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Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I am your guide, Derek Hayes. Howdy, howdy, howdy, folks. It's great to have you with us here this evening. I have something rather chilling to share with you tonight. As the summer months slowly approach us, many of you are making vacation and travel plans. And I have zero doubt that those plans will take you to exciting places and allow you to do amazing things.
And I'm sure that good times will be had by all. But I bet a majority of you will find yourselves in a hotel at some point during your little retreat. And if you're anything like me, you sit in said hotel room and wonder what all took place there years before you found yourself sitting there in the room. What tragedies took place, what horrors were unleashed, and what energies still remain.
Now experts estimate that there are as many as 187,000 hotels worldwide. That's 17.5 million individual rooms. And with that many opportunities, you have to imagine that there are some wild stories out there. So please join me in exploring these paranormal hotel stories. And we kick this evening off with a visit with our favorite neighbors to the north. Please welcome Tim.
from up in Canada. Hey Derek and everyone listening, this is Tim from the west coast of Canada.
So this story takes place the summer of 2004. I was living in Jasper, Alberta at the time, working for a company that did audiovisual installations for mainly the Fairmont chain of hotels, which in Canada is like a higher-end chain of hotels. And I had been contracted out through this company to go to Edmonton.
to set up all the audio-visual for a huge conference happening in their Fairmont hotel. So I was there, we worked about a 12-hour day getting ready for this big conference, setting up microphones and speakers and all the rest of it. And they were putting us up in the hotel.
And so we finished our day of work and me and the guy I was sharing a room with went back to our room and contacted another guy we'd worked all day with to see if he wanted to go for dinner and a beer. So we're hanging out in our hotel room, just getting ready. We got the doors of the little cabinet that the TV is held in in most hotel rooms. There's, I guess, two double or queen beds.
And I'm laying on the bed, last guy showering. We got the doors open to this unit watching TV. We finished getting dressed. We leave the room. I'm last out. I walk by this
I'm holding the TV and I'm looking at the door. The do not disturb sign is hanging on the inside of the door handle. And the door has a large pneumatic, like a door closing hinge. So you can't leave your door open only if you were to wedge the door open. If you leave, it is going to close the door behind you. And it does just that. It closes the door. I hear the click. I turn. I check the handle. Handle is definitely locked.
We leave, we go, we have dinner and one drink. We had to work the next morning, 6:00 AM. It was going to be another 12 to 14 hour day getting ready for this conference. We come back and me and the guy staying in the room approach our door and the door is ajar. And we both look at each other and kind of mouth a dirty word thinking that we had been broken into.
He pushes the door open and it didn't dawn on me at that moment, but there was no resistance from this automatic door closer and there's no way the door could have been ajar in the first place due to that mechanism. We walk in expecting us to have been robbed. We flick the light on.
And all of our belongings are exactly where we left them. Nothing's missing. You know, this is back pre-iPhone. CD players and whatnot, a laptop. Nothing's missing. Everything's exactly where it was. And we're kind of confused. And then I realized that the cabinets of the thing holding the TV are closed. And the Do Not Disturb sign is hanging on them. And I look at him and I'm like, something's telling us that we're disturbing it, I guess? Yeah.
So I called security thinking that maybe, I don't know, they had been in the room or housekeeping or like, I don't know. We tried to think about all options of what it could have been outside of the paranormal. Security came up, checked the locks on the door. They were intact. Door closer still worked fine. He checked the door. Everything was fine. Housekeeping, they quit at 4 p.m. You know, we got back to a room probably around 9.30, 10 o'clock at night.
And yeah, just had a general creepy feeling about it. That's my story. Do not disturb. Thanks again for the show. Love it. Take care, Derek. Hope everyone's well. Oh, Tim, we're already disturbed. But thank you for the phone call. Now, my initial thought here is that I would not want to go back into the room after all of that, knowing that the door can be opened at any point.
You see, one of the freakiest things about hotels to me is that there is typically only one way in and one way out. And if someone or something is blocking that exit, well, what do you do? Now, I stayed in a hotel near my hometown in Ohio just a few years back. And while I was gone one day, someone came in and stole my dirty laundry from the day before. I lost an amazing Mothman t-shirt from Easton Hawk.
