In the spirit of Spooky Season, we reached out to the community to get your scary stories. Vermont has a rich history of strange areas like the Bennington Triangle, is home to famous spiritualists like the Eddy brothers who lived in Chittenden, and even a ghostly rowboat said to be seen gliding across Lake Bomoseen. But Brandon, and those who live here, have a rich, eerie history of their own. 

The story below is from The Goddess Akeeyah, a mystic and spiritual healer who had a memorable stay at the Brandon Inn in the late 1990s. It combines her written account from 2020 with information from a recent conversation with the Neshobe Current.

I make it a habit to clear the energies from any and every hotel room I stay in. It's necessary if I want a good night's sleep. Believe me, I've slept in many a haunted space!

The two most haunted hotels I've ever slept in were the Brandon Inn, in Brandon, Vermont, and a Super 8 in Rawlins, Wyoming.

My hotel room in Brandon was on the second or third floor. It was supposedly the most haunted room in the hotel, but no one had told me it was. I didn't even know the hotel was haunted. Later I learned that the person who made the reservation for me was curious to see if I would experience anything paranormal while sleeping there.

I had eaten a wonderful dinner at Café Provence. It was one of those meals where I couldn't help but eat every morsel and crumb. The best eggplant dish I’ve ever had. Chef Robert's culinary delights are magnificent! 

Later that evening I held a psychic gallery, similar to what the well-known psychics Sylvia Browne or John Edward might do. Kathleen Johnson, a friend, was there, as well as her daughter, Samantha.

Afterward, I was experiencing a serious digestive situation. I hurried to the hotel elevator. It was one of those old-fashioned lifts with a see-through metal gate that moved at a snail's pace. The sweet and proper elevator man politely asked me, "What floor?" There was barely enough room in the elevator for the two of us. All the way up to my room, he smiled like the Cheshire Cat. 

I would later learn there hadn't been an elevator man for decades. As it turned out, the man I saw had been a devoted employee and had died a long, long, time ago. His picture can be seen in an old group photo in the lobby.

Anyway, I rushed into my hotel room and made a beeline for the bathroom, noticing the window shade had somehow been pulled all the way up. In my head, I'm thinking, well, it's so dark out there, man, and who's going to be out there at this time of night? So I left the shade up.

I thought I wasn't going to make it to the toilet, but I did! Relieved, I flushed and washed my hands, then turned to the window to pull down the shade. It was darker than dark outside, not like Chicago at night. Imagine my shock and surprise when I saw a bearded man standing right outside the window, looking straight at me! He had a hat and suspenders on and looked like a miner or mountain man. At that moment, I saw him, he saw me, and we both screamed! I pulled that shade down so fast, which wasn't an easy task!

Frightened, I did not return to the bathroom for the rest of the night.

In the morning, I walked in and I peeked carefully behind the window shade. The coast was clear. It was a beautiful day. I realized how high up my room was, and there surely was no ladder or ledge outside the window. It was far too high for anyone to be standing there. (Now that I think about it, although it looked like the man was outside, what if he was actually behind me?!)

As we were getting ready to depart the following morning, I took a good bath in the iron clawfoot tub. It had a shower curtain that wrapped around it. I turned my head, and when I looked, I saw this little woman’s hand reaching through the white shower curtain toward me. Certain it was my manager, Irene, I pulled back the curtain a little bit so as not to expose my fabulousness, poked my head out, and said, "I'll be finished soon." But there was no one there. No one.

Later I went up to my manager's room and asked her why she had tried to get my attention while I was bathing. She looked at me, puzzled, and said, "Akeeyah, I just woke up, I didn't go to your room."

When we were ready to leave the inn, the door to my room closed on me just as I stepped toward it, and wouldn't open — from the inside or the outside! It wasn't locked. We, including the hotel manager, couldn't open the door, no matter how much we jiggled and pushed. The spirits wanted me to stay. It was necessary to have a good conversation with them BEFORE the door opened up on its own. They didn't want me to leave. My manager and the hotel staff witnessed the whole thing.

They liked my company, and they liked that I acknowledged them. So I had to pray, and then I promised them I’d come back one day, and if I couldn’t come back in the physical I'd come back in spirit. I said, I’ll never forget you, and I'll make sure to tell everybody about you. And here we are, how many decades later? And you know what, I'll bet that they're happy.