No Ghosts, But Pretty

The bridge the jilted Emily supposedly jumped off of.  Weight Limit does not apply to ghosts.

We Expected More from this Ghost Tour

 Before we left for Stowe, Lizzie and I had done a little research on places to visit.  I read a review of Emily's Bridge on trip advisor ("No ghosts, but pretty") and Lizzie found this flickering lantern tour, so we figured it'd be a good way to cover it all.

As Lizzie noted, we should have known better from the flickering lantern tour website.  As Lizzie and I mused about what our ghost-tour guide might be wearing, a man who identified himself as Shawn (hereafter known as Shawn of the Dead) wearing a lime polo shirt and khaki shorts carrying several plastic bins of lanterns showed up.  He began the tour by telling us that he is a history teacher, and the tour used to just be straight up about history, but no one cares about history (I BEG TO DIFFER) so he shoe horned in some ghost stories to make more money.

Okay. So neither Lizzie nor I believe in ghosts, but we like good story telling, and it's fun to get spooked by scary stories while walking around in the dark.  Unfortunately, in his hour and a half tour, Shawn of the Dead told us more about his various employments than he did about history or ghosts.  We heard about two ghosts, Boots Barry, and Emily of Emily's bridge, who was the creation of a high school student playing with an ouija board.  (No ghosts, but pretty.) 

Boots Barry supposedly haunts the Green Mountain Inn.  A groomsman who lived in the servants' quarters on the third floor in the mid 19th century, he was deemed a hero after saving a coach from runaway horses (by lying in the road in front of them.  Shawn of the dead swears this works, but I wouldn't try it) and was given a medal, and free food and drink for life at any Stowe establishment.  This went to his head, and he was fired from his job at the Green Mountain Inn when he became derelict in his duty.  He became a hobo, was eventually arrested, and learned how to tap dance from his cell-mate, earning the nickname "Boots."  Eventually he made his way back to Stowe, and supposedly saved a little girl who had climbed out on the roof of the Green Mountain Inn to retrieve her doll that had blown out the window.  It was snowing out, and after saving the girl, Boots slipped off the roof and died.  And now he haunts room 302, and a toilet. 

Shawn of the dead doesn't seem to know that his 'evidence' of the haunting of 302 casts doubt on the story more than it bolsters it.  It is this long-winded ramble about a former student of his who was a practical joker, and put her future mother-in-law in room 302 the night before their wedding.  He told us former student's fiance is also a practical joker, and then says that Mom hears "tap dancing" several times during the night, and then when she wakes up, all of the items that had been on her night table were arranged in a circle on her coffee table.  Definitely a ghost, and not her mean son and daughter-in-law fucking with someone who is scared of the paranormal.  The toilet part is even stupider.  Apparently he recommended the Green Mountain Inn to the Gonzales family, and Mrs. Gonzales called Shawn of the dead, and put her husband on the phone who yelled at him for recommending "the most expensive breakfast ever."  WHY YOU ASK?  Maria Gonzales went into the bathroom with their child, and A STRANGE FORCE PULLED HER RENTAL CAR KEYS OUT OF HER POCKET AND INTO THE TOILET!  Some might call this strange force gravity.  Obviously Maria didn't want to get in trouble for accidentally flushing her keys, so she convinced her superstitious husband that a ghost did it so he wouldn't be mad at her.  Shawn of the dead was like "AND THEN MORE PEOPLE REPORTED LOSING KEYS DOWN THE TOILET" oh I don't know, maybe because they were trying to recreate your stupid boring story?  Anyway, Lizzie and I had breakfast there the next morning, and no keys were sucked into the toilet by ghosts.

The second ghost story was even more boring, and involved a kid hugging the gravestone pictured above ("What do you see?" Shawn of the dead asked.  "A pac man ghost?" says Lizzie.  "A pokemon?" says Shannon).  The kid had gone on a tour of the Vermont Teddy Bear factory, bought a teddy bear, named it Emily, WHICH IS THE VERY SAME LUDICROUSLY UNCOMMON NAME OF THE GIRL BURIED UNDER THE TOMB STONE THE CHILD HUGGED LATER, SCREAMING EMILY, EMILY! which Shawn of the Dead tried to convince us was the Emily of Emily's bridge (not true--it's never been proved she existed.  If you're going to lie, make up some good, entertaining lies, dammit.)  Anyway, apparently the kid's lantern also blew out, which was supposed to be meaningful.  At the beginning of the tour, Shawn of the Dead made a joke that non-believers tended to disappear on his tour, and he's right, because as soon as we got back to the visitor center, we dropped off our lanterns and left before his final shill. 

