You're in town for the weekend and looking for a great hotel to rest your head. Fortunately, you discover one right within your price range. You think it's going to be a simple process, but some unusual things occur during your stay. These people managed to walk away from a simple hotel visit with some bizarre stories.
1. It's Not Worth The Savings
A French budget hotel where a friend and I stayed before embarking on a camping trip. As my friend and I were getting dressed in the morning, one of the cleaning staff stuck their hand through the open window towards my handbag which was sitting on a table! Yeah, I started using Trip Advisor after that...
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2. Pay To Leave
We booked a place that looked really nice in the advertisements. When we arrived, it was actually a man's house, out of which he ran a tattoo parlor. The kitchen was covered in week-old food, the entire house smelled like pot (while we were there), and he had guys coming into the living room to get ink. We were feeling pretty nervous by the end of the first night, so we decided to move. The owner got so angry he started threatening us and we ended up having to bribe him to be allowed to leave.
3. Stairway To Heaven
A small dusty hallway ending in an unmarked staircase. Climb the stairs to the fourth floor (this information wasn't provided but the fourth floor was the only one with lights, so we figured).
The stairs are completely dark, there's old furniture strewn across the steps.
The rooms were cramped and stank, the lady who ran the place only spoke Chinese, and the price was higher than advertised.
On the upside, the room had air conditioning, which is a big deal in Taiwan in the summer.
4. Impromptu Hotel
It was in Jiangxi province, China. I roll into town at like four or five o'clock and I need a place to stay, so I walk into this modern looking place by the bus station. Turns out it's so modern it's not all the way built yet.
There's no one at the front desk, so I yell, and the guy I passed in the parking lot doing donuts on a scooter comes in. He's inebriated. He quotes me a really good price for a room so I take a look at it; there's exposed concrete everywhere, wires coming out of the walls (live, maybe?), basically a construction site. But I'm only going to be there one night and the price is right so I take it. As best I can tell, I'm the only occupant of this massive hotel.
So I go hiking the next day and when I'm back and ready to leave the hotel guy, still inebriated, asks me where I'm going next. I tell him, and he says, basically, "OK cool, I'll get beverages and tickets". Which he does. He's off like a shot. So he blows off his job and goes with me to the next town, four and a half hours away, sharing his drinks with the bus driver and being pretty cool for a random hotel clerk.
We get dinner when we arrive (which was incredible), but after that he wants to find some female company, so I excuse myself and flee to the next province.
I still wonder whether he worked there or not.
5. You Bashing Turkmenbashi?
Hotel "Turkmenbashi" in, well Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. When you pull up, it looks like an emerald, sitting above the Caspian Sea with the desert behind. The lobby is highly impressive, with green marble and large fish tanks.
Then you get to the rooms... I don't think they'd been cleaned since the Soviets left. The AC hardly worked (it was well over 100 during the day and not much better at night), the food was horrible, and to this day I have no idea how I didn't pick up bed bugs.
On the upside, the bar opened at 10 am so my "translator", my Ukrainian colleague and I would drink the local drinks through the day.
6. To The Window, To The Wall... (Same Thing)
Metro Hotel in Hagersten, Sweden, right outside Stockholm. It was a converted warehouse and had interior windowless rooms, which is a fire code violation in the US. The location is in an industrial district bereft of anything but sketchy people. My bag gathered dust bunnies on the roll down the hall. The bathroom smelled like pee. I told my kids they could not walk barefoot nor take a shower without wearing flip-flops. The curtain was so thin that the industrial strength security lighting lit up our room at night. The elevator was a cargo elevator, which was kind of fun. And, if you canceled any portion of your reservation without a minimum of 24 hours notice, they charged you the full reservation amount plus a cancellation fee.
Anyway, the moment I got my computer on the wifi, I booked us into a much better more expensive hotel for the rest of our stay in Stockholm, but one I knew was clean. When we drove away after two nights, we were missing a license plate.
7. Gently Used
Econo Lodge in Pasadena, California. I checked in, got to my room and laid down on the bed. When I looked over to turn out the beside table lamp there was a used rubber hanging off of the lampshade. I decided that I wasn't going to stay the rest of the night. I packed up, got my money back, and went to a different hotel. My total stay was about 15 minutes.
8. By 'Chateau' We Mean 'Rent By The Hour'
The Chateau Royale Inn in Lake Geneva. Great location, awful hotel. It was so bad I wonder if it’s a front for something. Everything was dirty, service was awful, it was truly a nightmare.
It’s in a popular tourist town. It seems like with just a little effort it would be very profitable, so I just don’t understand the business plan. Maybe there’s an unlimited supply of overflow from the crowded hotels elsewhere in town, but I highly doubt that any legitimate tourist stays there twice. If it’s the only hotel available, don’t stay there, look for something 30 miles away and commute.
I also wonder about some of the reviews I see online. Some are legit and say how bad it is. But hundreds of others do not, making me think those are fake reviews.
Pixabay Geneva, Switzerland.
9. It's One Of A Kind
The Westbury Hotel near Earl's Court, London.
My girlfriend hadn't traveled much internationally, and the Westbury was the default option in a package trip we were buying. I tried to tell her it wouldn't be anywhere near as nice as the average U.S. hotel, but she didn't believe me.
The common areas of the hotel were fine, if a bit tatty and rundown.
We got to the room, however, and it was a nightmare. There wasn't a bed: the mattress was actually on the floor. It looked like the carpets hadn't been vacuumed in a couple weeks, and there were crumbs and crumpled up straw wrappers on the floor. The TV looked like it was from 1994 (this was 2004). There was a small balcony, but someone had removed the doorknob; the ever-resourceful people who owned the place had stuffed paper towels in the holes to keep the cold air out.
The "shower" was a tiny corner of the bathroom. There wasn't a door or even a "lip" around the shower area - it was just a corner of the room where they'd installed a shower head, drain and curved curtain rod. The shower curtain was covered in mildew, so you didn't want to touch it, but that was impossible, even for my 5'2 girlfriend -- the shower was that small. This was especially puzzling because the bathroom itself was quite large -- almost as large as the bedroom. But here was this 18" shower that flooded the whole bathroom when you used it.
I think my favorite thing was this exchange between my girlfriend and the front desk girl after we noticed that there wasn't a washcloth in the room:
Girlfriend: Excuse me, could I get a washcloth? There doesn't seem to be one in our room.
Front Desk: YOU AMERICANS! EVERY TIME YOU COME YOU ASK FOR WASHCLOTH! WHAT ARE WE, WASHCLOTH FACTORY? PEOPLE ASK ME 50 TIMES A WEEK, 'YOU HAVE WASHCLOTH?' I TELL YOU WHAT I TELL THEM -- NO! NO WASHCLOTH HERE!
GF: But if you get asked for a washcloth '50 times a week', don't you think that's a sign you should maybe order some?
10. French Hospitality
A hotel in Paris. It was in the middle of summer. There was no air conditioning, and the windows barely opened. It was the size of a shoebox, the carpet and furniture were all the same color (light purple), and the service was horrible. Want your room cleaned? They will do it when they are ready. Want an extra towel? Better go to a store and buy one yourself. Want some restaurant suggestions? Scoffs.
11. Rule No. 1: Don't Tell Anyone (Also Rule No. 2)
Every time I have ever moved, the house I was moving to has never vacated on time, so at the last minute, I've had to stay for a week or two at some motel. The most recent one I like to call Fight Club.
I asked to be moved three times because I wound up next to a room with constant screaming matches going on. The parking lot, where no doubt a lot of crime was going down, had brawls happening every day. Sometimes it was homeless people, one time it was a huge gang of about a dozen people going at it. The fight actually spread to the inside of the hotel where they were chasing each other down the halls and they were kicking in doors.
The front desk clerk got beat up. He had to go to the hospital after he called the cops, who showed up nearly an hour later. I kicked the leg out from a table and held it like a baseball bat, and I waited by the door waiting for my turn, waiting to see if anyone was going to kick my door in.
After about a week of this, I left and I spent three days sleeping in my car waiting for those people to vacate my house.
12. Rats
On a family trip to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a few years ago. Everyone in the place would gather at the pool and hot tub area in the late afternoon, adults and kids. There was this really odd smell near the hot tub; an icky, rotting smell. Thought it was the trash since there was a communal grill in the same area, it was summer, and people are slobs. Three nights, every night hotel guests at the hot tub, kids dunking themselves in the water, playing and spitting it at each other, kid stuff.
By the third night, the smell was really distinct. I was sitting with my 6-year-old, both of us in the hot tub. I was playing around with the filter lid for no particular reason when it popped out of place. To my absolute horror, the most wretched decaying smell wafted up and inside the filter basket was a huge half-boiled rat. Everyone screamed, freaking out ensued.
Called manager and security. Not at all amused about the thought of all the diseases that me and my kid, along with the other guests, had been stewing in for three nights. Some kids had that decayed rat water in their mouths (not mine, yay!). I have never scrubbed myself and my son as much as that evening. I wanted to remove a layer or two of skin. They did comp the whole stay, but it was disgusting.
13. Just Like Magic
Stayed in a hotel in Greece as a part of a tour package. When we got there, we were told that the hotel, as well as the neighboring buildings, had no power or water. We were forced to carry our bags to the third floor with no help from any of the staff.
