The Haunted Hotel Room

A friend of mine told me this story of something that happened to

My friend, who wishes to remain anonymous

him, and I've been saving it up for today.
          We were chatting, and he said, "I never used to believe in ghosts, but..." He wasn't going to get away without giving up the story after that.

          He used to 'travel in computers and accessories' - that is, he used to travel round a circuit, trying to convince various shops and stories to buy and stock all sorts of things, from laptops and tablets to novelty USB sticks.

          "You get to know various other salesmen in the same line," he said, "because you're always staying in the same cheap chain hotels and B&Bs. So, this trip, I was in ---- and staying at a ----- "

          He told me the exact name and location of the hotel. But I'm not going to write it down here. I'm not looking to be sued.

          "Anyway," he said, "when I looked into the restaurant that evening, I met up with a couple of other reps. I knew them slightly. One was in electronics, like me - the other was in sports gear. So we ate together and had a pint or two - but the thing was, when they saw my room number, they gave each other funny looks.

          "'You're not in room 265?' says the one.
         "I said, 'Why? What's wrong with it? Gets a lot of noise, does it?'
          "They went through the funny looks routine again. Shock, horror, he's in room 265. Are you going to tell him, or shall I? That sort of business. 'Come on,' I said. 'Out with it.'

          "'That room's haunted,' the computer bloke said. 'Ask if you can change it.'

          "'I wouldn't sleep in that room for a year's pay,' says the bloke in sports.

          "'What?' I says. 'Have you slept in it?' No, 'course he hadn't - but he'd heard about people who had, and -

          "'Oh, FOAF,'" I said. They didn't get it. 'Friend of a friend,' y'know. These things always happen to a friend of a friend, don't they? Never to the person telling you about it. I told 'em only kids believe in ghosts.
          "In fact, I scoffed so much, they never got around to telling me what was supposed to happen in room 265 - we got off onto some other stupid subject. Aliens or Area 51 or something.

 

'Aliens or Area 51 or something...'

        "Anyway, I went up to my room about eleven, and turned in soon after. It was a completely standard hotel room - y'know, little bathroom, a bed, a desk, a tv. I've lost count of the number of nights I've spent in hotel-rooms exactly like it. I had a quick shower, watched a bit of tv, switched off the light and settled down. I'd forgotten everything they'd said about ghosts.

          I was just starting to drift off, when the bed moved - and I was sleeping alone! There was a jolt, like someone had sat on the edge of the bed.

          I sat up like a jack-in-the-box. It was so real. I had no doubt at all that somebody was in my room and had sat on the edge of the bed. I snapped on the light. Nothing, of course. Just the hotel room, and my things on the desk and chair, where I'd left 'em.

          I got up and looked around. I had some idea that one of the others had got into my room and was playing tricks - but unless some member of the hotel staff had let them in, they couldn't have done. I hadn't heard the door open - and like most of these doors, they're heavy and fire-proof. Hard to open quietly.

          In the end, I decided that my imagination was playing me up. I'd been drifting off - it could have been a sort of half-dream. And even though I'd forgotten the talk about the room being haunted, it could have planted the idea in my head.

          "So I got back into bed and settled down again.I was asleep, or near as damn it, when there was a cold draught at my back - and then a puff of cold air on my ear, and a voice, a woman's voice, said, 'I'm glad the door's locked.'
          "I was standing by the room's door, with the light on and my heart pounding like Desert Orchid's on the winning stretch. I don't remember getting there.
          "I was looking at the blandest of bland hotel rooms. Y'know: dark blue carpet, beige walls, white covers on the bed. Apart from my few things, it was neat and boring and clean - and like ten thousand other hotel rooms all over the world.
          "My heart rate started slowing down, and I felt a bit of a fool. Fancy letting those two idiots get to me. And that place was so blah that the ghost of a vanilla yoghurt would have turned it down as not sinister enough to haunt.
          "I had a drink from the fridge and watched a bit of late night telly. Listened to people tramping past in the corridor outside and slamming firedoors. After an hour, I went to bed again, feeling really shattered. This time, nothing was keeping me awake.
          "Now imagine this. Imagine you're all warm and toasty - and an ice-cube touches you. I want you to really imagine that freezing touch. The way the shock jolts you. The way the ice clings to your skin. The way the shudder goes right through you to the other side.
          "That's what woke me. Only it wasn't an ice-cube. It was a hand, a cold hand. On my chest. And an arm, reaching over me from behind. A woman was in bed with me, pressing against my back and reaching around to hug me - and she was icy, freezing. Like a randy snowman had climbed into bed with me.
          "An icy kiss pressed against my neck - and that was when I raced into reception, at three in the morning, in my underpants.
          "Don't remember anything else - except suddenly realising I was in reception, looking at the night-clerk, in nothing but my socks and Y-fronts. (Yes, I wear Y-fronts. Shut up.)
          "I wouldn't go back upstairs either. The night-staff had to let me hide behind their desk and find me a coat to wear, while they went up and moved my luggage from room 265 to another room on

another floor.
          "I didn't get any sleep that night. I kept thinking she might find out what room I'd moved to.

