50 World Travelers Tell Their Creepiest Hotel Stories 

1. When I was about four years old my family ended up staying at the Cedar Lodge motel where Cary Stayner worked right before he murdered four women. My family drove to Yosemite, and it was a long drive for us (three kids all under the age of seven plus two adults and a fuckton of mountains will do that). By the time we arrived at the motel, it was late, we were all cranky, and we couldn’t wait to get out. But the moment we pulled in, something set my mom’s teeth on edge and she insisted that we leave and find another hotel, reservation or not. My mom has always had this like sixth sense and her gut has actually saved us a couple of times but my dad was tired and convinced her to ignore her gut and stay for just the night and the next morning we’d leave. I can remember my mom actually refusing to let go of our hands, making us stay right by her side as she kept looking around while checking in. To try and get her to relax, my dad suggested we go to the pool, thinking it would calm her down. Well, when we got there, there were no towels so my mom called the front desk. The moment the man delivering towels arrived, my mom immediately grabbed us out of the water and rushed us back to the room. The man gave her the absolute creeps and she says there was just this feeling of pure evil when he looked at us. That night my mom and dad pushed the dresser in front of the door and had us all sleep in the same bed. The next morning, we left to go to another hotel but my mom couldn’t stop talking about how evil that motel was. About two months later, she and my dad were up late watching the news when they started reporting on a man who had murdered a woman and two young girls in Yosemite. Just as my mom began to say, “I bet it was at that motel” they showed Cary Stayners face and said it occurred at the Cedar Lodge motel. Cary Stayner was the man who brought us our towels at the pool. We’ve never gone back to Yosemite and my mom is always insistent that we listen to our gut feeling and when every bone in your body is telling you something is wrong, gtfo.

2. My company would put us up in the Shilo Inn downtown when we were in Salt Lake City. A coworker of mine was awakened in the middle of the night by the sounds of a bunch of kids in the hallway. It went on for longer than he could tolerate, so he opened the room door to tell them to hush — only to find the hallway empty.

He could still hear the children, so, figuring they were in an adjoining room, he called down to the front desk to complain. The man at the front desk claimed to be certain there were no kids staying on that floor, but that he was certain the noise would subside in a bit. He offered to send up some earplugs.

My coworker was a bit annoyed (how can you say there are no kids here when I’m hearing kids?), but went back to bed and eventually fell asleep.

The next day when he was checking out, a different clerk made the mistake of asking the routine question “Was everything satisfactory with your stay?” My coworker gave her an earful about the noisy kids, and how the other clerk had dismissed his complaints.

The clerk looked a little uncomfortable, and said in a half whisper: “We are not supposed to talk about our history with guests. But please do a google search for ‘Rachel David’ and you’ll understand what happened to you. We get similar complaints every few weeks, and we try to never put kids on that floor.”

In the van on the way to the airport, he read on his phone the story of how a mother, Rachel David, had tossed her seven children off the 11th floor balcony of the hotel — then called the International Dunes — to their deaths before jumping herself.

3. My wife and I stayed in a pretty well known hotel in London. The rooms where pretty nice but had a door which allowed someone to travel between our room and the one next to us. To do so you needed to open the door in my room and then someone had to open their in the neighboring room. There was only one handle on each door. One night I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I saw someone moving around. It being the dark and the middle of the night I thought it was my wife. The next morning I found my separator door ajar….

4. My spouse and I stayed at a massive hotel complex which consisted of one hotel who bought almost every other hotel around it. We bought the online special and were put in one of the ancient aquisitions. There was this odd 4×4 piece of plywood that was hanging down from the ceiling just enough so it felt like someone could watch you through the crack but you couldn’t see in it. We hung up the do not disturb sign and went to tourist around. We came back and the TV was on at maximum volume. We left and returned again and the shower curtain had fallen down. Good thing it was only a one night stay…that room just had the feeling of someone there.

5. Family vacation. 1am. 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 way I saw The Shining. I can’t be scared more than that from that movie.

6. 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.

7. I was traveling out of the country right after finishing up a huge 5-day work event where I had about 10 hours of sleep total during the 5 days.

I got to the motel, which is kinda run down and the carpet and blankets are damp but I’m so exhausted I don’t even really think about it.

