CLEWISTON, FL — They say that a ghost appears at the Clewiston Inn.The figure of a woman walking toward a window in one of the rooms startled one of the maids. Frightened by the episode, she turned in her letter of resignation the next day.
A psychic medium dining at the Inn came upon an illusory trail of books leading to a room where one of its former inhabitants n an avid reader whose room was found stacked literally several feet high with books n had spent her last days.
Or so the stories go.
Some of the employees swear they have seen the hauntings themselves, others claim they’ve experienced things they cannot explain but remain skeptical. Still others simply go on doing their job.
For Chris Hill, the manager of the Inn, the ghosts don’t scare her.
See, she’d rather not spend too much time trying to explain why the front-desk switchboard kept lighting up for Room 255 when the room was vacant. Even after the communication lines to the room had been severed because the staff had had enough of it, the light sometimes glowed as though someone inside was calling for help.
Anita Conklin’s short obituary ran in the Nov. 2, 1994 issue of The Clewiston News: Anita Reece Conklin, 80, died at her home on Oct. 27, 1994 at home 12:30 p.m.
She had lived a long time at the Inn, in Room 255, where she and her husband would retire to each night after he would get back from his job managing the Miami Seaquarium.
He was a large man, affable, and always got along well with everyone. She was much the same, according to Inn employees, and could talk up a storm if you gave her a moment.
They both appreciated photography and, because their appetite for learning was such, occasionally would go for days without being seen by staff because, employees said, they were reading books.
The hotel hostess said that it appeared the two did not have family living nearby, and rarely had visitors.
He died several months before she did and the Inn was given orders by surviving family members to toss out all of their belongings, and many things were hurled from the top story window to a garbage bin on the ground below.
Ms. Hill thought it was a shame and picked up one of the couple’s photo albums.
They had photographs of the man’s meeting with famous dignitaries and presidents and an itinerary for his presentation at the Merv Griffin Show. The couple enjoyed photographing landscapes and other items, and a picture of her sitting on a field of flowers smiling, and, curiously, a photo of the Clewiston Inn’s switchboard were in the album.
Sometimes, Ms. Hill has stayed up late, all through the night and into the morning for the midnight shift, and not experienced anything but what she believes are noises that the Inn makes when it is settling.
She’d like to understand that there is something beyond the normal, but because she hasn’t seen a ghost, she isn’t certain.
“I’d like to believe that it’s true,” she said.
Still, too many of her employees have reported strange things.
One complaint from employees is that they’ve felt the presence of something around them and actually felt something tug at their clothing or hair but turned around to see empty space around them. This has happened most often in the kitchen at night.
Although a number of incidents have been reported throughout the Inn and inside the kitchen, perhaps the most active area inside the old hotel is Room 118.
Not a lot is known about this room except that the figure of a woman sometimes appears here, moving very slowly across the room occasionally when the room’s front door is opened. She walks, almost sliding, to the back wall, where the window is, and makes a brushing, sweeping motion against the wall. Then, she disappears.
At least five independent reports, according to the ghost-hunting team, have reported the exact same occurrence.
It was here that the manager came in after an employee reported seeing the woman and took a Polaroid picture of the window. In the original photo, the faint figure of a woman’s face and dress can be seen floating inside the window panes.
Workers here are mindful.
A maid, who did not give her name, knocks on the door of the room before she enters.
“I show respect,” the woman said. “If there is one, she’s a good one.”
The Lee County Ghost Hunters team arrived last Friday to investigate the sightings, and brought equipment and recording instruments to see whether they could capture the strange phenomenon.
On Friday, the first of several days at the Inn, the group studied the rooms, spending the night there and collecting vast amounts of information to file away for their records.
The idea to meet there came after one of the members of the group, which had already conducted investigations like this before in other areas, saw a news video about the Inn’s hauntings.
One of the members had stayed in Room 118 for four weeks before the investigations. He woke up one night feeling a strange sensation in his foot, as though it had fallen asleep even though he had slept straight against the bed. He slept near the edge of the bed, where the apparition of the woman had appeared to others, but he never saw anything personally.
On Friday, he once again entered the room and looked around carefully.
He hoped he would find something before the weekend was over.
Clewiston Inn Haunted
Clewiston Inn Haunted
