Taking the Cure

L1010045, originally uploaded by edrahe.

Some claim its haunted. My wife and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary during our overnight stay this past weekend.

The Original Springs Hotel in Okawville, Illinois, is a well known Southern Illinois institution where for more than a century folks from all over the region and country have come to soak in the healing mineral water. We each enjoyed a massage and the hotel's famous mineral baths.

If you go for the massage, ask for Claude Bell. Claude has been a massage therapist there since 1938. By my math that's 70 years! Claude can tell you a story or two, or three, about all the characters who've been on his table. I aked him about the ghosts that supposedly haunt the hotel. He just laughed and said that in all his years there he's never seen a ghost. I didn't have a chance to ask Claude much else about his job or the hotel because his work put me to sleep!

So, if you live near St. Louis I would reccomend taking a weekend of the cure at the Original Springs Hotel.