And when I confronted the front desk about it, well, first they claimed they had nothing to do with it. Then they came clean and said my clothes were ruined in some sort of repair. But there were no repairs made in that room. Now, luckily, I'm a paranoid person, and I took all of my belongings with me that day, save for the dirty laundry. Otherwise, who knows what would have come up missing.
Well, admittedly, Tim's experience could be explained away without paranormal explanation. But the rest of tonight's calls, maybe not so much. Now, I have a whole lot more in store for you, so don't move a muscle. I'll be right back. Did you know about the seven-day money-back guarantee? In one action...
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Plus a fast-paced, streamlined format centered around the popular. Now this next entry takes us to the state of Illinois. Please welcome Christy to tonight's program.
Hi Derek, my name is Christy. I'm from the Chicagoland area. However, my story takes place in Kansas City, Missouri, probably about nine to ten years ago. So I think this was probably roughly 2015. So I used to travel quite a bit for work and I would book hotels through a travel agency that we had internally through my company.
And they had booked me at this Sheridan Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. I had never been there before. It was actually my first time to Kansas City. Really knew nothing about the area, but had some business that I had to do there. So I was off and traveling to the lovely state of Missouri. So I get to this hotel. I walk in and the first thing I notice is that it is absolutely beautiful.
It has this big, huge chandelier in the lobby area of the hotel. And then on the second floor, there's a walkway that's open to the main floor. So you can actually see the walkway from the main floor of the lobby area. But as soon as I walk into this hotel, I immediately get this feeling
overwhelming feeling of dread. The hairs on my arms started standing up and I started to just feel really creeped out.
walking through the lobby of the hotel to the point where I just didn't even want to be there. And I couldn't figure out why I was feeling this way. This hotel was stunning. There was nothing creepy about it whatsoever. It was almost wedding-esque. I mean, if I lived in the area and was getting married at the time, I probably would have loved to have my celebration there. But it just completely creeped me out.
So I go to the front desk and I'm checking in and I'm so tempted to ask the person working at the front desk if anything had happened at this hotel. But I had never experienced anything like this before. I don't get like creepy, weird feelings or anything like that. I really don't have anything paranormal that's ever really happened to me. And I decide against it because I just didn't want her to, you know, think anything.
that I was strange, right? Like asking if something weird had happened here, if there was something going on with the hotel. So I get into the elevator of the hotel and my room is actually on one of the upper floors. But as soon as I get in, the first thing I say to myself out loud is, this hotel is creepy. And I think I said that because I had to validate how I was feeling about the place. And
I had to vocalize it, basically. So I drop my stuff off in the room and I decide I'm hungry. It's kind of later at night and I get down to the second floor, which is where the restaurant is at. And mind you, up in my hotel room, I'm feeling fine. Don't get the creepy feeling anymore. I get back to the second floor, which is the walkway area, which leads to the restaurant.
And I'm in the walkway area looking down into the lobby and I start getting the feeling again. Like I'm just creeped out by this place. Like there's something wrong here. It just has this like very off vibe. Ignore it. I get to the restaurant, feel completely fine again. I eat at the restaurant, go back through the lobby, start getting that weird feeling again.
Finally, I get back to my hotel room and I just decide, I'm like, you know what? There's nothing wrong with this hotel. I'm going to Google this hotel. I'm going to prove to myself there's nothing wrong here with this place. I start Googling the Sheridan in Kansas City, Missouri. And I just find some like basic information about the hotel. And then I Google Sheridan Hotel haunted. So nothing about it being haunted pops up.
this article pops up about how this Sheridan used to be the Hyatt Regency Hotel. And back in 1981, there was a gala at this hotel and there was quite a few people that came to the gala and were hanging out both on the second floor as well as in the lobby area of the hotel. Well, apparently the second floor was not structurally sound
And the entire second floor collapsed on all of the people in the lobby area. And it ended up killing, I believe it was 114 people in the lobby of that hotel. Sorry, I'm like getting freaked out even just talking about it. This was the largest structural collapse, I guess, that caused a large number of deaths prior to 9-11. There was 114 people that lost their lives in
in the lobby of this hotel. I had no idea that this had happened. So naturally, I am freaked out. I do not sleep all night. I'm literally like wide awake. My heart is racing. I'm researching about this hotel. And I finally fall asleep. I probably got maybe like an hour, two hours of sleep max. And I go out and I visit...