'There's nothing I want to know...'

          "The next morning, at breakfast, when my friends asked me how I'd slept - well, I opened my shirt and showed them the red-blue mark of a woman's hand on my chest. And the bruise on my neck.'"

          "Did you ever find out anything about the ghost?" I asked. "I mean, was someone murdered in that room, or what?"
          "The only thing I know about that ghost," he said, "is that she has great taste in men. Apart from that, there's nothing I want to know. And she won't be getting a second date."

And if you believe this is a true story, told to me by a friend, then I am your Granny's great-uncle Jim.

Copyright Susan Price.

Overheard in a Graveyard

This is an excellent collection - varied, emotive and well-judged. Highly recommended. - Amazon review.

 

                                  Nightcomers

'Every tale shows the quality of the imagination, and the accuracy of the telling. What most impresses is the authority of Susan Price's voice: exact, rich or spare when necessary, able to evoke the Past without falsity, and the present without effort.'
(The Guardian.)

 

 

  

Hauntings

'This collection… has a depth of emotion that is at times disturbing.' Magpie,

Ghostly Music for Hallowe'en

     It's Hallowe'en this coming Friday, but as I usually post on

A 'Spirit Photo': public domain

Saturday, I shall miss it. And it's no use posting about Hallowe'en on Saturday, November 1, as that is, of course, All Souls Day, when the bogies and boggarts are all banished away - until sometime around Christmas, when they seem to come back, in time for our tradition of telling Christmas ghost stories.
     All fine by me, as I'm always ready to tell ghost stories.
     I think I've blogged before about my family's stalwart efforts to remain sceptical and hard-headed despite all the yammering from the other world.

Wikipedia: The Fairy Bridge

     There's my cousin, for instance, Alan Hess. Studied chemistry, worked in the computer industry and is a man of science. When he lived on the Isle of Man, and was told that, when crossing the Fairy Bridge, you always have to politely wish 'good morning,' to the fairies - or ill-luck will befall you.
      Naturally, being a man of science, he scoffed. And the next time he drove across the Fairy Bridge, he called out - well, this is a family-friendly blog, so I won't say what he called out. But he was dreadfully rude to the fairies.
       And lost control of the car, skidded across the road and ended up in the ditch. After that, he was always very polite to the fairies. But ask him about it now, and he maintains that it was coincidence. Pure coincidence.

        But my main tale today is unseasonal. Davy and I once went for a walk along the river Teem. It was August, and about as hot as August can be. We walked through pasture and cornfields, climbing stiles and crossing bridges over small streams. It was beautiful, but we became very thirsty.

      It was a long trek back to the pub where we'd left the car, but I saw a church spire rising over the tree-tops. The church was much nearer. "Where's there's a church, there's probably a village," I said. "Maybe a pub - or a least a shop where we could buy a bottle of water."
      So we walked on, and came to a wooden bridge that would take us across the river to the church. The banks were thickly wooded, so we couldn't see anything of the church, or any neighbouring buildings, except the spire.
      Once over the bridge, we came on an oddly desolate scene. There was no village - or any other building at all except the church.
     But there had been a village. We could see the raised, roughly square and oblong platforms where the buildings had stood. You could see the streets that ran between them. Sheep wandered here and there, walking the sunken streets and clambering over what had been houses.
       We wandered around the church, noting the changes to it, the walled up doors and windows. Davy said he'd like to see inside, so we went around to the porch.
        I was struggling with the big iron door handle when Davy said, "Don't!" I looked over my shoulder at him, a bit puzzled. "There's a service going on," he said.

