Samson & Delilah's Haunted Bed & Breakfast

By Jesse W. Thompson

Annabelle and Delilah Lovland inherit Grandpa's run-down log lodge in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento. They lack money for renovation and face a $280,000 mortgage plastered on them by Cleo's husband Percy, who wants to steal the property.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jesse W. Thompson
• Release date: Aug 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311555786

Jesse W. Thompson

After service in the Navy during WWTwo, I finished college on the GI Bill, then went on to Luther Seminary in St. Paul for three more years; from there as a pastor to Fairbanks, Alaska, then to a tour of duty as a Navy chaplain in San Diego and the Far East, followed by pastorates in Washington, California, and Minnesota.The more I learned, the less I believed of the hard-nosed doctrines of most religions and the denominations within those religions. I resigned from active involvement as a minister.Through all the years, I wrote, traveled, studied, entertained, MC'd banquets at conventions, did a few TV commercials, some theater work, and I continue to read, to learn, and to write as the years fly by.

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Thompson S & D Haunted B & B

Samson & Delilah’s Haunted Bed & Breakfast

Published 2015 by Jesse W. Thompson at SmashWords

© Copyright:2015 by Jesse W. Thompson

Standard Edition All rights reserved.

This is a story; a work of fiction.

Any similarity or resemblance to, of, or about names, persons, places, things, stuff, or events, is happenstance, accidental, coincidental, and rises from the author’s imagination. If a real person’s name is used, remember, this is fiction. Thank you..

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Created in U S of A

It is undecided whether there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson

Chapter 1

The Iraq War and the recession trimmed the number of their camping expeditions, but they didn't kill them all. At Donner Lake, in the glow of the morning sun, the three fishing partners relaxed and gave themselves time to recover from Sam's breakfast of rainbow trout and potatoes slathered with butter and fried in bacon grease.

Sam, Tony said, for the tenth time, I say it's a good idea.

For the tenth time, I say you're crazy.

Tony's right, Dave said. You really ought to.

Stop and think a minute, Tony said. You've sent money to feed hungry kids. That’s wonderful, but now, your unemployment has petered out. Dave and I get by on our pensions. You're smack up against the wall.

I only send a few bucks a month.

You won't even be able to do that. You've got to do something for yourself or you'll go hungry too. We think it's a great idea.

It's a super great idea, Dave said. You like to cook, you like people, and what’s more, people like you. Look at all the times you fix breakfast for us. Nobody can touch your pancakes. With your b and b, you could make breakfast for people and they'd pay you for it.

If you wanted to, you could include fried trout for supper, Tony said. No kidding, Sam. You could make breakfast and then go fishing and sit around nights and tell a few of your whoppers to entertain the company. You're a natural.

You want me to get up before the chickens so I can fix breakfast. Then I have to go catch fish for supper. Then I have to sit up nights and tell stories. When do I get to sleep?

Chapter 2

Little disturbed the peace and quiet that reigned over raggedy old Lovland Lodge. April with her showers washed the paint that flaked from her barn. The carriage house and the main lodge itself, with their weatherbeaten logs, shrugged off the chill of winter and welcomed their ninetieth spring. Down by the Big Pond, perfume from the red and yellow lilies kissed the air. May welcomed June.

#

Kitty found a suitcase stuffed with souvenirs under the bed in the attic and gave it to Delilah and Annabelle. On a soft day in June, they sat on the front porch pawing through it. Delilah fished out a faded headline from the Sacramento Bee dated April 1, 1918.

ESCAPED LUNATIC STRANGLES TWO

PROSTITUTES AT LOVLAND LODGE

In February of 1918, Grandpa Lovland joined the army. Rather than let his handsome lodge stand empty, he leased it to Arnold Johansen and went off to fight the First World War, the War to End All War Forever. Johansen turned the lodge into a brothel.

The Bee reported: "Three of Johansen’s seven working girls came from Sacramento, two from San Francisco, and two, Dagny and Cynthia, 19 and 21 years old, he brought with him from Minnesota. He called them Sugar Hostesses.

"On the afternoon of Easter Sunday, March 31, he checked in a man who carried a small gray satchel and wore a navy blue double breasted suit. With a shiny face and white hair, the man looked like a senator or a preacher of some sort. Johansen saw no reason to suspect him of any more than normal dirty work.

"He told him he'd find the two girls on the second floor in room 203. The man thanked him, paid for one hour with them, and hiked up the stairs.

"He knocked on their door. They welcomed him in. Under their pink negligees, Dagny and Cynthia wore black silk panties, black stockings, and pink high heels.

