Waterloo Village   May 1995

                              By Diane M. Cece                    

PART TWO

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  My heart pounded and my hands trembled as once again I breathed in a gulp of night air while locking the front door of the Stagecoach Inn.  I don't know how I got to the front door; don't even remember careening toward it or if my feet touched the floor on my flight out of the building; I just knew I was there locking the door to keep the evil inside the house.  As if I could do that.  However, I do remember dropping the "OPEN" sign on the windowsill prior to my flight out.

  The next day the Stagecoach Inn was closed to the general public and investigated by supervisory personnel.  The attic door upstairs was found wide open (it is always tightly pegged closed during tours).  A broken teacup and saucer on the floor by a night table, and a broken window was found in the same upstairs bedroom.  A splintered piece of wood from the grilles was found under the trestle table in the tavern.  This is eerie because a set of grilles (in tack) was also found behind the radiator in front of the window with the missing upper grilles.  The "OPEN" sign for the window was found exactly where I dropped it (on the broad stucco windowsill).

  A paranormal investigator said a phenomenon like this can only be explained as follows:

  It could be when I witnessed the grilles moving, stopping then splintering and shattering, I was momentarily experiencing all this in a different dimension of time.

  (Women weren't allowed in 18th century taverns.  I was dressed in period clothing when I re-entered the tavern.  When I passed through the tavern door, did I momentarily enter another dimension of time that was going on and was someone trying to scare me out of the tavern?  Did someone standing in the kitchen door throw something at me, missing me and knocking the grilles out of the window in front of me?)

  The grilles found behind the radiator (in tack) were found in the 20th Century window.  How about the one splinter of grille under the trestle table also found in the 20th Century window?  Did this piece fly into the 20th Century window when the grilles burst in midair?

  The growling of an angry dog under the register desk which was sitting in the corner, between two windows and in front of the stairs.  Was this in fact the spirit of a dog in another dimension?  Or perhaps was I in a 20th Century window where a angry spirit took the disguise of a demon/dog?

  The force field coming out of the kitchen - was it in fact an angry servant or cook?

  A historical 18th Century fact notes that a woman was murdered in the bedroom at the top of the tavern stairs.She haunts the upstairs bedrooms and sits in the upstairs front window watching and waiting for her lover to come up Waterloo's Main Street.

  Other historical notes say that a mad servant haunts the kitchen of the inn and a peeping tom spirit stands silently in the corner of the ladies front parlor where the female tour guides would get dressed in their 18th Century period clothing.  Needless to say, none of us got dressed in there after the paranormal analysis of the building.  No wonder that room was always so cold!

  I will leave it to your imagination as to what you think really happened to me that May day.  I'm only glad that I was able to run back out of that window of time and be back in the 20th Century.