A half-century went by, and I never experienced this.
Then, it happened again just a few years later. We were the only people left in an inn void of guests and staff. And these inns were not small places; they had several floors and about 15 guest rooms each. Both were well over 100 years old, highly rated popular places to stay and booked at optimal times.
The phenomenon goes further. The peculiar emptiness was on our last night’s stay in both cases. And both places lost power during the daytime leading into the last night. Furthermore, our rooms were on the third floor in each place.
One stay was at the Stockport Mill Inn in Stockport, Ohio, in the middle of nowhere. The other was at the Greyfield Inn on the non-developed Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast.
The week we stayed at The Greyfield started with a full house. It’s billed as a communal stay where all the guests dine together and can sign up for excursions together. As the week slipped away, so did every last guest except us and a couple staying in one of the two cottages on the property. The staff had nearby lodging in the former carriage house. But because of the emptiness in the booking schedule, many of them took time off, leaving a skeleton crew of just a few to cook and serve dinner to us.
The Greyfield is a pretty expensive stay. It was built in 1900. Much of Cumberland Island was owned by the Andrew Carnegie family. Other than the inn staff and guests, only a handful of campers at primitive campgrounds and day trippers who come across on the public ferry are on the island on any given day. They, and the “wild woman” of the island whom books have been written about.
The atmosphere that night, with the intimate setting and only one other couple, took on a close-knit quality. The conversation was deeper and more personal. As we really got to know each other, the calm of the place made us feel at home. Albeit our real home was a far cry from a Carnegie home. Still, a delusion of sorts settled upon us. Knowing we would be the only folks in the sizeable old home where John F. Kennedy, Jr. stayed on his wedding night, the other couple joked about being our guests for a dinner party. When we finished the last course and finished our drinks—we could serve ourselves after the staff was gone because the bar had everything on the chert system where, on your honor, you wrote your name and the drinks you had in the ledger for someone to tally on your bill at the end of the stay—we saw our “guests” to the main door on the second floor. We hugged goodbye and waved to them from “our” grand porch as they descended down the fairytale staircase and into the darkness of the trees amidst the wild horses.
When we turned and closed the door, my wife and I looked at each other, feeling the weirdness of the situation. We explored the quiet surroundings, from the kitchen to the library and great room. The only sound was our footsteps on the aged wood floors. It was eerily peaceful.
“I hope the Carnegies don’t see us as squatters,” I joked, referring to the ghosts that may appear.
By the way, the guest rooms did not have locks for the doors. I sat awake in bed for a while, intently listening to the groans of the historic home.
We tried convincing ourselves, “Oh, that’s just the house settling.”
A few years later, we stayed at the four-story rustic Stockport Mill Inn in Stockport, Ohio. The current structure was built in 1906 after two previous versions were destroyed by fire.
I sat in the wee hours of the morning with a book and coffee in the perch I claimed as my own in the common area on the third floor. Inspiration struck me, so I put my things down, picked up a pen, and jotted this…
The Still of The Mill
The silence of an inn before the guest doors swing open to the common areas is a calm that whispers “Good morning” to just you.
It’s so quiet, except for the flow of the spillway outside a nearby window three floors down. A river is already in a rush, brushing past the sleepy old mill.
The solitude settles deeper within as an unseen cloud pitter-patters drops against the windows, peeking into the darkness before dawn.
Soon, the new guests will stir this Bliss away. And they’ll whisk past Dottie, the joyous soul whose roof we slept under, eager to get away and explore.
But until then, time has stopped, at least for this moment, this long moment where I’m a part of the Stockport Mill, present with everything.
I forgot about my coffee and book and just do nothing.
Do Nothing: it’s never in the brochure.
But for now, I don’t want to do anything else.
When I finally looked up again, the snow was falling. It robbed the entire town of electricity and Internet access. Although the mill is hydroelectric, it sends its power straight to the power grid, so it, too, was without electricity.
It’s one thing to choose laziness, nestle up, and read a book in an old mill-inn nook. So we ventured out to explore but returned before too long because of the road conditions and widespread and elongated power outage.
Later in the evening, with restored electricity, we brewed coffee, lounged in an open area on the third floor amongst the history all around, and lost ourselves in our books.
The night drew quiet—too quiet. It felt like we were the only ones there.
I walked to the floors below and down to the parking lot. It was empty. We were indeed the only folks left in the grand old mill. We figured the Innkeeper Dottie allowed guests to cancel at the last minute (probably unnecessarily) due to the earlier electrical outage. That’s just the good soul she is, putting others first.
There’s a feeling knowing you’re the only folks in an enormous century building with timbers and decore of a bygone era in the dead of night. It’s a feeling I wouldn’t do justice trying to describe in words.
But it was as peculiar as it was calming.
That night, the river’s flow made the most exquisite white noise, perfect for a deep sleep!
By Frank Rocco Satullo, The OhioTraveler, Your Tour Guide to Fun!
