Here's an interesting place, especially if you live in Texas. Has anyone heard of it?

www.hcnonline.com/arti...e_1024.txt

Italian Maid Cafe gives off ghostly vibes

By DIANE TEZENO
Updated: 11.04.08
For Jamie Rogers of Texas Paranormal Researchers, the Italian Maid Café and the hotel that sits atop the quaint eatery in Richmond is a “ghosthunter’s dream.”

The café at 300 Morton St. sits on a stretch of street that has been the site of a number of ghostly apparitions and phenomenon through the years, according to Alex Ciocca, owner of the café.

According to local stories, a man committed suicide and another man hung himself in one of the rooms of the now empty 23-room National Hotel above the café.

“It's like stepping back into time, an era of entire hotel floors that shared community bathrooms,” said Rogers.

The owner of the café and one of his delivery drivers, Bobbie King, have seen numerous ghostly sightings and heard unusual sounds in and around the establishment.

Ciocca first encountered something strange when he would travel through the hotel to get to the roof to change the lights on his business sign overhanging the building.

“Every time I would get to this one spot in the hotel, this eerie feeling would come over me and I would get really scared,” said Ciocca.

When the café owner discovered that a couple of his customers were ghosthunters, he invited them to check out the spot.

The café and hotel soon became a popular site for local ghost hunters, including Rogers.

Rogers and several fellow investigators armed with electromagnetic pulse meters, have investigated the café many times.

During one of the visits, the investigators were “frightened out of our wits by a banging noise and a light mist floating in a corner.”

On another visit to the cafe, Rogers went in with a Channel 13 news crew to conduct an investigation for a Halloween news story the station was working on.

“We kind of chuckled about it, thinking they wouldn't catch anything with so many people moving around, but believe it or not when we reviewed our photos their was a giant, misty orb directly over the TV cameraman’s head,” said Rogers.

Also, her crew captured sounds of whispers and footsteps following investigators into one of the National Hotel rooms where a man was said to have committed suicide.

Although confronted by many skeptics, Rogers takes the field of paranormal investigations seriously.

To prepare for an investigation, she and other investigators create a case file and gather background information on everyone involved with the premises.

“We ask a lot of questions about relationships, drug use, alcoholism, abuse to rule out any outside source of phenomena,” said Rogers.

Once they believe they have a credible case, the investigators spend an evening or entire night at the location, along with the family and friends that are involved.

Investigators then analyze the data gathered with electromagnetic field meters, listen to audio tapes from the investigation for electronic voice phenomena and watch video for the presence of orbs or mists.

Rogers then presents her findings to the subjects involved.

“We do not cleanse houses or buildings nor do we offer any type of psychic counseling,” said Rogers.

“We offer only a scientific approach to ruling out the normal in abnormal situations.”

Debbie Boren, owner of The Flying Pig Café and Sandwich Shop, didn’t need Rogers to furnish her with proof of the area’s ghostly phenomena, because she has seen it with her own eyes.

Boren recently relocated her business to a spot several doors down from the Italian Maid Cafe, and also is beneath a portion of the hotel.

On more than one occasion in the last four months, Boren has reported seeing a ghostly apparition she described as “a young man, 20ish in age, with a slight build, dark hair, who peeks out and just smiles.”

“That is the same way Mary, the owner of the former shop that was here, described him,” said Ciocca.

“The scary part is that Debbie never knew Mary, but they both described the ghost in the same way.”

The night of the Hurricane Ike, Boren and her husband, a retired Houston Police Department homicide detective and the couple’s son heard what sounded like furniture being moved around in the hotel and another time, the sound of a heavy ball rolling across the floor.

They went outside before the storm arrived to look and see if someone was in the hotel above, but saw nothing.

“Both I and my husband are both pretty skeptical people, and I’m not a big ghost-type person, but now I have no doubt,” said Boren of her experience during the hurricane and in the months since moving into her new location.

Of her many visits to the Italian Maid Café, Rogers said that no two times have been the same.

“The Italian Maid is always a bustling place that's full of energy. Energy like that can be residual and carry over into the off hours when the store's closed,” said Rogers.

According to Rogers, there are several active sites for paranormal activity in Fort Bend County.

“But I would have to say that the Morton Street area of Downtown Richmond is the most active. That is to say that is where most of our results have been found,” said Rogers.

“That's probably why we've been back so many times, it's guaranteed results with that place. I wouldn't call it the Richmond Terror or anything like that, but the fact that we always get some kind of results make it an ideal place for training and accomplishment,” said Rogers.

Sounds a great place for a ghost investigation - but way too spooky for me!

That sounds like a scary place, what a price to pay for enjoying spag bol!

Sounds like a scary place but a great place for an investigation. Sounds like you wouldn't be disappointed in your search.