"I also feel extremely comfortable here," she added. "Part of that is because I do believe that Dorothy Theodore, who was the owner and who passed away about 10 years ago, is here. I knew her when I was in my teens, and I feel like she’s my protection when I’m at the inn."

Dawn recalled one other story, this one involving present owner Jeffrey Theodore.

About nine years ago, he was talking excitedly about the renovations he was planning. Standing in the kitchen area, he was describing a few of the details to some of the servers, and then he added, "Boy, if my mother knew what I was going to do, she’d be turning in her grave."

Immediately, Dawn said, a long fluorescent bulb fell out of the ceiling fixture, hit the hard kitchen floor, and rolled. But it didn’t break.

While Dawn is one who responds to the unusual in an accepting manner, restaurant manager Anthony Calderaro admitted he has a lower tolerance level for the bizarre.

"Sometimes," Anthony said, "I go around saying, ‘I know you’re here, but I couldn’t handle seeing you.’"

But, Anthony added, both veterans and newcomers on the staff accept the situation well.

"We joke about it." He added. "Some say no way, and others say okay. But everybody agrees that whatever is here is friendly."

Anthony shared the incident that occurred in the Tavern, which is located to the rear of the Brandywine Room and frequented by a group of regulars.

One evening, he said, some of the steady patrons decided to try to stir up some amusement. They called out for Katie the ghost to appear, challenging her to give them a sign if she was really present.

Their taunting hit the jackpot.

The lights suddenly blinked on the computerized cash register and the cash drawer opened by itself and flew back from its casing.

The suddenly silent group slowly dispersed, calling it a night.

The old-fashioned oil lamps in the Tavern will sometimes flare up and glow very brightly without being touched, Said Anthony. Also, on a side wall-above the edge of the long, dark wooden bar-is an open shelf where glassware is stored. One evening, Simon the ghost apparently didn’t like the bartender, and the spirit kept knocking the glasses off the shelf.

Anthony said unusual happenings are not constant, although outsiders may think there is a lot of unexplained activity when all the events that have occurred over the years are summarized.

The Sea Captain is one of the inn’s better known spirit world residents. Since his appearances are usually in the same spot-in a chair behind the northeast corner table in the second floor Wyeth Room-the site has been dubbed the "Captain’s Table."

One employee, said Anthony, was carrying items up a narrow stairway toward the third floor offices, from the Wyeth Room. As she went up the steps, she felt someone playfully hitting her ankles. Unable to turn in the confined space to see who it was, she yelled for the jokester to stop. But when she got to the top of the stairway and quickly turned…no one was there.

"And no one could have gotten away by running down the steps quick enough to disappear or hide," Anthony said.

Gina Crouse has been office manager of the inn for four years.

She laughed as she explained that one of her jobs is to open the building about 6:30 each morning-usually alone-and, often-times, it’s still dark.

Her office is on the third floor, and she has seen the results of the spirits’ actions in her work area and throughout the building.

"I came in one day, about the crack of dawn," said Gina. "The only other person in the building was the pastry chef, in the kitchen. I immediately smelled a candle being blown out, that distinct scent of sulfur and beeswax."

Gina said she and the chef checked the entire building for over an hour and found no apparent cause.

"I even went into the basement under the bar. It’s creepy and I refuse to go down there. But I was worried that something was burning down there and the smell was coming up. I was this far from calling the fire department."

After two hours the smell disappeared.

"We never found the source of it," Gina said. "That was a wierdy."

In Gina’s office, on a shelf above her computer, is a heavy, brass carriage clock. On two different occasions, when her boss was in the room with her, the clock moved from the shelf and landed on the floor several feet away.