my client the next day. And I just happened to mention this hotel to the client was like, yeah, you know, I stayed at the Sheridan. Oh, it's such a beautiful hotel. I didn't realize that there was a disaster that happened there in like the eighties. And he tells me, oh, that's so funny that you mentioned that because just last week they put up this memorial for all the victims that had perished at the hotel. So I don't know if maybe that's
that triggered something, some kind of like weird energy at this hotel. But I definitely felt something. I don't know why I felt something. I've never felt anything like that before. And I knew that something had happened here.
without actually like knowing anything about the history of this place. So I don't know what that is. I don't know if people have had similar experiences like that. I would love to hear from people. And again, Derek, thank you so much for your podcast. I listen to it all the time. You are by far my favorite and just appreciate everything that you do. Thank you so much. Thank you, Christy. Wow.
That's a tragedy I've never heard of, which is surprising considering there were 114 deaths, as Christie had mentioned. Now, I found a video on YouTube that shows exactly how the walkway failed, and I do have to admit, it's quite reminiscent of the Silver Bridge Collapse of 1967 there in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a collapse that many still blame on the Mothman.
Also, in my digging, I found a lengthy documentary prepared by a local news station. If you're interested in the tragedy that Christie picked up on, head on over to the show notes to get that archival footage and those first-hand accounts. But how wild is it that Christie seemed to pick up on this tragedy, or the energy that was left behind by it? Could that suggest that she has some sort of hidden talent?
as a psychic medium, a sensitive or an intuitive? Or could it be that the energy from the victims is just so strong that sometimes people just can't help but pick up on it? Well, either way, despite the heartbreaking story, we thank you again, Christy, for taking the time to make the call.
Now, folks, if you too would like to share a story here on the program, all you got to do is call 888-608-NIGHT. That's 888-608-N-I-G-H-T. Or you can record your story on the Voice Memo app on your phone and shoot the file to me at MonstersAmongUsPodcast at gmail.com. Now, we're slowly getting a few monster stories in. So keep those stories coming, folks. After all...
They're my favorite. But I will say that I enjoy a good ghost story as well. And tonight, I have those in spades. And for this next one, we venture back to Canada, where we meet up with Ryan to hear about his harrowing haunted hotel experience. Hello, my name is Ryan, and I am from Calgary in Canada, in Alberta. So this story takes place in Canada.
Victoria, on Vancouver Island, in BC. I was with my whole family. Well, I have two sisters, and then my mom and my dad. So I was reading the book. I can't remember what it's called, but it's similar to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It's all like true stories from across Canada. And there was this one about the Ipris Hotel, which is where we were staying at in Victoria.
There's this one story about where it was being renovated. There was this girl that was working there and the elevator shaft got taken down. She went in there and she died. And so now there's a room up there where the elevator shaft used to be. And so some people hear like frantic knocking on their door and they'll open it and there'll be no one there. Or they'll get led to an elevator and the lady will ride down with them and then she'll disappear.
Anyway, so that's a little backstory, but I think it's on the seventh or sixth floor where all the paranormal stuff takes place. But I think three or four years ago is when we went. And I remember I was really into this book back then. So me and my dad went up and we decided, oh, let's look around, see if we can see anything.
I think it was like 8 o'clock at night, so it wasn't that late. But when I went up there, I don't know if it was just me feeling scared, but I just felt like I was being watched at all times, felt like something was following me, kept on looking back, but there was nothing there. And so we went to bed that night. I was like, still a little scared. Not that bad, though.
But when we were up there, my dad kept on trying to scare me. So I don't know who it was just that that got to me. But the next morning, we were all getting ready to go out for the day, to go to a museum or whatever. And I go into my mom and dad's room, just say like, hey, I'm ready, where are we going to go? And my mom was like, hey Ryan, my phone, which was sitting on her bedside table in the hotel, my phone just flipped off. Did you knock it over when you came in? And I said...
