A Very Paranormal Weekend at EPIC at the Cavalier on the Hill

I checked in Thursday, March 11th at the Cavalier on the Oceanfront as they hadn't got enough people to do Thursday night to open the Cavalier on the Hill. Of course, I stopped at the Boxwood Inn Bed and Breakfast on the way down, since this interview with the owner and the investigation at the same time would be in the ghost book I am currently working on. Since what happened there and the interview will be in the book, I won't go into what happened. No spoilers please! LOL

I got to the hotel around 3:00 p.m., checked in, and got some of my stuff up to my room on the second floor. Not long after, I decided to walk down the beach to find some place that was open to grab dinner. I ended up getting a gyro and cheese garlic bread at North Bend Pizza. Someone who worked there mentioned he had been a plumber at one time and had been in the Cavalier on the Hill to work on the pipes during off season. He had an experience, as it was empty at the time and he worked for a plumbing company at the time, telling me that he had heard children running through the halls and knocking on the doors. No children in the hotel as rooms are not rented until summer.

I ambled back to the hotel and my room, ate my dinner and uploaded the pictures I took at Boxwood. Watched some TV. After a while, bored silly, I grabbed my camera and headed out the door. My destination was the Cavalier on the Hill across the street. I figured I would get some outdoor pictures of the place and the grounds before everyone arrived tomorrow. Besides the fact, the threat of rain for the weekend might make outdoor photos hard to get.

I did run into a paranormal investigator from Maryland taking photographs too. He and his wife had arrived a day early and were staying in the Oceanfront hotel, same as me. We parted, and I climbed up the hill to take photos. I walked around the whole hotel, snapping here and there. Lights were on, showing workers were inside the place. But most of the place was dark. I sense other eyes watching me from the windows and on the grounds. And I am not talking about the humankind. But I trudged on, refusing to let fear in. After all, there's not been any instances of anyone being hurt by the spirits that make the Cavalier home.

Done, I headed back to my room and uploaded the pictures. Studied them. Found a lot of blurring that shouldn't happen, but I suspected it was the supernatural that affected my camera (which did in many ways all weekend when I stayed there). Found an orb outside the front entrance in one. A weird white mass rising from a garden in another. Kind of an outline of what might be a person inside the pool room area that I noticed when I zoomed in close enough to the door that had the plaque, Fallout Shelter on the wall next to it. By the way, the fallout shelter is the room with the pool, one of the most haunted places in the hotel.

After watching Supernatural, I crawled into bed and went to sleep. Now you would think I had a good night's sleep, wouldn't you? The bed was comfortable and I woke without bed pains. But I kept waking up all night. Toward morning, I had what I thought was a dream at first. I was lying in the hotel bed and this African-American man in a brown suit appeared, standing over me. He sat down on the bed beside me. I sat up with a gasp. it was five o'clock in the morning. I didn't go back to bed. Told myself it must have been a dream. Except I admitted to myself later that I never dreamed of myself lying in a bed, especially that of a hotel I stayed at--it would have been the bed at home. A ghost? I learned later that this hotel that was all part of the Cavalier on the Hill's grounds, leading down to the beach. I learned from a man who said he was a Virginia Beach firefighter at the conference later that there had been someone who had a heart attack and died the first year it was open. Plus the land was also part of the original Cavalier, and the man could have been part of that, too.

After breakfast, I found that the staff could get into the Cavalier on the Hill at 9:00 a.m. and I rushed to get my stuff back in the car and checked out. They said that the bill would be sent over there. I drove up to the driveway that led to the front of the hotel (where I got the orb) and parked in a space nearby. Then I strolled inside and gasped in amazement at the beautiful place. Stairs led up to the lobby. Statues and paintings decorated the area. I found Registration and learned that the Pocahontas Room was where the guests' tables would be. A bit later they let me take the first table by the doorway. When people entered, I would be the first table they would see. I set up what books I wanted on the table, the ceramic skull full of candy, plus flyers and business cards. I left my EMF meter on and it kept flashing all the way to red many times. Is it the spirits, or just something logical from computers or lines inside the walls? 

At noon, we were able to check into the hotel. I was first in line and got my key cards for Room 466. I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor with my luggage and other stuff. The fourth floor was quiet. I had two beds, but since I had no roommate, I arranged most of the stuff on the bed near the door. I stuck my bottles of cokes and coffee creamer in the refrigerator and went back downstairs. Now the public was allowed in free from 1pm to 10pm on Friday. Some people didn't let the rain deter them from attending.

