Okay, up, my last day in Salem . . . and boy, is it!!! Things are not going so well right out of the shoot! What a disaster! Why do I have to make everything so difficult? I hate packing!
I’m excited to be flying to New York from Salem but how strange that I’m not staying in Salem for Halloween! In the past, you could not drag me away from Salem on Halloween! I guess I’m thinking Halloween weekend might just be more exciting in New York but since having the final altercation with the Bitch Maid at the Hawthorne, I’m just done. It’s been five years since I’ve been to Salem and granted, I only had three days. You just can’t do Salem in three days, BUT these three days have been hard on me. So let’s start with packing. No organization, I just shove it in, squishing fingers along the way. Got it all in and now I’m ready and the shit begins.
Unknowingly, by not having the maids in my room for the last three days has caused them to suspect me of stealing towels. Towels? Towels?? I didn’t have the maids in because I was EXHAUSTED when I got here and I slept. Slept in my room for three days. It’s my room. I paid to be in it, right? Anyway, here’s what happened. I roll on out of the room and I see a gaggle of maids ahead of me. Out steps one, very authoritative, looking me in the eye and announces to me that I’ve had no maid service while I was here. I look at her, quite friendly and polite on my part, and say, “Yes.” I’m actually a little afraid of her. She looks like one mean bitch and she’s obviously unhappy with me. I would call her a witch but I RESPECT WITCHES, not her! I continue to be very polite and move away from her. I do not engage her. As I walk away, she issues an order to the other maids to COUNT THE TOWELS IN MY ROOM. Count the towels? Are you kidding me? Is that all you got? I still do not engage her. I know her for what she is. There will be a day when I want to come back to Salem and stay at the Hawthorne Hotel and this ignorant bitch is not going to ruin that for me. Engaging her would have caused a huge shit storm and I refused to go there with her. I just walked away. I hope she’s happy. All my used towels are stacked up neatly on the bathroom floor. Every single one of them. For God’s sake, why would I want to steal towels from the Hawthorne Hotel? I have stayed many times at the Hawthorne. Why would I steal from them? I like them very much. I do not need their towels and I appreciate them enough that I didn’t even think to steal from them. They have been good to me over the years. Why would some petty-ass power-hungry bitch even think that I would steal from the Hawthorne? I didn’t even think of it over the years. I am a honest person. I never steal from anyone! I am honest to a fault. I do question the motives of the bitch though. I really do.
So I check out of the Hawthorne. I am very hurt and upset but I leave without a complaint. I just leave my beloved Salem and the Hawthorne. I’m in such a dark mood and I’m just plain mad. I don’t remember getting to the airport. I do remember boarding the plane and feeling bleak all the way to New York. I didn’t know I’d feel this way on my way to New York. I thought I would be excited and happy but no. The bitch maid from hell made sure of that. One last note, when I arrived in New York, it literally took three hours for me to get from the airport to my hotel. Three hours to go 9.7 miles… and the hotel doesn’t have my room reservation. Oh dear, here we go. . . Luvs, Janet
The shadow even turned around and took a couple of steps backwards along the way! I know that doesn’t sound like anything but I was standing still and literally filming my shadow moving away from me and disappearing on the other side of the sign! I didn’t see this event until I viewed the video on my computer. Well, I loved it, of course, so I quickly put some creepy music on it and uploaded it to my You Tube Channel. Yes, I have a You Tube Channel! And quite honestly, I’ve had several very strange experiences in Salem. I can truly say without a doubt that Salem is haunted. There are many spirits moving around these old Salem streets and I’ve been blessed to be aware of them. Mainly they appear in my photos but sometimes they are physical as well. There was one who appeared just as I was taking a photo of a store window. She was so small and seemed to have a little witch dress on, I kid you not! She came dashing around me so fast. I could actually hear her coming from behind me (it was late and dark with no one around). I could hear this clattering/clicking sound on the cobblestones and as she went around me, she upset the atmosphere. My camera picked this up and surprisingly you can see her in the bottom corner of my photo. She actually looked like a white stick figure (ectoplasm) in a full-run stance with just the suggestion of a witch dress. Of course, I didn’t see her until later when I downloaded the photo but I sure did hear her. She was making a real disturbance as she ran by me. I still remember it very clearly to this day. The other ghostly guy turned up by my side in the Charter Street cemetery. This was my first trip to Salem in 2009. It was my last day in Salem and I was getting in a few more photos before I had to leave. I was taking a photo of the tree that I love in the cemetery and, of course, I wasn’t aware of anything unusual but when I got home and looked at the photo, well, there he was! He was standing right there on my left side intently watching what I was doing. He was male and looked a bit misshappen but there he was, a dark shadow figure. I felt really honored that a spirit in Salem seemed to be so interested in what I was doing and I was so fortunate to catch him in my photo! Another photo I took in the same cemetery captured a swirl of orbs in front of the trees. It was quite beautiful. Another appeared to be a sunbeam playing among a display of Halloween flags hanging in front of a store on Derby Street. The way the sunbeam jumped from one flag to another seemed to not be possible with the sun’s movements and the order in which the photos were taken. It was quite strange. And certainly everyone has heard about the Hawthorne Hotel ghost. 
Well, I believe there may be something to that even though the Ghost Hunters didn’t find anything! During my first stay at the Hawthorne Hotel in 2009, I was all tucked in bed and sitting up watching TV when I felt something playing with my hair on the top of my head. I looked up and starting swatting things out of my hair thinking it was a spider. There was nothing there, and I looked everywhere! Also, when I stayed at the Hawthorne in 2010, I had several people ask me if I’d seen the ghost when they saw me on the 6th floor. I mean when I was looking out the window and there was a tour outside, they would holler up and ask if I had seen the ghost! I never experienced a ghost while I was in that room but the bed was a true nightmare!
I race over to the edge to try to catch that sunset and “click!” I get one …. 1 …. uno …. photo and *blink* the sun is gone. And as I suppose you know, that photo SUCKED! And there it is over there. I had to tweak the hell out of it …. my sole photo of the sunset.
A lot of street people approach us and want to pose for us. There’s money involved, of course, and the whole group thinks I’ve lost my mind when I keep telling this rundown, dirty little man to “give it to us!” “Let’s have a really smoldering, sexy look.” “Ya, good, just like that!” The group leader looks at me and then tips the old fella and the man wanders away. Hey, it will never be said that I don’t know how to spice things up …. even if I’m totally bonkers! And there’s the ghost of a street guy over there. Why, oh why, can’t I take at least 1 decent night photo?
My Salem Happenings 