"The man opened his suitcase, took out a bottle, and poured two short drinks of almond flavored amaretto. The girls took the gesture for a preliminary nicety and tossed them off.

In seconds, they passed out.

#

Delilah and Annabelle knew that something terrible had happened long ago at Grandpa's lodge. On this June afternoon, with business dead and thin hope for the future, they learned what it was.

It's no wonder they never told us about it, Annabelle said. At least we know how the place became haunted.

Haunted or not, we've got to find a way to pay off the mortgage. Annie, we've got to. We can't let Percy steal it.

Their family had owned it for three generations. They loved the place and hated the thought of losing it. but they needed to dredge up 280,000 dollars in eighteen months or they would lose it to foreclosure.

They kept digging in the old suitcase. More Bee articles described the two murdered prostitutes as beauties.

"Both were blondes. Raised as orphans, they came from a family of Olsons in southeastern Minnesota. Their mother had died in the flu epidemic and their father in a blizzard during a homestead attempt in North Dakota. Johansen brought them with him to California.

"After the lunatic poisoned them, he strangled them with their silk stockings and dumped them face down on the bed. He spread eagled them and doused them with French perfume. Across their buttocks, he laid King James Bibles flopped open to 1st Corinthians, Chapter 10, with verse 8 circled in crimson: Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. "

Goodness me, said Delilah. That's a lot of fornication.

The articles reported further that the lunatic had been transferred from the Agnews State Mental Hospital in Santa Clara, known as The Great Asylum for the Insane, to the State Hospital in Stockton. Fellow inmates considered him crazier than they were, "He was a puke who badgered us day and night, yapping that we had to be born again to escape hell. When he flew the coop, we gave three cheers.

"Like thousands of other mentally deficient, alcoholic, or sexually promiscuous individuals, he had been sterilized by the state as part of the California Eugenics Program under the State Lunacy Commission.

On the loose for three weeks, he showed up at the lodge and made his visit to the two girls on the second floor. The hour passed and the customer had not returned. This made Johansen suspicious. He slipped two shells loaded with buckshot into his double barreled Winchester and tiptoed up the stairs. He knocked on the door and stood back. The door flew open. The bug-eyed maniac stood there with a butcher knife in his hand. He screamed bloody murder and leaped out. Johansen says he emptied both barrels in his face.

A number of letters to the editor, signed by Real or True or Bible Loving Genuine Christians, argued that the prostitutes deserved killing.

They had it coming.

God punished the whores for their sins.

Their killer killed as God's executioner.

The alleged lunatic satisfied the Almighty's demand for judgment. Johansen's murder of God's servant will weigh against him on the Great Judgment Day and send him to hell.

Though raised as a Norwegian Lutheran and familiar with guilt, Johansen had married a Catholic girl. The church forced him to change to her faith. In time he took solid hold of some of its beliefs, particularly the belief that, rather than being sent immediately to hell when he died, he could in time escape from purgatory and make it to heaven.

After the murders, he called in a priest. Surely, the priest told him, killing the murderer would not convict him of mortal sin. He had killed in self-defense.

The priest also informed him that the lunatic probably did not go straight to hell. Because of his twisted mind, he probably did not know what he did. Even if he did understand, he lacked time to repent and therefore has a chance that God will show mercy and send him to purgatory.

The two girls had no doubt landed in purgatory. The priest prayed for them also, begged the Virgin Mary for mercy, and told Johansen that if he provided enough indulgences in their behalf, he could reduce their time in purgatory by as much as ten thousand years.

"The surplus merit of their patron saint, St. Nicholas, can be applied to their credit.

He will keep watch over them and could even grant them furloughs. An occasional return to earth can be granted to any sinner in purgatory, including the lunatic himself. This tells us almost certainly how Lovland Lodge became haunted.

So then, the ghosts of these two girls, on leave from purgatory, established residence on the second floor. If they and perhaps also the ghost of the maniac at times roamed the halls, it explained the occasional cold breeze, the odd thump and clump and clank, the door that banged shut in the night, and the book that jumped from a shelf and flew across the room

This didn’t scare the sisters out of their wits; but it scared them enough to think that the place was haunted. Though this would not force them to sell the lodge, the slump in the economy tempted them to do so.

They would hate to sell it. Worst of all, they would hate to lose it by foreclosure and see it go to the man they detested, Annabelle’s husband, Percy Whiteside.

A handsome devil, with a pack of false promises and phony mortgage papers he had backed the sisters into a hard corner. He put up the money himself, money he made as a drug dealer. He arranged it as a loan that would give the sisters money to make repairs, spruce up the buildings, and help put the lodge back on a money making basis.

