GHOSTS -- The Animated Inn – Andrew and Colleen Tomko have no doubt that the Frenchtown Inn contains spirits. Since 1996 it has been their family home, place of business, and more. They take the paranormal phenomena in stride with interest and even affection. A psychic helped sort out the extra-normal personnel – a stable hand, a little girl, and a woman on the third story who likes to be left alone,
Jorge, a muscular man in his late 30s, was a dishwasher at the hotel circa 2002. He apparently encountered the woman upstairs.
Deterioration on the long-disused third story needed attention, so when time permitted, he did some extra work up there. At dusk one evening, he was standing on a ladder removing the crumbling plaster and lath from the interior walls, when suddenly he was being pelted by the debris he was generating. Jorge fled in alarm. At the end of the upstairs corridor, he slammed the door behind him, and heard a pounding on that door as he ran down the stairs.
Although he was badly frightened, Jorge eventually resumed his efforts upstairs with two precautions: He would only work in full daylight, and he posted a picture of the Last Supper in that room for protection.
During the winter of 2018-19, one of the chefs, exploring the top floor, found Jorge's Last Supper picture and hung it in the kitchen. The next morning, the Tomkos' adult son, Paul, found the picture on the kitchen floor and one of the stove burners in full flame.
The apparition of a little girl, age 8 or 9, with long dark hair and wearing a white nightgown, has been seen in various places inside the inn over the years. A psychic called her Sherry Ann, but Colleen says that name might be made up. And more than one person has seen a silhouette of a man wearing a top hat. Colleen and at least one server have heard footsteps coming up the basement stairs, too. But no one was there.
One evening, circa 2000, after the inn had been buttoned up for the night, the Tomkos and a few other employees were unwinding at the bar. Because Colleen's father had died recently, conversation had turned to mortality. Then everyone heard the back door slam, and they found one of the stove burners going full blast.
New employees, particularly servers and other front-of-the-house personnel, will hear their names whispered two or three times, then never again.
Because restoration projects – which are many and ongoing – seem to stir up the spirits, Andrew will speak reassuringly to the spirits before he'll begin something new. He said that over the years the building has been subjected to poorly conceived and executed alterations. But he strives to protect and restore the hotel's integrity, and he believes the spirits appreciate that.
“The building does have an energy about it,” says Colleen. She and Andrew both accept the spirits as just an intriguing fact of life, an animation of the big, rambling building that they love.
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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