        I was even more puzzled. I didn't think my hearing was that bad. I hadn't, and couldn't, hear anything except the sheep and the river. I put my head close to the door and listened. I could hear nothing from inside the church.
        "No, there's not," I said, and tried again to open the door.
        "There's somebody practicing on the organ then," Davy said. "We shouldn't disturb them."
         I gave him a funny look. Was he having me on? There was no organ playing, and no other sound at all from inside the church. I opened the door - and immediately forgot about everything except investigating the place.
         The church was dim, cool, silent and completely empty. It was a beautiful old place, and plainly dated to before the Reformation, as it had an old rood-screen, and steps that had originally led up to the gallery above it.  We had a good poke around, and then went outside and wandered over the vanished village, speculating about what had happened there, before trudging back to the pub through the heat, and finally getting that drink.
          It was only hours later, when we were home, that I thought back over the day and remembered that conversation in the church porch. I thought it over, remembering Davy's tone and manner. He hadn't been joking: I was certain of that. He had simply been stating something obvious to him: something - a service or an organ practice - had been going on in the church.
          So I asked him about it. "There was someone in the church," he said. "I thought we shouldn't disturb them.But you never listen."
          "But there wasn't anybody in the church," I said. "There wasn't a soul in there."
          "Whoever it was must have gone out by the other door when we went in," he said.
          I thought about that.
         Nah. Not a chance.
         There had been another door, but it had been big, old, heavy and closed. If, on hearing me push open the door, someone had jumped up from the organ and nipped out the other way, it would have been impossible for us not to have heard them. They would have had to scurry across a tiled floor, open a big, heavy door, and close it after them - all in an eye-blink.

          I put this to Davy. "I heard music playing in the church," he said - again, a simple, plain statement of fact.
          Knowing him as well as I do, I am completely convinced that he did hear a service or, at least, music playing. I am equally certain that there was no one in the church, and hadn't been for hours, and that there was no music playing.
          Davy will not countenance any idea of ghosts. As far as he's concerned, he heard someone playing the organ, who then, in a moment, silently left the church as we stepped through the door (since the music apparently continued until we entered.)
          I think I will just mention that although born in Edinburgh and raised in the Lowlands, Davy is of pure Highland descent. Just saying.

          When I told my brother about this, he said, "Davy must have tinnitus." Typical Price.
 
          I invite all my readers to contribute their spooky stories below, in honur of the season. Winter is coming.


           And if you're looking for some suitably ghostly reading...
 

Overheard In A            Hauntings                 Nightcomers
Graveyard

        

THINGS THAT STAMP ABOUT IN THE NIGHT

Hauntings by Susan Price

          It was the Christmas when I was 15.  I usually shared a bedroom with my sister, but she was staying with relatives, so I had my bedroom to myself.  I went to bed last, and lay awake reading, my bedroom door closed.  Lying there, I heard my brother walk from his room to the bathroom.

          Then he walked from his room to the bathroom again - only without first returning to his bedroom.  After that he went up and down the stairs several times – sometimes without bothering to come back up before going down again.  Sometimes he started down the stairs without having walked across the landing to get there.

          At first I explained these gaps in the footsteps as my inattention, but soon I started to be annoyed.  Sometimes the footsteps started inside a bedroom, sometimes outside the door.  They made circuits of the house – across the landing, down the stairs, back up the stairs and back along the landing.  They’d do this several times in a few minutes, sometimes walking up the stairs without going down them, or vice versa.

          What were my family up to?  Were they tramping heavily one way, and then creeping the other?  And why?

          They were real footsteps.  At 15 I knew the difference between a creaky floorboard and a real, heavy footstep.  I called out to ask what the game was, but was unheard or ignored.  I didn’t get up – it was too cold.

          I heard my baby brother start to cry, and my parents wake.  I clearly heard my father get out of bed, walk round it, leave his room, cross the landing and start down the stairs.  Then my mother called, “Oh – the powder’s here.”  My father walked back into his room.

          And soon after that I turned off the lamp and went to sleep.

          Next morning every one slept in, except my mother.  I asked her why everyone had been tramping about in the night.  She was mystified.  She’d heard nothing, and swore that neither she nor my father had left their beds after turning in.

          I told her that I’d heard Dad get out of bed and go part way down the stairs when the baby had started crying.  “He never got out of bed,” my mother said.

Nightcomers by Susan Price

          I couldn’t believe her.  She insisted that when the baby had cried, she had asked my Dad to fetch the powder, and he’d started to get out of bed – but then she’d found the powder, and Dad had lain down again.  He’d never left his bed, let alone walked out of his room, along the landing and down the stairs.

          I didn’t know what to think.  I had heard the footsteps.  I’d been awake and reading.  When my brother got up, I cross-examined him, but he swore that, not only had he heard no footsteps, but had never left his bed.

          But my Dad, when he got up, said yes, he’d heard the footsteps.  “I got up about four and went round the house, I was so sure somebody had got in.”  There was no break-in, but even after he’d returned to bed, he’d heard the footsteps for a while.  He’d eventually dismissed it as some kind of dream or imagination and gone to sleep.

