fallow would not return to bed but could discover nothing. The courageous fellow would not return to bed but remained watching some time. Presently he saw the bed shake violently; the floor was firm; nothing moved, but the bed. Determined, if possible, to find out the cause of this bed-quake, he looked in the bed, and near the bed and not seeing anything to account for the shaking, which every now and then seemed to seize on the bed, he at last pulled it from the wall.

Then the “murder come out.” The sign-board of the inn was fastened to the outer wall by a nut and screw, which came through to the back of the bed, and when the wind swung the signboard to the fro, the movements was communicated to the bed, causing it to shake in a most violent manner. The gamekeeper, delighted at having hunted up the ghost, informed the landlord the next morning of the real nature of his unearthly visitor, and was handsomely rewarded for rendering a room, hitherto useless, now quite serviceable.

All the ghost stories on record might no doubt have been traced to similar sources, if those to whom the “ghost” appeared had been as “plucky” as or gamekeeper.