May 9, 2008

A Hotel Guest's Final Goodbye

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[Name Withheld Upon Request], Derbyshire, UK, February 18, 2008

I have been a hotel manager for a number of years now, and during my career, I have heard stories and myself witnessed several encounters with so called spirits and ghosts in hotels that I have worked in. As anyone who has ever worked in hotels knows, the hours are long and most of the experiences I have I always attributed to being tired as I am in my mid-30s, level headed, and after all a senior manager in a hotel! Four weeks ago, a regular guest of the hotel that I currently work for passed on in the night -- peacefully and of natural causes I hasten to add. It was a traumatic experience for all my team that knew him as he was highly regarded and had a good-natured relationship with the team, given that we are a small hotel. As I mentioned, this was four weeks ago, and my experience relates to the anniversary evening in which he went to bed and never awoke -- two nights ago.

As I was staying in the hotel on this occasion I went to the bar following the fact that my Laptop, that I was working on in my room decided to crash and I lost about two hours worth of work. It was about 11:15 PM, the evenings Duty Manager, and Night Porter were at the bar, and I ordered a beer and stood talking to them about how the night was and my annoyance at the fact I had perhaps a further three hours work ahead. We were talking for about 30 minutes about various work issues, the lights were on their night settings throughout the hotel, as all guests had retired for the evening. As we were talking, we were all interrupted by a voice saying clearly, "Hello," and turned to see if a guest had entered who we had not heard and was waiting to check in. There was nobody there, and the Night Porter (who is in his mid-50s) assured me that the doors to the hotel were locked! At this point we put the lights on and the three of us did a search, inside and outside the building, to see if someone was about and fooling around, but nobody was.

On speaking with my Night Porter and Duty Manager they mentioned that four weeks prior, the guest that passed on ordered a drink from the bar, and shortly after went to his room! As you can imagine this spooked me and my colleagues and we all agreed that perhaps this event should not be made common knowledge! Perhaps he was trying to get our attention so he could get another glass of Merlot! After this, I took a whisky and went to bed. But my experience didn't stop at that unfortunately! As I was lying in bed and drifting off to sleep (with a light on I must add, and deciding not to continue working), I felt clearly the empty side of my bed sink as if someone had just sat on it, so I pulled the duvet up a little further and closed my eyes a little bit tighter! I must point out that the room I was in was not the room that our guest had passed away in, and what followed was a very restless night and a cold one at that! The following day, as I was leaving the hotel for the day, I clearly heard again, the same voice say "Goodbye," only this time I was the only one to hear it and my receptionist that I asked if he heard the voice, looked at me as if I had two heads! As I pointed out earlier, I have had similar experiences, some witnessed by others and myself and some alone. I have on several occasions awoke in the night and seen a friend of mine who was killed in an accident some 15 years ago, standing over me, but I always put it down to a dream. What normally followed however always seems to result in me being given bad news, like my mother's cancer eight years ago, and my grandfather passing away. I did always put it down to coincidence but now, perhaps, I am not so sure!