Percy's partner acted as mortgage banker in the scheme. At foreclosure time, it would be simple to trick the sisters into signing quitclaims and placing Percy’s name on the deed as grantee. Once he gained control, he intended to sell the lodge to a group of investors with plans to destroy the lodge and develop the site as a destination resort with a luxury hotel.

The money came as a bank check payable to Percy himself, mailed with a letter on stationery and an envelope he lifted from a Bank of America branch in Sacramento. Percy made no repairs. He did no maintenance. In four months, he threw the money away on gambling and high priced prostitutes in Las Vegas.

Young and innocent, Annabelle had not known the kind of man she married.

#

A few days later, near the end of June, Delilah and Annabelle strolled to the fence around their six acres of pasture. Delilah carried a tin bucket of oats. So you met with Percy again. The creep.

I did, Annie said. He learned that I realized the hole he dumped us into, and he threatened again that even if we paid off the loan, he’d find a different way to steal the property. That’s his goal. Been his goal all along. That’s why he married me. It took me way too long to catch on.

Love truly is blind.

Blind as a dead bat. I went to Little Creek last week and talked with Gordon some more and he says it’s not possible for Percy to grab it simply because I divorce him.

We owned the property before you and Percy got married.

That’s right. Percy doesn’t have an automatic claim. I wasn't married to him when mom died and we got the property. Gordon went over the community property laws and explained how Percy has no legal way to take it unless we lose it to him by foreclosure. I told Gordon to start the divorce proceedings and signed the papers.

I wish you had started it sooner, Delilah said. How long does it take?

"It varies, but it always takes at least six months. He’ll have thirty days to file a response to my petition. We both have to declare what we own, our income, expenses and such things. If both parties agree, the settlement agreement and the marriage dissolution papers can be signed. It still takes six months from the date he receives the papers.

"That’s the law. But he’ll contest it, I know. His lawyer will see to that, and then it will have to go to court and it’s anybody’s guess how long that could take. I also filed a restraining order.

He won’t stop at anything to get at me. Gordon went with me to the court clerk and to see Judge Nancy. Nancy wanted me to wait until the next day and then gave me a quick approval for the temporary order. That’s why I stayed overnight.

I wish you had called me. I worried myself sick.

I'm sorry, Dee. I know I should have. I go back on the fourteenth for the permanent order. Gordon said he’d serve the orders as soon as he gets hold of Percy, and he said that wouldn’t be hard. He knows the Sunday school teacher he shacks up with.

The two sisters rested their elbows on the top rail of the fence, easy for them, since they were both long legged and tall, with Annabelle an inch above Delilah’s 5 foot 8. Delilah had blue eyes. Her hair tended to reddish blonde. Anna had dark eyes and glistening black hair, typical in what Norwegians call Black Norwegians.

The fence boards around the pasture, once white, had faded to a washed out gray. Delilah rattled the tin bucket of oats against the top plank. Josie, their mare, 16 years old, favored her left hind foot as she limped toward them.

Look at her, Delilah said. She’s more sore-footed than ever. We’ve got to call the vet.

It’s three weeks since the Waltons were here. The money from them is long gone.

Some say the economy will tank worse before it gets better.

I don’t see how it can get much worse. We should rewrite our ad and put in different pictures. We could even advertise for somebody to go partners and kick in enough money to pay off the loan.

Dear me, I’d hate to do that. I’d love to pay off the mortgage, but to share ownership─

I know, Anna said. "Even if we wanted to, it's almost impossible to find the right people.

She glanced back at the main lodge and the other buildings. Tears moistened her eyes as she hugged her sister. Dear Dee, how I wish we could fix things up, even to half what they used to be.

Have you heard any of those nighttime noises lately?

Annie shook her head. I heard the rooster yesterday morning. Kitty heard those weird groans again the other night and some more of that giggling.

She swears she sees that happy face right along, Dee said. It's like a happy ghost looking in the window at her. I can’t imagine what she thinks she sees.

It makes me wonder if only happy people see happy ghosts. Could that be?

I don’t know. We’re happy, Anna. We’re worried, but we’re happy, even if we don’t go around singing all the time, like Kitty.

#

Kitty Kellogg, the hired girl at the lodge, made the beds and did housekeeping chores. The way business had slumped, the sisters didn’t need her, but they had taken her in when she needed a job, they loved her like a sweet little sister, and they would never let her go. She told them that if they kept feeding her and let her keep her room in the attic, they could wait until later to