The inn where things go bump in the night

An Apalachicola bed and breakfast took a foray into ecto-tourism last weekend when professional ghost busters led a weekend seminar at the Coombs House Inn.

If you hear disembodied voices emanating from your oyster boat or have ectoplasm oozing from your attic you would be well advised to call on Betty Davis and her crew of supernatural sleuths, the Big Bend Ghost Trackers headquartered in Monticello.

Last weekend, two of the Ghost Trackers, Lisa Guancial and Michael Williams, of Tallahassee came to present Lynn and Bill Spohrer, owners of the Coombs House, with a plaque declaring the inn officially haunted.

Following several spooky sightings over the years, the Spohrers invited the Ghost Trackers down to scout the scene on Dec. 12. After spending the night in Mr. Coombs’ bed chamber, Room 8, the Ghost Trackers were ready to declare the environs spook infested.

“Someone came into the room twice during the night. The first time the door opened by itself and then closed. The second time the door opened again and something came in and stood at the foot of the bed,” said Guancial. “You know that feeling, when you are sure something’s there, but you are afraid to look? That’s what it was like.”

During their first visit the Ghost Trackers also heard mysterious footsteps on the second floor stairwell.

Last weekend, they stayed in the Villas, a second old house a block away, that now serves as an annex to the original Coombs House Inn.

Guancial, in room 15, and guests in adjacent room 16 heard someone tapping on the door in the evening, but in both cases, nobody was on the other side when the door was opened. Guancial detected the presence of a woman in room 11.

One of the ghost hunters also experienced someone tugging on a pants leg in room 19, a room Lynn Spohrer said was originally a sewing room where the former owner often sat with her children.

Never fear, the resident ghosts at the Coombs House aren’t hostile. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a house less eerie than the cheery yellow inn on US 98.

“We didn’t pick up on anything evil or malevolent,” said Guancial.

Chief among the spirits residing at the inn is Mr. Coombs himself. Former innkeeper Anna Wilson reportedly saw him twice during Hurricane Dennis.

Coombs House manager Estelle Banta remembers Wilson was in the dining room when she had her encounter with the not-completely-departed.

“She called me and said she had seen Mr. Coombs out on the porch trying to come in. I looked, but I didn’t see anything,” said Banta. “Later Anna saw him again in the same place and she said he disappeared through a wall.”

Banta said she has never encountered a spirit, although she lived in the Coombs House for over eight years. “The only thing I ever saw that frightened me was my reflection in a window,” she said.

But plenty of other visitors to the inn have experienced the supernatural, she noted.

A former housekeeper for the property reported hearing and seeing apparitions of children. Banta said she has also found notes about ghostly visitors written in the journals kept in each room of the inn.

Several similar entries in the journal for Mr. Coombs’ bedroom report guests feeling someone kiss or stroke their cheek as they slept. One woman wrote she sat up all night and talked to Mrs. Coombs.

Who goes ghost hunting?

About a dozen participants turned up for the ghost hunting package. All spent the weekend at the inn.

Ricky Callahan and Janet Smith, of Bonifay, said it was their first ghost adventure. They have visited the area frequently in the past. They found the event in a newsletter they received from Coombs House and decided it would be fun to attend.

“As a teenager, I used to come to Apalachicola during the summer and play in the Coombs house when it was boarded up,” Callahan said.

Ron Waterman, of Bristol, said he has seen “full body apparitions” twice in the past: A young woman in tears near the cemetery in Mayport, and an old woman in a sunbonnet in his Bonifay home.

This trip, he and Guancial both reported seeing a figure wailing in the Chestnut Street cemetery on Saturday night.

Roy and Dora Burnside said they were staying at the Coomb’s House to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. “We didn’t think we were interested in ghosts, but the thing was happening this weekend and we were already here,” said Roy Burnside.

The haunted weekend was a package and included several meals at local restaurants in addition to lectures on the habits of hants, tours of historic sites and, of course, a room at the inn.

Highlighting the event was an after-dark visit to Chestnut Cemetery on Saturday night. Participants reported misty shapes drifting between the tombstones and photographed several orbs.

Guancial said the Spohrers are planning two more haunted weekends this year and have already arranged for them to return next January. Same spook time. Same spook station.

For more information about haunted weekends call the Coombs Inn at 653-9199 or the Big Bend Ghost Trackers at 508-8109.