Boo!
That is what we kept repeating the entire week before we left for our spring break weekend to Seguin, TX. Our original idea was to go and spend the weekend at Greune, TX but since we spent more time talking about it and not actually booking a place to stay, the only place affordable we found was about 20 minutes away from Greune.
The place, Mosheim Mansion, offered us an awesome deal, it was a bread and breakfast, that assured us that kids were not an issue. The price for two rooms included breakfast. We also noticed that it had 5 star ratings on all the websites where ratings counted but during that research we also realized that the Mansion was famous for being haunted. I asked the lady, Carol, with whom I spoke during the booking about it and she assured that there is nothing to be worried about, and even if there are ghosts they are harmless. With bravado, we booked. We screamed after we booked, because we had booked a haunted mansion for our spring break getaway. The four adults with the haunted knowledge could not stop talking about it. The two oblivious kids looked forward to spending the weekend together.
Rented, a car, picked up the other adults and hit the surprisingly traffic free road towards Seguin, TX, of course it was half past midnight when we were about 30 minutes away from Seguin driving on lonely, dark, Texas road when we spotted a guy, with a stick standing in the middle of the road. My friend S and I saw him but our better halves did not. We realized that the mood was being set. Each of us had a different image of the house we would be spending time in. I, having read the welcome email top to bottom, knew what to expect, while the rest thought it was in wilderness. In spite of knowing that it was in Seguin downtown, which I thought would be cute like Greune, I was in for a surprise when we drove through a broken down, dilapidated city. Each building stood testifying better times that they had seen. The rest of the adults sighed with relief when they realized that this was not an out-in-the-boondocks B&B.
We unloaded and headed up creaky stairs into creaky room, filled with portraits of random men and women dressed in period clothes. The rooms, stairs, halls were filled with antique furniture, lights, lamps, headless mannequins in corsets, and mirrors, mirrors every which way you turned. The kids were asleep but the adults were awake. G and S, had no fear, they explored the house, brought glasses and wine bottles from the welcome area, roamed around freely looking for ghosts. R and I on the other hand, screamed at the guys for leaving us alone for even a minute. Everything looked spooky for us. The surprising thing was that all of us slept peacefully that night.
The following morning, we strolled down via the stairway supposedly haunted by "John", to the dining room, the breakfast served was delicious. There was a lot of love and yumminess added to it. Hot coffee, eggs, bacon, french toast and German Pancake was served in elegant Victorian dining tables in chairs. The customer service was very good. Carol Hirschi, the landlady told us about the history of the house, the hauntedness of the property and also informed us casually that the room we slept in is supposed to have the ghost of a small girl. Thanks but no thanks...but we still continued to spend two more nights there.
The kids, on the other hand, went up and down the stairs, enjoyed spending time on their own while the parents sat down and tried to talk about life, future, haunted house, trip, etc. We spent the day at an indoor amusement park called ZDT's, thanks to the rains and the cold weather, our plans to go to Sea World was thwarted. We then drove to Greune, could not walk around much and landed up at Cooper's BBQ restaurant for dinner before heading back to Spookville. We played cards till we could no longer keep eyes open, cursed the loss of an hour to day light savings and hit the sack.
More good breakfast gave a head start to spending a day at San Antonio. The Alamo was visited, which the kids declared was boring, too many guns that only boys would be interested in, and too much walking without anything fun to do. The riverwalk was useless with the mild drizzle and the cold air, so we rushed into a restaurant to have a late lunch. The girls decided to sit on their own in a table for two and have their lunch. They had lemonades while we had our margaritas and enjoyed our burgers (mine was yummy portabellas). We drove back to the Spookapalooza before dark for the first time during our stay there.
Back at the room G and R took a nap while S and I kept an eye on the girls who saw TV, played games, made gazillion rainbow loom fish tail bracelets. Wanting to go easy on the food, we ordered pizza and wings from Seguin's best Pizza place, Rosie's, which was rightfully not famous for their wings, which was horrible. Ate the pizza, kids were story told into sleep and the adults sat down for another game of cards and yet nothing remotely spooky or ghostly had happened.
Final day, we packed up, headed down for some more the yummy breakfast and convinced Carol to show us the basement which is supposed to be the most spooked out place in the hotel. Nothing. No one felt a thing. None of those chills running down the spine, or cold air. We walked up, a couple of us relieved, and a couple sad, but the kids were happy to just walk up and down spiral stairs. We thanked Carol and loaded up and headed home.
S played piano for us each morning. We sang and danced to it in the main hall. It was blissful. We sang our lungs out in the car, and sang generally the whole time we were together. The kids joined us and taught us a few funny songs too. The house felt spooky because of the paint colors, dark and musty interiors, the furniture, etc, If we had not known about the haunted stories we probably would have not felt scared at all and enjoyed it a bit more.
We realized on this trip that our girls were old enough where they wanted to spend time on their own. They begged to have their own space and enjoyed in each others company. We saw dispute resolution at its best when the two parties involved were focussed on having fun and not wanting to waste time fighting. They showed beauty in their relationship when one stepped in to defend the other. They were always sad when we came into their space and begged us to leave them alone, which we obliged only too quickly to spend time adult time with adult friends. It turned out to be theirs as well as our spring break where we relaxed and did not do much else.
Will I do it again? Hells to the yeahs!!! At the same place, and enjoy it a bit more than the last time because I now believe that there are no ghosts there.