No, I didn't touch it. My dad was staring at it and he saw it do it. And he was like, this is like really weird. Like Ryan can go put it back up on the bedside table. And I was like, yeah, sure. And so I almost plugged in. So I put it back up. We walk away and we're all staring at it now. And we saw it flip, probably flipped two feet in the air and flipped over and fell down to the ground. None of us did this. None of us were tripping on the court or whatever. We put it back up.
Thank you, Ryan. It sounds like quite an eerie incident. But if I'm honest, you might have gotten off easy as far as the paranormal is concerned.
because there is all sorts of spooky activity reported at the Fairmont Impress. It opened to the public in 1908, so there's plenty of history there, and plenty of ghosts as well, because the original hotel's architect, Francis Rattenbury, was bludgeoned to death with a carpenter's mallet in 1935 by his chauffeur who was also his wife's 18-year-old lover.
Now while the murder did not take place at the hotel, Rattenbury's ghost is still said to roam the grounds there. Other sightings include a chambermaid named Lizzie, a construction worker who took his own life, and a mischievous elderly woman who knocks on guest room doors. So if I had to guess here Ryan, I would suggest that it might have been the elderly woman. She sounds awfully cheeky. Either way, thank you again Ryan.
for sharing the story. Now, we're going to venture up to Canada once again here this evening. Please welcome Tanya to the program. Hi Derek, this is Tanya from Canada. I have a ghost story.
I travel a lot for work. I tend to stay at the same hotels in any Canadian city I have to visit for my work. And as it happens, that day that my assistant had made a mistake and basically booked me into the wrong Sheraton. And I ended up in this new old hotel that I hadn't been at before. I was very pregnant. I got the
taxi driver to get me some McDonald's on the way back. So I book into this hotel. I have no choice. It's like 2 a.m. I was traveling from Ottawa. I get to my hotel room and right away I get smacked with an eerie sense as soon as I walk in. And I remember walking into the room
There was like a bit of a hallway and then you went into the room where like two king-size beds were in there and it was a very old-style room with a lot of drapery and woodwork and whatnot and I didn't like it. I felt like it was wrong. There was like a walk-in closet in that hallway and I didn't like the idea of it.
But anyways, I persisted and put my stuff away, ate my McDonald's and went to bed. I woke up to someone walking around my bed. This was a carpeted hotel room. And it was a man walking around my bed and breathing really hard and sighing angrily. I peeked and saw him and it was a naked man just walking around my bed and just like pacing around the bed.
And I was freaked out. I started thinking about, okay, what can I use to smack this person over the head, get them away from me, like something is going to happen to me. So I peek, I close my eyes, I peek, I close my eyes, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. And just as I'm deciding to pull the lamp out or I don't know what, the presence walks out into the hallway and I sense it disappear.
And all of a sudden I feel comfortable again in the bed. And so I was really freaked, obviously. I called my husband, told him about it. He's like, no, you're fine. You're fine. It's okay. He said, you know, I thought I was at home and I could hear you sighing. And I was annoyed at first because I was wondering what you were doing.
Anyways, after I called my husband, I promptly got dressed. It was like six in the morning. So I just went out for a couple of hours for breakfast before my meetings and then went back to my hotel room quick enough to like grab my files that I needed for the day and left. Told a couple of colleagues what had happened to me just because I couldn't get it out of my mind.
And so at the end of the day, they convinced me, like, you need to change hotel rooms. You need to change hotels even. And I don't know why, but I was angry of the intrusion. And at first, I didn't want to change rooms. Then I changed my mind and I said, you know what, I'm going to at least change rooms. And so they convinced me to ask the clerk for a new room and to ask whether they had any ghosts in the hotel. So, yeah.
Basically, I didn't get much of an answer. They said they had seen like a red lady on one of the floors, but, you know, that other guests had come in and kind of not said why they wanted to leave in the middle of the night or whatever, but that they didn't have any stories similar to mine at the hotel. So anyways, I get a key to a new room. They asked me if I need help switching my things. I said no. Again, being very, you know, pig-headed.
