This is a continuation of our previous blog entry on ghosts in hotels.
Over there, every other building is at least 300 years old and countless people have lived, died – and even been murdered – within their walls.
Lots of buildings in France and England even have plaques on their walls saying something like “XXX died here in XXX,” when a famous person is known to have died in that house.
It’s very interesting from a historical viewpoint, but certainly not if you’re wary of ghosts.
She said she saw images of people from the past all along the hotel corridor, as she was walking to her room.
“They all looked pale and were lined up against the wall expressionless,” she told me.
Scroll down to read about some of the scariest hotel rooms in the world…
Most Europeans I’ve spoken to don’t seem to care much about having to live with spirits long gone.
They even put up patiently with the idiosyncrasies of the ghosts – taking everything in with an amused air.
Some Asian visitors however, still prefer to stay away from anything other-worldly. I certainly do.
The somber atmosphere should have foretold of eerie occurrences.
However, I naively chalked this up to a taste for the avant-garde and a penchant for dark colors.
In the middle of the night, however, the radio began blaring at full blast.
Scroll down to read the rest of this story, and about ghosts in Venice…
Later, amidst the fog of a waking dream, it came on again.
The skeptical might attribute this to faulty wiring but who really knows? And why did the radio only turn on at midnight?
I automatically assumed it was the air conditioning and so I called the front desk to complain.
I stayed on for a few more days, walking around Venice and making the rounds of my favorite shops. I even spent a day at the Lido, hanging around a beach.
That’s why the night clerk looked like he’d literally seen a ghost…
And, while many of these tours are purely for fun. I did the St. Andrews ghost tour one evening, for instance, and there was absolutely nothing scary about it.
In fact, it was so un-scary (even if St. Andrews can be a rather somber town, especially on a dark and overcast day) that the organisers had to rustle up a fake ghost to appear before its clients.
A man in a ghost costume surprised us at the end of the tour.
Nevertheless, some tours are just not for the faint-hearted.
Then it terminated in a local cemetery well-known for apparitions.
I had to leave midway because of a terribly uneasy feeling. Apparently, not a few participants experience this, and some even start shaking all over.
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Some even employ their ghosts as an effective marketing tool.
This isn’t just because it’s neo-gothic architecture fits the popular imagery of a haunted house.
Both guests and hotel staff frequently report seeing a lady in white roaming the corridors and hearing banging doors and footsteps from empty rooms.
My suite – which was fashioned out of several rooms in the attic — was large, bright and decorated in pastel colored chintz.
This was in spite of closed windows and no wind at all.
I feigned sleep for the rest of the night, not wanting to come face to face with the unexpected by turning on the lights.