I fall asleep pretty much immediately at like 8PM local time.

At maybe 11pm or so, I get a call from the motel phone saying there’s been a complaint about noise. I tell them that’s impossible, I’ve been sleeping. They ask me if maybe it’s someone else in the room and I tell them nope, I’m here alone so there’s definitely no one else making noise. They ask me again if I’m sure I’m by myself and not causing any noise. I say yes again. Fall back asleep immediately.

When I woke up and thought about it some more, I realize how weird the entire interaction was. There was absolutely no noise I could hear anywhere nearby and I don’t know why the motel staff would need to clarify so many times that I was alone.

Apparently they never called. So I assume it must’ve been someone calling the different rooms to see who was in the rooms and how many people. I’ve never been so glad to always always use the extra latch chain lock.

8. When I was like 14/15, I went with my family to Las Vegas and we stayed off the main strip in a 2 bedroom suite. It was a smaller casino/hotel. My parents left to go out and enjoy the night while I stayed with my younger siblings. They slept in the bedrooms and I was in the living room watching tv. I think I dozed off at around midnight and when I woke up, I was in a stairwell. Outside of the hotel room. I had no shoes on. I had no cell phone. No room key.

I went to the front office and told them I was locked out of my room and they believed me and gave me a key.

I still don’t know why I was out there. To this day, I have never sleep walked. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I did sleep walk, maybe something happened during those hours that I cannot remember. But it was creepy enough for me to share.

9. I arrived late at a hotel for a business trip. Flight had a malfunction so we had to land. They fixed it on the tarmac & we never deplaned. Room already paid for, confirmation number in hand, etc. I got there about 5 hours after I was supposed to be there. Of course, they gave away my room. I already wasn’t happy from all the delays & I wasn’t going anywhere. The event I was there for was in their hotel. I wanted my room. I was polite but resolutely firm. They did some scrambling and asked if I would consider a damaged room under construction. “As long as the sheets are clean so I can go to bed, I don’t care.” was my reply. Mistake. The room they gave me was literally a crime scene. The case had been closed so there was no legal issue to contend with but someone had been killed (or nearly killed – not 100% sure) in that room. They had primed over the blood stains on the walls & ceiling but had only taped down semi-clear plastic over the pooled blood on the carpets. Multiple small holes in the walls had obviously been patched & sanded but they were MULTIPLE SMALL HOLES IN THE WALLS. They gave me a completely new bed and TV from on-site inventory so I was comfortable but, man, it was creepy as fuck.

The creepiest part was the priming job. It was so obviously blood splatter. You could see where the person had been hit & where they fell. You could also see how they had tried to get up & where they had finally collapsed.

10. My girlfriend works as a tv commercials producer and often travels to South America (mainly Argentina). One night she woke up at around 3am to find a male hotel employee standing at the foot of her bed staring at her. When they checked the CCTV he had been doing it for hours that night and for the previous three nights.

11. 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. Always happened in the dead of the night when in deep sleep. As soon as i woke up it would stop. 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 his randomly try and kick doors down within the hotel. The family was very wealthy and connected and the manager didnt 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.

12. We were in south, booking a hotel. My girlfriend was using the bathroom when she suddenly started screaming. I went in just in time to see a hole in the ceiling and an eye. The person ran immediately and we could hear the footsteps on the roof.

13. I was in Spain, nice vacation, fancy hotel. In the room next to us was a young german couple. They were always partying as it’s fullest. One night I woke up, because I had a terrible nightmare, i heard sirens, terrible screaming..

The hotel rooms have (next to normal ones) little windows to the inside of the hotel. It was open. I could hear every word from the police. The girl was drunk and brought another guy for sexy time to the room. Boyfriend wasn’t amazed, enraged and tried to stab the guy, but he accidentally killed the woman, who must have tried to stop him. It was pretty sad.

14. My mom went to this hotel where the tv would turn on by itself a few times a day as well as doors closing in her room. It was a big room that had stairs in it. Somewhere in Montauk NY.

