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My Supernatural Vacation: A Remote Beach, A Victorian Mansion & A Ghostly Encounter Diana
and I are back from a vacation trip
to St.
George Island, a pristine barrier island
that sits between the Gulf of Mexico and Apalachicola
Bay in the Florida Panhandle. As you can see
in the photos below, the first morning we hit the
secluded 9-mile long beach (that has been permanently
preserved as a state park), there wasn't another person
within sight. This remote stretch of the Florida
coastline is known as the Forgotten Coast because
it is far removed from the state's population centers
and the major highway systems.
St.
George Island, Florida. Above and below: Diana catches
some sun while I snap photos.
We
have some very nice beaches where we live in the Tampa
Bay area but almost all of those have condominium
towers as a backdrop rather than the unspoiled sand
dunes you see at St. George Island. Though we have lived
in Florida since 1972, this was our first visit to the
isolated area. We had to be in the state capital, Tallahassee,
on Friday for our daughter Brittany's "white
coat" ceremony at the Florida State University
College of Medicine where she just finished her
first semester. So, we decided to turn the trip into a
summer break by visiting the island and historic Apalachicola
for a few days before moving on to Tallahassee which
sits about 80 miles inland from St. George Island.
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We
stayed in Apalachicola (about a 15 minute drive
from the island) at the beautiful Coombs
House Inn (named one of America's 30
Best Inns by Travel & Leisure Magazine).
We found the Inn while researching the area on the
Internet and were sold by their website
which is one of the best I have ever seen.
The
Victorian mansion was built by local lumber baron James
N. Coombs in 1905. Coombs and his wife both
died within 30 days of a tragic fire that swept
through the town and severely damaged their home
in 1911. Over the years the house fell into severe
disrepair |
The
Coombs House Inn
Apalachicola, Florida |
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and was finally
boarded up and abandoned. In the early 1990's,
one of the world's top interior designers, Lynn
Wilson, came across the property and
decided she had to save it. Two years and
countless dollars later she opened the doors of
the meticulously restored property that has been
winning awards ever since.
Wilson bought two
more adjacent homes (one that Coombs had also
owned) and restored those as well, giving the
Inn a total of 23 suites spread across the three
structures. We stayed in the Coombs
Suite in the main house, which was
the ill-fated owner's original master
bedroom. |
Diana
catches up on some reading in the Coombs Suite at the Coombs
House Inn. The
final night of our stay in the Coombs suite yielded an
unexpected "ghost story." For Diana and
I, this trip was also part of a 25th wedding anniversary
tour of Florida bed and breakfasts (I wrote about one of
our other stops in Mount
Dora last month). Thursday evening we picked
up a bottle of champagne and enjoyed it while sitting on
the rear porch at the Coombs Inn. While we were talking,
I picked up an article about the Coombs family and read
that James and his wife were buried in the centuries old Chestnut
Street Cemetery, located immediately across the
street from the house.
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It was about an
hour before dark so we decided to walk over and
pay our respects to the couple who had built
this magnificent home and whose bedroom we had
spent the week in. The history-rich cemetery is
the final resting place for many of
Apalachicola's early residents, including
several Confederate veterans of the Civil War
battle of Gettysburg. The cemetery dates
back even further than the town's official
founding in 1831. Unfortunately it has
not been tended well with many headstones
cracked and some in danger of falling over. That
presents a bit of a spooky atmosphere when you
are there just before dark and that imagery was
still in the back of my mind when we went to bed
later that night. |
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In the middle
of the night I immediately woke up when I heard the
sound of a water bottle hitting the floor next to the
bed. I knew I had left a plastic bottle of spring water
sitting on a compact refrigerator that sat on the floor
about three feet from my side of the bed. At first I
thought Diana must have gotten up and accidentally
knocked it over but I glanced across the bed and saw she
was still sound asleep. Then, with faint moonlight
through the window barely illuminating the room, I
looked back toward the refrigerator where I could make
out the outline of the bottle still in the place I had
left it sitting at room temperature when I went to bed.
I slipped out of bed and picked up the bottle. The hair
on my arms immediately stood straight up because, not
only was the bottle that I heard hit the floor still
standing where I left it, the
bottle and water was now ice cold!
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With
no ready explanation I didn't see any point in
waking Diana and scaring her too, so I crawled
back into bed and closed my eyes (okay, maybe
just one eye while warily keeping the other open
and on the lookout for apparitions). After an
uneasy hour or so, I dozed back off and slept
until the sun peaked through the blinds the next
morning. With the room fully lit, I now saw that
there was a bottle of water laying on the floor
(so I hadn't imagined hearing that fall after
all), but there was also one sitting on the
refrigerator - the one I had picked up that was
ice cold. When
Diana woke up at least half of the riddle was
solved. She had gotten up while I was still
asleep and taken a cold bottle of water out
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the refrigerator
for a drink. Rather than put it back, she left
it sitting on the refrigerator. The other bottle
must have fallen off the refrigerator (though we
still don't know how) not long after she went
back to bed, leaving her still cold bottle there
for me to pick up and mistake for the one I had
left out the night before. I was relieved
to learn there was a logical explanation for
what happened. But next time we have a glass of
champagne, just to be on the safe side, I'm
going to skip the twilight trip to an old
cemetery! |
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On Friday
morning we made the 90-minute drive north to Tallahassee
where the first year med school students who had just
completed their first terms were welcomed to the medical
profession in a white coat ceremony that night. This is a
ritual that I understand is now performed at 90% of U.S.
medical schools. On
Saturday we all headed back home to Tampa. Brittany has
just a one-week break before going back for the fall term,
but it beats the one day she had between graduating
from the University of Pennsylvania in May and
arriving in Tallahassee to start med school. This week is
her first real respite from studying since spring break
last March. She has been using it to go the beach, the
movies (District 9) and to get in a little
tennis. After
a refreshing break, I'm ready to dive back into the domain
business. Now that I've brought you up to speed on where I
disappeared to over the past week, I'll begin assembling
some comments and photos from industry news and events
that occurred while I was away. That information will be
posted in this column over the next couple of days. To
bring everyone up to date on recently reported domain
sales I will also be producing a double length report for
publication on our Domain
Sales page Wednesday afternoon. That will
cover every sale reported to us since our last sales
column August 5th.
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Above: An FSU
College of Medicine faculty member helps Brittany
Jackson (far left) put on her white coat for the first
time while other students wait for their turn.
Below: Brittany (a
semester closer to her M.D. degree and fulfilling her
dream of becoming a pediatrician), after the white coat
ceremony Friday night.
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