The Weekend // The Palmer House Hotel

Happy Wednesday! I thought I’d share a little about my weekend with you, with some exciting news at the end.

This weekend I went to the Palmer House Hotel, which is said to be haunted. The Palmer House has quite the history–including a literary one. Sinclair Lewis worked there and I think he even based a location in one of his novels off of the hotel. The building has a presence when you see it as you drive down Main Street (the “original” main street). There are a couple of rooms that are thought to be haunted, as well as the hallway right outside the room that I stayed in. There are a lot of reports of strange activities all over the building and I heard it was recently voted the most haunted hotel in America.

I went to Palmer House Hotel on an excursion with Ghost Stories Ink, which is a group of writers and artists who go on paranormal investigations in order to gain inspiration. During the day on Saturday I went to a workshop in the basement, in a room that looks like a set from a horror movie. The workshop was about engaging the senses to bring stories to life.

Saturday night, the Ghost Stories Ink team split us up into groups and we toured the hotel for a ghost hunt. It was a lot of fun and kind of creepy at times. There’s so much to explore at the Palmer House that we were up pretty late. The ghost hunt ended around 2am, but my friend and I were chatting after so we didn’t actually fall asleep until about 3:30. I used to stay up that late regularly, but haven’t for a long time because, well, adulthood. So it felt good to stay up late again, even though I was totally exhausted the next day. And the day after.

Ghost Stories Ink is actually the group that led the writer’s and illustrator’s retreat that I went on in May. They actually led us on a ghost hunt back then, too, and at that time they were in the process of putting together an anthology of stories inspired by their outings, so people who had gone on one of their investigations was invited to submit a story for publication. At the end of May I submitted a short story and it was accepted!

I think I mentioned a project that I worked on this summer and that project was the story. It went through a bunch of much-needed editing. So, my short story was published in an anthology (Night Visions) that was released at the beginning of November. I signed a stack of books on Sunday in the café of the Palmer House. I’m reading it right now and the stories have been so much fun to read!

After signing the books and grabbing breakfast, my friend and I came right home. It was a fun weekend, but we were pretty tired.