Tonight marked the third time I’ve heard the mysterious “BOOM” sound (alias the gunshot) in the Florentine Ballroom. Each time it came from a different place – first the hallway, then the roof, and this time from the back wall, somewhere above the back door.
This time, though, we were accompanied by a security guard. It came loud enough to scare the crap out of people – at least, those who knew it wasn’t me. When I told the guard I hadn’t done it, he looked a bit shocked and ran off to investigate the back wall on the assumption that someone or something must have been there. Nothing was. He came back looking spooked.
“Man,” he said, “I thought you were full of crap the first time you said you heard this!”
The noise came back a couple more times while we were there tonight, loud enough each time to be quite a shock – I think many customers still think we’re setting them up. In fact, a couple of people tonight told me they assumed we were, until they noticed that the guard seemed genuinely freaked out. We don’t have the resources to rig things like this up in commercial ballrooms, folks.
As we left, the guard was telling another guard about and told him to go up to the room for himself.
“$%^& no!” he replied. “I’m not going up there alone! I’m not stupid!”
I’m still not claiming this as proof of the paranormal (I never do that with anything), but something odd is going on in that ballroom. We’ve been coming here regularly for some time now in all seasons, but we’d never heard this noise before, and neither has security. I’m starting to think of that Dickens book where the servants all think the house is haunted because of the noises it makes, but it turns out the house is just falling apart. I really hope that the Congress isn’t doing that!
I’m organizing all the posts about the phenomenon under the tag “gunshot,” although it’s sounding less like a gunshot to me now. I started taking video after the first noise came up tonight, so I got some more examples of it. Not sure it’s worth blogging, though, as it’s not THAT different from the first video.