15. Found a hotel in Yangon (Burma) the day we got there for pretty cheap. They mentioned the rates were low because maintenance was being done on several floors. We sleep fine, wake up and head to breakfast. At breakfast we met some Germans who had also stayed the night in our hotel. They said they had not slept well because during the middle of the night someone woke them up to move them from the floor they were on. We (us and the Germans) found out later that they had been moved because they were on one of the levels reserved for maintenance, and part of the maintenance included gassing the rooms for bugs. During the middle of the night they were just going around the rooms shoving the gas nozzle or whatever under the doors and letting them run; wound up killing the two people next to the Germans before they realized they’d accidentally booked people on that floor. We weren’t on that floor thankfully but it has always stuck with me how seemingly easy it could’ve been to have gotten mixed up in that.

16. In 1996 while air-drying naked after a shower lying on my hotel bed in Beijing with the curtains drawn, I received a call demanding I put on clothes.

17. Stayed in a B&B in Pennsylvania that seemed cute enough. They did have a wall of antique dolls in the main room but otherwise no signs of weirdness.

That’s until we were settled in the room. I noticed some scratches on the floor near a book case and after some inspection realized it was a secret door. When I asked the owner, who gave a creepy vibe if it worked he said yes and showed me that it opened to their office (which was a cluttered room with a computer and piles or crap). It had a lock on their side and when I asked if there was a lock on my side he smiled and said “no”. When I showed some concern that there was an unlockable entrance to my room that was camouflaged that they didn’t tell me about he just kept smiling.

So that night no sex (fear of cameras) and I barricaded the fucking door and barely slept.

18. My friend recently told me this story. Every summer he travels through Central and South America for a couple of months. One year, he stayed in Roatan for a few weeks. In the middle of the night he hears loud knocking on his door; he was by himself and knew no one from the area. He grabbed a knife, sat down in the kitchen, and waited. They continued knocking for a while, but they eventually gave up and went away. He talked to the hotel owner the next day and she basically told him if he had answered the door he’d probably be dead. He took off and hasn’t been back since.

19. Oh boy, this one still makes me shudder. We were traveling with another couple who had budget restrictions and we needed to find a last minute place to stay in Las Vegas. We had been looking forward to a nice hotel with a pool to kick it by and chill out. They couldn’t afford it and so they found a super cheap AirBnB with a pool. We were trying to be good, flexible travelers so agreed to compromise. As we were driving to the place, I tried to ignore the increasing amount of poverty and strung out people on drugs on the street looking lost. We pulled into the apartment lot and I said nothing. My husband and I looked at each other. It looked like a seedy apartment place from District 13. As we walked into the building, I was overcome by the smell. It was sweet, and at the same time, horrible beyond belief with a layer of perfume on top.
My body would not let me breath in the smell and I had to cover my mouth with my shirt sleeve in order to breathe. I was on the tail end of the flu so I had been nauseous for days and I figured I was just being sensitive. We hurried to see the pool and it had a big sign “under renovation”. Covering my mouth as we went back into the building, we checked out our apartment. It was clean and the smell didn’t permeate into it, so we agreed to stay. That next morning, I woke up having had the worst dreams of my life. People getting shot and hurt and beat up. Constant drama and horror all night in my head. My husband seemed interested in what I had dreamt and I didn’t want to get into it so I just said people getting hurt.
When we got home in a couple of days I brought up the smell in the hallway. It wasn’t until then that he told me that it was the odor of a badly decayed human body.
Thanks for telling me, dude!!! My husband is paramedic and so gets to smell the worst smells known to humanity.

20. Not mine, personally, but my co-worker was on a business trip and went to check into her room and they hadn’t cleaned the room from the last guest. She only knew this because when she walked in he was dead on the bed. Heart attack or something but somehow they skipped over turn down service on check out.

21. About 14 years ago I set off on a 13-month round the world trip. One of my first stops was Kilkenny, Ireland. I caught a bus from town and arrived at Foulksrath Castle. Built in the late 1300’s, in 2004 it was a hostel that cost only 14 EUR per night for a bed. I had never spent the night in a castle before, much less for 14 EUR!

I set my things on a bed and went outside to socialize with other tourists in the late afternoon. There were a couple guys on the roof and they yelled out for us to join them for the sunset. I LOVE sunsets, so I started up the stone steps, first a circular staircase and then a very narrow last flight of stairs to the roof. While I was climbing, I heard someone behind me but when I got to the top of the stairs and turned around, there was no one behind me. I found this was odd but enjoyed the sunset anyways. At dinner time, the guests all cook in the kitchen and then dine by candlelight. The castle caretaker then told us the story that the castle was haunted – one ghost makes the air feel cold, another female ghost smells like flowers, and the last ghost runs up and down the stairs. The hair on my arms stood on end – was I followed by a ghost? I didn’t sleep much that night in the creaky old bunkbed.

