In Chattanooga, by the Tennessee River, stands a three-story wooden building, the Cairo Hotel. This hotel is the most haunted in America. So haunted that not even ghosts dare to inhabit it. Therefore, you might think that the hotel is deserted; but nothing is further from reality. The Cairo Hotel is full of haunted stuff. But haunted stuff of a kind subtler than ghosts, elemental creatures, vampires, werewolves et cetera… Of a kind that made President John Quincy Adams say, when he stayed overnight there after unsuccessfully trying to solve the Muskogee Indians’ mess (the Muskogee Indians had drunk all the coffee from the southern states in protest against the Treaty of Indian Springs). He said “Fiddlesticks! How awful, Sweetie!”, and immediately went to invite the Muskogees to spend a night at the hotel. The next morning, the Muskogees agreed to sign a new treaty by which they ceded most of their land to Georgia and gave Adams a bandolier bag.