At 6:00 p.m., they closed the vendors room and I went to grab a friend's book that just came out to get it signed, but when I got back downstairs, the room was locked. The conference staff was getting ready to take us guests for dinner (which was the Jewish Mother), so I ran back upstairs to my room to drop off the book and grab my jacket. Upon opening the door, I got a face full of the odor of fresh flowers. Like my room had bouquets of flowers everywhere.

I thanked whoever it was for the nice smell and left. When we got back from the restaurant, the fragrance was gone. I dressed in my pirate costume and went the ballroom where the party was to be held. Many people dressed in different costumes. I took pictures. 

Ten o'clock came way too soon and I tramped upstairs to undress and slip on street clothes to do some paranormal investigating with some others. Had a blast. But it drew close to 1pm and I felt it was time for bed. After all, Saturday would be a long day. I had only just slipped on my pajama top and had turned around to the bed when I saw something red appeared and move on top of the covers near the end. I peered closer. All right, I wasn't wearing contacts or my glasses, but dang it, I could see the movement. It dropped onto the bedspread. I picked it up and saw it was a red petal of an artificial rose. I remembered that the girls in room 366 had found a petal just like it in their room on the floor, even though all day they hadn't. I bolted out of the place and found them still downstairs. Now, theirs could have come from under one of the beds (which they did find some beneath it the next day) as on Valentine's Day the staff admitted these petals were strewn all over the lobby and maybe some rooms due to some function they had. But when yours appears on top of the bed and is moving, well, I figured the ghost wanted to leave me one, same as the flower smell earlier. Besides, I checked under my bed and the floor, and didn't find any petals.

I had a ghostly stalker. Later, I learned other women found other petals like this. No doubt one of the spirits had been a lady killer in life. But when you're sleeping alone in a room, you don't want to wake up to someone staring at you while sleeping or watching you in the shower. I felt someone touching my hair while I lay in bed until I said a prayer and asked it to go away for the night. I finally fell asleep, but I kept waking up a lot during the night.

At 6:00 a.m. the next morning, I woke up tired, took a quick shower, and got dressed. I went to my bookbag, unzipped it, and found the rose petal gone. I looked around the room, but couldn't find it. Had the ghost become upset with me as I'd run out to query the person at the hotel desk about the petal and had taken it back? It had to unzipper the bag to get it, unless it could reach through the pocket and get it. 

I grabbed breakfast at the restaurant in the Cavalier Oceanfront across the street, then, spent the day when the conference opened, selling and signing books and talking to the other guests. That night was the awards dinner. A woman at my table told me her daughter had an interesting experience Friday night, after she and her friend came back from the ghost tour at Ferry Plantation. Still wearing their costumes from the party, her daughter had her friend dressed as a flapper sit at one of the tables. She peered through her viewfinder, ready to snap the picture when she saw him. The dapper young man in a 1920s suit and hat, sitting in the chair across from her friend. She pushed down with her finger to take the picture, but suddenly, the button wouldn't work. It took a minture, then it worked, but when she checked back on her viewfidner, the male ghost was not there! Just her friendin the chair, the table, and the empty chair on the other side.

Afterward, I trudged back to my room. At one point, I had crossed the street and close to the steps leading up to the entrance, when I noticed I had three shadows attached to me. Three? Two I could explain, but I'd never seen me or anyone else with three.  Paranormal? 

I got out my camcorder to do some filming. I also used my camera for a few shots. Knowing I needed to get more sleep as I would be driving home the next day and this was daylight time change, I went to bed at midnight. This time, I said my prayers and asked to be left alone. I slept through the night and woke up at 7am. After getting dressed, I carried all my stuff out to the car and checked out.  I did one last investigation, I took my digital recorder to do  EVPs, and took pictures with my camera.  I did the sixth floor first, but nothing, no voices or noises on the recording and nothing on my photos. Bit on the fifth floor, when I asked if anyone was there (the floor was silent and everyone was downstairs at the conference), a voice I heard and I recieved on tje recording replied, "No!" from the middle of the floor, close to me! 

The rest of the day, I sold more books in the vendors room, packed up before my talk and stowed in the car, and gave the talk at 2:30-3:30pm, leaving not long after. I arrived home at 5:45pm.

I like to say, I did enjoy my paranormal experiences for the most part and enjoyed meeting and making friends with Steven LaChance and his charming son (who inspired Sixth Sense), Al Chewning, and Mark Nesbitt. It was super talking to L. B. Taylor again. Meeting Rosemary Ellen Guiley. I listened to Belinda talk about Ferry Plantation. I met Lisa Foster Moss for the first time and learned how sweet she was. Both she and Teddy Skyler had put on a great conference. They're planning 2011, so I heartily endorsed doing it.