So I go in, I start packing my bags and the hotel room phone starts ringing and I couldn't answer it. I kept clicking on, on, on, it wouldn't answer. So obviously that freaked me out. I just bolted with all of my stuff, went into the new room, put my luggage in there and left for dinner. Well, when I got home from dinner to the new room,
While I didn't have an eerie feeling in that room, my luggage was still undone as I had left it. But there was just one single black sock on the second double bed in the new room. And that was enough for me not to sleep again and to vow that I will never sleep at Hotel Vancouver again. Thank you, Tanya. That's definitely not what you want to wake up and see wandering your hotel room at night.
And this is also one of those rare instances where I bet the witness hoped that they saw something paranormal. Because the alternative is somehow even more unsettling. A dead naked stranger in your room is better than a live one. I guess that's what I'm saying. And I heard you say you won't be back to that particular hotel, Tanya. Well, exercise that option sparingly. Because the world is covered with haunted hotels.
and the next one that you stay in might be even worse. But for funsies, let's run down a list of the most haunted hotels on planet Earth according to travel and leisure. Number 10 is Ross Castle in Killarney, Ireland. Number 9 is Hotel Del Salto, San Antonio del Tequendama, Colombia. Number 8 is actually a hotel that I've been to, Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel.
over in Los Angeles. Number seven is the Bell Hotel in Norfolk in the UK. Number six is the Nottingham Road Hotel in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Number five is Dragsholm Castle in Horef, Denmark. Number four is Russell Hotel in Sydney, Australia. Number three is the Langham in London. Number two is the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York City.
And the number one most haunted hotel on the globe is none other than the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Shining Hotel for those not familiar. A hotel that not only inspired Stephen King to write the story, but one that inspired many ghost stories as well. How many of these infamously haunted hotels have you managed to visit?
And speaking of infamously haunted hotels, this next one covers that very subject. Please welcome Kelly from the state of Arizona. Hi Derek, this is Kelly from Arizona. This one takes place in Bisbee, Arizona about six years ago in February. I've always wanted to stay at a haunted hotel, so I decided to stay at the Copper Queen because I knew it was haunted.
I know you have to book the haunted rooms in advance, so I didn't. I just got any room. So I wanted to do like my own little mini investigation and go around and take pictures, which nothing came of it. And then when it came time for going to sleep, I just got ready for bed. I was sitting on the bed. And the next thing I know is I feel a hand on my shoulder.
Thank you, Kelly.
Well, given the reputation that the Copper Queen has garnered over the years, I imagine that disembodied hand could have come from any of the spirits that are said to haunt the halls of the hotel. You have the old bearded man. He has long white hair and a long white beard. He wears a black cape and a top hat. And apparently the scent of cigar smoke is a precursor to a sighting of the old man.
Then there is Billy, a young boy that drowned in the San Pedro River who haunts the hotel because many believe his mother once worked there. At least, so says the legend. You can hear Billy's footsteps, hear his disembodied giggles, and it's said that if you turn a faucet on near his presence, he cries and retreats to the corner. It seems he's terrified of water after his fatal incident. And then there's Julia Lowe.
the spirit of a lady of the night that once worked in the hotel. Now one of Julia's customers broke her heart, so she hung herself in room 315, a room that is now named after her. Julia is said to appear to men only, and will whisper in ears and allow herself to be seen darting around corners. So as I said Kelly, it could have been any one of these culprits.
But whoever it was, I'm glad that they gave you a show. And I'm glad that you shared the experience here with us tonight. So thank you again, Kelly, for calling in. And folks, to Canada we go one last time, where we meet up with Linda from up in Ontario. Hi Derek, it's Linda calling from Barrie, Ontario, Canada.
I have a couple of hotel stories for you today. I used to travel a lot for business, so I'm bound to come across haunted hotels every once in a while. My first story took place at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC, Canada. I was teaching software there. My first night in my hotel room, it was in the winter, but I was in Victoria, so it was nice outside. It wasn't too cold, but my room was just freezing.
The whole time I was there, it was freezing. And my first night there, I decided it was time to go to bed. And I was on the right-hand side of the bed, facing the edge, right on the edge of the bed. And I was just starting to fall asleep. And I felt this cold rush of air come down from the ceiling. It was so cold, but I thought it was wet. And it rushed by my back down into the bed.