          But we both heard the footsteps.  It made me uneasy to remember that I’d called out, demanding to know what was going on.  There’d been no answer – but what had ignored me?  I was glad I’d stayed in bed.

          I wasn’t scared at the time, as I had no doubt that the footsteps were being made by some member of my family – though I was puzzled by their continual roaming of the house, and the odd gaps in them.  If my father hadn’t heard them too, I would probably have dismissed them as imagination.

          Happy Hallowe’en – and please leave an account of any ghostly experiences you’ve had.

          If you'd like to read one of the stories from NIGHTCOMERS, click on the links below.  One will take you to the story.
           The others will take you somewhere else.
           You click at your own risk.  This blog accepts no responsibility for any offence taken.

           Will you choose to click on  RAT or
                                                                      WITCH or
                                                                                           GHOST?
           IMP or
                                  BROOMSTICK?

          My new ghost story collections, NIGHTCOMERS and HAUNTINGS will be published as e-books, available for download from Amazon, on Hallowe'en.
          My website: www.susanpriceauthor.com

          And here's Blot, trick and treating...

And if you enjoyed this cartoon, you may enjoy this post, over at Awfully Big Blog Adventure

THE HAUNTED HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN...

          More bedtime stories my family told me…

'Hauntings' by Susan Price

          When I come to think of it, my family were great story-tellers.  There were the stories in books – and then there were stories about our uncles and aunts, our grandparents, and great-grandparents, and even great-great-grandparents.

          I said I’d tell you more about why my Mom hated the house I was born in.  She often told me about an incident that happened a few weeks after I was born.  My Dad was working late, and she was lying in bed, reading, while I slept in my cot beside her.

          She looked over at me and saw me open first one eye - and close it - and then open the other eye.  I was too young, she said, to be able to open one eye at a time like that - and anyway, I was asleep.

          It was more as if someone had lifted up my lids to see what colour my eyes were.  She'd often seen the old ladies in the street do that with new babies.

          Mom jumped out of bed, scooped me up, took me into bed with her, and pulled the blankets over both of us until Dad came home.  Why are blankets such a protection against ghosts?

          My aunt told a ghostly tale about lying in bed too.  She had a terrible time nursing her parents through their final illness, and came near to a nervous breakdown herself.  My grandmother died first, and spent her last hours talking, in the voice of a little girl, to her own, long-dead mother.  My grandfather lived for several more months, enduring great pain.  When he died, my aunt was exhausted, grieving and depressed.

'Nightcomers' by Susan Price

          Two nights after the funeral, she was in bed when she felt the end of it sag as someone sat on it. Propping herself up on one arm, she saw the vague outline of a man in the dark: and knew it was her father.  She knew the way he sat; she smelt his tobacco; and although she heard no words, the words he’d so often said to her came to her in his voice: ‘Don’t be silly: everything’s going to be all right.’  She felt comforted.

          She told no one, not wanting to be told she'd been dreaming, or thought hysterical.  She didn’t mention it at all until about ten years later, when she and my father, who had always been close, were talking about their parents.  Then, hesitantly, she told my dad.  He was astonished.  On that night, he said, two nights after their father’s funeral, he’d been working late in a small engineering works.  He’d been alone in the place when he suddenly had a strong sense of someone standing close behind him.

          He’d whipped round, and had seen a vague shape, and smelt tobacco, while in his head the words formed quite clearly: ‘Tell your sister not to be so daft; everything’s going to be all right.’  But did he pass on the message?  No – because he did not believe in ghosts.
          I should have it put into Latin for our family motto: Despite All: Believe Not In Ghosts.

          I love hearing your ghost stories, so if I've reminded you of any, please share them.
         I'm going to e-publish my two collections of ghost stories, Hauntings and Nightcomers, on Hallowe'en.  It seems appropriate...

           My website is here: www.susanpriceauthor.com

          
 And he-e-e-e-re's Blot

     

CATS AND GHOSTS

          More ghostly tales then…

          Close the curtains against the dark, and draw your computer chairs closer to the virtual fire...

          Tales of cats this week…

          My aunt (she of the spooky tales) moved back into her parents’ house, to care for them as they died. She brought with her a black cat, named Charny.

          My grandad had always been fond of cats, and Charny soon learned that he was sure of a welcome, and much stroking and ear-rubbing, if he jumped up on the bed in the front room. All the months my grandad lay dying, the cat hardly left the bed. He would jump down to eat or use his tray, perhaps take a quick stroll up and down the garden, and then immediately return to my grandad’s side where he lay, night and day.