Unfortunately, a few years later the caretaker resigned, and Foulksrath Castle closed its doors to backpackers in 2009. It’s privately owned today.

22. Guest house in La Paz, December 1997.. The guest house itself was lovely. Good atmosphere, lots of backpackers from all around. We did a hiking trip to Rurrenabaque, and got stuck there at the start of the wet season. 3 of us decided to rent a jeep with driver to get us back to a place where we could get a bus. The fourth, was in less of a hurry. She decided to wait for a clear day to fly back over the Andes. Misfortune had it that she arrived before us at the guest house. There was a crazy guy with a knife that cut several backpackers, and cornered our friend. She was pretty cut, and had a terrible experience. The guest house staff jumped the idiot, contained him, and he got put on a plane out of the country by the police (apparently easier than dealing with foreign embassies). She recovered well physically, and we treated the staff to lots of good drinks.

23. Two friends and I stayed in a hotel in Sapporo. It was part of a large franchise, all very standard, no funny business.

On the first night, I went to bed last, my friends were already asleep. I closed my eyes, just listening to how the breathing of people sleeping gets really loud in a quiet room. There were four sets of breathing, including mine. Counted again, and again, four sets, mine, my two friends, and some… thing? someone? else.

This repeated every night for the four nights we stayed there, and in my culture, we don’t mention the supernatural in case they notice we notice them, so I suffered those nights alone.

Nice hotel and wonderful trip, otherwise. Sapporo is lovely in May. You might be able to catch the last of the cherry blossoms.

24. I went to sleep in one room, and I swear to god, it felt like I woke up in a completely different room. I didn’t know where I was. It was like a surreal alien abduction story.

25. Finally! Something I can answer! 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 didnt 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.

26. 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 too spooky for me.

27. My best friend and I (both f) went to Marrakesh and in the middle of the night we were woken up to a man shaking our door trying to get in. Luckily it was locked from the inside.

28. OH BOY. So, right out of high school, I went to visit my boyfriend in the military. How my parents let me go, I will never know. So we get a motel for the week, and we proceed to spend the entire time in the room, as two kids who haven’t seen each other in months will do.

On the fifth or so day, we get back to the motel from dinner and find that the room below us is taped off with police tape and surrounded by cop cars. We assume drug deal or prostitution or something and don’t think anything else of it.

Well, after my week is up, I’m in a cab on the way to the airport and hear something about the Sunset Inn motel on the radio. It turns out a Marine killed his wife there, drove to Texas, was killed in a police shootout, and the found her body three days after she was murdered.

29. We stayed at a monastery in Italy. At night, there were so many strange noises and people walking around. Nearly everyone in our group woke up randomly in the night because they thought someone was awake and in the room or due to strange noises.

30. Me and the fiancée once stayed the night in the grand hotel in Torquay. For those not in the know, Grand hotels in the uk are marvelous old victorian buildings which sadly (particular in old seaside towns) tend to have seen better days. Well anyway we were having a ball getting money drunk amongst the old folks who still love to spend their weeks in such places, particular in the very attractive art deco bar. Everything was super until we tried to sleep that night. My Fiancee was first, claiming that a little boy came into our room and started tugging on her hand, and I later that same night awoke screaming convinced that a Woman had burst into the room in a state of undress screaming for help! Lets just say we left in a hurry, and when leaving I asked, “Has anyone ever said this hotel is haunted.” To which the receptionist replied sheepishly very much in the affirmative! 10/10 would go again.

31. It was at a crappy motel (Motel 6 or similar) in Baltamore on a road trip in college. I didn’t tell my girlfriend at the time, but I notice someone wrote “God help me” on the wall in the bathroom, I’m pretty sure someone killed themselves in the room recently.

32. 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.

