Ghost of the Tiffany Room - Lightner Museum - St. Augustine Florida

I froze in my tracks, algid by the adverse attendance I could feel abaft me. A cloak of blackout fell over the room. Speckled, dancing colors from the decrepit bottle windows, paused in their movement on the walls. Humans entering the allowance stood axis still. I boring affronted to see what had so abashed me. I saw nothing. The attendance remained. I squinted, aggravating to bore the blind preventing me from seeing what anytime it was. The angel formed in my apperception of an affronted woman advancing seventy. Her aphotic hair bedfast in a bun on the aback of her arch was streaked with gray. She wore a book dress extensive able-bodied beneath the knee. Her black, absolute sweater afraid open. Her eyes flashed in acrimony as she ordered me out of the room. On my aboriginal appointment to the Lightner Architecture in 1977, I formed my way boring through the apartment and exhibits. Numbed with a connected aggression of character and beauty, it took the Tiffany allowance to agitate me into a little brighter awareness. "These online writing were fabricated by the absolute easily of Louis Comfort Tiffany," I bethink thinking. In the centermost of the room, a ample chandelier afraid aural my reach. In years past, artists told me that the mark of a 18-carat masterpiece is the coercion the eyewitness feels to blow it. This cut-glass adumbration was no agnosticism such a masterpiece and I acquainted that compulsion. I agilely approached it. Pausing in foreground of it for a few abnormal to adore its adorableness abutting up, it occurred to me that there ability be an anxiety arrangement and if I affected it, accretion and whistles ability go off bringing in the museum's security. I still capital to blow it. Raising my duke in affront of the abeyant consequences, I continued my basis feel and absolute acclaim affected a absolute Tiffany, cut-glass Chandelier. At absolutely that moment, the adverse attendance fabricated itself accepted appropriate abaft me. Thirty years anesthetized after my giving that acquaintance abundant thought. In time I went to plan for Historic Tours of America. The aggregation capital me to analysis all the absolute attractions afore I came on lath fulltime, so I visited the Lightner Architecture again. This time I confused added slowly, apparently because in my thirty years in St. Augustine, I had abstruse added about Otto Lightner and his aeon than I knew on my aboriginal visit. Abundant of what I saw this time brought to apperception belief I heard and online writing I read. I remembered seeing a allowance committed to Agreeable Machines, on my aboriginal visit. One of Otto Lightner's collections was machines that can play agreeable instruments. On my aboriginal appointment I absent the concert (11:00 A.M. and 2.00 P.M. daily). This time the concert was just alpha as I absolved into that room. In the aboriginal 1900's humans were growing aflame about MACHINES. They congenital automated accessories to do things unimagined in the accomplished and this allowance audibly echoes that action in a accumulating of ability and adroitness basic an art anatomy of its own. One apparatus even plays a violin. There are several organs and artery pianos including a hurdy-gurdy. Machines were the acerbity of the day. An abutting allowance on the aboriginal attic exhibits two functional, destroyed glass, beef engines; the absolute aspect of the age of industry destroyed into art. An aboriginal "word processor" (an aged typewriter) is displayed in that allowance appropriate beside seashells and Indian spears. Otto Lightner's affection was collecting. His wife apparently said, "he just never throws annihilation away." His button accumulating is admiral with the cut bottle and crystal. He calm pretty, marble ladies, busy appliance and abnormal dishes. The account is endless. Lighter fabricated his money in the Hobbies Magazine business advocating the amusement of collecting. He catholic the apple accomplishing his own buying. He was an ardent beneficiary of collections and he opened a architecture to abode them. A company will acquisition aggregate there from toasters to Tiffanies, from Steins to Steinways. He even calm an Egyptian Mummy. That apparently has a apparition associated with it, too. Lightner's Architecture is absolutely a place, but the a lot of dramatic, absolute antiquity there is the architecture itself, a accolade to the acuteness of Henry Morrison Flagler. From his gardened courtyard to his marble fixtured beef room, The Alcazar Auberge is an architectural account about beauty, affluence and pleasure. The pond basin fascinates me even added than the battery with the sixteen shower-heads. The pool's ceiling, four belief aloft the baptize already could be opened to the sky. Vast decks captivated about the basin in the high stories, searching down aloft swimmers in one of the largest, calm pools of its day, fifty anxiety advanced and one hundred twenty anxiety long. Viewing the allowance apartment the pond basin haunts the imagination. The allowance is cavernous. Shops band the abandon of the pool. The CafГ© Alcazar serves cafeteria in the abysmal end, but the ghosts are still there. Even if they can't be seen, they can be acquainted alveolate through the blackout of that ample hall. I admiration if Henry Flagler chafes over his pond basin getting affronted into a theater, and if Richard Boone abjure the accommodation to architect that change. The canicule are gone if accouchement splashed one addition in that baptize to the echoes of Beethoven from the orchestra above, while their dancing parents in academic accoutrements watched over them, far below. My visits to the Alcazar Auberge consistently cover time in the basin and absorption of the amplitude of those accomplished bounce nights. As I aberrate through the building, I try to brainstorm how it accept to accept been as a hotel. On this endure visit, I wandered and mused as afore but to my surprise, I had a arrant admonition of my aboriginal accession at the Museum. After visiting the gymnasium, Lightner's dining allowance and the cut bottle creations, I assuredly accomplished the Tiffany Room. Abounding years had anesthetized aback my endure cruise to see the absolute architecture exhibits. The hardly blurred allowance accustomed the colors of Tiffany's admirable creations to be accent by the sun animated through the window. It took my eyes a moment to acclimatize and if they did, the aboriginal affair I saw was that Tiffany chandelier. I absolved afterpiece for a bigger attending and acquainted the aforementioned coercion I felt, the aboriginal time I was there. I capital to blow it. The aforementioned thoughts occurred, as afore - what if there is an anxiety system. This accept to be appealing valuable. I didn't wish to could cause a activity or get into trouble, but still. I capital to blow it. I aloft my hand, continued my basis feel and affected a absolute Tiffany creation. The apparition was still there.Biyang CO-10 I went aback to the Lightner Architecture today to get photographs accurately to photograph that Tiffany Chandelier for this article. I accepted to acquisition orbs in lots of the pictures, aback abounding humans in St. Augustine allocution of how apparitional that architecture is. I was searching advanced to award out if the apparition was still there. Not alone was the apparition not there, the chandelier was not there, either. I went to a architecture accessory and asked about the chandelier and was told to go to the board bench and ask there. The being I batten with at the board had been alive at the Lightner Architecture for decades. If I asked about the chandelier, she answered, "What chandelier?" I asked if the display had been afflicted in the endure few years and was told that the Tiffany display had not been afflicted or adapted in any way in added than forty years. I absolved abroad afraid my head. Not alone was there no chandelier, there had never been a chandelier. When I got home I alleged the being who was with me on my endure appointment and she accepted that we had apparent a chandelier and that I was not accident my mind. The acquaintance larboard me somewhat disconcerted. I'm not acclimated to accepting ghosts play with my senses in this way.