Sarah Nigbor

As we left the scorching city of Memphis behind, we headed down the Great River Road to our next destination, Vicksburg, Miss. Home to a large number of antebellum mansions and Civil War sites, this gentle city on the river won my heart. We stayed in the Duff Green Mansion, which was used as a hospital for both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, thus escaping wreckage as cannon balls rocked the city. It was also used as a boys orphanage at one point but is now a stately bed and breakfast.

We stayed in the owner’s suite while the children were delegated to the children’s nursery adjacent. Each child had their own four-poster bed complete with a mini stairway to get atop the high bed. About a minute after we settled into our rooms, a man knocked on the door. He proclaimed himself to be the maintenance man and said he needed to swap out a cracked toilet seat. Sure enough, the toilet had a crack and he quickly made the switcheroo and was out of our hair. However, he left behind a long, vicious looking knife with a serrated blade on the windowsill. It didn’t look like anything you would use to fix a toilet. It looked like it came from a serial killer’s collection. I, being dramatic of course, forbade anyone to touch it so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints on it. What if it had been used in a murder? I’ve seen a lot of Dateline: You better hope your prints aren’t on any murder weapons. But what does my oldest do? Promptly picks it up and brings it to the front desk. Don’t say I didn’t warn him.

The next morning, I awoke to my husband looking around quizzically. He asked if I had heard anything in the night. I slept like I was dead, even with the knife incident fresh in my memory, so if the murderous maintenance man had broken in, I wouldn’t have known the difference. Hubby claimed to have heard chains dragging down the hall in the night. Could it be a soldier ghost stuck in the old hospital where he died? We will never know. Shane decided it was an employee, but what B&B employee would drag chains on hardwood floors at 3 a.m.?

After a delicious three-course Southern breakfast served on fancy China, we skipped the formal tour of the mansion so we could skedaddle and get on the road to New Orleans. Plus, I felt it was a miracle that none of our kids had dropped or broken anything. As we tromped up the curved stairway to our room, I noticed a woman and her little boy behind us. I thought nothing of it until they followed us into our room. As they stood there looking around, I froze. They looked at me expectantly, like I should know what to say. As the seconds ticked by, the woman’s face turned red and her eyes darted around the room.

“Is this part of the tour?” she asked. “Oh my God, this is your room. I am so sorry.” Before I could even blink, they ran from the room and down to the parlor to join the actual tour. As my son came out of the bathroom proclaiming his latest BM a success, I thanked the Lord silently that the woman had fled before hearing that on her “tour.” That certainly would not be very hospitable.

Thinking I better usher these redneck Northerners out of this lovely southern home, we stopped at a gas station on our way out of town. I stayed in the car while the boys ran inside to use the bathroom. Hubby came out looking disturbed as the sink in the gas station had been covered in blood, as had the toilet seat. Our middle son convinced the youngest that he had contracted a horrible disease in the bathroom, so that’s what we heard about the next 100 or so miles. But seriously, had we stumbled onto another Dateline scene? Weird happenings seemed to abound in Vicksburg, what with knives appearing on windowsills, dragging chains, playing tour guide and a bloody bathroom. And people warned me that New Orleans would be odd.