Motel Hell is my new book. Here is the beginning of it just to whet your appetite…..
I haven’t written much in recent months as I was lacking the motivation. After writing about the black-eyed kids, nothing much scared me enough to get me interested to write. I began a book early last year on haunted hotels but found the topic was already well-covered and the same old places discussed over and over. Then, I remembered Trip Advisor! I had come across a few reviews by people who spent a terrifying night or two in a hotel that was occupied by something sinister. As I went back over my notes, I began to feel a growing sense of excitement as many of these reviews are both chilling and yet, quite honestly, funny. So, for several days, I scoured that website and Yelp looking for similar reviews and guess what? I found quite a few. I had found my motivation again to write.
So here we go. I present them in no particular order nor have I focused on any particular place. Yet, in this book, you will find reviews that will chill you and some that may make you laugh. The lesson to be learned is to be careful where you book into to –to use a play on the old Motel 6 tagline – Motel Hell – where the ghosts play with the lights for you!
The original idea for a haunted hotel book came from a few of my own experiences. So, we will start with those to put you in the right frame of mind.
My Haunted Hotel Stays
I don’t know about you, but when I stay at a hotel, I generally hope and expect to get a good night’s sleep in a certain degree of comfort. I always pray that the couple next door doesn’t decide to be too amorous (and noisy) and that the guy across the hall isn’t going to watch CNN at 5:30 am in the morning at high volume. The room is only to sleep in really and therefore, having paid an exorbitant amount to sleep in it, that is what I expect to achieve. Of course, I habitually check the bed carefully for signs of bed bug infestation. That’s my expectation of a hotel and it is most likely yours. Sometimes, however, the room is already occupied, and it is you that disturbs ‘their’ peace.
I had an interesting experience recently at a hotel I stayed in that resulted in me checking out and finding somewhere else with an ‘unoccupied’ room. I checked into a hotel in the Netherlands and was given a room. The room initially looked good. It was very large and furnished in period style. I took off my coat and began to unpack. However, I heard a sound that was a cross between a tapping and a dripping sound. It seemed to emanate from a big old closet standing in the corner. I went to the closet and listened, but it was the sort of noise that you cannot seem to trace. I opened the closet and it stopped. Thinking perhaps it was from next door or the heating, I resumed unpacking. However, when I closed the closet, the noise started again. By now, I was puzzled, and I investigated that closet and area of the room it was in, pretty closely. I pushed it, rocked it. Looked inside it for a cause – an explanation. Each time, I went close to that closet, the sound stopped. I began to feel the hairs on my neck stand up and I decided I couldn’t stay there.
I called reception and told them about the noise and said that there was no way I could put up with it. They said they would send someone up right away. After 5-minutes of constant clicking or knocking sounds, and an increasingly strange atmosphere, I was determined to fight my case that I simply couldn’t and wouldn’t stay there. The hotel lady knocked on the door peering in at first. I told her about the noise and she walked straight over to that closet and barely 5-seconds later she said “Yes, I couldn’t sleep with that either Sir.”
“You heard it then?” I asked, surprised.
“Oh yes,” she said.
She left promising to find me another room.
After waiting for another 5-minutes in that room, I could no longer stand it and I packed and went back down to reception. Within 5-minutes, they informed me the hotel was fully booked and they had transferred me to another Hotel. I asked if the room was haunted and was told they did sometimes have an ‘issue with that particular room. I was pleased to leave.
To be honest, I travel a lot and have slept in many hotels’ rooms – probably thousands and only in rare circumstances had any issues. For a while, I was an IT consultant for a big firm in London and they sent me to work at a large UK bank’s IT department outside of Manchester. I was there a few months and would commute up Sunday night and back home Friday afternoon. I stayed in a number of hotels in Knutsford and one, in particular, was haunted. Unfortunately, I no longer recall its name, but it was part modern and part older. For most stays there, I was allocated a room in the modern part of the hotel and found it an excellent place to stay. On one trip, however, they gave me a room in the old part.
It was already late when I checked in and I went straight to the room and got into bed. It was a dark room – oak paneled. It didn’t switch off the bedside light and kept the TV on at a low volume as I didn’t like the ‘feel’ of the room at all. It wasn’t long before, I kept hearing a knocking sound. On investigation, this seemed to come from behind the paneling, so I settled down once more believing it to be heating pipes or something. No sooner had I closed my eyes than – whoosh! All the covers were pulled off my bed in one quick movement. I sat bolt upright (as you do), shocked. Now, I’m sorry but I won’t tolerate this type of nonsense anymore. I go up calmly, dressed, packed and went back to the front desk to request a room in the newer part of the hotel. Once again, there was no surprise on the part of the receptionist. She just asked me if I’d experienced something strange in a sort of nonchalant fashion while changing the room allocation in the computer. “It happens,” she told me.
Motel Hell – Out Now!
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