Stowe has such interesting history with great potential for fun paranormal stories.  There was a giant hotel, a city block long, which burned in a giant fire, all except the bowling alley.  Bowling alley + ghost = A+ material.  What about the poor person who died in the fire at the von Trapp family inn?  He could float along on the wind yodeling at people who forget to extinguish their cigarettes properly.  Maybe Lizzie and I will start a competing tour and steal away Sean of the Dead's clientele until he ups his game.  (Tap dances to the next post, spookily...)

Corngratulations are in Order

 After visiting the von Trapps, Lizzie and I stopped to take on a corn maze.  There was an older woman and a teenage boy at the admissions kiosk, and the older woman told us that there had been bears coming up to the river behind the corn maze at about this time (it was 4pm) but that as of yet no bears had made it into the corn maze.  Reassuring.  Lizzie asked if they had any advice, and the teenage boy said in a kind of booming and terrifying voice, "IF YOU CAN MAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE YOU CAN MAKE IT OUT."

Not if the bears find us first.

We started by just going left, and eventually were forced into a dead-end, and on the way out of the dead end, we passed by a man whose children were pooping in the corn rows. (We knew because we heard rustling in the stalks, and a little boy standing near his father said "they're pooping" while giggling, and Dad gave us a creepy affirmative chortle.)  No.  Don't do that.  I don't know what happens to the corn in this maze, but what if people are going to eat it?  Pop-Corn, not Poop-Corn.

As most things do, this started off really fun, but kinda began to stress us out about 10 minutes in.  We eventually did find the bridge, and went up to navigate, but ended up turned around several times, sometimes following the dragon flies without another good idea of what to do.  Eventually, I began an earnest prayer to the corn god.  We were cornfused, in a maize of sin, and only the corn gods, with their delicious bread, could lead us out, and just a few moments later, we arrived at the exit.  It only took us 20 minutes, which is probably a Shannon and Lizzie world record, if not a corn maze world record.  We did not have to call the fire department to chopper us out, and we did not give up and decide to live in the poop-filled corn rows.

Hallelujah.

What's up?

High on A Hill Lived a Lonely Goatherd

 Because the 30th anniversary is the diamond anniversary, Lizzie and I decided to continue the celebration of our friendiversary to Stowe (VT).  We went up on a Friday afternoon, so didn't arrive until after 7, leaving just enough time to eat dinner and polish off a bottle of pre-mixed margarita.  Classy!  Saturday we crammed in quite a few activities, including exploring Mt. Mansfield and Smuggler's Notch (used for smuggling booze and what not back in the day) and of course, the Von Trapp Family lodge.

Here you see me coercing Lizzie into doing her best "THE HILLS ARE ALIVEEEEEE" spin with the mountain backdrop.  After fleeing nazi Austria, Maria and Georg settled here in Vermont in 1942.  Poor Georg died in 1947 (lung cancer.  don't smoke, kids) and Maria and the kids (including the three she had with Georg--That's like 10 total) expanded their house into a ski lodge.  This ski lodge burned down (killing at least one guest) and on the site they rebuilt an "Austrian-style" lodge because the von trapps super know how to monetize everything.

So the Sound of Music is obviously fictionalized, but interestingly, Maria wasn't super stoked about marrying Georg--he was 25 years her senior--but she did love the kids, and so ended up marrying him anyway.  In her own words:  "I really and truly was not in love. I liked him but didn't love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children. I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after."  Glad that worked out.  I was always kind of team Baroness von Schraeder and the boarding school idea.

Georg and Maria are interred at the lodge, in a fenced off area I initially thought was reserved for on-lodge weddings.  No.  I was very, very wrong.