After hauling all our luggage upstairs, we were told it would be another 2 hours before anything was fixed. Our tour guide decided to take us for a walk around town to pass time. Fast forward 2 hours later with no progress whatsoever. I decided to go to the hotel next door, only to see it is fully functioning. When I ask the front desk if they were having power issues they had no idea what I was talking about. I also noticed the room prices were half the price of what the hotel next door was charging.
I go back to my hotel to confront the staff about the situation. They look at me confused when I told them the hotel next door has power and water. When I mention the room prices there were nearly half price the last lady at the front desk became passive aggressive. The power was magically restored within 5 minutes.
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14. Do It Yourself
I stayed at a place about 10 years ago and this place was barely a step above just sleeping outside. Hard beds, water spots, mold, faint smell of smoke, etc.
What really did it for me was when I wanted to take a bath. The bathtub had no stopper, and it wasn't one of those deals where you flipped a switch to stop the drain, so I called down to the front desk to ask if they had any stoppers. Their answer? Get one of the small face towels and jam in the drain, fill the bath, and by the time the water slowly drained out, I would be done.
15. Smoking Room, Please
Our truck was in the shop and my co-driver and I booked a stay in a hotel nearby. The sewer line below the hotel had broke and the city was in the midst of fixing it, but the smell ...
We spent several hours in our room battling the stench, but it was too much. We asked the front desk if there was another room we could have away from where they were working on the sewer line. They only had one other room. A smoking room. Neither of us smoke. The smell of smoke was infinitely preferable and even helped mask the oppressive stench from outside.
16. Spent Less Money For Double The Problems
Me and my wife stayed at a hotel in a rural place in Texas. We decided to cheap out a bit on the hotel cause we figured it couldn't be too bad. It wasn't spectacularly bad, but it was bad enough that I'll never cheap out on a hotel again.
The hot water wasn't working so they switched us around to a few different rooms before determining that the building's hot water unit was broken. After taking a cold shower, I decided to try the complimentary coffee they keep in the room. Huge mistake.
That night we got treated to a serenade by the other people staying at the hotel that I think was titled "late night arguments." It was a long serenade that lasted pretty much the entire 8 hours I was trying to sleep on a deformed spring mattress.
So the next day, after having a breakfast of stale cereal and warm milk, me and my wife go out. When we got back, we found out that they locked us out of our room. There was a different person working the front that day, so they were just as confused as we were about what to do about it. After about 30 minutes, they made us a new pair of key cards.
We had a bit of time to sit down at that point, so I decided to try out their free WiFi. It turns out the WiFi isn't free. You had to be a subscriber to some network or other to use it. So I connected to the network of some adjacent business that provided a speed somewhere between dial-up and snail mail.
On the way back home, me and my wife decided to double our budget for a hotel in the future.
17. The Italian Job
Milan, Italy. Couldn't find a hotel near the airport late at night. My wife asked a taxi driver where a hotel was. The taxi driver said, "follow me."
Drove us to the sleaziest hotel in Milan. Weird people in the lobby. Trash all over. By then it was midnight so we took a room and hoped for the best. I literally slept all night with one eye open. Left at the next morning and left my car keys on the table in the room. Got back to the airport in the United States and found I had no car keys. Just the icing on the cake.
18. Making A Smokey Exit
I had a traumatic experience at a hotel in Texas a few years ago. I was with my son, who was 9 at the time. First night there and all of a sudden, the fire alarm goes off. My son freaks out, and I try to calm him down, saying someone probably pulled the alarm by accident. As I'm putting on my shoes, he opens the door. Thick, white smoke barrels into the room. He is terrified and so am I. We are on the 5th floor. I know we have to get out, so I grab his hand, tell him we're going for the stairs at the end of the hallway and to take a deep breath.
We get into the hallway, and the smoke is so thick we can't see 2 inches in front of our faces. Breathing in means instant choking. Running on pure adrenaline, I run to the end of the hallway and start pounding on the wall to find the door to the stairwell. I find it, throw it open, and down the stairs we fly. We burst outside, exhaling white puffs while we cough and choke. Fire trucks show up, we are stuck outside with nothing but our pajamas. Finally, at 2 a.m., a fireman calls everyone over for an announcement. It wasn't a fire, some jerks set off all of the fire extinguishers in the hallways and pulled the alarm.
19. Bed Sores
My dad was staying in Thailand on business. It was just one night, so he was all packed and just using the room to sleep after a long and eventful day. He slept great and woke up when he realized that he literally could not move. He was paralyzed from the number of bed bugs that bit him through the night. It took like 2-3 minutes of intense focus and slow movements before he could sit up. His entire body was covered in small red sores from the bugs.
20. Birthday Night Fail
My boyfriend took me out to a hotel for my birthday night, to be part romantic, and partly let me sleep in for the first time in months (I had an almost one-year-old baby who still to this day wakes up at the crack of dawn). He didn't know anything about hotels and accidentally booked us a night in the nastiest place with stained bed sheets, funky smells, bad TV, and the works. We sleep there and at 5 a.m. his phone goes off. I decided to just go take a nice bath and relax since I couldn't sleep. I go into the bathroom, turn on the light, and at least 15 cockroaches are sitting in the tub. Couldn't get out of there fast enough.
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21. A New Lock
We were on route to Washington, D.C., when we started to lose daylight and had to find a place to stay. The motel we found didn't have a paved parking lot and the air was full of dust. I think I recall seeing some piles of cement blocks but not much else.
We pull in and a lady with a pink muumuu and hair curlers comes out to our car, telling us she owns the place and that all the rooms are taken and the rest are being renovated. Behind her is her son: a meaty behemoth that may not have had all the lights on upstairs. She does have one room and she can let us have it at a discount. My dad jumps at this chance.
I remember there was a pool in a courtyard behind the main building. My mother scouted it out first and then insisted we were not to go anywhere near it.
Our room didn't have a door lock on the front door. The bathroom didn't have a door at all. The carpet was a long shag rug in dark blue and green. Nothing felt or looked remotely clean. There was one very hard bed and one lamp, and not much else.
My father phones the front desk to find out why the door lock isn't working. The result was the son knocking on our door with a chair we could use to prop under the doorknob. My father spent the night trying to sleep in a chair by the rigged door. We paid and left early the next day.
22. Too Tired To Care
Earlier this summer a friend and I were driving from San Diego to New Orleans. My friend booked a place because it was cheap and a 3-star hotel. We got there around 2 a.m. and they said we couldn't check in. They said, "we've already marked you as a no-show." We wait 45 minutes while the guy gets it worked out. When we got to the room, the entire floor smelled horrible.
The room's lock was missing, the shower curtain was covered in red stains, all the towels smelled clean but were covered in brown hair, the phone was wet and covered in something, and the beds couldn't have been more uncomfortable.
However, we were extremely tired and already in the room so we decided to just call it a night.
23. Scary Birthday Cake
Staying the night at a hotel in Texas. The hotel doesn't look the best, but not the worst. Lots of families and kids. So anyway, they have an indoor pool. My 15-year-old daughter was accompanying her 4-year-old cousin from the hotel room to the indoor pool area via the only elevator.
She gets on the elevator to a large group of men who were circled around the walls of the elevator. One of them was holding a knife and another one asked her what she was doing on the elevator. The doors hadn't closed yet. She was scared and she ushered her cousin out and told us what happened. We went to front desk to let them know what happened and that we were scared. The front desk clerk said it was okay. They probably had a birthday cake up in their room and the knife was to cut the cake.
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24. Not-So-Pet-Friendly Hotel
Coming in after registering online with a pet-friendly hotel we'd stayed in before. They left us alone our entire stay and the moment we left I had a nasty email explaining how they were going to do an extra charge of $40 for our dog. They had no additional pet fee, so I asked what the issue was.
The next email was from the owner of the hotel going on a hateful rant about how we stayed there often enough that we knew they had a pet fee and that we were going to pay it because it had been charged to our card.
I forwarded all the emails to regional after contacting the company via Twitter for the address. We weren't getting responses calling the hotel directly.
A few days later the entire hotel stay was refunded to my card along with the fee. I'm super confused. I have a new email from the president of this huge global hotel chain. He's apologizing for the local hotel treating us so poorly and made the owner call and apologize. He then credited over a hundred dollars to our reward card for their company so we can go out again at their expense.
Never been back to that hotel but have happily stayed in other hotels by the chain.
25. Awake Before The Crack Of Dawn
Staying in some hotel just outside of Rome. This place was probably a former resort at some point in time, as it looked like it used to be nice.
We asked for a room with 3 beds. In reality, it was 2 beds and a tiny couch, so my 2 friends took the beds and I took the couch. We were woken up at 3:30 a.m. by a rooster just outside the window and an old dog that barked just like the rooster. it was horrible.
I went to take a shower and the water came out as if it was a power washer for 15 seconds, and then a nearly empty water bottle for 15 seconds. It was switching between scalding hot and freezing cold.
For breakfast, we're eating last night's dinner rolls and plain non-flavored yogurt.
I think I remember there being roaches in the room.
26. Shocking Experience
I stayed in a cheap church-run hotel when I went to NYC on a school trip. It's specifically for students, nuns, and clergy, so it was bare bones. When I went into the room, there was a giant flap of cheap paint hanging off the wall, with the plaster exposed. Then when I went to flip on the light, I got electrocuted. I couldn't stand for a bit afterward.