33. I was in a hostel in Vancouver and was settling in when my bunk mate arrived. She was an older, Aussie woman in her late 50’s/early 60’s from Melbourne doing some world solo travel (she alluded to “being alone now”). She asked me about NYC (I’m from there) and answered almost everything that I told her with a subdued, almost whispery “that’s amazing”. (In accent: thaht’s uh-mayyy-zeeng)

In bed later that night, I turn over in bed away from the wall and see her standing by my rail with the moon from the window pouring over her. She’s wearing a long, white nightgown and her hair is in a disarray, almost glowing and she’s staring at me. Her face is at an angle so half of it is in shadow and she whispers “that’s amazing” and then goes back to sleep.

34. I used to travel for work and my typical schedule meant that I would usually check in at about 11 pm. I’ve walked in to rooms and without even turning on the light, just fell right into bed to find somebody already sleeping. This has happened 3 times.

35. Drunk guy at a hotel bar kept creeping on me and trying to demand that the bartender pour me drinks on his tab (I refused). I didn’t give this guy my real first name (and definitely not my room number), although he had already seen my last name on some work stuff I had with me. Nonetheless, that night I’m trying to fall asleep…

My room phone rings, I answer it and he slurs “Your real name is Megalodon319?” He them goes on a drunken sexual rant and I have to unplug the phone to get him to stop calling.

With just my last name, he got the hotel staff to tell him my real name (plus God knows what else) and give him my room phone number.

I was livid.

36. I was on a trip around southeast Asia in 2012. K was staying at this hotel/guesthouse thing in Cambodia with my traveling companion.

It was the middle of the night, and both of us woke up to the sound of our door handle jiggling. Then the door opened. My friend said “what the fuck?” In a confused just woken up state, and this scared the person off. We need him/her running away, and we asked eachother if “that really just happened?”

To make things even stranger, I got up and locked the door, and both of us just went back to sleep as if nothing happened.

I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t heard the person come in… As I said, the door was locked, and we heard the person trying to pick the lock, or do whateverhe/she did… And knowing people are home doesn’t seem like a smart time to rob someone

37. This happened to my father, not me, but definitely too creepy not to share.

My father went with a group to go on a trip to Tanzania to do some medical work in a poorer village. For a few nights of the trip the group stayed in a hotel. My dad was sharing a room with another man from the group, separate beds. One night, he is woken up by his roommate who has the light on. He looks terrified – trembling and praying. My dad asks whats wrong but he won’t say anything about it. My dad is obviously concerned, but since he can’t do anything about it, he goes back to sleep.

The next night, in the middle of the night, my father gets up to pee. He walks to the bathroom and starts to relieve himself when he catches a very strong scent of body odor. He and most of the people from the group are daily deodorant wearers, being from the US. Many locals in Tanzania don’t wear it as frequently, so when the smell hits his nose he realizes he and his roommate might not be alone. He turns around and sees, standing there in the doorway, a local woman – shaking violently, her eyes rolled up locked on the ceiling. He panics, as no one should have been able to get into the room. He turns back around towards the bathroom in a moment of confusion, but when he turns back shes just gone, as if she had never been there.

Shaken, he goes back to bed thinking maybe he was dreaming or seeing things. He lays back down on his side and, adrenaline starting to wear off, he begins to doze off again. Suddenly the smell returns. He slowly rolls over and looks to his left. There, in the bed beside him, is the woman – laying flat on her back, eyes glued to the ceiling. Again, panicking, he breaks his line of sight to her and again she is gone. My dad wasn’t able to get back to sleep. The woman never made another appearance. He asked his roommate about it the next morning and he had encountered the same thing the night before, which was why he was so shaken.

It could be explained by the fact that they were both on anti-Malarial drugs which can have side effects that include strange dreams, but still. Super creepy. And definitely weird that, even if it was caused by the medication, both my father and his roommate experienced the same thing.

38. I went on a road trip through USA a few years back. The night before I was due to return the rental van and fly home, I checked into a motel and transferred all my belongings into the room so I could pack my bags properly. I dumped it all on the desk on the other side of my room and promptly fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, the tea kettle from the RV (which I swear I hadn’t moved into the hotel room) was sitting on the pillow next to me. Nothing else had moved.

Such a small thing, but it creeped me the fuck out and I still can’t figure out exactly how it happened.