And then I felt what felt like someone took their hand and slammed it on the bed behind me. Scared the out of me. I immediately jumped up, put my light on, put my glasses on, and said, "Well, thanks a lot."
How am I supposed to get to sleep now? I have to get up early to work in the morning. So needless to say, I slept with the light on for the next few nights until I was more comfortable with the room. But there's a lot of haunted stories of the Empress in Victoria, and that's just mine. My second story took place in the States at a client hotel. This story took place when I was training again, software at the hotel.
And again, I was just falling asleep and I was lying on my stomach this time, looking out to the left of my pillow. And I was just half asleep and I again felt this cold presence. And I swear that there was this dark shadow leaning over me. And I just rose in terror and I just laid there for about two or three seconds.
And then this dark shadow swooped up above me and into the wall behind the bed. I laid there for a good five minutes, not moving, absolutely frozen, before I finally got the nerve to get up and put my light on. And again, I slept with the light on for most of the nights that I stayed at that hotel. Those are my stories. I hope you enjoyed them. Thanks. Great job. Love your show. Talk to you again. Thanks, Linda.
Sounds like Linda and Ryan need to have a conversation. They both had unusual experiences at the Empress Hotel. And that wasn't the only scary hotel story Linda had to share either. What was that mysterious shadow she encountered at her second location? All in all, it was great stuff, Linda. And we thank you for adding to tonight's collection. Our attorneys live... ...to the office, kicking back to watch the game or enjoying a night...
All right, folks. Up next, we wander down to Texas. Please welcome Addie to the program. Hey, Derek. This is Addie from Texas. So I am telling a story. It's not my personal story, but it's one of my closest friend's stories. I live in Galveston now, and a couple years ago, I started attending a college in Galveston.
And my friend and her mom were staying in a hotel the night before we moved in for freshman orientation. So Protector Identities referred my friend as Kay and her mom as B. So once you know that Kay and B are both sensitive to the paranormal, Kay has told me multiple stories about different things that she's seen or felt or heard, and her mom has the same thing.
So the night before freshman orientation, K and B were staying in, I think, the Hotel Galveston. I believe one of the oldest hotels in Galveston, rumored to be haunted. So K and B were staying in that hotel the night before freshman orientation. A little bit of backstory you may already know, but in the year 1900,
Galveston had a huge hurricane and it wiped out almost everyone. It killed so many people. It wiped out establishments. It just devastated Galveston and it took some time to rebuild from that. So a lot of these places are rumored to be haunted by spirits from that hurricane. So one of them is the hotel they were staying in.
She told me, you know, they checked in, everything was fine, they were good. Oh, also note, it was pouring rain this night. That's an important note. Kay was telling me she and her mom were staying in a room and everything was fine at first. And then, you know, they hung out, whatever, and then they went to bed. Well, Kay woke up in the middle of the night with a weight on her chest.
And she woke up and felt like she couldn't breathe. There was something on top of her. And she looked over at her mom and Bea was just laying there with her eyes wide open, not moving, not saying anything. So Kay thought her mom was still sleeping. And so Kay just kind of brushed it off like, okay, you know, whatever. Everything should be fine. Well, she went back to sleep.
And then they woke up the next morning and their suitcases had been opened and clothes had been thrown everywhere throughout the room. Their room was a complete mess. Suitcases were open, clothes were everywhere, pictures were knocked over. The room was a mess. And Kay looked her mom and said, I don't know if this was a nightmare or something. I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt a weight on my chest.
And B told her, "I woke up last night as well and I looked over and saw somebody hovering over you." So K thinks that weight was probably a spirit on top of her. And the spirits didn't try to hurt them or anything. They think what happened was the spirits were trying to wake them up, to get them moving.
The spirits were trying to get Kay and Bea out of the hotel to warn them because of the big hurricane that happened in 1900. After that whole fiasco, they quickly packed up in the morning and got out of there. But she said it was a crazy first experience in Galveston. I guess another experience I could add with Kay involved and with paranormal that actually I was a part of.
So last year we were celebrating my friend's birthday. We'll call him R. So we were celebrating R's 23rd birthday and we were staying at a hotel in Houston. It's not an old hotel, but...