27. Getting Lost Sleepwalking
I used to sleepwalk when I was younger. On vacation, I unlocked the door and walked downstairs. Woke up in the corridor, had no idea which room I was in because it was the first night. I spent about 10 minutes banging on one room, finally, I hear an Asian lady so I ran down the hallway. Luckily enough the second door I tried was right.
28. Insects
I was in Topeka. Decided to stay at Motel 6 to save some money. I get in the bed and feel something crawling on my leg. I throw the cover off, and insects are all over my legs. I get dressed and get out of there PRONTO.
I go to the front desk and they say I can't have my money back, I already paid, no refunds. Finally, she says I can have a different room. I say no, I don't want to stay at your insect-infested motel. I say bring the manager out. She says she's not here.
I walk out and get a room at the Holiday Inn across the street. Wonderful people. Friendly, clean spacious room. I get to my room and go to bed. Next morning I call the manager and ask for my money back. She says no. I say my next call is going to be to American Express and tell them to block the charge. She gives me my money back.
29. Saved Money But Left After 30 Minutes
Found this one place, something of a converted apartment building, the rooms were huge. The office was separate from the building, and it looked like they tried to make more rooms out of it. On the second floor was a huge window duct taped onto the frame. We were tired and continued to the fourth floor.
We get to the door and there was no lock on the door, it was held closed from the outside with a chair. We were hungry and ordered pizza and went to pick it up, so we explored our temporary squalid abode for any more atrocities. There was a full fridge, filled with mold... and mustard, an attic door that led to somewhere dark and crusty, and stains in the bathroom.
Anyway, pizza comes back and we hear "we need to get out of here, there are some guys with knives hanging out." We decide to get out of there. Race down the stairs, and the first floor smelled really bad. Sounded like a few fights coming from somewhere and we weren't going to find out any more than that. We get to the office and ask for a refund.
They didn't want to give us a refund since we were in the room for around 30 minutes.
I said, "Give me a refund, this place should be burned down. You couldn't pay us to actually stay here. We are over 1,000 miles from home, give us something, seriously."
Did I mention this was a family vacation?
30. The Bad Times Overfloweth
Back in high school, my school did a week-long musical exchange program to Cuba. It was absolutely stunning and I enjoyed every bit of it. However, the place we stayed at was a resort, and each room was a tiny cabana that held 3-6 people.
Everything was going great the first few days, until one day we heard this strange gurgling while sleeping. The toilet water was overflowing EVERYWHERE. Not just for one night. The toilet just kept overflowing at the same time, in our cabana every single night until we left. We had no idea why.
It got to the point where we just started closing the bathroom door and clogging the bottom of the door with towels. We took shifts with replacing the towels.
31. Don't Look Back
My cousin and I got to our last stop on a road trip. I get out to check in while my cousin waits in the car. Everyone stares at us. I walk into the tiny, dirty "lobby" and a man with two teeth emerges from his apartment behind the front desk. He makes strange small talk and tells me I look like a Stephanie and he's going to call me Stephanie. He tells me he gets off at 11 and that he gave us the best room, right above his apartment.
I return to my cousin's jeep and she looks horrified. She said a man came up to her jeep, touching it and peeking in until he realized she was still inside. He bolted.
Our room was the last one in front of a large deck and next to a ladder leading down to the man's apartment. We quickly realize that the conjoining door to the room next door is open and has no way to lock. We prop something up against it to keep it closed and unpack. We see scratches down the walls and dents in the walls-- signs of a struggle.
As I'm in the bathroom, the door has about a half inch between the door and the frame where anyone can see through. It's weird, but I deal with it. My cousin calls to me. She points to the main door, where the deadbolt is busted clean off. There's a latch, but nothing to latch onto. The peephole is also covered by a plastic sheet.
My cousin wants to leave, but I tell her we have until 11 until the worker's shift ends and we can sit and think about it. Just then, my mom saw some photos I sent her from the room and sends back two words: "leave now."
My cousin and I literally run to the car and speed out of that parking lot, never turning back.
32. Surprise Waterbed
My family checked in, brought our bags to the room, and planned to change clothes and head out to eat dinner. I sat down on the side of the bed to tie my shoes and noticed it felt weirdly cold. I pulled back the duvet, and everything looked fine. I pressed my hand down on the sheet, and water seeped up from the mattress.
We called the front desk and they sent someone to change the sheets. As they're changing them, my dad pressed down on the mattress again and more water seeped up through the mattress and soaked the sheet. No idea what was spilled on the bed, why it was cold, or why it wasn't noticed when the sheets were originally changed.
33. Light Up The Room
Had a room reserved at a place in Tampa and it looked nice online and it had some good reviews. Driving in the nearby area and it was a little sketchy but I wasn't worried. We checked in and we opened the door and turn on the lights and the walls were covered in roaches of all sizes. Usually, they run when you cut the lights on, but these all looked at me like they were saying, "are you gonna turn the lights back off?"
Went to the front desk and demand my money back. Front desk dude is apologetic and insists on looking at another room. At that point, I'm basically like, "okay buddy, humor me." Open the door and more roaches.
Go back to the front desk and just laughed as the guy did the refund.
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34. Late Night Stranger Danger
My friend and I were working a fitness expo in Vegas and stayed at a cheap hotel to save some money. They have two sections to this hotel. The tower when you first walk in, which is equivalent to a nice hotel. Then they have the back section which you get to by walking through the entire hotel, EXITING the building, and entering another building. This building is next to some type of alley and anyone can just walk in without being seen by any type of employee or security.
That night around 2 a.m., there is a pounding on the door. It woke me up out of a dead sleep. I can see feet under the door and I just stayed as still and quiet as possible. He kept pounding and pounding on the door. He stood there for almost 5 minutes in silence (I could hear his heavy breathing and see his feet under the door). Then started pounding and kicking the door angrily, while making crazy noises. He eventually kicked one last time and then ran down the hall. Less than a minute later we heard 4 loud gunshots down the hall. I have never been so scared in my life. We stayed up all night and talked to the front desk (in the nice part of the hotel) the next morning. They claimed they knew nothing about any gunshots and happily switched us to the secure portion of the hotel.
35. The Sound Of Footsteps
New Year's Eve, 7 or 8 years ago. Was attending a decent sized outdoor shindig (~50-75 people) with my girlfriend at the time. Everyone was welcome to bring tents/crash on the floor inside, but there was a hotel about 2 miles away that seemed much more welcoming.
Checked into the hotel at about 3 am, walked into the room, and the phone starts ringing. A woman who was in the room below us was calling and complaining about the noise we were making. We had literally walked in and my GF had ducked into the bathroom. I don't think we had even said anything. Tried to explain this to the woman, she hung up. A few minutes later my GF leaves the bathroom, walks to the bed and gets in, and the phone rings again. Apparently, the sound of a 110 lb woman walking 15 ft across the floor in this brand new hotel had once again disturbed her sleep. We chuckled about it, turned on the TV to a low volume, and started to wind down. We were pretty tired and quickly decided to sleep. I turned off the bedside light, took off my glasses, and accidentally missed the nightstand, dropping them on the floor. Again, the phone rang - "YOU THINK THIS IS A FREAKING GAME?" I told her in no uncertain terms where to go, how to get there, and what she could do upon arrival.
We briefly discussed the amount of crazy below us, and fell asleep. Woke up a bit later (20-30 minutes?) to beating on the door. She had called the police and told them we were partying, jumping on the floor, and trying to torture her. I explained the situation to the police, invited them in the room to demonstrate the lack of party happening, and just then... the phone rings.
She heard the multiple footsteps in the room (and it's not like the cops were stomping everywhere) and called. I asked the officer to answer and sure enough, she immediately fell in on him, threatening to come up and kick butts, etc. The police were happy to go down a floor and explain that someone walking on the floor in the room above you is not a crime, but threatening people is. She wasn't arrested, but they did shut her up, and came back up to our room to have a chuckle and leave.
Since I was pretty wound up and my shot at sleeping any time soon had been ruined, I unplugged the phone, grabbed my rolling luggage, and paced the room for about an hour and a half. Then I slept like a baby.
Photo by Bogdan Glisik on Unsplash
36. The Master Key
I paid way too much (probably a couple hundred) for a bad motel. It was obvious from the outside that it was bad, but we were desperate because some other plans had fallen through. It was winter in Utah in the middle of the 2002 Olympics, so all the places were gouging and it was way too cold to try to sleep in the car. So we found the one place that had a vacancy and figured we'd deal with it.
It was disgusting. There were stains on the floor and the beds. We bought a sheet at a dollar store to throw over the bed because we didn't want to touch it. There were used towels tossed in a corner when we came in that housekeeping had never bothered to clean up. There were holes in the linoleum on the bathroom floor. There was no shower curtain. Just a disgusting mess of a room.
But that wasn't the worst part. At some point I needed to grab something from the car, so I took the key (they were still using an old metal key), locked the door behind me, and went to get whatever I needed. When I came back I put the key in the door, heard it click open and stepped into the room. Then I got very confused because I saw someone else's bags in the room and the shower was running. I backed out of the room and shut the door, then looked at the number and realized I'd gone up the wrong stairs. Ours was room 28, and I'd gone to room 38. But the key had worked. Did this cheap piece of poo motel only have one key for every door?
How many doors would this key unlock? How many keys were out there that would open our door? I slept with one eye open that night.
Photo by CMDR Shane on Unsplash
37. A Quick Poke
My cousin's son was about 3 playing in a hotel room in Florida and was stuck with a hypodermic needle he found under the bed.
