Unknown Trivia About Your Inn

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JBloggs

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Care to share something you do NOT share with guests or on your website or blog? Some trivia about your place? Maybe a darker side (I had an office right near Botany Bay in Sydney Australia that used to be the bath house for the brothel)...
If walls could talk?
Anything unknown you would like to share (not KNOWN stories)?
 
I have a motor mouth, so no unknown stories here. If they're 'unknown' it's because I don't know them!
 
Our B&B is circa 1895. I have a potted flowering plant in my kitchen that was owned by the original owners. (I don't mention the type for anon purposes). His name is the "ancient of days" and is quite happy at the moment. When we sell this house will be passed on to the new owners. I don't advertise him as I don't want guests traipsing into the kitchen to see him, he likes his privacy.
More trivia I have used cuttings and they have done okay for a while and then didn't make it, he is in the orig pot and never transplanted (that I know of) and seems to thrive, so I leave him to it.
 
Our B&B is circa 1895. I have a potted flowering plant in my kitchen that was owned by the original owners. (I don't mention the type for anon purposes). His name is the "ancient of days" and is quite happy at the moment. When we sell this house will be passed on to the new owners. I don't advertise him as I don't want guests traipsing into the kitchen to see him, he likes his privacy.
More trivia I have used cuttings and they have done okay for a while and then didn't make it, he is in the orig pot and never transplanted (that I know of) and seems to thrive, so I leave him to it..
The plant is from 1895? Holy cow! We have one that is from the OO of the B&B, not the house. But, it's right in the dining room so everyone sees it and comments. It's gotta be about 30 years old at least. And it will stay when we move on.
 
I guess the only "unknown" story about my house is that when the older brother sold the house to the next family, he sold it complete with furniture and everything - the younger brother did not have an opportunity to get ANY of the family stuff and resented it. They did manage to mend fences a bit just before they both died. The son of the younger son did get his Grandfather's original deed and gave it to us. DH is supposed to frame it for me so it can be displayed - and it will stay with the B & B if & when it sells.
 
It's not dark but the people previous to us were the Swannies who took over from their parents (ie mum and dad passed to son and daughter in law) but the people before them used to run a restaurant out of our basement called Ma's Kitchen (we used to sometimes get mail to their restaurant manager) and the wife of the couple used to teach a (really good apparently) Yoga Class in the basement as well! Our terrace of houses used to be called Ashgrove which is where one of my neighbours got their name. The street we are on used to be called walker road but they changed it on King Edward's corination year to King's Road. We also used to be opposite a park which would have been nice though I am grateful for the conference centre that gives us all jobs.
 
Two stories on "the darker side". Our house is from the late 1800s. An elderly relative of the second family who lived here was "helped" to pass on to the next world. Whenever we get people who say they are sensitive or pyschic all tell me that in the same room they get a feeling of a warm female presence.
This story I shared here a few years ago. A couple who spent their honeymoon here (older couple) had a real connection to our place. When the wife died, we were asked if the husband could spread/bury the wife's ashes on the property. We thought about it and allowed the husband to bury his wife's ashes in a location nobody would be walking near. 6 months later we got a call from the husbands family saying that he had cancer and had a short time to live. They asked if they could buy the husbands ashes next to his wife. About a year later, about 30 member of the family all got together here, had a memorial and buried the husband.
I will tell these stories to the next innkeepers, but no guests need to know!
 
Two stories on "the darker side". Our house is from the late 1800s. An elderly relative of the second family who lived here was "helped" to pass on to the next world. Whenever we get people who say they are sensitive or pyschic all tell me that in the same room they get a feeling of a warm female presence.
This story I shared here a few years ago. A couple who spent their honeymoon here (older couple) had a real connection to our place. When the wife died, we were asked if the husband could spread/bury the wife's ashes on the property. We thought about it and allowed the husband to bury his wife's ashes in a location nobody would be walking near. 6 months later we got a call from the husbands family saying that he had cancer and had a short time to live. They asked if they could buy the husbands ashes next to his wife. About a year later, about 30 member of the family all got together here, had a memorial and buried the husband.
I will tell these stories to the next innkeepers, but no guests need to know!.
It is amazing they felt such a connection to your place.When I worked at a big hotel we had an older couple who spent their honey moon with us shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer so when he only had a short time left they came back to stay and we all really looked after them. They were good people it is sad they didn't find each other till it was nearly too late and then to have just such a short time.
 
Oh, we do not tell folks - no need to - that my Daddy and my b-i-l died in my Library. I do not know if Mr G or Mrs H (2 previous owners) died in the house or in hospital.
 
People have died here, both naturally and tragically. No getting around that in a house that's a century old!
 