It was heavily hurt by Hurricane Harvey that came in a couple years ago because Harvey hit a lot of Houston and many people passed away due to it. And so this particular hotel was affected by Harvey. So R, Kay, and I and a couple of our friends, we were going up to the room that R got for us. We were in an elevator that had mirrors around. The elevator is pretty cool.
And as we're going up, I looked over and sometimes Kay gets a little claustrophobic. So I thought she was a little bit claustrophobic because it was like night of us in the small elevator. She looks kind of pale and she looks a little sick. And so as we got out of the elevator, I turned to her and I was like, Kay, you all right? And she's like, oh, yeah, I was fine. She's got a little claustrophobic. I'm like, okay, cool.
Later that night, we were all hanging out and I was talking to Kate and I and Kate told me, so remember when I looked a little sick in the elevator earlier? I was like, yeah, I did. You said you just got claustrophobic. She said, well, I was a little bit of a lie. I was like, well, what happened? And she said, when we were in the elevator, I felt this presence, not an angry presence, not a spiteful presence, just a presence of a spirit there.
And she said she knows when she's feeling a spirit because she feels ill and she kind of dissociates. And she felt somebody there and the elevator with us. And like, wow, that would be weird. Like, I wonder who that was. Like, you know, this hotel wasn't that old. And she said, well, I was reading up on the hotel and I found out that one of the maids that worked there passed away in a heartbeat.
And so she thinks it was that maid who was with us in the elevator. Kay didn't have any other experiences
with the panel while we were there, but it was weird that I got to experience that with her. I didn't feel any presence together. Fortunately, I'm not sensitive. I wish I was because I know I've had a couple encounters with Supernatural and I wish I could have more of an encounter with them, but Kay does not particularly like the Supernatural. It's ironic that she is a sensitive. But yeah, so those are my stories.
Thank you, Addie. Now, according to Delaney's research, Hotel Galvez has a legendary ghost resident. Her name is Audra, and Audra's soon-to-be husband was a sailor, so she would stay in room 501 while her fiancé was on leave. And when her lover failed to return on time, Audra feared he had been lost at sea.
So as a result, she hanged herself in the west turret of Hotel Galvez. A few nights later, the sailor returned to the hotel, safe and sound, only to find that his bride had perished. Now, I told you at the beginning that there are a lot of haunted hotel stories out there, and Addie here might have learned that the hard way. But we thank you, Addie, for taking the time to call in.
And you know our next caller just might have learned all this the hard way as well. Please welcome Justin, all the way from Montana. Hey, this is Justin out in Montana. I wanted to tell you about a story that two brothers had told me that I worked with. This didn't happen to me, but they were telling me about it. I guess these guys kind of experienced this stuff as they were growing up and had night terrors.
They both had issues, like, at night sleeping. I guess their family life was messed up. We were working construction and, like, you know, out on the road, staying in hotels. He said he came back from work one day
to the hotel and he got into the shower and with the hotel room you know you can kind of like turn the TV on and depending where everything is set up in the hotel room you can see the TV from like the shower so he said he had the TV on and he was taking a shower he kind of just like peeked up over the top of the shower curtain just to look at the TV and when he did he said he saw this silhouette of this shadow man
And it was looking at him. He said he was like, ah, you know, it freaked him out. And he said that it freaked the shadow guy out and the shadow figures took off, like started away.
So when he seen the shadows, they both scared each other kind of thing. And, you know, that was it. Freaked out. He said he got out of the hotel room and stayed with his brother that night in another hotel room. He was freaked out over it. And then his brother said when he was younger, he had a computer. He woke up and he heard, like, tapping on the keyboard. He looked over and he said he saw this thing.
The shadow figure was gone.
Thank you, Justin. Just when you thought strangers and ghosts were all you had to worry about in a hotel, now we have proof that shadow people invade those temporary spaces as well.
And believe it or not, I spent considerable time looking for a cryptid story that took place in or around a hotel room. So I could tap into several different paranormal genres throughout this hotel episode. But alas, I did not find anything. But I did find a super creepy entry that starts in the wilderness and ends up in a hotel room. But first, I need to take one more quick break. Don't go anywhere.
All right. Next up, we head on over to Kentucky. Josh, welcome to the show.