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38. Surprise Visitors
Hotel in Kings Cross (Sydney), it had this door that would slam very loudly and quite regularly throughout the night. So our sleep was relatively disturbed anyway. Then on one of the nights at some point after midnight, housekeeping thought our room was empty and opened the door to let some new guests in.
Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash
39. I Just Want To Take A Shower
We stopped around midnight to find an available room on our way home from vacation, when I decided I was too tired to keep going. We pulled off at an exit that had two options, a La Quinta and a Days Inn. I voted La Quinta, but my husband stressed that he really wanted to see if there was something available at the Days inn first since we happened to stop in at one on the way to our destination and it was actually really nice.
We get into the lobby and they set us up in what was one of the few rooms remaining. Very nice front desk agent tells us that it's just gone done being renovated the price is decent so I figure why not. We get inside and the room is way different than the last Days Inn. The room is painted these super bright almost highlighter type colors and the room smells like paint. At this point, I feel like I am just being picky, but we try to put the a/c on since it's July and it doesn't turn on.
They give us another room, upgrade us to a "suite" for the trouble. So we start walking to the room and are forced to pass these 3 guys leaning against the wall to get to our room which is about two doors down from them. As we walk past and unlock the door they make snide comments about the two of us getting the suite and what we're going to do inside. Super classy, but whatever... I'll get over it. This one smells like paint AND cat pee, but whatever I want to sleep. Try to go and take a shower and the set up is super weird. In every other hotel/home/apartment I have ever been in has had a normal tub spout. This one just has a very tiny tube underneath the handle for the shower and when I turned the shower on it caused a strong stream of water to shoot out. It's actually so strong that it hits the wall at the back of the shower and sprays out into the bathroom. Its strong enough to be semi-painful to my hand, and it is at crotch height for me. Not into this and no way to stop it. Take a video, partly because at this point I cannot stop thinking "what the heck?" and head back to the front desk.
The wonderful front desk clerk is apologetic, asks to see the video and is also very flabbergasted. Offers to escort us to the 3rd room.. the last one they have available. Off the 3 of us go. The last one smells like paint, still terrible colors all of which I was expecting. AC works so I walk into the bathroom to make sure there isn't some stupid issue here. The shower doesn't work at all, neither us nor the front desk can figure out how to turn it on. We get back to the front desk where the poor woman is apologizing over and over and the "owner" is waiting. Front desk agent refunds our card while the owner keeps talking about how she saw nothing wrong with the shower in the second room.
That was both the worst and the oddest experience I have ever had and has so far been the only bad review I have ever left on trip advisor. They tried to publicly smooth things over with an apology response but I think the shower video speaks for itself.
Photo by Laura Marques on Unsplash
40. Charlotte's Web
Planned a trip once and looked into motels/hotels about 30 minutes outside the city. I can't remember the name of the hotel because it wasn't a national chain, plus it was 7 years ago (and I think my mind's done its best to shut out the experience as best it can).
Anyway, the pictures on the website all looked nice. Rooms looked good for what I needed and with a free breakfast, what could go wrong? It was $100 a night, seemed reasonable.
So I get there, and in the large hotel parking lot, there are only about 2-3 cars outside.
I go in, and it takes roughly 15 minutes for someone to meet me at the front desk. I check in, and start off to my room. The elevator door opens and boom, dark hallway, no lights.
I was like "wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut". It was being renovated or something, and you had to walk through the renovation to get to your room.
I get to my room, and it's roughly about half the size I thought it was. I go to the bathroom because I want to shower after a long roadtrip. I turn on the water and the cold water doesn't work. I turn on the hot water, and it never gets hot, it just stays cold.
At this point, I'm getting really frustrated cause I'm paying $100 for this experience. I'm so tired that I say whatever and try to take a nap. I go to sit on the bed and something moves. I don't know what it is at this point, but I know I saw something small move.
I lift the pillow and...........spider nest.
I immediately pack my stuff back up and again walk through the renovation to the elevator. I press the lobby button, the doors shut, and......you guessed it, elevator gets stuck. Now I'm trapped, and after about 3 minutes in there, the lights also go out.
I pull my cellphone out and try calling the main desk. It takes 4 calls before they pick up. They say they'll send someone. After 2 hours, finally someone gets the elevator working and I'm let out.
After I get to the front desk and get my refund, I storm out of the place and toward my car. On the way, I trip on one of those long concrete barriers at the front of parking spots, and promptly break my wrist.
Photo by Егор Камелев on Unsplash
41. Old School Alarm
Driving cross-country from Wisconsin to Florida. Three o'clock in the morning, we've been on the road for hours, and neither of us can keep our eyes open anymore. We agree we have to stop at the next hotel, motel, Holiday Inn...anything.
Shortly we come upon an exit with a hotel. It's easy to tell this, because its name is just "Hotel".
We go in, and it looks pretty shady, but it's late and we're exhausted, so we get a room from the nice Pakistani fellow behind the desk. We only need a few hours sleep, so we request a wakeup call.
Opening the door to our room, we see that it's definitely shady, as everything in the room has been bolted and/or chained to the walls or floor.
At least, everything had been, because it's all gone now. The television, the mirror, the fridge, the end tables, the phone...they've all been stolen, and judging by the conditions left behind, usually, a good amount of force was employed.
We pile our bags between the two beds and both sleep with knives under our pillows.
As I drift off to sleep, my exhaustion-fogged brain catches onto an important detail I had missed earlier...how are they going to leave a wakeup call when we don't have a phone?
7:00 a.m. - KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK "HELLO IN THERE! IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO BEING AWAKE NOW! HELLO! YOU MUST BE GETTING WITH THE WAKING UP!"
42. Quiet on set
We needed a place to stay just one night after attending a concert an hour or so away from home. It only needed to be a simple place to stay, but I found a cheap little place with a spa in the room and though it would be fun to use the opportunity for a bit of romantic night away.
We arrived before the gig and found the place painted a cheesy shade of pink, and the layout of the room was like a shady drive in motel, stained carpet and plastic furniture. The toilet broke two seconds after arriving and we had to call maintenance to fix it. We left for the gig, laughing at what a dodgy place we'd found ourselves in. Later in the night we arrived back at the hotel a little wasted and ready for some fun in the spa.
As soon as we entered the bathroom we were hit with the unmistakable sound of obvious intimacy thumping through the walls. It pounded through the room and we giggled, and when it stopped suddenly we panicked a little that they'd heard us. But we just heard chatting coming from the room next door; small break.
Five seconds later, they're at it again. Suddenly, regular conversation. These guys were going from being intimate to polite conversation in seconds. Eventually, we realized; they were making a video. Finally packed up all their equipment in a van at about 4am and went home, after 7 hours of 'hard' work.
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43. Ramada I'm Out
Ramada Inn - Tyler, TX - Mid 90's.
I was traveling a lot for work. Over 4 years, I averaged 2 round trips per week. I never cared about getting into a quality hotel, just not a dump. This trip is more involved than average, so I'm there for 2 nights.
I got in on a late flight and to the hotel about 11 pm. There was only 1 other car in the parking lot - that should have been a sign. It was obviously an older building, but I've been in older. I check in as usual and drop my bags in the room. A quick look shows some cracks in the bathroom tile and sink - nothing functionally bad. The carpet is cheap and stiff - not crunchy though. The TV gets 1 channel - it was either weather or in Spanish.
Hungry, I stop at the desk to ask for a recommendation. Not only is is not the same person that checked me in 10 minutes ago, they don't know of any restaurants in the area. I go find something on my own. As I walk past the desk on my way back an hour later, it's another new person behind the desk greeting me. Still the same one other car in the lot.
At 3 am, there's a pounding on my door. It's a deputy with what appears to be another new person from the front desk (turnover can't be that high, can it?) hovering behind the cop. The deputy is here to evict me. According to the desk guy, I owe rent for a couple weeks and he wants me out "NOW!" He hands the deputy a clipboard with the paperwork. Half asleep and reading upside down, I say 'That paperwork is for room 301. This is room 103. I assume we're done here.' The deputy apologizes (not the desk jockey, though) and I shut the door and go back to sleep.
I go to the client site the next day and pass yet another new person behind the desk. I opt out of the 'breakfast' offered. Another vendor onsite offers to buy dinner, so I head to the hotel for a quick shower. My stuff is gone. All I left was an overnight bag, since I travel light and took my laptop to work. I talk to the new guy at the desk (I seriously never saw the same person twice). He checks the computer and says I was only checked in for one night. We sort out that error and he makes a couple phone calls. Apparently, the maid locked my bag in the maids closet and I have to wait because she has the only key. An hour later, he gets a phone call and goes to get my bag for me. I strongly suspect someone took it home hoping something of value was in it.
After a quick shower, I meet the vendor for dinner and tell the whole story of the hotel so far. He says there's plenty of room in the Holiday Inn across town he's in, but I feel like I have to stay through the end. I get the feeling there has to be a punch line at the end of this joke of a hotel. On the way back to the hotel, I had the idea that I was going to see a crane with a wrecking ball in the parking lot when I woke up - just a random thought.
After a relatively uneventful night (some noisy people in the halls is all), I check out. There's a new, handwritten sign at the desk stating 'NO REFUNDS'. After I sign my receipt, I point to it and say, 'My butt. I'm getting every penny back.' The new guy at the desk says something about the policy that I interrupt with, 'I'll get it from corporate, easily.' I get to my rental car and there are 3 bullet holes in the rear driver's side door.
