So much fun it's scary...

Best Friend is still in town for her Flight Attendant training. When we first found out that she would be in Atlanta for almost a month we were so excited. I thought I would see her every other day or so and we would do dinner, hike, drive up to Great Smokey Mountains N.P., go to Savannah a couple of times. Apparently we were wrong and apparently the training is demanding. I hadn’t seen her all week until this weekend.

On Saturday, Germaphobe and I drove to Best Friend's hotel by the airport for a night out on the town. It was so much fun and I met so many people from all over the country who there training for the airline. There was S. from Iowa, L. and C. from Texas, R. from right here in Atlanta, A. from the U.P. (upper peninsula) of Michigan, and a guy from The Dalles, Oregon in our group. We all had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar’s happy hour and then went to downtown Atlanta to shoot some pool. I really enjoyed hearing our new friends talk about their lives back in their hometowns. It was also very interesting to see their take on my home. The Michigan girl couldn’t get over the huge buildings. “I’ve never seen anything so tall! They’re so big!” she said. “They are?” I asked. Oregon Guy reassured me that they were and that Portland’s buildings aren’t as tall. I guess he was right. As I stood on Peachtree Street and looked up at the same buildings that I have looked up to so many times before, I thought to myself for the first time that maybe they are tall. We native Georgians and Best Friend (who was once a Georgia resident for 5 years) got an earful of the astonishment that Oregon Guy expressed when he saw that the gas station attendant was working behind bullet proof glass. We explained to him that it was because we had then entered the ghetto. There’s a thin line and short distance between the “safe” part of Atlanta and the unsafe. I thought it was funny that Oregon Guy was amused by this. But then again, the residents of Oregon can't even dispense their own gas because it’s against the law. I expressed some astonishment over the Oregon gas stations when I visited there, too, I guess. It was refreshing and fun to see my home through the eyes of others. (Though technically Atlanta is not my home because I am not a city girl...bleh!)

We went back to the hotel and talked until the wee hours of the morning sipping Bacardi and Coke. Best Friend and I talked the Oregon Guy’s ears off about how wonderful we thought that Oregon (except their gas stations, of course) is and how much we loved our visit to the Columbia River Gorge last spring. Then we tortured him with pictures we took there that Best Friend still has saved on her laptop. It was a fun night from the beginning until the end when I finally got into my bed at 4:15 a.m.

Sunday was just as much fun, though it was like a waking nightmare…No, seriously! It really was like a waking nightmare but in a fun way!

Best Friend introduced me to another girl at her training. This girl lives in Atlanta also. Best Friend had already mentioned her to me because this girl really likes to hike and participate in many of the other activities I enjoy. She even likes doing crazy things like ghost hunting. Best Friend told her my “ghost story” of what happened to me this past November when I went to Chickamauga National Battlefield past dark.

Let me explain that I am interested in the paranormal but don’t necessarily buy into it completely. When I was a little girl, I had a few creepy experiences and have sort of been interested finding something similar to those experiences now that I am an adult. I believe in the possibility (actually after the night at the battlefield I KNOW there is a possibility) but I don’t think that every strange sound, movement, or sighting is a ghost. I am a girl who is not scared of ANYTHING except snakes. But after that night on the battlefield, I turned into a real baby, came home trembling, and slept with my lights on (what little sleep I got, that is).

With that clarified, on with my story…This girl Best Friend introduced me to, C., was thrilled to find out that I am interested in this type of thing and wanted me and a few of the other people to go on a “ghost hunt”. C. happens to be married to man on the SWAT team. And he happens to have a key to an old abandoned sanitarium where the SWAT team practices some of their tactics. When Best Friend told me about this, I exclaimed, “You’ve got to be kidding me! A haunted insane asylum? That sounds just like a horror movie!”

I told her that I was game. (Though, I was actually terrified inside remembering my battlefield experience) So C. and her SWAT husband took four of us along with them, including myself and Germaphobe.

It looked like a horror movie when we pulled through its gates. It was dark outside and even darker inside. The windows were broken and doors were broken in. Yikes. I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. It felt like a horror movie, too, as we walked through long hallways with flashlights, broken glass and other debris crunching beneath our feet. I kept thinking of how eerily similar the movie House on Haunted Hill 's setting was to this place. Or maybe I was stuck in a game of Silent Hill.

We walked through the all three levels of this place and through nearly all of the rooms, including the morgue. That was sickeningly creepy. Still, the creepiest, horror movie-like things were the reminders of what this place once was, such as a few chairs with restraints on the armrests, what looked like dentist chairs with the restraints, and other equipment that were used in treatments. The fact that the old place was practically in ruins and so dirty only compacted the fear factor. I secretly wondered how many showers Germaphobe would take when she got home. (And I stifled a giggle when she expressed to me over dinner later that, despite how tired she was and that she would be getting home late, she was going to have to wash off the filth of the place. Haha) It really was dirty and smelly. I felt spooked every time that I passed another dark room and sometimes couldn’t muster the courage to peek into them. Or when I did look and saw a broken old mirror I jumped at my own reflection. Sheesh…where’s the girl I knew four months ago? I hardly know me anymore!

All in all, I am relieved to report that other than a few extremely cold spots and orbs (that could possibly be dust particles) showing up in a few pictures, nothing happened. And whereas, the once-brave girl that I was prior to the battlefield would have loved to have heard the eerie laugh and footsteps of the little boy who is said to haunt the 3rd floor, the wuss that I have now become slept much easier last night knowing that if there are any ghosts in that vacated sanitarium, they had no interest in communicating with me.

Of course, I have yet to upload my pictures from my digital camera to the computer for examination or listen to the recordings I made with my digital voice recorder.