Room Nine

"As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall."

So wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his book of poems,"Tales of a Wayside Inn".

So here we are, at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, which inspired Longfellow's poems and was clearly old even in his time. And we got to stay in Room 9, part of the original building and climbed a stairway worn (and very steep) to get to it. There were crazy doors in abundance (five of them). Thankfully the last of these turned out to reveal the bathroom - I'd begun to suspect that there wasn't one as I'm sure that ancient hostelries didn't have private bathrooms.

Apparently we have a ghost. Her name is Jerusha and she likes to tug at people's clothing (who doesn't?) - she's a member of the original family of innkeepers from the 17th century. Unfortunately, a 26 mile bike ride, a heavy meal and a couple of glasses of wine knocked me right out, and she could have been swinging from the rafters while singing sea shanties and I wouldn't have noticed.

So here's the weird thing. We didn't notice this at first, but tucked in between the beams in the ceiling were folded pieces of paper - notes left by previous occupants of the room. And they were everywhere! Notes to Jerusha, notes hinting at secret doors and passageways (we didn't find any), notes describing previous visits, notes to future occupants. And every now and then, the management collect up all the notes and put them in the third drawer of the dresser. There are hundreds of them - and they are the subject of today's blip.