          Until two days before grandad’s death, when Charny jumped down, left the room, and wouldn’t go back into it again.  If picked up and carried inside, he struggled, and ran away as soon as put down.

          After grandad died, my aunt had to move, and Charny went with her again – but would not stay in the new house.  He ‘went mad’, running to every door and every window, crying and scratching, not resting until let out into the yard. If carried back inside, he panicked and ran about in fright until the door was opened.

          After a time of sleeping rough, Charney settled happily with a neighbour, and would come back to visit my aunt – but would not set paw in the house.

          I can personally vouch for the fact that almost every cat my aunt has kept in that house developed a habit of freezing and staring fixedly at a spot about half-way up the stairs.  I also heard heavy footsteps climbing the stairs one night when I was house-minding the place.

My parents' wedding

          My mother, too, told a tale of a sensitive cat. When my parents were first married, they lived in the old house where my father had been born.  Mom always disliked it.  It was creepy, she said.

          It was gas-lit, and you had to put money in the meter.  If the gas ran out and you didn’t have any sixpences or shillings, you had to sit in the dark.

          Mom was often alone in the evening, when Dad worked late.  She would sit reading on the sofa, with her cat, Tiny, who lay on her lap for hours, purring.  But when the gas sputtered out, Mom said, and it was  instantly dark, Tiny jumped from her lap and ran under the sideboard, squeezing herself right to the back, cowering against the wall.

          A cat, scared of the dark? You can imagine how my mother felt, as she groped for her purse and scrabbled for a sixpence.  Quite often she didn’t have a sixpence, and had to sit in the dark, wondering what had frightened the cat…

          Other things happened in that house that made her like it even less… but that’s for another blog.

         Have you any good creepy tales of ghost and animals, or ghostly animals?  Or beastly ghosts.  Come on, come to the virtual fire and share them…

www.susanpriceauthor.com

          My new ghost story collections, NIGHTCOMERS and HAUNTINGS will be published as e-books, on Hallowe’en.

And here's Blot, with Hallowe'en games...

 

   Bobbing for ideas can certainly be like that....

A TRUE GHOST STORY

Nightcomers by Susan Price

          Over at Do Authors Dream of Electric Books, the other day, Stuart Hill was talking about true ghost stories.  He collected a few good ones!

          I left a comment there about my family’s long struggle to be rational and not believe in ghosts – a battle fought by generations before me, while my family were beset by ghosts and heavy-footed things that tramp in the night (of which, more later this month).

          In my collection of ghost stories, NIGHTCOMERS -  which I’ll be bringing out as soon as my brother can finish the cover – there’s a story called ‘The Baby’ which I based on one of the flesh-creepers my aunt told me. 

          Doris was my grandmother’s niece; and Emily one of my grandad’s sisters.  They were close neighbours and, as Emily was heavily pregnant, Doris was looking forward to seeing the baby when it was born.

          But Doris contracted pneumonia – pretty much a death-sentence in the early 1930s, especially if you were poor.  She was put to bed and her mother and sisters sat with her.

          Doris was sick for days.  The other women knew that Emily had given birth, but no one told Doris.  The baby wasn’t strong, and they thought it best not to mention it.

          Doris kept asking that the bedroom window be opened, but it wasn’t, because it was cold.  Again and again Doris demanded that the window be opened.  She struggled to sit up, saying, “Open it!  Open it!”

          Obviously, she was delirious.  They tried to calm her.  “Let her in!” she said.  “She wants to come in – she wants to be with me.  Let her in!”

          “Who’s outside?” one of the sisters asked.  “Who wants to come in?”

          Doris said, “Emily’s baby.  She wants to come in and be with me.  Let her in!”

          Doris begged for the window to be opened until, eventually, someone did open it, despite the cold.  They left it open after she died too, for a whole day, for fear of what they might shut inside if they closed it too soon.

          The women sitting with Doris knew that Emily’s sickly baby had been a girl.  And two days after Doris’ death, the baby that had wanted to be with her, died too.

          My Aunt told me this, but, a true Price, ended it by saying, “It’s easily explained – Emily never had a baby that lived longer than a couple of days.  And it would have been on Doris’ mind.”

          Somehow, these sensible remarks never stopped that cold grue going down my back.

          I think I might tell true ghost stories all this month – and if anyone wants to leave theirs as comments, I'd love to read them, and we can build up quite a collection by Hallowe’en!

         But before any more ghost stories, here's Blot -