39. A chalet in the state of Maine Vermont with three others. The lady at the “front desk” was approximately a billion years old with cloudy eyes and her “front desk” was a small table next to a recliner in a room full of knick knacks and china dolls. The actual room, was what I imagine a hotel room in the 40’s would look like, and obviously it had never been remodeled. The bathroom had a metal claw-foot tub. The worst part, though, was the door at the back of the room. I assumed it would be another closet but we opened it and there was nothing but cold and darkness. We used the flashlight on our phones and discovered a long, wide, cement-walled hallway. I assumed it was used to travel between rooms when the weather was bad but the vibe it gave off was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The night went smoothly and nothing ever happened but I still feel like we survived a night in a boring horror movie.

40. When I was about 4, my family was at the resort in St. Kitts. I was swimming with some of the friends I made there, when one of them speaks of a woman at the pool, calling her “retarded” I didn’t know what that meant at the time. She had some mental disability, I don’t know what it was.

One point during the swim I found myself in front of her, and out of sight of my parents. I don’t remember anything leading up to this moment, but I remember her telling me “close your eyes and you’ll get a big surprise.” I did, not knowing any better, and she started hitting the top of my head with her fist and holding me under water.

Luckily my mom spotted this happening and stopped it. The woman who tried to drown me had a helper who was supposed to keep an eye on her, but was found sun tanning and not paying any attention at all. My mom lost it on her for not paying attention. This whole thing was more scary than creepy, but it stuck with me ever since, so I thought I’d share.

41. Once witnessed a thief breaking into cars in the parking lot from my hotel room window. Called the front desk and they had security go outside with a big ass stick. We had the bird’s eye view as this security officer is searching for the thief and the thief is evading him. Unfortunately, the thief got away in his vehicle.

42. 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 – 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 motherfucking scorpion, this time wayy bigger, plops on the ground at my feet. Stared at it for a moment in shock, squealed like a girl, squashed it and kept drinking.

43. When I was 12, my family took a vacation to Europe. At our hotel in Rome, there was this amazing indoor pool…and being a child of my age, I would have spent the entire vacation there if I could. During one such swimming excursion, some random gentleman, I think probably around 40-something, comes over to me and starts tickling my feet. My mother is with me, but is preoccupied with one of my other siblings. He speaks English as well and starts teasing me for being ticklish and telling me how I’m “simply adorable.” Through my giggles, I keep shyly asking him to stop. He doesn’t, and just keeps teasing me and touching my feet and lower legs. This went on for maybe 2 minutes tops before my mom sees what’s happening and goes into super protective mode and tells him to back the fuck off.

44. Did the couchsurfing.com thing with a friend a few years ago. We are both big guys so typically feel safe everywhere we go.

Show up at the house, 60year old guy opens the door while on the phone. Hes only wearing sweat pants. He signals for us to enter. He continues his conversation and ends with an I love you. He turns to us and says welcome, and apologizes for being on the phone. He starts talking about his GF, who he was talking with, and how she lives overseas. He mentions he has several GFs and boasts about being a ladies man. He then starts to show us pictures. These girls looked like they were 14, while sliding through the pic he accidentally showed us one of their passports. This weirded us out a lot. We were early twenties and didn’t really know what to do, so we said we were tired and wanted to sleep. He walked us to the room while rubbing his belly. Told us he we make breakfast in the morning.

We decided to sleep the night, but leave before he woke up. My friend slept on the bedroom door so he couldn’t sneak in. We got up super early and bolted.

We got super weird vibes from the guy and just felt gross/weird about the whole thing.

45. I toured around in bands a lot in my twenties, and not once but twice came back to my hotel room to find a turd in my shower. I was the only person with a key to the room. One was in Germany and one was in Belgium. Two years apart, completely separate tour and crew.