On the flight home, I type up an email summary to my travel coordinator. I try to keep it on the humorous side and include all the relevant details. At the end, I request never to be booked in a Ramada and recommend the company be dropped from preferred vendor status. She forwards the email to Ramada and CC's my manager. Ramada is pretty much blacklisted by the company and the email makes the rounds through the company for the humor.
A week later, I get a refund check from Ramada. It's handwritten and includes a stack of coupons for free stays at any Ramada Inn. I cashed the check and returned the coupons with a note stating that I have no use for them since I will sleep in my car before I stay at another Ramada Inn.
44. The Minifridge Incident
My family had gone to Florida for vacation and were staying in a cheap but relatively nice hotel. After the first three days we noticed they had a minifridge in the room, so naturally, my brother looks inside. Some sicko before us had opened two of the soda cans in the fridge and half drank both of them, which placed back in the fridge upside down. After a few days, what seemed like the hotel's entire ant population had swarmed inside the fridge through god knows where. When my brother opened it, so many came pouring out that it may have looked like a miniscule interpretation of the Killer Ant scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The fridge was promptly shut, and after my brother's quick shower, we decided we didn't want to stay in the hotel after that night.
Photo by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash
45. Time To Call Housekeeping
This happened to me in Daytona, FL. I was down there working and had a super long, stressful day. Finally time for bed. Pull the covers back, and blood. A bunch of it. And it wasn't dark and dry, it was bright red and still wet. Nasty! Then they send up a guy, who resembles the creep in Scary Movie 2, with new sheets. I said thanks, but I will change them myself.
46. Taxi Cab Confessions
I was finishing up a solo backpacking trip and decided to treat myself to a hotel for the final night. I went to request a room, and the front desk explained that they were all booked. They offered to arrange a cab to take me to one of their other chains across town and I obliged.
The first part of the cab ride was just a basic conversation, and then it turned creepy. The driver started to ask if I had a boyfriend and if I was going to be meeting anyone at the hotel. I noticed that we appeared to be driving away from the city and into a rural area with farmland. I asked him where we were going and he explained that he knew a shortcut.
He proceeded to ask me what I would do if anyone attacked me. At this point, I was terrified and explained that I carry a big knife on me at all times (totally fake!) and that I wasn't afraid to use it. Moments after this, he pulled a u-turn and took me to the hotel. I ran into the hotel and told the staff what happened, and spent the rest of the night with my door bolted shut with a chair against it. I creeped out my window for any signs of him and left the country early the next morning.
47. Who You Gonna Call?
I was in a B&B in rural Virginia and I saw a full-bodied apparition of a lady in 19th-century clothing holding hands with a young girl. It was preceded by sounds of the door handle jiggling from the bathroom. In the morning I didn’t say anything to anyone, not even my wife, and the owner asked if I heard the noises. I said that I did and he said that others have seen the ghost of a woman and her child. I was like, really? You got me!
Don’t know if he was messing around with me or what, but if it was fake, I’m not sure how he made the ghosts appear. It was almost like they were burned into my mind more than physical manifestations.
48. Walking The Dog
Around 2014, I was on a tour playing with a band that had stopped to play a show in the NYC Brooklyn area. After the show, we met someone who offered for us to crash at his house and having nowhere to park the van in the city, we jumped on the opportunity to stay right away. The guy told us that we had to be super quiet because his wife was pregnant and would be asleep. When I got to the house, I grabbed a couch and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up and there was a man standing in the kitchen area with a dog quietly looking at us and directing his dog in the direction of the door. It was dark and hard to make out his face but I got up and scoped out the situation (no one around). In the morning I brought up to the owner about him having a roommate with a dog and he looked at me more confused than ever and reassured me that it was only his wife and him in the tiny apartment. Still curious about what the heck happened there.
49. Ceiling Crashers
in the '90's, I got a great deal on a hotel that was being renovated in Houston, Texas, near the 6 Flags Amusement Park. I was legally carrying a weapon and had it in the hotel room. I was the next to the last room on the floor, and there were noisy kids next door.
The bathroom was in the front of the room, and it had a suspended ceiling. I went to sleep and woke sometime later when I heard the toilet flush (I was alone in the room).
I got up to check it out, and there was a towel in the toilet, and the ceiling tile was moved out of place. It took me a few minutes to put it together: the kids next door got into the ceiling and into the room, putting their feet on the towels on the rack; knocking one into the toilet, making it flush because it soaked up so much water.
I called the front desk, and explained; they sent someone up to the room; I told them I was armed. I think it settled down after that.
50. A Haunted Experience
My dad was a steward in his youth, and this happened to him in a hotel in Switzerland. So he (Muslim) was about to do his prayers in his hotel room when the lamp on his nightstand suddenly turned off on his own. He went to turn it back on and it turns out the plug had been disconnected from the socket. He plugged it back in and went back to pray, and the same thing happened again, right as he was starting to pray. Creepy enough? Not nearly.
Now, to be honest, I don't really believe in ghosts and spirits, nor the stories about the subject when people tell them. This next part, however, makes me think there's a possibility they do.
While he was sleeping later that night, he was awakened by a strong wind suddenly blowing the windows completely open and letting cold winter air into the room. He got up to shut them and discovered that the windows opened outwards instead of inwards.
51. Walking With A Ghost
My family stayed in a famously haunted hotel in New Zealand when I was about 6. I didn't notice anything creepy and neither did my brother or my mum, but my dad said that while he was in the bathroom he could hear someone moving around in my mum's and his room and when he called out to ask what she was looking for, there was no reply. He just figured it was her but then when he walked back in, she wasn't in there and had been reading a story to my brother and me for about 10 minutes. Afterward, we asked the front desk if maybe there had been some housekeeping or something but they said that housekeeping is only in the mornings. My dad's always been very critical of people who believe in supernatural things and used to tease my mum when she talked about the time she saw a ghost, but after that night he's been a lot more open about the possibility.
52. Handle The Situation
I stayed in a hostel in London (near Paddington station) with my three friends two years ago. We found this hostel last minute because we were initially going to stay in an Airbnb but when we got there, the owner/area was really weird and we later found out he didn’t have locks on the bedroom doors (he also changed his name on Airbnb and restarted his profile or something later).
Anyway, the hostel was actually pretty nice but during the night someone tried to open the door by VERY slowly pushing the handle down and upon realizing it was indeed locked, they then VERY slowly pulled it back up.
My friends should be lucky I’m a light sleeper because none of them woke up...
53. Eyes On You
I was staying in a hotel in Amsterdam with a female friend. Our room was located on two sides of a tiny little courtyard, with another room occupying the other two sides. The bedrooms looked into each other and so did the bathrooms. The widows took up almost a whole wall so you could see practically the whole room through them.
We left the bedroom curtains closed most of the time, otherwise, they could see right in. The bathroom windows were frosted so we thought that would be OK.
My female friend went for a shower and I happened to glance out the bedroom window. It was at that point I realized that the frosted glass didn't actually hide that much. I also noticed a guy in the other room watching her. He sees me and disappears, I quickly alert my friend and we both go storming to reception. They tell us that the rooms have just been renovated (which was true) and that they didn't realize it was an issue. They have no other rooms for us but do refund us basically all we paid for the room, move the guy, and fit a net curtain to the bedroom and a waterproof curtain to the bathroom that day.
They also left the guy's room empty for the duration of our stay. Kind of creepy but I do think it was a genuine mistake as the windows had only recently been replaced.
Photo by Skyler King on Unsplash
54. A Hot Mess
My Mom, my Dad, my sister, and I drove across Canada. We stayed at three motels along the way because my Dad was cheap and I still don't know why. Both Mom and Dad had great jobs and we didn't want for anything but the principle of sleeping in hotels and paying bothered him, I guess.
Anywho, it's 10:00 p.m. and we are in some godforsaken place called Wawa and just need to crash. So my Dad goes in and pays and then we drive super far down the road in a separate building. We walk in and it is the most messed up room I have ever seen. Mattresses on the floor. Rat traps everywhere. Those sticky fly strips hanging from the ceiling. Stains everywhere; just gross. Funny thing is, my Mom had to yell at my Dad that we were NOT going to stay there. It was so gross.
55. Don't Stop Living In The Red
The 2-star hotel in Vietnam during my school trip...it had these weird wooden statues; I don't know if you can picture them but they had a very creepy red stain on some of them and stuff like that. We stayed there about 2 days until the teachers decided to go away when one of the younger students started screaming and crying because she saw some weird things outside her window...the next one we had was much better and actually comfy compared to the other one.
56. Surprise Husband
My mom was traveling for work and sat next to a man (fellow business traveler) on the plane. They had a casual conversation and exchanged business cards. Later that evening she’s in her hotel watching TV and gets a phone call from the front desk that her husband is here and they want to know if they can give him a key to the room. Turns out, the creep on the plane was pretending to be her husband to try to get into her room.
57. Spirit In The Night
I was in Washington DC almost a decade ago and had gone to bed somewhat early (about midnight-ish) since I had an event to be present at around 9 am. I woke from a dead sleep, around 3 am or so. I looked to the right side of the room and saw a woman in a long, flowing, white dress peering out the window. She then turned to the left and flowed to the other side of the room and dissolved.
