And now, the continuation and conclusion of The Weirdness at The Stagecoach Inn!

Pine Cone grew more intrigued when I informed him of what I learned about the Stagecoach Inn’s dark past and wanted to go back as soon as possible so he could take his own photos. I tagged along for morbid curiosity’s sake as he dragged his tripod and camera around the perimeter of the old inn, where we found piles and piles of the local newspaper in the backyard, still wrapped in plastic. Once inside, he took picture after picture while I trailed behind him, constantly looking around and feeling as though we were being watched. It was easier to visit the house prior to knowing the backstory; I didn’t know to be so nervous. It didn’t help that Pine Cone was helpfully pointing out stuff I hadn’t noticed before: “Hey, Stef, look how half of that chair isn’t dusty, like someone was recently sitting on it!”

The next day in the darkroom, Pine Cone was developing one of his pictures of me at the Stagecoach. I was sitting on the decrepit concrete back steps of the former inn, looking at the ground, completely unaware of the face in the window that was an extremely coincidental reflection of the leaves against the glass. Fear and excitement inspired me to examine the picture closely, and I discovered five more faces. I was probably just trying too hard, although the more I looked at one face, the more defined it became.

Pine Cone decided to make his own trip to the Stagecoach, armed with a camcorder and a couple of friends one evening. A half an hour later, he showed up at my house, cracking his knuckles and calmly stating that they’d had an “encounter.” According to them, they walked around the house, three of them holding candles. His friend picked up a check written out to the newspaper when for no reason two of the candles went out, and the friend felt a presence touching his shoulder, provoking them to flee in terror.

These experiences sparked Gypsy’s interest, so she and I ventured to the inn, where she was amazed by the hand-painted signs pointing the way “To the Body Room” and how the inside was still in fair condition even though the windows were broken and the weather was always coming inside. As though we were searching for an answer to a mystery that we weren’t sure of, we rifled through the piles of junk on the floor and found old newspaper clippings, checks made out for more than $500 that never been deposited or cashed, and liquor licenses. The amount of possessions left behind was unbelievable, like someone left in a hurry and took nothing with them.

Gypsy and I wanted to figure out which bedroom was Joseph Kly’s. The newspapers didn’t make it easy for us to figure out: some claimed it was on the first floor, some insisted it was across from a kitchen, another said that a witness lived above him, and yet another source said the room had been repainted and re-carpeted. None of the rooms downstairs looked as though they’d ever been painted, so we headed upstairs. We were in a bedroom across from an upstairs kitchen, photographing a orange body outline spray-painted on a mattress, when we noticed that the walls looked like they’d been repainted and the carpet looked new. Suddenly, Gypsy looked around and asked, “Do you hear music playing?” My heart started pounding: I had never mentioned to her that the witnesses always heard a radio playing in Kly’s room to drown out his moaning. My paranoia got the best of me and I ushered us out of the house, but the house continued to haunt me. I wanted to go back and do some “spring cleaning” just to see what the house would look like without all its contents dumped on the floor—and see if anything else might get unearthed in the meantime.

My friends and I planned to go back on a Monday morning, but the Sunday before, Pine Cone messaged me: “You know how you wanted to go to the Stagecoach tomorrow? Well, it’s kind of burning to the ground right now.”

To say I was stunned would’ve been an understatement. I couldn’t have expected anything less. After all those years of the place standing quiet and empty, why would such a thing happen now?

We visited the Stagecoach Inn—or what was left of it—the following morning, where a couple neighbors eyed us suspiciously, our interest being a little too interesting. The building we’d been exploring just a short week ago was now a smoldering, gutted skeleton. The only structure remaining on the still-smoking property was the chimney, although that looked in danger of falling. Flames still licked the gaping holes of the former house. In the grass scorched by the brush fires caused by the blaze, lay some of the books I’d gone through.

Though the fire at the Stagecoach Inn made the news, nobody seemed to care much about it. The newspaper reported that the fire was labeled “suspicious,” but authority ruled that no further investigation was warranted and no charges would be filed. The house was seen as an “eyesore,” and there was relief that it was gone.

Today, all traces of the Stagecoach Inn have been erased. I’ve driven by the property several times since, and now I can’t even tell where the building once was. I still can’t get over the timing. Suspicious fire indeed—it seemed more than coincidental that the building would inexplicably go up in flames just as we seemed on the brink of truly piecing together all that had happened there. I’d never seen a ghost there, but I’d certainly felt a strong supernatural atmosphere. Could it be that there was something in that house that wanted pieces of the story to be known, and once it was satisfied, used the fire to free itself? Or did the house hold more sinister secrets that it couldn’t let be known? Maybe those feelings of being watched were more valid than we know…

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