Love
ART
That is what we kept repeating the entire week before we left for our spring break weekend to Seguin, TX. Our original idea was to go and spend the weekend at Greune, TX but since we spent more time talking about it and not actually booking a place to stay, the only place affordable we found was about 20 minutes away from Greune.
The place, Mosheim Mansion, offered us an awesome deal, it was a bread and breakfast, that assured us that kids were not an issue. The price for two rooms included breakfast. We also noticed that it had 5 star ratings on all the websites where ratings counted but during that research we also realized that the Mansion was famous for being haunted. I asked the lady, Carol, with whom I spoke during the booking about it and she assured that there is nothing to be worried about, and even if there are ghosts they are harmless. With bravado, we booked. We screamed after we booked, because we had booked a haunted mansion for our spring break getaway. The four adults with the haunted knowledge could not stop talking about it. The two oblivious kids looked forward to spending the weekend together.
Rented, a car, picked up the other adults and hit the surprisingly traffic free road towards Seguin, TX, of course it was half past midnight when we were about 30 minutes away from Seguin driving on lonely, dark, Texas road when we spotted a guy, with a stick standing in the middle of the road. My friend S and I saw him but our better halves did not. We realized that the mood was being set. Each of us had a different image of the house we would be spending time in. I, having read the welcome email top to bottom, knew what to expect, while the rest thought it was in wilderness. In spite of knowing that it was in Seguin downtown, which I thought would be cute like Greune, I was in for a surprise when we drove through a broken down, dilapidated city. Each building stood testifying better times that they had seen. The rest of the adults sighed with relief when they realized that this was not an out-in-the-boondocks B&B.
We unloaded and headed up creaky stairs into creaky room, filled with portraits of random men and women dressed in period clothes. The rooms, stairs, halls were filled with antique furniture, lights, lamps, headless mannequins in corsets, and mirrors, mirrors every which way you turned. The kids were asleep but the adults were awake. G and S, had no fear, they explored the house, brought glasses and wine bottles from the welcome area, roamed around freely looking for ghosts. R and I on the other hand, screamed at the guys for leaving us alone for even a minute. Everything looked spooky for us. The surprising thing was that all of us slept peacefully that night.
The following morning, we strolled down via the stairway supposedly haunted by "John", to the dining room, the breakfast served was delicious. There was a lot of love and yumminess added to it. Hot coffee, eggs, bacon, french toast and German Pancake was served in elegant Victorian dining tables in chairs. The customer service was very good. Carol Hirschi, the landlady told us about the history of the house, the hauntedness of the property and also informed us casually that the room we slept in is supposed to have the ghost of a small girl. Thanks but no thanks...but we still continued to spend two more nights there.
The kids, on the other hand, went up and down the stairs, enjoyed spending time on their own while the parents sat down and tried to talk about life, future, haunted house, trip, etc. We spent the day at an indoor amusement park called ZDT's, thanks to the rains and the cold weather, our plans to go to Sea World was thwarted. We then drove to Greune, could not walk around much and landed up at Cooper's BBQ restaurant for dinner before heading back to Spookville. We played cards till we could no longer keep eyes open, cursed the loss of an hour to day light savings and hit the sack.
More good breakfast gave a head start to spending a day at San Antonio. The Alamo was visited, which the kids declared was boring, too many guns that only boys would be interested in, and too much walking without anything fun to do. The riverwalk was useless with the mild drizzle and the cold air, so we rushed into a restaurant to have a late lunch. The girls decided to sit on their own in a table for two and have their lunch. They had lemonades while we had our margaritas and enjoyed our burgers (mine was yummy portabellas). We drove back to the Spookapalooza before dark for the first time during our stay there.
Back at the room G and R took a nap while S and I kept an eye on the girls who saw TV, played games, made gazillion rainbow loom fish tail bracelets. Wanting to go easy on the food, we ordered pizza and wings from Seguin's best Pizza place, Rosie's, which was rightfully not famous for their wings, which was horrible. Ate the pizza, kids were story told into sleep and the adults sat down for another game of cards and yet nothing remotely spooky or ghostly had happened.
Final day, we packed up, headed down for some more the yummy breakfast and convinced Carol to show us the basement which is supposed to be the most spooked out place in the hotel. Nothing. No one felt a thing. None of those chills running down the spine, or cold air. We walked up, a couple of us relieved, and a couple sad, but the kids were happy to just walk up and down spiral stairs. We thanked Carol and loaded up and headed home.
S played piano for us each morning. We sang and danced to it in the main hall. It was blissful. We sang our lungs out in the car, and sang generally the whole time we were together. The kids joined us and taught us a few funny songs too. The house felt spooky because of the paint colors, dark and musty interiors, the furniture, etc, If we had not known about the haunted stories we probably would have not felt scared at all and enjoyed it a bit more.
We realized on this trip that our girls were old enough where they wanted to spend time on their own. They begged to have their own space and enjoyed in each others company. We saw dispute resolution at its best when the two parties involved were focussed on having fun and not wanting to waste time fighting. They showed beauty in their relationship when one stepped in to defend the other. They were always sad when we came into their space and begged us to leave them alone, which we obliged only too quickly to spend time adult time with adult friends. It turned out to be theirs as well as our spring break where we relaxed and did not do much else.
Will I do it again? Hells to the yeahs!!! At the same place, and enjoy it a bit more than the last time because I now believe that there are no ghosts there.
Love
ART
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