So, here's the deal.

I had 10 days of unused continuing education time coming, to be used before November 1 (or thereabouts). The only time I could get away was this week, after I'd already been away on vacation since last Thursday.

I needed something cheap and close by. I heard about this retreat center in NW Illinois on the Rock River...special clergy rate for the fall...$20 a night! No TV, but en suite washrooms and heated, so I said "Why not?"

Cool, I thought. And I was right. The place is nice, recently completely renovated, and in the next building over, from 8 to 4, I have access to the internet.

So I booked for the week...until Saturday anyway...(yes, i know that's not 10 days...so sue me.) And so on Halloween afternoon, I left Chicago for a very pleasant 2.25 hour drive and got here about a half hour before dusk. When I picked up my key, the nice woman gave me her phone number and said she'd be only a oouple of miles away if anything happened.

See, it turned out that on this massive 50 acre spread 2 miles from a little town, in the middle of farm country, I was going to be THE ONLY PERSON ON THE PROPERTY.....ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT.

Shades of "The Shining," n'est-ce pas? Or "Friday the 13th?"

So I go to the building where I am going to sleep...It contains 20+ rooms on two levels, some meeting rooms, etc. And the lights are on, permanently it would seem, in all the hallways and stairwells...my room is on the end of the hallway on the second floor.

After a brief sojourn into town for some surprisingly good Mexican food for dinner, I returned about 6:30 to the retreat center...my building glowing with a zillion watts of external and internal lights...All this power usage for me? I wonder...and then recall that it's probably a security thing to protect their investment in this new building. So I will myself to fell secure...no sense all that going to waste.

Ever try reading a book locked into your room in a large empty building on Halloween night in the middle of f-ing nowhere?

I heard every kind of noise, from the moths' self-induced concussions slamming into my windows to get to "the light" to creaks and groans of the infrastructure that surely indicated the presence of otherworldly or axe-wielding fellow residents making their way down the hall...

Around 7:45 (see how the time is flying by) I got up, got my key, locked my door and did a tour of the bright, shiny building, just to confirm for myself that there was noone there, that I was delusional and that Jack/Johnny wasn't about to seek entrance to my inner sanctum (or my guts--take that Scatman Carothers) with a hatchet. All was well of course...I even found a TV in one of the common rooms that could pick up a faint signal for 1 station from Rockford...the NBC station...showing a marathon of "Medium" and the first image I saw was of a corpse...Off that went, and off I went back to my room and a "fun" novel.

By 9, I was listening to music on my computer and reading, when it seemed the bumps and thumps got particularly present again...and I could have sworn I heard a human voice...I chastised myself, turned up the tunes and kept reading...and read the same page about 5 times....another "sweep" was necessary...With false bravado..who was I trying to impress, the ghosts?...I grabbed my key and my cell phone and went for another sweep of the building...again nothing, so I stopped and turned on the tv again...still "Medium" but one I had seen, so I sat down to watch for a while, sitting in the dark common room (the only common area with the lights off) watching the tv.

Suddenly there was movement in the corner of my glasses, the light shining onto my glasses from the doorway behind me was clearly being disturbed in some way! Someone was in the building!

Holy crap...which I almost did....

I turned off the tv and crept to the hallway, first looking down the short end of the hall to my right, and then the long one to my left, when suddenly from the right side that had just been empty, a figure emerged from the stairwell....and we both did little airless yelps followed by Jerry Lewis double-takes. (I categorically deny that I screamed like an 11 year old girl. Honestly, I didn't...I swear...Truly.....I mean it!)

I'm sure the night custodian will be telling people about the Halloween invasion of his space by a chubby white guy in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and green plaid flannel pajama bottoms for many days to come....

Me? I'm just looking for another pair of pajama bottoms to get me through the rest of the week....

(kidding....or am I?)

After that, it was a Tylenol PM kind of night...but I survived! A blessed All Saints Day to everyone!