46. I arrive at a secluded, coastal hotel south of Marmaris Turkey around 2 AM. It had been a long day in Istanbul followed by a flight and long bus ride into Marmaris where I haggled with non-English-speaking taxi drivers… who were not even aware that this small resort exists. When the taxi pulls up to the hotel… it’s on fire. When the owner, standing out front sees us he opens the taxi door excitedly, “You come. I have nice room for you!” I point out that the hotel is on fire but he simply gestures and says “Small fire. No problem. You come.” I. Am. Utterly. Exhausted. I find myself following the owner into the hotel, stepping over fire hoses, waving away smoke, passing fire fighters as they run up and down a very nice staircase. We pause at the second floor landing and the owner tells me, “See. Fire only on this side of hotel. This side no fire. You come.” My exhaustion removes every ounce of common sense and I follow him to a room down the hall. The room is indeed fire-free. I quickly scan the in-case-of-fire message on the back of the door, checked the window escape, and promptly pass out with my gear and boots on. In the morning I awake [alive] wondering if I dreamt the entire thing. I go down the smokey stairs past the charred other side of the hotel. The owner is so happy to see me [still alive] that he eats breakfast with me.

I went back a few years later and the hotel had fully recovered.

47. 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 no where. 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!

48. So mine takes place in a London hostel a few weeks ago. I have 2 friends with me that are both male, and we’re staying in a 9 bed mixed dorm. There’s 3 sets of 3 tier bunk beds. I’m in the bottom bed of the right bunk, friend 1 in the top of my bunk, friend 2 in bottom bed of middle bunk.

So, we get in at 2am and all just quietly get in our beds, after a few minutes of lying there trying to sleep I hear rustling behind me (I’m lying on my side facing the wall). So I think it is just someone going through their bag and ignore it.

Then I feel a hand on my hip over the cover, I turn round and it’s a random guy telling me to move over and trying to pull at my cover. I initially thought he was drunk and wasn’t sure which bed to be in so I tell him to go find his own bed, and then he shuffles away to bottom bed of left bunk.

Then he comes back again, i again tell him to go back to his own bed and he shuffles back to his own again. This happens another couple of times, with me gradually speaking louder and getting less polite telling him to fuck off.

So I’m shaking cause the situation is making me nervous, and message my mate that’s on the top bunk, saying I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep that night. He messages back casually thinking it’s cause of someone’s snoring. This is when I find out both my mates have ear plugs in and although they’ve heard me speaking, they each thought I was speaking to the other friend. So I tell him the situation and he starts keeping an eye out.

I hear the guy go to the bathroom that is en suite, but I can tell from the light he left the bathroom door open whilst doing so and refused to look. My mate fills me in that the guy was walking round with his pants down and deliberately left the door open to get me to look, but either way the guy goes back to his bed after and we think the situation is finally over.

Then it happens again, my mate keeping an eye out shines his phone light on the floor and shouts for the guy to fuck off. Apparently he was crawling across the floor again towards me.

The guy suddenly takes offence at my mates light shining on him and starts actually climbing the bunk ladder like King Kong to get to my mate on the top and was trying to take his phone. They wrestle for a while with my mate actually kicking the guy in the neck to try and keep him away, only for the guy to swing backwards and come straight back at him again.

I use this time to run for security, who find the guy still hanging on the bed when they get there, then call the police and have the guy taken away in a riot van and banned from the building.

Whilst the police had dragged him outside waiting for the riot van, the guy even head butted the brick wall several times.

No idea what that guy was on cause it wasn’t alcohol, but definitely on something to take a kick to the neck and still act like nothing happened afterwards.

The guy kept trying to blame my mate when security came as well, saying things in broken English like “come up here and see how violent this guy is”.

My other mate that had slept through the whole incident kept saying the next day that he couldn’t believe how friendly everyone in London is.

49. 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 shit 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 shook up, but it was better than getting in the car again.

Thank you, anonymous biker gang.

50. While in the isles of Scotland, we stayed in a B&B. It was owned by a couple. The bedrooms were extremely well done and beautiful, but on everything there was signs to not “touch”. To use the shower, you would have to ask the couple and the Internet ended at 11pm. The woman would also check on everyone at random times in the night, we would hear creeping in the hallway to make sure “everyone was sleeping” and not doing any illegal things like using the Internet. When we checked out of her B&B, she came into our room and said that we “stunk”, and opened the window to prove this and demanded for money immediately. Another traveller was kicked out of the B&B because the checkout time was 10am, and they were forced to stand outside (she wouldn’t even let them stay inside) in the thunderstorm while their taxi came. Another traveller had to go a check (we were in an isolated place) to pay for the room and she took their bags and wouldn’t give them back. But on the way out…she asked everyone if they enjoyed their stay!