In The Presence of History

On my first night in Glenwood my friend who was suppose to come from Grand Junction couldn’t make it owing to a sustained cloud burst in the High Country that resulted in a mudslide along her route.  So, I found myself alone in the hotel that night. 

Hotel Colorado was built in 1893.  Constructed in the Italianate style around a lovely courtyard, many gardens and several elegant entrances, the Colorado sits adjacent to one of Glenwood’s famous hot springs.  Over the decades she has had a number of famous visitors; Presidents Taft and Hoover, Tom Mix, the Mayo Brothers and the man whose many visits the staff seems most proud of, President Theodore Roosevelt.  Indeed scatter throughout the halls and filling the coffee shop are dozens of Teddy bears which, of course, were named for our 26^th President.  His busts and pictures proliferate on almost every floor. 

Glenwood Spring’s most picturesque hotel is also said to be haunted.  Some of you who have read my earlier posts might find it interesting to know that a man is often seen on the fifth floor, near the penthouse.  A little Victorian girl, playing with a ball; a lady who looks in on male guests; the frequently reported haunting of the two suites in the bell towers; an elevator that moves up and down on its own; strange smells and sounds often reported by guests and staff, all conspired to bring CCPI Paranormal Investigations out of Grand Junctions to the Colorado in 2006.  They found highly suspicious areas of electromagnetic energy outside of rooms 551 and 325.  My friend and I stayed in 321.

I fear very little in this world or the next.  I believe that all things are part of the Goddess, and being one with Her I have no reason to fear myself.  Thus, even if I had known these things at the beginning of my trip it wouldn’t have stopped me from roaming the halls, courtyard and entrances of the old hotel throughout most of the night that I spent alone. 

I didn’t see anything.  That isn’t my gift.  I am an intuitive and an empath.  I felt things, and I heard them – not with my ear but with my intuition.  All Witches have this ability. 

I can only surmise because a Witch was on the premises a fireplace in the lobby whispered, “He stood there.”  In the courtyard the fountain murmured, “They kissed here.”  A chair on the second floor wanted me to know that the doctors had been in the room down the hall, and that, “she would have bleed to death without them.”  In the near darkness a beautiful desk just outside of the elevator on the 5^th floor furtively said, “Many strange and frightening things have happened just around the corner in 551.”  The wall leading to room 325 was shouting, “They walked past here.  You can catch them before they do it.  Look closely and perhaps you might see their shadows – but that isn’t your gift is it?”

Do our dead return to us?  Do they come to warn us of our folly or to teach about the world in which they lived years, decades, centuries before?  Is it just that they want us to know that the world is different, but still the same?  That reality is like energy, it can neither be created nor destroy.  It just changes form within predictable parameters.   Is that why we speak of a swinging pendulum gliding between polar opposites like peace and war; moral and immoral; good and bad; civil rights and disenfranchisement?  Can it all be like alive or dead – you’re either one or the other, there is no third option and the time in-between is just the swinging of the pendulum?  If that is true is there anything any of us can do about anything with the force of the pendulum, like that of life and death, out of our control?

I left Glenwood ill, not physically, but psychically.  I felt the way I had years before in circle with Crones who where Drawing Down the Moon, bringing the full force of the Goddess’ energy too close for a novice to handle.  I was overwhelmed; anxiety ridden and tormented by the idea that I hadn’t tried hard enough.  While I had learned some of it, I hadn’t learned it all and had missed something important.  I realized then that the only way to truly see the pendulum is to learn the lessons that inform its movement faster than it can move.  If we understand it, might we find a way to repeatedly send it back toward the things that promote life and not death?  Is that what the dead could be trying to tell us?