Interesting places I have been this summer (1)

At the end of last August I finally took some days off, and once again headed for Puglia. It's my wife Beatrice's home region, so over time it has become a second home for me too (me and my wife Beatrice go back a long while together now...). It felt like I had my last holiday ages before (and it probably WAS ages before...) so we decided to do something we never did before, maybe also to show off a bit with our daughter Anita.
For starters, we booked a suite in a very nice (and usually expensive, we got it from booking.com) hotel in Lecce called Torre del Parco.
http://www.torredelparco.com/
'Torre' means tower, and the hotel is actually built in an structure dating back to the XV century... Anita was really excited at the idea of staying in a real castle, and the suite was everything we expected a suite in a castle tower to be: an extravagant place of luxury, with a four-poster bed, a large Jacuzzi-style bath (a small swimming pool as far as I am concerned), etc. ...

Anita was beside herself with excitement, and it was difficult to convince her that we actually had to leave the room to visit the city... luckily after much coaxing and bribing we succeeded, and spent some lovely hours in the city center: Lecce is one of the nicest towns in the south of Italy, with many archeological and architectural sights and places where to simply hang out and relax. When we finally headed to the hotel we were really happy at the prospect of resting under the vaulted ceiling of our unconventional suite... unfortunately, something went wrong - at least, for me...

I don't remember at what time it started, but that night I experienced the worst nightmare I had in years, possibly in my entire life. Just remembering it makes my skin crawl and look behind my back as I write. I don't remember the details, but it was me, Beatrice and Anita, we where walking together heading somewhere, and Anita lagged behind, so I was forced to stop once in a while and see what she was up to... and there she was, stopping on her tracks as I looked at her, and then suddenly moving very fast toward us, "The Ring"-like, when I was just turning my face away, so that only with the corner of my eye I could see her face twist into the most horrible demon-face, Linda Blair style! I was terrified, and slowly resurfaced from my sleep, only to enter in the worst half-sleep state I can remember, where I was conscious to be in the castle suite, but still capable to conceive that some terrible possession might have really occurred, and that my demon-daughter could be anywhere in the vast, silent and dark suite, as I curled in my bedsheets...

Needless to say, when I finally rose the next morning I didn't feel exactly that my money was well spent in the castle suite! Anita was as lovely as ever, but it took a while for me to dispel the scary images from my mind. I even spent some time considering to inquire about any possible hauntings in the hotel, but then concluded that it wasn't probably something the hotel staff might have been interested in discussing. I certainly didn't feel like talking about it at length yet. Writing about it now revived something of the thrill I felt (nothing even nearly pleasant...) but I felt it was worth recording somewhere!