I See Dead People: More Mineola Ghosts

I love it when I get confirmation my psychic senses are spot-on. Yesterday, Friday April 26, 2013, Sarah, Angela and I went back to Mineola, the town where the Beckham Hotel is located. Angela wanted to visit some cemeteries and the museum to do some historical research. Sarah and I wanted to go along and see what Angela found. As usually happens, though, we discovered more ghosts along with the research.

We "chatted" with several ghosts in one of the cemeteries, but the other one was very quiet. I'll expand more on these in a longer post, or maybe when we do the e-book about the Beckham. The most fun for me, excluding the estate and garage sales we hit, was the visit to the Chamber of Commerce.

The lady at the Chamber, Pam, helped us contact Connie Meissner, who's restoring the Beckham Hotel. Since this resulted in our fantastic overnight investigation, I wanted to stop by and thank Pam. Angela and Sarah saw an interesting shop and decided to prowl in there while I visited with Pam in the Chamber building across the street.

Pam was there, and we only talked long enough to introduce ourselves before I felt someone. "You've got at least one ghost here," I told Pam.

"Doesn't surprise me," she said. "The building is very old. It used to be a bank. We've got three stories: this floor, a basement and a floor above us. The basement contained the original bank vault."

"Would it be possible for me to take some pictures and see if I catch the ghost on film?" I asked.

"Sure." She wasn't hesitant at all, and I recalled she had mentioned during our first conversation that she did believe in the paranormal.

"I'll have to go get my friends," I said. "They'll never forgive me if I go looking for ghosts without them."

I went back across the street and got the video camera out of the car, then went into the store Sarah and Angela indicated they were going go shop in.

"Hello!" I called.

A female answered, "Hello," and I thought it sounded like Sarah.

"We've got ghosts," I called. "Come on, let's go."

Oops. The lady who walked out wasn't Sarah. Neither she nor Angela were in the store. I apologized to the woman, who had a very puzzled look on her face, and hurried out the front door without explaining myself. Next door, I saw a Gourmet Popcorn Shop." Yep, that's where they were.

After they paid for their popcorn, we headed back to the Chamber building. We descended to the basement, with Pam telling us more about the history of the building and being a really good tour guide. We liked her immensely. In the basement, we examined the vault and took photos. We even walked into the vault, but the atmosphere was nothing at all like the one we found at the Beckham. We also didn't catch anything paranormal.

We traipsed back up the stair, two sets of them, to the third floor. There, we found the ghosts we were looking for.

Pam said the building had also once been used as a lawyer's office. Then I said, "I'm getting the name Harry. Is there a Harry associated with the building?"

Her eyes widened. I could tell I'd either shocked or flustered her. "Yes," she said at last. "Harry … uh … Harry … I can't recall his last name." She frowned, then went on, "Meredith! His name was Harry Meredith. I can't believe I couldn't think of his name. He had an office here for years, and when he died, he left a lot of his fortune to the City of Mineola. Part of those funds are responsible for us having the Civic Center in town."

I nodded, happy with the confirmation of my sixth sense. I didn't bother to tell Pam I'd seen others get flustered and forget well-known facts when I received names via my gift.

Sarah, Angela and I all felt Harry and chatted a bit with him. There was a chair Sarah felt was a secretary's chair, or, as she said later, "Maybe a woman who felt she had to do secretarial duties, although she really wasn't the secretary." We got the name Bonnie, but Pam didn't recognize that. She did say she would check her reference material. We also got quite a few interesting photos.

Here are four of mine: The page with the info on Harry Meredith from the centennial book done for Mineola's 100^th birthday; Harry's desk, and two cut-outs of interesting spots in the photo of the desk.

All in all, it was a wonderful day. We missed finding Connie at the Beckham, but we'll be going back to this wonderful town many more times. Even during the daytime, the larger cemetery we walked through was extremely active. We believe we encountered Doyle, the gambler from the Beckham, whom Aunt Belle talked to. That's who he said he was, anyway, and he wanted to know why Aunt Belle wasn't with us. There are also two "hanging trees," both with areas on limbs that appear to be worn from ropes. I'm already yearning to do a nighttime investigation of this cemetery, so we'll see when we can work it into our plans.

Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V is going through its final edit. I'm fairly certain it should be up by May 1. Then it will depend on how soon the e-sites make it available for sale, but I'll be sure to shout it far and wide after it's up.

If you haven't seen the gorgeous cover on my Facebook page, which the extremely talented Angela did for me, here it is, also: