A Ghostly Encounter at the Jim Thorpe Inn

The year is 2011 and I'm staying with my parents in a hotel that's supposed to be haunted. My father and I are both firm cynics in the world of the supernatural, but it's with an understandable pause that my mom walks through the grand doorway of the Jim Thorpe Inn.

"As long as we're not staying in any haunted rooms… I'm happy," she admits compromisingly.

"Aw, but a little poltergeist here and there could be fun!" my dad jokes brightly. Though on opposite sides of the belief spectrum, my mom and I find middle ground in our blinking glance toward him. We're united in our distaste for his characteristically fatherly humor.

Arriving in our room, it looks different than I'd expected. There are no overturned beds, no tarot board, nor ghostly accoutrements. Not even a sign that says "Beware malicious spirits!"

The only horrors on display here are those of the interior design variety. I feel as though I've walked into - not a hotel that allegedly burnt down with residents still inside of it - but into the Pinterest fantasy of my late grandmother. There are chairs that are as welcoming as a winter sidewalk, and a few grades stiffer. They're striped, pristine and jarringly corduroyed. The carpet beneath it reeks of antiquity, and the quilts covering each of the beds aren't the sort that are intended to warm. Intricate patterns are woven into the woolly fabric; they serve more as ornate wind tunnels than they do blankets.

Though I don't believe ghosts are real, I'm eager to be proven wrong. My mom - a spiritual hypochondriac - sees subtle signs of the paranormal in each aberrant sound in the embellished halls of this historied building.

"Did you hear that?" my mom asks after a light thud sounds.

My dad responds with a smile and a noncommital shrug. Even if it had been loud enough for him to hear, it wouldn't have bothered him in the slightest.

"I heard it," I admit, firmly convinced it's little more than a pipe, or one of the upper middle class families vacationing here rather than Hawaii or The Florida Keys.

It's on after the third night of poor, albeit unhaunted, sleep and a begrudging trip to a local store to purchase a real blanket, that my parents and I prepare to depart the hotel. With bags packed, we have a final breakfast in the hotel's dining room.

It's a vibrant sunny day, and we opt to eat on the deck. A beige, yellow railing wraps around the front face of the building and houses a series of tiny white tables. We're on the town's main street, and a parade of walking tropes in shades and Jim Thorpe T-shirts amble by us. There are moms in hastily purchased hiking attire, fathers with fanny packs, and children with places they'd rather be etched plainly on their faces.

The smell of bacon wanders through open windows, along the deck, and off into a clear blue sky.

"What can I get for you today?" asks a pretty waitress through two rows of unnaturally white teeth. She's got a Pennsylvania tan, a pair of short shorts, a plain shirt, and a glob of malformed gum bouncing between blinding pearly whites.

We give our orders, and she jots them down attentively. My dad, in his typical fashion, tries to instigate a friendly conversation with the eager-to-be-finished-her-shift waitress.

"So… have you heard any stories about ghostly goings on yourself?" he asks ponderously. As the unenthused waitress's eyes deaden, she prepares a rehearsed answer. She doesn't exactly seem like a budding aficionado of the occult.

"Look, dude, I'm just working this hotel as a summer job. I'm not a historian," her face reads. But instead of allowing this veil of occupational niceties to fall to the floor, she explains, "uhhh… I heard about some hauntings in the basement or something. Apparently some kid was trapped and died down there when the building burnt down."

"And that's accessible to the public?"

"Uhh… I don't really know… I'm not technically hotel staff," she explains.

So with little else to go off of, and little hurry to go home, my mom and I make our way toward the basement. The walls are an off-white, and the floors uneven. A carpet lines a hallway that wraps around the buildings entire underbelly and toward a stairwell.

As we walk along the hallway, it has an unmistakable The Shining sort of energy to it. The walls are plain enough to be eerie. But instead of cavernous, they're narrow, claustrophobic, and slathered in a porous white paint. Bubbles and imperfections texture the surface from end to end, and the smell of must is all but inescapable.

Now that we're down here, though, it abruptly occurs to me that I don't actually know how to summon ghosts - if they exist at all. So in a jumbled series of knocks and skeptical greetings, I fail to elicit a response from the beyond. "Hello? Hello? Anyone there?" I repeat between impatient bangs.

But nothing. Not a moved object, a faint thud, or a ghostly "ooo" within earshot. I try my luck for a few more minutes, but to no avail. I look up and down the staircase - for nothing in particular - and I'm unsurprised when I don't find it.

My mom and I exchange looks of dwindling conviction.

"Wanna just head back to the car?" she asks, a disappointment coloring the voice of the middle aged spiritualist.

I hadn't expected anything myself, but still feel a little defeated to be leaving without even a tepid campfire story to tell. So with a sigh and dejected carpet kick, I agree.

"Yeah, I guess."

In a last ditch effort to see anything at all in this creepy old hotel, I knock along the wall as I stand beside the stairwell. I knock the standard door knock melody. "knock knock-knock-knock-knock… knock knock," I tap against the wall with a closed fist.

And without half a second's hesitation, I listen as a kid's footsteps flutter up the entire flight of vacant stairs before me. It's the playful pittering of a child at play. But there's no voice that belongs to it. There's no figure making the footsteps.

A softened "pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat" travels up thirty stairs with a spectral sort of grace. There's a light and joyous energy to the motions, but the disembodied sounds send shivers up our spines and hair-risen legs into a frantic motion. My mom and I flee the hotel, board my dad's vehicle like robbers into a getaway car. Beads of sweat drip down our blanched foreheads. Whatever exactly we'd seen… or heard… is written flagrantly across our faces.

"You look like you guys just saw a ghost!" my dad welcomes us in with frustratingly cordial smile.