Drove into the Catskill Mountains a day early before my gig with Dinosaur Jr. I brought my tent and some gear to camp in the woods but realized I needed to finish some editing and needed electricity and wifi for that so I found a spot nearby. It was an inn that was built in 1790 apparently by John Adams cousin. Yes John Quincy Adams the person who signed the declaration of independence and there's a beer named after him also. Not the best tasting beer but whatever I don't drink. The room was cheap and they served a free breakfast in the morning with a lax checkout so I was in. I went up some creaky ass stairs to the second floor where my room was located at the beginning of a long old carpeted hallway on the right. Smelled like meemaw‘s closet, old and danky. I opened the door to a room with two beds. I felt like I was time warped back into 1985. Flower them, gold brass plated knobs and handles, a fluorescent CVS bathroom light overhead and an ashtray. One of the beds was a queen size with about twenty pillows the other was a twin that looked leaned a little like a car with a flat tire. No AC, just a window fan but that’s okay because up in the mountains it was a nice balmy 65/70 degrees. So as the sun went down and I was unpacked I just sat on the bed working off my laptop when I started hearing stomping coming from the floor above me. Loud as shit. Back and forth up and down, Jesus Christ wtf? It kept going on for about an half an hour or so. Sounded like kids fucking around upstairs and it was definitely distracting for me. I left the room and went upstairs because I was gonna tell those loud ass kids to chill the fuck out but when I got to the top of the stairs I didn’t see anything other than some random pile of toys on the floor at the end of the stairs. Weird. Walked halfway down the carpeted hallway and felt a draft and then smelled something bad enough to think that someone took a big dump after doing some hardcore sauna aerobics with the door open. It felt eerie and smelled bad. I went downstairs to the lobby to ask the old man innkeeper that checked me in if there were kids on the upstairs floor and if there were they needed to settle the fuck down because I was working and also to say that maybe there was a room with plumbing backed up or something. Got to the first floor lobby and nobody was there to hear me complain. Just the ticking of an old grandfather clock and the creaks. Maybe people go to sleep early out here since there’s not much to do. There isn’t anything to do. It’s a pretty isolated area. After checking out all of the picture frames, taxidermy animals and bar gold labeled stools that read Trump I got hungry and decided to go grab a pizza from a nearby town that was about half an hour away. Daylight, it was still daylight. The road seemed never ending. I’m in the Catskills. Big trees overhangs, barns, mountains, beautiful yet boring. No cell service and only one radio station....gospel. Got the pie and hauled ass back to the inn. Still nobody around. Tick toc tick toc. was the only sound I could hear. That fucking clock. I started thinking about that shitty song and music video by Soul Asylum back in the early 90s and the opening lyrics were “Grandfather sits by the grandfather clock” fuck that song and that video. I used to stay up late as shit praying for a Dinosaur Jr, Afghan Whigs or Superchunk video but a lot of times it would be that damn music video or Soup Dragons or EMF. I fucking hated MTV 120 minutes sometimes. I lost a lot of sleep and had shitty Monday’s at school because of that show. Moving forward.....I sat up in my room and ate a few pizza slices and felt as though someone was staring at me from the toilet. I got up to shut the bathroom door but couldn’t because of the uneven door or doorframe or house shift or whatever. I started smelling farts. Creepy AF. I’m not scared of many things but this moment was starting to make me have second thoughts about booking this place. I started hearing noises coming from outside. Great. I can‘t catch a damn break. I looked outside the window and couldn’t see shit because of the painted in screen and the fact it was dark as hell but I could hear stuff ripping and tearing and snapping. All of these noises coming from the woods outside. I knew there were woods outside my window because I saw the woods when there was daylight earlier. I went back downstairs to see if anyone had come back so I could let them know that there was some loud shit going on outside my window but nothing. Nobody was in the lobby. I decided to take a look for myself so I opened the screen door and looked to the right and saw the dark silhouette of something big. First thought was that it was some big fat hillbilly creeping around maybe lost on his way back to his camper or treehouse but whatever it was it was bigger than that. It wasn’t a man, it was just some big ass dark blob of space that I could not figure out for the life of me. Now keep in mind I’m sober. I haven’t drank or have done drugs in over eight years. Just wanted to clear that up. I went back upstairs, locked the door and slept with the lights on. Kinda freaked out but who am I going to tell about this? I did do a few Instagram stories on it and had a lot of people telling me to leave. Next morning I got up and went downstairs and breakfast was being made for me. Smelled good. Pancakes, eggs, fruit and coffee. I was happy that I made it through the night. I was happy that it was daylight outside, I was happy it seemed like I was the first person to get breakfast which meant it was going to be so damn fresh like this new fucking day. As I sat there and ate all of this complimentary badassery food I asked the woman who served me where everyone was and that they are missing a great breakfast. She looked at me and said “There isn’t anyone else, you’re it. Nobody booked a room last night. The owner took off last night to go play darts but was too drunk to come back so you had the whole place to yourself” . I asked if there were any kids staying here and as she poured me some more coffee she said “Just the ghosts”
