Tour From Beyond

My husband and I traveled to Albany New York from Colorado to visit my 98 year old grandfather who was recovering from a fall that resulted in a broken hip, He was in a rehabilitation hospital to receive therapy and it was nice to see him and other family members that live in New York since we live across the country and don't have a chance to come out as often as we would like. Having visitors can be tiring so instead of sitting in his room driving him nuts staring at him, we decided to take a day trip to Lake George and visit Ft. William McHenry, a Fort and live history museum of the events that happened in that location during the French and Indian war. My husband is a military history buff whenever we come back to the East coast, we try to visit places that had historical significance and it seemed the perfect thing to do on an overcast day in upstate New York. We arrived in Lake George, and I made a mental note to research vacation homes, hotels and food in the area because my adult children were always needing advice on where to go on vacations, even if they didn't always appreciate it, I laugh internally, like they listen to me. We parked the car and looked for a place to have lunch, deciding on a quaint pizza place and while we waited, I pulled up the fort information on my phone. We pre-purchased the tickets and dove into the delicious hot pizza that New York is famous for. It did not disappoint, crunchy and chewy with gooey, stringy cheese, we ate way too much so it was time to walk off the calories. After paying the check, we walked down the flower lined street, hearing the sound of the paddle boats horn and listening to sounds of laughter and squeals of vacationers enjoying the lake, mini golf and other attractions, I see an ice cream stand and tell myself to remember this for after the fort tour before we left Lake George. We walk up to the entrance of the fort and my husband is excited to see what awaits us, there are not that many people in the fort or around the entrance so we walk in, show our pre-purchased tickets, grab a map, and stood in an area marked guided tour to begin in 15 minutes. My husband has wandered away to read plaques on the wall describing various artifacts that had been unearthed in different excavations of the property. I am becoming increasingly anxious, I feel the oxygen in the room coming and going but not enough to cause any physical danger, my husband seems fine and unaffected by this so I dismiss it to being in a darkened musty area and the fact that we are visiting from a higher altitude and my body needing to adjust, I go into the gift shop and buy a bottle of water and a candy bar to boost my blood sugar, I just ate so I shouldn't be feeling this lightheaded or shaky. The tour guide arrives and we begin the tour, my husband taking my hand, the floorboards creak under our feet as we walk into the large main room of the museum that used to be a barracks, the large glass display cases with uniforms, firearms, and other various collections and dioramas, the 30 minute tour comes to an end and we are sent on our way to go to the basement or outside to the grounds where there are several demonstrations going on. We decide to go downstairs and see where they kept prisoners and gunpowder. I walked the length of the basement and back, sat down and pulled my phone out to check email and messages while my husband reads the information on all the displays and takes pictures. While I am sitting I notice that there is a lot of noise upstairs with foot traffic from newly arrived group of tourists and in the spaces of the floorboards the flashes of light as the people crossed in front of the overhead lights, and some murmuring of conversations. My husband walks up to me and we are ready to go outside and watch the demonstrations of loading cannons and weapon firing . As we are sitting down to watch the last of the show, I noticed that there are only a handful of people there. I look around and say to my husband, "where are all the people?" He looks at me and asks me what I am talking about. " I tell him while we were in the basement, I heard a large tour group come in and I didn't see anyone, there was only one way in and out of the fort that I could see and I didn't see anyone come up behind us. He said, "I didn't hear anyone." I said," I heard dozens of people walking around above us while you were looking around the exhibits. "Oh, he said, I don't remember anything." I dismissed it, and lost myself in what was being said about the cannon fire and other historical facts about the revolutionary war and the role of the Fort during that conflict. As the speaker wrapped up his presentation, he explained that some visitors have reported seeing and hearing large groups of soldiers walking around the main part of the fort. I looked at my husband, wide eyed and surprised, just as he looked at me, he said, " I really didn't hear anything!" I have always been a bit sensitive and able to pick up activity occasionally. We left the fort, I pushed it to the back of my mind as we walked outside toward where we parked, I remembered the ice cream and of course we had to detour to the stand where we both had amazing ice cream covered in chocolate sauce and strawberry dip. Such a crazy day. I really think the kids would love to see this place.