I was too groggy to actually piece what I had seen until I got home and thought about it. I wish I had remembered the hotel I stayed at so I could do research on it and figure it all out.
58. No Way Out
I booked this strange motel in advance for a business trip. The lobby was on the same level as the ground, but the first and only floor was up half a flight of stairs, and the furthest room back was about 400 square feet with no exits or entrances save for some fire exits.
Also, the floor was partially damp. It later dawned on me to wonder why I was put in the room furthest from the entrance to the motel when I had never heard or seen anyone and there were no cars in the parking lot...
59. Chain Of Fools
Stayed at a historic hotel that has a haunted reputation. Locked my door and used the chain as well. Went to bed, got up the next morning and went to the bathroom, and noticed my door was cracked open, held shut only by the chain....Ghost or creepy hotel employee?
60. Fighting My Way Back
I was 12 years old visiting London with my sister, who was 21 at the time. We were staying in a hostel and our window opened onto an overhanging, so we were sitting out there relaxing and enjoying the night air. There was a bar right below us and a few people were leaving when a fight broke out. A bunch of yelling turned into a bottle being broken over a guy's head. He fell to the ground and the others all booked it. About a minute later he got up. His face was absolutely covered in blood. He looked up at us, smiled, and asked my sister if she wanted to go out with him sometime.
61. Brand New Wardrobe
When I was around 10 years old, my family went to Thailand on a holiday. We were staying in a nice resort in Pattaya one night (who knows why Mum thought that was a good idea) when a local Thai man climbed at least three floors onto our balcony and stole the clothes we had drying outside after we went swimming. Mum called reception and someone came up with a broom 15 minutes later to get rid of the intruder but he'd already left. In retrospect, I think he was just poor and wanted some clothes so no harm done.
Then there was the time we were in Fiji and housekeeping came into the room at 6 AM thinking it wasn't occupied. That was more awkward than scary though.
62. Peep This Out
In high school, a Greyhound bus full of us drove down to Tijuana to build houses. We stopped in Montana the first night and were booked to stay in this hotel. Like 5 of us girls were put in a room that wasn’t really close to the rest of the group. They were all next to each other and we were on the floor above.
We didn’t think much of it at the time, but as soon as we got in, I just had a feeling that something was off and I had a feeling to check out the peephole in the door. Turns out, it was installed backward, so someone on the outside could look in, but we couldn’t look out. We covered it, but sleep was hard that night.
I’m so amazed by how a gut feeling just led me right to the problem. Everyone was blown away. We had just dropped the bags off and I just had this feeling and walked straight to the door. Freaked everyone out. But now every time I’m in a hotel I check the peephole.
63. A Dollar Disaster
Many, many years ago, I was a 25-year-old American hippie chick traveling by myself in Colombia. I stayed in a hotel that cost $1.00 a night and all these men kept knocking on my door, trying to get in. I put the bed in front of the door and went to sleep. I was an idiot.
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64. Seeing Red
I checked into a motel while driving from Atlanta to Miami. I was exhausted and somewhere south of the Orlando area. I went into the room and it was a bit stinky and the floor was carpeted and sticky. I wanted to leave but I felt like I couldn't drive another mile safely so I just got into the bed and fell asleep.
A few hours later I woke up needing to pee. I went into the dark bathroom and the floor was wet, like soaking wet above my flip flops (that I wore to the bathroom because of the sticky carpet). I grabbed a towel and wiped my feet just before I got back into the bed. I went back to sleep easily and awoke just after dawn.
I turned on the light, slipped my feet back into my flip-flops, and noticed the towel on the floor with pinkish stains on it. I walked back to the bathroom and the floor was flooded from the tub overfilling. The water looked bloody. My heart fell into my stomach and I noped the heck out of the room. The desk clerk assured me it was not blood, but rather a "cleaning solution." I did not buy it but did not want to stick around to fight it.
65. Punk Rock Towels
Mystery man showed up in my room in Richmond, Virginia.
Traveled to Virginia for a conference at a mid-range hotel, signed in and spent the first night alone. I was a 20-year-old girl at the time. My (platonic male) friend stayed in my room with me the second night. I wake up around 2 am and see a strange man in my room. My friend wakes up and sees him too. He stutters and says that he was just dropping off some towels and must have made a mistake. Didn't report it at the time because I would have felt bad if the poor guy got fired over an honest mistake, but I wish I had.
Richmond is still punk as heck, though.
66. Hidden Intentions
When I was a little kid, like elementary age, I was at a beach resort in Hawaii and playing in the sand with a boy my age. Some older guy came up to us asking to help him find his lost dog; we had common sense and were insistent that we wouldn't go even though he kept asking for our "help." Later that evening, before even telling our moms about the incident, apparently they saw a few guys hiding behind a palm tree and some bushes. To this day, I still sometimes wonder about what their intentions were.
67. Light Goes Out
Staying at a BnB owned by Christians in Tel Aviv. They left Bibles on TOP of all the pillows in our room. As a devout atheist, I started reading Genesis to my roomies but in a super silly valley girl kinda way (and God said, like "let there be light" or whatever, and there was, like, light, and God was like that light is totally awesome, etc.). We went out for a bite, then came back and they had come into our room and taken away the Bibles. So they were listening in.
68. Where Was Cat Noir?
When I was 4 or 5, my parents & I stayed in a Motel 6 somewhere in Arizona. In the middle of the night, we hear a bunch of screaming & doors slamming & people running down the hallways. As we're all waking up, it also feels kind of like it's raining in the room -- only the rain is moving. My dad throws on the lights & the ceiling is crawling with tiny ladybugs. And they are falling off the ceiling, so the beds & carpet are also covered in tiny ladybugs. And apparently, ours was not the only room affected.
69. An Old Haunted Hotel
I travelled to Liverpool a few years ago with an ex-gf. We stayed in the Adelphi Hotel for 2 nights. I found it on a booking website for cheap and I am a massive history geek so I thought it would be perfect! For those unfamiliar with the building, it been in continuous use from the 19th century. It has these really old fashioned rooms with high ceilings and generally victorian furnishings. I thought it was great if our room was a bit creepy (there was a massive mirror right across from the bed). Just so, there was nothing out of the ordinary so we went out to explore the town.
When we came back at night we were too tired to even take a shower as we normally do. We fell right into bed. Something to be conscious of before I begin about the actual creepy part is that the room was an ensuite with a tiny foyer in between the bedroom and the bathroom where the front door to the hotel room was also located along with a storage closet. I always like to lock things before I go to sleep, it's kind of a habit of mine. So I locked both the front door as well as the chain lock on the door leading to the bedroom. So far, everything was normal and we drifted off to sleep, or so I thought.
Less than 15 minutes after I had closed my eyes, but not yet fallen asleep I experienced the most intense terror of my life. I'm not talking normal terror. This was the most afraid Ive ever been in my life. Like I was consciously aware that someone was watching me and didn't want me to know it. There was a feeling of dread in the air, like something wasn’t right. I jumped out of bed and turned the light on. Nothing. But the door was wide open...
I woke up my ex and asked her if she had gotten up to use the toilet since we had gone to bed. She said no so I asked her again, with more intensity. No, she was certain that neither of us had gotten up in the 15 minutes since we had turned off the lights. I told her ok and asked her if she felt weird at all. She said no, just very tired and she wanted to sleep. However, I was too terrified to fall asleep. So I turned on all the lights in the room and locked the door again. Trying everything to take my mind off of what was seemingly just an empty room, every now and then glancing nervously up from my laptop to see if anything was still there.
Hours later, I was too tired to stay up anymore and I fell asleep without realising. But when I woke up in the morning, the door was once again open. Once again my ex denied either of us using the toilet in the night. The same sequence of events was repeated the next night as well. After the first night I began to suspect something was not normal, however, I refrained from googling “adelphi hotel” and “haunted” until I was on the train out of the city. Apparently, the Adelphi is the most haunted hotel in Britain. I dont know if I believe in ghosts, but I was really frightened that night. I will never forget it. Even now, I'm sat at home in my well-lit flat in the middle of the day and I'm getting scared writing this.
70. Kick Out The Jams
I checked into a hotel on vacation. Everything was going okay. Woke up one night to erratic movement of the door handle as if someone was trying to get in or break the door down. It always happened in the dead of the night when in deep sleep. As soon as I woke up, it would stop. I spoke to a hotel manager about it and he told me it was a patient who was recently released from a mental institute who does this, as he still thinks he is locked up in the institute. A combination of not taking his medication and sleepwalking makes him randomly try to kick doors down within the hotel. The family was very wealthy and connected, and the manager didn't want to kick up a fuss for chucking out someone who can shut his business down very quickly. I left after a week because it got worse.
71. Here's Johnny!
Family vacation. 1 Am. My brother and I had just finished watching The Shining on TV. Neither of us had seen it before. We heard someone trying to open our door. No one else was supposed to have keys.
Someone tried to swing open the door, but the hotel lock stopped them. They kept trying to open it multiple times, banging the door against the lock. After a few tries, they gave up. The hotel desk clerk accidentally entered the wrong room for their keycards.
It was probably best that I saw The Shining. I can't be scared more than from that movie.
72. Biker Sweet Talk
When I was 12, I was staying in a motel with my mom on a road trip. We were in the middle of nowhere in Texas at a motel that had a decent rating in our guidebook and was really cheap, so we went for it. In the middle of the night, the owner knocked on the door and told us we had to leave because he wanted the room for someone else (!!!) My mom was outside arguing with him while I was gathering our things, and I was terrified because I heard him start yelling.
