St. Francis Inn

(Painting of  St. Francis Inn hanging in Elizabeth's Suite)  

On November 18th, 2001 we arrived at our much anticipated destination; The St. Francis Inn located in St. Augustine, Florida.  A week before our trip, I had the opportunity to catch "Ghost Detectives" on the Discovery Channel in which they did a one-hour show about haunted locations in St. Augustine;  The St. Francis Inn was one of them.

We stayed in Elizabeth's Suite on the second floor.  It is not the most haunted room at the inn, however, Bev (the Inn manager) told me first hand of her experience on the second floor.  She had seen a female apparition walk past her and enter the suite.  It looked like the apparition was carrying either a baby or handful of blankets.

  Even though My wife and I did not see or hear anything out of the ordinary during our stay, we believe that we indeed did make contact the morning that we were leaving.   Approximately, around 6:30 Tuesday morning my wife inadvertantly woke me up from a sound sleep.  She was talking in her sleep, but not talking normal by any means; her voice was low and raspy sounding - she honestly sounded possessed. I have heard her having nightmares in her sleep before, but never have I heard anything quite like this.  I listened about 35 to 45 seconds trying to understand what she was muttering, but it was not intelligible - like trying to understand a foreign language.  I finally assumed this must be some kind of horrendous nightmare she is having and woke her up.

When she awoke I told her she was having a nightmare, but she told me that she wasn't.  She told me in her dream she saw two orb-like spirits.  One floated down to her and started to change into the form of a woman.  She saw images of a family - A man who was enraged at his wife for some reason, but instead of taking out his anger on her, he took it out on his son.  In the dream the local community was hunting the man for murdering his son.  She  said it did not feel like  an ordinary dream at all, she felt as if a  heavy weight had been sitting on her chest.  Next time I plan to be more prepared and have a tape recorder next to the bed ready to record anything.

 I set up a digital camcorder  with infrared capability in the living quarters of Elizabeth's Suite right before we went to bed in the other room.  To my disappointment, I did not get any orbs or apparitions on video tape.  However,  at  12:59 p.m.  ( almost 1 a.m. exactly),  the microphone of the camcorder picked up the sound of someone taking a breath - almost like a sigh. 

My first thought was that the microphone picked up one of us taking a breath in our sleep, but that cannot be the case.  At the very beginning of the tape after I walk out of the living quarters into the bedroom, you can hear us talking...but just barely - our voices are so low you cannot hear what we are saying, so there is no way that the microphone could have picked one of us taking a breath in our sleep.  The breath is definitely coming from inside the living quarters and not the bedroom.

Our next trip to the St. Francis Inn we plan on staying in Lily's Room on the third floor, which is reportedly the most haunted room at the Inn.  In Lily's Room a number of poltergeist-like effects have been reported as well as mysterious sounds and apparitions.

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