Born and died in the same room. Some days I feel like that...not able to ever escape this place...
Just kidding. :)
 
According to local rumour, the man who built this house had an accident at work and used his compensation and disability benefit to build the house. However he did much of the work himself and his ex wife video'd him working and reported him to the authorities. He had to pay back all the money, hence the foundations stood incomplete for about 6 years until he met his 2nd wife who put up the money to finish the building. That's why if you look at the deeds it appears the house took nearly 7 years to build and if you go down into the cellar area much of the walls are covered in dried moss.
 
My place on the town square was built of solid brick in 1895 as a new wing for a wood-frame hotel built before the Civil War.
When the old wooden part of the hotel burned about 1910, the brick wing survived with zero damage and continued to operate as a hotel till it closed in 1940 (and the 2nd floor then sat empty and untouched until I came along to buy it).
It's well known by the old timers in my town that the left rear upstairs room of my place was the local brothel all through the depression. I'm undecided about telling folks about this. Some would think, cool. Others might think, eooo.
 
Our house was built for a cousin of President Jimmy Carter. Since I don't have much info about that owner of this house, I didn't have it on our info page on the web site. He was a well known dentist and was the president of our State dentist association in the early 1900's. I think that he might have had an office downstairs in this house because we found a couple of old medicine bottles during renovations, but I have not been able to verify this.
 
From about 1900 to 1950 part of the ground floor of my building housed the local newspaper, which my great-grandfather owned (our family never owned the building, just the business that rented space there). The upstairs of the building was a hotel (and brothel...see above).
Through the depression era my famously alcoholic grandfather (son of the newspaper founder) was editor of the newspaper. When I was making an offer to buy the building I had a guy climb up under the building crawl space to inspect the foundation. He found a trap door, that's now boarded over from above, in the section where the newspaper office was located.
Beneath that trap door he found a mound of half-pint whiskey bottles. We haven't touched them yet. They're still under the floor. But I pulled a few out, did a Google search, and determined them to be from the depression era. My 88-year-old mother confirms that her dad ALWAYS had a half-pint of whiskey on him.
So I have no doubt that what we've found is my grandfather's empty whiskey bottle collection! Amazing. The newspaper business moved to another location before I was born. My grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver before I was born. But to think that now, all these years later, I've bought the building and this "historic" collection, is amazing.
Web searches indicate that these old bottles are worth $25-$35 each, and there are hundreds of them, but I would never sell them. I plan to display them, and the story of them, in my inn's pub.
This all has been just great fun!
 
From about 1900 to 1950 part of the ground floor of my building housed the local newspaper, which my great-grandfather owned (our family never owned the building, just the business that rented space there). The upstairs of the building was a hotel (and brothel...see above).
Through the depression era my famously alcoholic grandfather (son of the newspaper founder) was editor of the newspaper. When I was making an offer to buy the building I had a guy climb up under the building crawl space to inspect the foundation. He found a trap door, that's now boarded over from above, in the section where the newspaper office was located.
Beneath that trap door he found a mound of half-pint whiskey bottles. We haven't touched them yet. They're still under the floor. But I pulled a few out, did a Google search, and determined them to be from the depression era. My 88-year-old mother confirms that her dad ALWAYS had a half-pint of whiskey on him.
So I have no doubt that what we've found is my grandfather's empty whiskey bottle collection! Amazing. The newspaper business moved to another location before I was born. My grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver before I was born. But to think that now, all these years later, I've bought the building and this "historic" collection, is amazing.
Web searches indicate that these old bottles are worth $25-$35 each, and there are hundreds of them, but I would never sell them. I plan to display them, and the story of them, in my inn's pub.
This all has been just great fun!.
That's a great story!!
cheers.gif
Pun of the emoticon intended ;)
 
Our house was the retirement home of Maj. DOnald Keyhoe....famous or infamous....for all the UFO magazine articles, radio shows and books back in the 60's. We have the cutest picture of him sitting on a couch next to Betty White as she interviewed him I guess on her TV talk show.
Old timers in town call him the crazy UFO Guy. Said he was as nice as could be though. He had tons of research he had done on UFO's...it made for some interesting reading. He also flew with Charles LIndbergh as his PR man, all over the US on his tour after the famous flight. So that gave us something to share with folks that was a little out of the ordinary.
 
The Inn we are in was owned by a Civil War Hero and he owned a merchentile store, then it was a Persbetarian Church for a while, the preacher thought it was the end of the world and stopped making payments for the church (WWII), it was then a Cadet Club, there was a Japanese Internment(sp) here and the army guys came to the house for "conversation" and "companionship" and dancing, they actually took down th ewall between one parlor and the dinning room for dancing...now what was happening upstairs in the bedrooms thats left up to interpretation.
Apparently there was a supernatural team here last year and found three ghosts-a woman that hums and has a sweet smell, a teenage young boywho pulls pranks and then there is a Union Soldier stuck in the basement. Stories about on or two of the ghosts around town, we have not encountered any of them yet.
 
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