Tag Archives: hotels

The Ghost in the Hotel – –

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Last week was busy – three states in three days for four different meetings. No sweat. I learned a long time ago to sleep in hotel rooms just fine.

But in the third hotel, in Atlanta, something a little disturbing happened. I am accustomed to traveling alone. When it’s night time, I set my door guard as usual, do the before-bed needfuls in the bathroom, and either read until the book hits my face, or watch TV until I realize I’ve missed the last ten minutes of the plot.

All these things were done and I awoke in the middle of the night needing to visit the wee room.

When I entered, the toilet seat was up.

I have no further information about how that might have happened. I certainly didn’t put it up. The door was locked and bolted. There were no adjoining door rooms into my room. And I was alone.

This is what’s known in the business travel industry as “freak out territory.”

In the cool light of day, I have examined the many alternatives–aided by crowdsourcing online.

The prevailing theory is ghosts. In second place is a rat coming up the pipes. In distant third is the fact that the toilet seat was loose, inclined to shifting. Perhaps it simply flew up and I didn’t notice.

Yeah, none of these theories work well. Personally I’m willing to believe it was a ghost and move on with my life. He wasn’t noisy, and although it would have been more polite to put the seat back down when he was finished, maybe that was his way of expressing his presence on a polite but distant way.

As a friend of mine said in a musical X-files sort of way: doo-doo doo-doo

The People in 306

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Every year, Jack and I emcee the Sycamore Shoals Celtic Festival, in gratitude of which they give us a small stipend and a big room in a grand hotel.

For the past four years it’s been the Carnegie, a nice place in JC that features huge bathrooms, glorious hallway chandeliers, and paper-thin walls. Last night Jack and I settled into our room with the requisite Indian take-out meal from Sahib’s, mid-term grading for me and Scottish political sites for Jack.

About half an hour later, we glanced at each other. Strange noises were coming from the hallway. It sounded as though a child were throwing up.

“No, that’s the room beside us,” Jack said, as I started to open the door leading to the hall. He indicated the wall with a flick of his head.

I stood at the point where the noise seemed loudest and listened again. The soft, ah-ah-ah gasps escalated to something like crying.

“This kid is in pain,” I said to Jack. “Do you hear an adult in the room? Should we knock?”

At that moment a male voice said, “Good girl, do it again” and my whole assessment of the situation shifted. Jack and I shot back from the wall as though, well, shot.

The voices continued, rumbling, mumbling, giggling, and that high, heated shrieking the gasps had turned into. There were sounds of spanking, and choking. “Are you all right?” “Oh yeah, that was amazing!”

Jack and I glanced at each other, at the clock by our bed (10:45), at our empty, neatly made bed, and busted up laughing. At some point marriages turn into “Let’s get a good night’s sleep” instead of “I’ll have what she’s having.”

And that’s okay. Don’t get the wrong idea; sex shared with the right person has no equal. But it also has no need of broadcasting. Sex just doesn’t sound like much fun at all when you’re not the one having it. Erotic asphyxiation is definitely off my list. She sounded like a poodle with asthma.

So is the Carnegie Hotel, perhaps. Next year we’re asking for the Comfort Inn. Fare-thee-well, paper thin walls that bring more than someone else’s TV into your life.