night the dog went crazy. Our dog is normally quite passive and well-behaved. This night the dog ran through the kitchen door and down the back hall. We followed her and she eventually arrived at the entranceway to the sun porch. She was baring her teeth and snarling. She went to table 13 and started barking. We didn’t know what to think. We had just moved in. We were not aware of the ghost stories,” said Whitney.
Mark admitted that he became quite annoyed, “I had the place rewired when we bought it. Then every light in the house reversed itself, but not at one time. We would be sitting in a room with the light off and it would suddenly come on. We had to reverse the procedure of the switches. I called an electrician in, but he had no explanation. You had to believe that something was going on. There was no logical explanation.”
The Freemans shared their experiences on The Dini Petty Show. Mark spoke of two occurrences that particularly intrigued him. One occurred on the second floor of the house by the attic door. In those days the Freemans operated the business on the first floor. The second floor and attic space were used for living quarters.
“I used to have an office on one side of the attic door and a living room on the other. It only took three steps to pass from the office to the living room, past the attic door. One day I noticed the attic door open. It shouldn’t have been open since a deadbolt lock always kept it shut. I locked the door and went into the living room. About three seconds later I turned around and noticed that the door was open again,” said Mark.
One year Mark and Whitney decided to take separate vacations. “I intended to leave for my vacation the day after Whitney returned from hers. By now I was quite aware of spirit activity in the house. This particular evening I was going downstairs to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs a light switch was positioned approximately five or six feet away. I told them ‘I’m going away for a couple of days and I know that you like to disturb Whitney. I don’t want you to do anything while I am away. Is that understood?’ The moment I said ‘understood’ all the lights on the bottom floor came on.”
Whitney had experiences as well. “She woke me up out of a deep sleep. I had never seen her, but I had heard and felt her. I knew it was a woman. It was a woman’s voice calling out my name.”
Whitney’s pet rabbit slept in a cage in her bedroom. The cage had a water bottle attachment and made quite a noise when the rabbit took a drink. When that happened at night, Whitney would get out of bed and remove the water bottle. As the bottle started to rattle one night, she rose to remove it. Then Whitney remembered the rabbit was up north with other members of the family. There was no cage and certainly no water bottle. Had the rabbit always been responsible for the noise in the past or did someone else like to “rattle the cage”?
Stairway at the Jester’s Court Inn.
The Freemans sold the business in 1986 to Niki Bainbridge who continued to operate the establishment as a restaurant and to reside in the upstairs of the building with her family until 1997. In that period Niki developed an incredible relationship with several spirits inhabiting the house. Niki often saw the apparition of a thin woman in her 70s. She wore a high-collared blue dress and a long, white bibbed apron. Niki described the clothing as late 19th century. This ghost always had a “heavenly” smile and displayed nothing but kindness in her eyes. Her presence was reassuring and somehow comforting. “When I saw the woman I felt her saying that I never needed to worry. Then she would turn around and walk right through the wall,” said Niki.
One day a dinner guest in the restaurant saw a little girl sitting on the stairs to the second floor. The girl was playing with a doll. The man thought the girl was real. He had no previous knowledge of haunting in the building and was very surprised to discover that there were no children on the premises.
One night Niki was sound asleep in her bed in the attic; she awoke to hear heavy breathing. She quickly turned on the bedroom light. A glance to the other side of the bed revealed the shape of a human figure outlined in the duvet beside her. Seconds later she watched as the figure disappeared and the duvet returned to its normal flat shape. A ghost had actually joined her in bed!
Another night she was startled from sleep by someone shouting her name in her ear. At first she paid no heed to the noise, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Then it dawned on her. Could this be a sign of danger? Rising from bed she quickly scrambled downstairs to check her children on the second floor. They were fine. All this time the thought of fire played on her mind. Her fear took her downstairs where she discovered a candle burning against a wooden window sill. Somehow a mysteriously lit candle had fallen against the pane of glass and then onto the sill. Had the spirit not awakened her the entire family might have been trapped by fire. The original fate of the hotel could have been repeated!
Who lit the candle? The spirits, of course. It was not uncommon for Niki to come downstairs in the morning to find a burning candle on a dining room table. Indeed, Niki once encountered a lit candle every morning for 30 days in a row! Once she even discovered a candle burning under a table. She had had enough. Like Mark Freeman, she decided to address the spirits. Niki asked them to stop; she demanded that they end this ritual and they listened. For a time the candle nonsense was curtailed.
The spirits found other ways to taunt Niki, however. She found herself locked in her room one night, from the outside. She had to call a friend in the morning to come and unlock her bedroom door.
Despite the number of pranks they played on her, Niki felt the spirits in the house cared for her. “After working all day and evening I would stay up to watch television and then nod off. The spirit would turn the television off. I would wake up, turn it back on and shout at them, tell them I was not finished watching the tube. Then I would doze off and waken to find it turned off again. I know they were looking out for my welfare.”
One evening after closing time Niki sat down at her desk on the main floor to do some bookkeeping. Suddenly she felt that somebody was watching her. She turned and saw the figure of an old woman standing in the down-stairs hall. The woman smiled at her, turned, and disappeared down the hall.
The infamous “Table 13” at Jester’s Court Inn looks innocent.
When Niki was out for an evening a young male staff member worked late in her place. He phoned Niki to come to his rescue; he couldn’t handle the ghostly activity. He saw a couple sitting at table 13 and an elderly woman serving them dinner. The restaurant was officially closed at the time. The lights had been turned off in the dining room but somehow a candle had been lit at table 13. He wasn’t long in finding another place to work.
Table 13 is located in the glassed-in porch, overlooking the main street. It was not unusual for a passerby to see a candle burning at table 13 and a couple having dinner — after closing hours. Niki had many requests from diners to be seated at table 13, famous in the area for its “special status.”
In late 1997 Niki had to make a heartwrenching decision — continue to stay in business or sell. She was tiring of the long hours and all the hardships that go with owning your own small business. By now she was quite attached not only to her business, but also to the spirits who lived in the building. Nevertheless, she decided to sell. How did the spirits feel about the change?
Apparently they were not happy to have Niki depart the premises. At one point when discussions were being held in the restaurant regarding the sale to the new owners, a plate from an overhead shelf flew off and broke into three pieces in mid-air. One piece hit Sam Chiusolo, one of the prospective buyers, on the head, and the other two pieces landed on the other side of the room.
The
