Mascoutah AirBnB
06/2021
In the summer of 2021, my fiance and I decided we wanted to take a little weekend trip to a spa not too far from us. It was a place she'd been to before and wanted to share with me. I travel on hotels all the time for work, so instead of booking a regular hotel, we decided to get an AirBNB. Being a tiny bit rural, there wasn't a ton of options, but we found one about a half an hour from the spa. The owner hadn't had it listed too long and had maybe 4 other guests before us. He was really nice and communicated ahead of time that while the downstairs, kitchen, and bathrooms were pretty well done, if we had any feedback from him about upstairs and bedroom area, he'd appreciate it so he could work on it.
And it was a VERY cute, older house that he had definitely spent some time and effort renovating. As he said, the completed areas were beautiful. The upstairs room, the main sleeping area, was essentially a large. Open loft room with a laundry room and full bathroom with a shower. And while the walls were definitely painted and the nightstands were new and modern, the rest of the room was bare except for 3 things. A 2 shelf bookcase that was attached to the wall, a small black stool, and a small wooden chair.
The first night went along without a hitch with one small exception. The light downstairs turned on by itself. After a little experimenting, it seemed the ceiling light in the downstairs room could be controlled by the upstairs remote if you were standing directly above the downstairs fixture. At least, that's what we settle on and I'm want to continue to choose to believe.
We went to the spa later day and have a lovely day walking around the small town it was in, visiting antique stores and local shops. We went back to the AirBNB town, had a nice dinner in town and spent the evening drinking wine in rocking chairs off the porch, enjoying a rainy evening and each other's company.
Eventually we decided to head to bed. This is when the weird started. Next to the bed close to the wall, the host had squeezed in a nightstand that had a light that we couldn't figure out how to turn on and a jar of earplugs, presumably for street noise as it was off the town's main road. I was having issues with carpal tunnel at the time and tended to sleep with my arm out to prevent my hand from going numb. I was asleep when I was awakend by the feeling of the nightstand moving and the jar of earplugs falling behind the nightstand. At first, I thought maybe I had startled myself out of sleep, shaken the nightstand with the arm thst was draped partly over it, knocking the earplugs off on my own. But, after picking them up and settling back in, a cold realization came over me. If it had been me who shook the nightstand, my arm would have shaken it side to side - from the bed to the wall. But I distinctly, and eerily, recalled the night stand moving back and forth - from the head of the bed to the foot. I didn't have the grip or strength with only the back of my hand on this night stand to have moved it that way. And, after sitting there in my now cold sweat, I realized it hadn't just been shaken - it had been moved out at least a 4 inches to give the jar room to drop behind it. There was no way I'd jolted enough when awaking to have done that. But that's what had happened. My fiance had been completely asleep next to me on the other side of the bed. It hadn't been her.
Shaken, I decided the best thing for me to do was pretend it didn't happen and go back to sleep. How I managed to shove that unease down I'll never know.
The next day, we drove the short distance to the botanical gardens and zoo, had lunch and dinner there, before driving back to the AirBNB. We were going to be leaving the next morning, so we had our stuff mostly packed and I left my suitcase partially open on the stool. Her bag was on the floor next to bed. Having somehow forced myself to forget the events of the night before, I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly once we were ready for bed.
Sometime later, I woke unexpectedly. Again. This time from what sounded like something being dropped. I had just about decided I'd imagined it when I heard it again. It was coming from the center of the room and the second time, my fiance woke up, too. She asked what the noise was amd I said I didn't know, but that I thought I'd heard it twice. She turned on her light on her night stand to find my bag was no long setting in the stool. It was on the floor. But it wasn't just on the floor, like it had fallen over. If that was the case, I'd have been on its side or face down, right next to the stool where it would have fallen.
It wasn't.
It was face up, strap lying across the top, exactly how it'd be if you'd dropped it straight down off your shoulder after carrying it inside. The way it always was when I'd dropped it in my hotel rooms. It was also now in the middle of the room, several feet away from the stool it had been on. There was no way it could have fallen and rolled. It was a large bag and only partially full. It would have just slumped in on itself. But there it was - right side up in the middle of the room.
My fiance looked at me and asked what I wanted to do. I told her pretend it did effing happen and go back to sleep. And, amazingly, we did just that.
We woke up much earlier than we had planned and, without even discussing it, immediately packed up all our stuff and left. When I got home, I opened my bag and took out my laptop, which had been on the bottom of my clothes in the bag. Several of the keys were loose when I opened it. Like it had been dropped. And dropped with enough force to pop the keys off. Which is not a tiny amount of force.
I don't know what was in that house, but it didn't want me there. I'm glad I didn't give it the opportunity to express that feeling a 3rd night.
Submitted by:
Jennifer