The Haunted Hotel May

Editor's Note: I can find no reference that a Hotel May exited in the Vincennes, Indiana, area. Has anyone ever heard of it?

Submitted by: "Timothy EWING"   <timewing@charter.net>
Date: 09/11/2008 
Subject   The Haunted Hotel May in Vincennes   Indiana
 

Hello,

My mother Thelma D.  Ewing passed away  in 1993 at 70 years of age. In stumbling recently onto  some of  her papers, I found a recollection she put into writing. I  had heard her  relate this story, but had never known she had written it  down in such  detail. The following is a transcription in it's   entirety;

The summer of 1954  my husband and I went on a vacation trip from  Sparta, WI. to Louisville,  KY. Our way back home took us through the small  town of Vincennes, IN.  As it was getting dusk, we decided to stop for the  night. As we  approached a large building, a long narrow vertical sign lit up  all  around its perimeter with plain naked light bulbs, announcing this was the   Hotel May. I remarked how strange they didn't have florescent lights. We  could  see no light coming from inside the building.  

We parked at the curb and approached the  front  door which was placed at the corner of the building, and climbed a few   cement steps. We stopped inside and saw a desk with an old fashioned  lamp  burning dimly at one side. The lobby was devoid of all furniture,  the pigeon  holes for mail behind the desk were empty. A staircase to the  upper floor was  at the right of the desk. There was a secondary dim glow  to the lobby but I  could not determine the source.  

Utter empty silence greeted us. Then I  spotted a  door half open between the desk and the staircase. While the room  was  dark I started to step toward it, thinking someone may be asleep in there.   My husband put out his arm and stopped me, saying don't go back there,  we're  leaving.

As we  pulled  away from the curb, I looked back but couldn't see anything, not even   the lights of the sign. I said, "Oh, they must have turned the sign  off."  About a half block away my legs started to itch badly, clear up to  my knees. I  said if I didn't know better, I'd say I had been walking in  tall  weeds.

We drove  further  and came to a hotel busy with people and activity. I told the man at  the  desk that we had stopped at the Hotel May. He said, "Oh, you couldn't have   been in the Hotel May, that was tore down two years ago. There's nothing  there  now except the basement and you would fall right into it. The  weeds on the  property would be up to your knees." I opened my mouth to  tell him about it,  but my husband nudged me.

I asked my husband why he had stopped me, and he said, "They would   have thought we were crazy."

Signed, Thelma  Ewing


Mom once  told me that she wanted to return and see for herself  the following day, but  Dad wouldn't do it. She also wondered what would  have happened had she walked  to the front desk. Fall in the basement? Be  trapped in time? If anyone has any  information wether if in fact there  ever was a Hotel May in Vincennes, please  either post a reply ot contact  me at timewing@charter.net  

Thank you,


Tim  Ewing