I looked out the window and saw about half a dozen bikers in vests appear out of nowhere (maybe a nearby room?) and start confronting the owner. My mom came inside quickly and we watched them start harassing the guy, things like “She’s paid to be here. You’re gonna let her stay tonight! We don’t want to ever hear stuff like this from you again!” And the owner was saying things like, “I don’t want any trouble!”
Everybody left fairly quickly and we didn’t ever hear anything about it the next day at checkout. We weren’t able to sleep very well because we were so shaken up, but it was better than getting in the car again.
Thank you, anonymous biker gang.
73. What About Bob?
My mom was in China visiting her family when she got a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. She picked it up and didn’t recognize the voice and asked who the person was. The person pretended to be a friend of my uncle (I’ll call him Bob). My mom was suspicious so she didn’t really talk to Bob; she just hung up. Fast forward to when my mom arrived at her hotel. She got a call from the phone in the hotel room and she picked it up and it was Bob. She was kind of freaked out because she didn’t say anything about where she was staying. And Bob told her to meet him at a restaurant that was really far. She didn’t go and she checked into another hotel.
74. Into The Darkness
One time, between deciding if I wanted to go back to college or not (didn’t feel like my major was what I really wanted—didn’t go back), I stayed at The Hampton Inn that was here in town (didn’t live in the city and didn’t register for another semester just yet). The room felt off the moment I walked into it. I thought it was just me since I’ve always had roommates (boarding school) and family around. So first time with some true privacy oughta feel weird right? Well, I started Facetiming with some friends from high school and all was well and fun like old times when suddenly someone walked across the screen behind me. It didn’t really register that I was supposed to be alone in the room until I saw the look on my friend’s face. What the hecks ensued. I searched all around the room, underneath the bed, in the closet, the bathroom and everywhere someone could’ve disappeared to in two or three seconds. I was alone. Went to bed later on that night with the bathroom lights and desk lamp on. Woke up a few hours later with everything totally dark and the sensation of someone in bed with me. Freaked the heck out, turned on the bedside lamp and the figure of someone else’s body disappeared on the bed. Noped the heck out of there and took a midnight flight out of town.
75. Gotta Go Fast
I was in Texas in a pretty shady hotel. At first, I didn't think too much of it. Then when I was walking downstairs at around 7 PM to go to a friend's room, I saw a huge burly man with tattoos all over him. He was listening to this strange noise and whispering unintelligible sounds. I saw him go to a storage room and he left the door open. I look inside and he was gone. I was spooked at this point so I take the stairs down. By the time I get down, he was already there.
76. A Late Night Accident
Mild, but when a friend and I were visiting Norway, our hotel was set up with pairs of rooms sharing balconies. Kinda weird, but they were really small and not really meant for hanging out on, plus it was winter, so whatever. We were sitting in the room hanging out, my friend sitting in the chair next to the balcony door. Some older guy from the next room starts trying to open the door into our room. Waving to us and rattling the doorknob. It freaked us out a bit, but I think he had just had a bit too much and left after we locked it and closed the door curtain.
77. I Want Your Skulls
About 15 years ago, I was staying at a hostel in Freiburg, Germany. The dorm room I was assigned had maybe three other travelers. One of them was a young, muscular guy who seemed normal at first. I tried to talk with him but he would just stare back at me blankly. I assumed because he didn't speak English or German, or he just didn't feel like socializing. Anyway, later during my stay, I noticed that he was using a human skull as a piggy bank. Maybe it was fake, or maybe it was real. I didn't dare get a closer look. I never felt as though I was in danger, but it was definitely creepy.
78. Miss Know It All
A friend and I once stayed at a pretty fancy B&B for the night. The lady who owned it was absolutely lovely, but would appear out of nowhere. We’d be sitting alone in a large room with one doorway and suddenly she was in the room with us. Either this joint had secret doors or something really creepy was going on. She seemed to know things that we’d said or done as well. The thing that tripped us out the most was hearing someone trying to open our door during the night. She was super lovely and the building was beautiful, but we were relieved to check out the next morning!
79. Get Over Here
Was in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua last year. Massive spiders all over the room. Even woke up with a couple of little scorpions in my bed the first morning. Next night I'm sitting at the bar, drinking and chatting with a mate, and feel a tickle on the back of my neck and think it's a mosquito or something. Brush the back of my neck and another darn scorpion, this time way bigger, plops on the ground at my feet. I stared at it for a moment in shock, squealed like a girl, squashed it, and kept enjoying my beverage.
Photo by Shayna Take on Unsplash
80. You're Not From Around Here, Are You?
I went on a weekend trip with my SO. We went to a little town in the middle of nowhere in Australia. Just getting off the train I could almost hear the banjo music from Deliverance. She got stared at. We thought it was funny at first, since I'm white and she's asian, it just seemed.. quaint. After a few hours though, the hairs on the back of my neck got restless. She didn't like it either so we decided to call it a day fairly early. We were staying above a pub. The patrons there stared even worse, not just curiously but... lustily? I guess? Enough to make my normally very happy and bubbly partner feel subdued and creeped out. Long story short, I caught a staff member of the pub/hotel removing a video recording device from the cupboard after we'd left the next morning, when I 'unexpectedly' returned to the room to see if I'd left my book in there... zero stars.
Photo by Gabriel Petry on Unsplash
81. The Shining Hotel
Last August, we went hiking in the Rocky Mountains & the last two nights of our trip, we stayed at the Stanley Hotel (the hotel in the Shining) & stayed in a “haunted” room on the 4th floor.
As we were getting settled in, I was putting our stuff in the closet & I heard a light switch loudly switch on. I peeked out of the closet to see what was going on & my partner was standing in the middle of the room frozen in place. Neither of us was near a light switch. And the bathroom light was now on when it had been off before.
We’d also left our do not disturb sign up all the time & our room had been tidied. That could’ve been housekeeping just ignoring our sign, but previous guests had commented that their stuff had been completely unpacked & put away, which the hotel said they don’t do. Housekeeping also worked evenings, which seemed unusual.
We didn’t spend much time in the hotel as we were out hiking most of the day, but that was creepy, plus the TV was acting very strangely, flickering & just freezing up, then the screen would turn pink across part of it. There was also a young child, maybe 2 years old hanging out outside our room. I’m pretty positive he was a real child, it just seemed weird that he was alone for a few minutes. (His parents were probably not far away, just didn’t see them). There were also bizarre noises coming from a room by the elevator, strange mechanical noises.
82. 98 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall
During a school trip (age 16-17) to Rome, the school booked us in some cheap hotel. We shared this hotel with other school trip groups from Germany and France.
At night, me and my bro were hanging out at the window of a 4th floor 6-bed room. Outside was a little square, where residents had a baby in a crib. We were just talking when we suddenly we hear glass shattering outside. We spot the shards near the baby. We didn't know what happened, but it became clear what had happened when a couple of minutes later a red headed man barges into our room and threatens us. Some jerk threw a glass bottle at his baby. Never found out who did it.
Photo by Jacek Reszko on Unsplash
83. Three Doors Down
My wife and I were driving across country to a family vacation. It was getting late and we were tired of driving and needed a place to stop. Most hotels were already full for the night, but we found a motel with vacancy and booked a room.
It was your typical run down motel right off the highway in Indiana. When we got to our floor with about only half of the hallway lights working we walked past a room with red tape on the door. As a good husband, I could sense my wife's uneasiness so to be as supportive as I could I joked to her that I bet someone died in that room. She didn't appreciate the joke but we were both tired and headed to our room about 3 doors down. When we got to our room the wife went to use the bathroom to find that someone had already used it and just left it in the toilet. No paper, no flush. The entire room gave off a "you're going to get a disease or leave with bugs" vibe, so we slept with our clothes and shoes on and made the best of it.
The next morning during checkout I made the same joke to the front desk clerk. "What happened to the room down the hall from us. Did someone die?"
The clerk didn't hesitate to reply that yes, someone had died. They fell asleep with a smoke in bed and burnt to death in the room.
My wife and I just said "oh..." at the same time as we soaked in the poor taste of my joke as it became a reality and turned and left. I searched online to confirm the story, and sure enough it was true. This motel didn't have a fire alarm system that reported to the fire department, so when the room caught fire the occupant died of smoke inhalation before someone was alerted to the fire.
We haven't stayed in a Indiana motel since.
Photo by Marvin Esteve on Unsplash
84. Heavy Sleeper
A crazy guy busted into my hostel dorm room with knives in his hands. My friend and this other guy tackled him to the ground, then a couple of minutes later the police stormed into the room with weapons drawn and riot shields and stuff and grabbed the guy.
I pretty much slept through the whole thing.
85. Who Drinks Peppermint?
My friend and I stayed at a motel in Berlin and when we came home after a night out it was obvious that someone had been in our room. Not because there was something missing (some money and passports still there), but there was peppermint beverage all over the floor and our beds. My friend, looking very out of sorts went to the staff asking for clean sheets, telling them what had happened and they clearly thought we must've been more messed up than we actually were. For a second I doubted myself, but I'm 100% sure we would never buy or drink peppermint anything, so pouring it all over our room definitely didn't happen. The memory of confusion on the staffs and my friends face still makes me chuckle every now and then. Good times.
Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash
86. Just A Bit Of Blood
My parents took my sister and I around the US quite a bit when we were young. In Alabama when I was about two, we checked into the Heart of Auburn Motel after a long day on the road. Once in the room, I immediately turned down one of the two double beds to find the pillow completely covered - literally caked - with blood.
To my mind this was a horror. My mother saw it as simply a failure of proper housekeeping. She called the front desk, had the sheets and the offending pillow changed and then tucked me into the formerly bloody bed.
She said someone probably had a nosebleed but my mind was filled with images of massive head wounds.
Much later in life, when my work took me onto several crime scenes, I saw blood splatter and pooling up close. This experience has convinced me someone actually bled out on that motel room pillow in the Heart of Auburn.
Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash
87. The Homeless Hotel
I travel a lot and have gone to plenty of 3rd world countries etc. But, my worst hotel story, by far, came in Sullivan County, NY less than 2 months ago.
We got hit with 2 storms that decimated that area and knocked out power for 10 days. I was there doing emergency work, and the entire area was a mess. So they put me up in a "hotel", I'm like "sure whatever", don't really check it out because our logistics person takes care of it and I'm swamped doing 18 hour days.
So I arrive at this hotel around 1am, exhausted, and I show up and it's locked. There is a handwritten note in crayon on the door that says "Not here, call xxx-xxxx". I notice at this time that the hotel is legitimately crawling with bad people. Not just weird people, but people screaming, running through the halls, slamming doors, crying etc.
Finally, the guy comes and lets me in. The place smells like a sour mix of poo, death and mothballs. I really don't have a need for the finer things in life, but this was a little much. So I get to my room and have to walk through these dingy, filthy halls. It was a motel, so my room was exposed to the outside, with a little walkway. I show up and immediately see a huge brownish stain on the floor, that I can only guess was old blood. The lamp shade was riddled with burns and the room itself was filthy. Someone obliterated the bathroom in what I can only assume was a messed up Jackson Pollack imitation.
I was so tired and had to be back at work in like 4 hours that I tried to just say whatever and pass out (in my clothes, with my boots still on). The door didn't close though so the wind was whipping on me through a large crack, and the heat didn't work. I wrapped myself in the duvet like a human taco, to no avail.
About an hour in, people started scampering around outside, screaming and yelling. I got up and jammed a chair under the door handle because, of course, the door didn't lock. I seriously considered sleeping in my car but it was cold and I felt like I had a better chance of being attacked in a parking lot than a room. Some guy crashed into my little bay window thing shortly after and I sat straight up and prepared myself for having to deal with someone that night.
When I got back to my station in the morning and told the guys where I stayed, they didn't even believe me. Two of the cops there said they investigated homicides there...not together, two different ones. The Red Cross rep said they used to send their homeless population there...but now they don't because it's too dangerous.
It's a big running joke now, but at the time it sucked and was the only time in my life I was genuinely worried about where I have slept.
Photo by Mikail Duran on Unsplash
88. Don't You Dare Touch Cleo
My wife and I were moving from Boston to California. We needed to find pet-friendly hotels along the way because we had our cat, Cleo, with us. One of these stops was in Albuquerque, NM.
The night we get into Albuquerque, we check in, get settled, everything’s fine’n’dandy. I also took a shower that night and didn't notice anything wrong with the bathroom, other than the shower being old and in need of some updating.
The next morning, we’re getting ready to head out. I go to the bathroom, and notice on the back of the bathroom door, written in (what looked like) dried bar soap, “C L E O ☹️”.
This was definitely NOT there the night before. I would have seen it before and after I took my shower. I called my wife into the bathroom to check it out and she didn’t see it the night before either. We then made sure Cleo was ok, scooped her up, put her in her crate, and packed up as quick as we could.
We did not want to investigate. We did not want to hang around. We checked out of that hotel and quickly got out of Albuquerque.
By the way, other than that hotel room, Albuquerque’s lovely!
Photo by Callum Wale on Unsplash
89. Don't Be Afraid Of People's Disabilities
When I was about 10, my family and I took a rare vacation to Atlanta and stayed in a budget hotel. Dad checked in, got the key, and we all filed into the room from the car. As soon as we get in the room, Dad tells us kids, "Now, kids, there's a woman downstairs checking in who has elephantiasis of the face." He proceeded to describe in vivid detail about how distorted her face was. "I'm telling you this so you won't freak out if you see her. She can't help it, and I don't want you to hurt her feelings." Which, I suppose, is a good way of getting in front of an awkward situation, but it had the effect of sending my 10 year old mind reeling as to what she would look like.
Naturally, I was sent to go get something from the car. Which I did. I got back to our room, knocked to be let back in, and nothing happened. I knocked again, frantically this time. Nothing happened. I started to panic, thinking that I had the wrong room. I started running up and down the balcony, calling out for my folks at the doors. I came to the end, which led to the stairs leading down, and saw the woman my dad described sitting on the ground. She smiled and waved.
Now, I'd already had this construct in my head about how this woman looked. In retrospect, she didn't look THAT disfigured. But to a 10-year-old mind that was already on the edge and panicky over having lost an entire family in an unfamiliar place, I froze and screamed at the top of my lungs Macaulay Culkin style. My older brother finally poked his head out of one of the rooms, saw the scene, and hurriedly grabbed me and pulled me back in the room.
Not so much creepy in retrospect as I probably just ended up making a disabled person feel worse. But for a dumb kid like me, it might as well have been The Shining.
90. Snooze I Say!
Was in a bed and breakfast near Savannah, GA. The room had an alarm clock in it, but it wasn't set. Around 3 am the alarm went off with a bunch of white noise. I unplugged and we went back to sleep, about 30 minutes later it went off again with white noise and it was powered on. It didn't seem to have a spot for batteries so I don't know how it could have happened. Not the type to believe I ghosts but that was to spooky for me.
Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash
91. Too Much Poo For You
Kind of creepy but also really gross. We got to our hotel and the rest of the room was clean but the toilet was filled to the top with poop. Like more than a normal human being could drop in one trip. Maybe it was a disgruntled employee who decided to leave his or her mark and we were the lucky ones, or they just forgot to clean it. Either way we were thoroughly disgusted and got a free night. We even got moved to another room because the smell was so bad even after it was cleaned.
Photo by Lori Martin on Unsplash
92. A knock knock Here And A Knock Knock There
Stayed in a hotel in Puerto Banus that wasn't really open. We'd booked and everything, but when we arrived, it was clear the hotel wasn't finished. We were taken to a room anyway, which had bare wiring and no water. A different room was found, and we were so tired, I just wanted to sleep, so I said it was fine, even though it was not decorated, tools were left in a pile in the corner, and the plaster dust was still hanging in the air.
I was woken at close to midnight by someone trying to get in the room. I figured they would realize their error, and leave it alone in a minute. They didn't. I ended up getting out of bed and ripping open the door and shouting "What?!" I was faced with two people, clearly a sketchy guy and his woman. They tell me I'm not supposed to be there. I asked where I was supposed to be, and they said they didn't care, but just not there. I told them to leave, closed the door, and went back to sleep.
About an hour later, someone is trying the door again, but this time, they're not just trying the handle. They're trying to take the door out. I happened to notice a hammer in the pile of tools, so I grab it, get close to the door, and shout through the door, asking what they want.
The response was that they were here for the meeting. I shouted that there was no meeting, and was told that if I didn't let them in, then the deal was over. It became suddenly clear that the room I was in had been earmarked for some sort of deal, and my being moved to this room had ruined the whole thing.
I opened the door, after tucking the hammer into the rear waistband of my boxers. I found three guys in the corridor, one clearly on something, and the other two looking like bailiffs, with the big torsos and pecs. I explained I was moved here by the hotel, and that the previous attempt to enter the room had been a guy and a lady, who had been turned away too. The 3 guys accepted this and left.
I was awoken 6 more times that night, by people trying to get into the room, and each time I had to jam a hammer down my boxers, answer the door, explain that no, this room wasn't available, and then try and sleep a bit more.
That room must have been used for all sorts as I believe there were at least 3 deals to be arranged there that night.
Photo by Alexander Rumpel on Unsplash
93. It's Mime Time
I once stayed in a B&B which had a shared bathroom. The first night, I got up at probably around 2 am and I was bursting for a pee. The bathroom was down the hallway, not too far but seemed like such an effort in my tired state. I got to the bathroom and open the door and there was this guy just standing in the bathroom, dressed head to toe in a mime costume. Face painted and everything. He was squatted down on the floor but his trousers were still up. I looked at him for a second; he gave me a wave with a smile and began just silently pushing. I just ran back to my room, locked the door and decided to pee in a bottle. I'm still not sure if I was just really tired and seeing things or something. It's seriously the strangest thing I've ever seen.
94. Splitting Heads
A little hotel in London, I remember it being a couple of blocks away from King's Cross. We got there late and there was only a reception guy, he told us about breakfast and internet services, etc.
"You can come back upstairs around 8 and the guy in charge of the Internet café will be back." "The cook starts serving breakfast at 6" "The cleaning crew usually start cleaning rooms at 10"
Things like that. The creepy part? He was the only employee there. He was the cook, and the cleaning guy, and the one in charge of the computers but he has different personalities for each and spoke of "the others" in third person. We only stayed there for a couple of nights and we were never really sure if he was crazy or just being funny.
