Cold Weather (and ghosts) in Virginia

     The heat and humidity began to get to me and as Yule (Christmas) began to roll around, my body longed for sweater weather and the hope of seeing snow. 

     Ayden and I hoped on a plane from Costa Rica to Virginia to brave the month of November. We stayed in our family home in the ever so haunted Fort Monroe.

Fort Monroe is the oldest military base in the USA. It sits out on a small island in southern Virginia. Old military housing...now our house, sits alongside the ocean waters, a moat seperates the homes from inside the fort, where more homes, and the old base stand.

The feelings that flood the air in this little town are exciting and eerie all at the same time. The countless ghost stories of each and every building, will keep you up for weeks just to read through or hear them all.

But my most intense experience was the lady on fire.

It was a cold November night, Ayden and I were cuddled up in bed under a mound of blankets. The house was dark and quiet and somewhere between a dream and real life...a vivid experience started to haunt me.
As I laid in bed, the bedroom door began to slowly swing open. I laid frozen in bed, holding my sleeping Ayden even tigher as a woman who was burned from head to toe stepped into the room and looked at me. I was unable to move or make any sound and we just stared at each other for several minutes....which seemed like hours.

In the sudden instance that she disappeared, the fire alarm in the house also went off. My paralysis wore off and I jumped out of bed with Ayden in my arms, running through the house to look for a fire. There was none.
The fire department was called, and as we waited and waited, they never showed. We heard them drive by, but it was as if our house was invisible and they could not find us. 12 hours that fire alarm went off..... Who was that woman? Did she die in that house from a fire? Or in the ever so haunted Chamberlin Hotel which sat a short walking distance away, and had come for a visit?

This is just one of countless ghost stories I have from Fort Monroe, but this was Ayden's first.

We spent the next month enjoying the crisp weather, and long walks in and around the Fort.

As much as we loved being back in the states, it was also culture shock to me. The difference in attitude with people, the zombie looks on everyone's faces as they were stuck in their daily routines of work, eat, sleep.

It was not often you'd see anyone outside and if you did, they were in their own world with their faces to their phones or music in their ears. The sense of community was long gone. It felt as though you'd have a better time befriending a lonely spirit than a living human.

We enjoyed a few last days, not taking for granted the joy of walks without sweating your life away.

As the days got colder, we began to back our bags and head back home to Mexico.

Random video of Ayden playing with our puppy Mika, in Virginia

Did you know, you can travel with me too!

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