junior, Me and the Ghost of The Buxton Inn

The Swamp Road Chronicles^®

"Junior, Me and the Ghost of The Buxton Inn”

(The night I felt a ghost for the first time.)

A number of years ago my wife had a business Christmas party she was to attend, it was being held in one of the ballrooms of the Buxton Inn in Granville, Ohio. Opened in 1812 it has housed presidents, stars and, I understand, Charles Dickens during a tour of America. The Buxton Inn is renowned for the great many reports of ghosts by guests and staff. There is an older lady who is believed to be an owner in the remote past and there is a cat that is often seen. You can read all about it at their website: buxtoninn.com. I want to tell you about my experience.

I had just completed reading one of the "Haunted Ohio" books by Chris Woodyard which had a chapter about The Buxton Inn, so, I suggested to my wife that we spend the night there after her Christmas party wrapped up. She likes paranormal stuff too, so she readily agreed. I understood that room number 7 was the most active room for ghostly encounters so I called and the room was available so, of course, I booked it. I hoped to get something on tape, so I took my video equipment along.

We got to the Buxton shortly before the party was to begin, be put our suitcases in the room and proceeded over to the ballroom where the party was to be held. We were really looking forward to the entire evening. Shortly, a lady came into the ballroom who introduced herself and said that she would be delivering a presentation that evening and she began to organize her material and the lectern where she would speak.

She placed some candles near her and asked if anyone had a lighter she might use during her talk. No one had one, but I remembered that I had seen matches on the nightstand in our room and offered to go get them.

The Buxton Inn is over 200 years old and the sleeping rooms are small. I opened the door and walked in, looking straight ahead at the matches on the small table. I had taken about three steps into the room when it happened. I had an experience that I describe as walking through a 3-inch thick wall of ice water. I can't talk about that experience without getting goosebumps on my arms. It was amazingly cold. I stopped and turned back around to see what might have caused it, but nothing was visible. I picked up the matches and headed back out of the room expecting to feel it again, but nothing was felt. I didn't want to freak out my wife, so I told her nothing about it until the next day on the way home.

I have read that many people believe when you have an encounter like mine, what you have experienced is a spirit walking through you, or you walking through it. To exist and manifest themselves they absorb all energy around them such as your body heat. It was transitory for me, so I think it, or she, passed through me; remember, when I went back just a few seconds later, I felt nothing.

A few weeks later my wife and I had dinner with a couple who had been friends for many years, I related to them my experience of feeling a ghost. They both got kind of excited and said, "That explains what happened to Junior! Now I understand!"

They explained that a couple of years earlier, they had been dining at the Buxton, sitting in the front, highly ornate, dining room. Their son 'Junior', complained about being cold, but they felt that the room temperature was comfortable, and so didn't think much about it. A little while later Junior complained again that he was "freezing"; they looked at him more closely and saw that his lips and fingers were blue and did indeed feel icy cold. There was no cold air vent or fan above him and no one else seemed to be cold, so they had him move to a different chair and he soon warmed right up. It made no sense!

We have all heard about people experiencing "Cold Spots" in haunted locations; apparently a spirit had been hovering over the child, sucking the warm energy out of him until the parents had him move to a different chair.

But wait! There's more!

Remember that I was going to try and film anything that might happen? Well, something did happen. I had set the camera where it could capture an image of almost the entire room. About 3 am my wife and I were sleeping, we were both facing in the same direction lying on our right side, she was lying in front of me. We were 3 or 4 feet from the bathroom door which we had left wide open. Suddenly, I heard a noise from the bathroom that sounded exactly as if someone had taken a water glass and slid it along the top of the sink. It was loud enough to wake both of us. She rose up a little and looked into the bathroom, the bathroom was very small and we could see the whole room from where we lay. There was nothing to see, no glass, no person, no ghost. After watching for a few seconds I laid back down and then, so did my wife. She didn't know that I had heard the same sound and rose up to see over her until I mentioned it the next day.

Did I catch the sound and our response on my video equipment? No, of course not. I had forgotten to bring my power adapter. I had enough battery power to last about 2 hours but that wasn't enough and the camera shut down before the bathroom incident. Frustrating!

But, I gained 2 more very interesting, unexplained stories to share with friends and family and YOU.

As submitted by Randal Lenn Hall 6-7-2016 Pataskala, Ohio

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