Ansonborough Inn - Charleston, SC

     We recently stayed at the Ansonborough Inn in the historic district of Charleston, SC.  The inn was originally a three-story warehouse built around the turn of the century (circa 1901) near the port.  While I’ve not come across any tales of this particular location being haunted, we did experience some curious circumstances during our brief stay.  First, Mary Ann was unpacking soon after arrival to find that the socks that she knows she packed were nowhere to be found.  While she was adamant that she packed them, it occurred to me that perhaps, just maybe she may have left them sitting on the bed at home and I didn’t pay much heed beyond that, until…

     The morning after our first night staying at the inn I went to put my contacts in only to discover that they were missing from the case in which I know I placed them the night before and have been doing since I began wearing contacts over 20 years ago.  It’s a routine I can do literally with my eyes closed – at least once I take the contacts out! So I have no reason or evidence to suspect that I did anything different this time.  At first I thought maybe I had made a mistake and opened the wrong storage case so I checked Mary Ann’s and as she had already put hers in, that case was empty as well.  I went back to my case and what was really odd is that the wells contained the saline I had put in them the night before when I deposited the lenses, but the lenses themselves were gone.  I triple and quadrupled checked even checking the lids to ensure they had not gotten stuck to the inside of the lids somehow, but no contact lenses.  Luckily I had a spare pair, but the disappearance was troublesome and the disappearance of the socks carried more weight.

     Now we have missing socks and missing contact lenses.  But wait, there’s more.  That evening Mary Ann went to retrieve a nail file from her bag and…you guessed it, it was gone.  Once again she is certain that she packed it with her toiletries and given the other disappearances, I believe her. 

     I am not saying that these missing items had anything to do with paranormal activity, but I can’t help but wonder what happened to these items.  Also note that there were three instances of missing items– three being the key number that tends to be prominent when paranormal activity occurs.  But if this wasn’t enough I have one more oddity to cap it all off.

     On our final night as we were preparing to go out to dinner I took out the digital recorder to see if perhaps we could capture any electronic voice phenomena.  I turned on the recorder and asked whomever had taken our personal items to please return them to the room while we were gone.  At the time of the brief recording, there was no ambient noise and both of us were standing completely still.  When we reviewed the recording, just after I voiced my request, there is a shuffling sound heard on the recorder that lasts for a couple of seconds.  It sounded as if someone was walking across the carpet perhaps.  Again, I will reiterate that both of us were standing completely still and I was holding the recorder completely still at the time.  There were no other sounds and no discernable voice that responded to my plea, just the unexplained shuffling noise that neither of us heard in real time, but could clearly hear on the recording. 

     So…plausible explanation?  I don’t know.  Maybe, but I can’t think of one right now.  Just something to make us wonder even more.