Hey Derek, my name is Josh. I'm originally from Bardstown, Kentucky, but I currently live in Louisville, Kentucky. Plenty of ghost stories and spooky buildings and haunted happenings all over Bardstown, where we've been on History Channel and all that kind of stuff. So it's a pretty cool place to grow up. But like I said, now I live in Louisville. The reason why I'm calling is because I've been listening to your podcast, binging from the very beginning while at work.
On my breaks, I go from my office to an old haunted hotel right across the street from where my office is. It's called the Seelbach. Plenty of history here. Al Capone used to hide out here. A lot of pre- and post-prohibition stuff. Very cool. Very interesting place. Tons of cool ghost stories to always hear about. But the reason why I wanted to call, because while I was in here, I was remembering this past October...
I was here with some friends doing a ghost tour and they were talking about how one of the rooms called the Oak Room basically now it's served as like a private dining area, a private event area. But back in the day, during Al Capone's reign, it was like a gentleman's club room. And over to the side was a private car playing area.
where Al Capone and his men would hang out and drink and smoke and play cards and talk business all that good stuff but also in that area are these little secret doorways that lead down to the basement of the hotel and out to underground escapes on the street level in the event that the feds caught on to where he was so anyway we were doing this ghost tour
We're talking to the tour guide, and she's telling us all these stories about, like, how a lot of times you'll see glimpses of people in mirrors. They're walking past, like, a mirror and see somebody in old 1910s, 1920s clothes walking by or just kind of standing there. And I'm standing there in the room, kind of looking around, checking it out. And I noticed that on one far side of the room, there's this mirror, and...
I'm just kind of looking at it, listening to the stories. And I notice that there's somebody in the back, over to the left, wearing an old school concierge outfit. And it wouldn't put past people here in the area around Halloween time to kind of dress up and figure clothes to kind of, you know, put people in the mood for the holidays. So I turned around and I didn't see anybody. Turned back around, looked in the mirror and they were still standing there and they were smiling.
I turned to my wife and I said, hey, do you see this guy there? She's like, yeah. And then the tour guide notices that we're talking off to the side. So, of course, they draw attention to us. And we say, hey, who's this? And then by the time everyone looks, that person's gone. So the tour guide talks about how it was one of the concierge that was in the hotel. It's one of his favorite homes in the Oak Room.
Mainly because he enjoyed the atmosphere of whenever Al Capone and his mobster friends were there. Obviously not when things were dangerous or scary, but just the overall camaraderie. Really appreciate what you do with the podcast. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. You know, anytime you have an old mobster involved, you can almost guarantee a ghost or two. And toss in secret tunnels, doorways, or exits, you likely double those chances.
But I will admit, given the hotel's colorful past, a ghostly concierge is the last thing that I expected. So thank you for that little surprise, Josh. And thank you again for calling in. Now I highly recommend you brace yourselves for this next one. Courtesy of Sarah in Colorado. Hi Derek, this is Sarah. I'm sharing this story from Colorado. This story happened to me about 15 years ago when I was in college.
It's a strange one, and I still think about it a lot. My boyfriend and his family invited me to go on a camping trip with them. It was a late summer trip before school started again, and they had hired an outfitter to take us into the flat-top wilderness. The initial plan was for us to horseback ride in, and the outfitter would drop us off. A few days later, he'd pick us up again with the horses at the drop-off location.
Their family had brought their dogs and I had brought mine. We had cleared this with the outfitter beforehand. I was so incredibly excited for this trip. Growing up in the Colorado mountains, camping and backpacking and adventuring was a part of life. And because of college, I hadn't gotten out much. And this was a chance to kind of reconnect with nature again before going back into school. Anyways, the day of, we set out.
And this was the first time we had met the outfitter in person. Immediately, he freaked me out. Every alarm bell went off.
There was something just not quite right about him and he ended up being very upset about the dogs and we weren't really sure why. As our dogs were used to the horses, they were showing no signs of excitement or aggression. They'd also been professionally trained for off-leash situations and we had cleared this with him beforehand, but he ended up insisting that I leave just my dog with him personally.
and that my pup would be very well treated by his lion hunting dog pack. And obviously, this got me very uneasy. He became very agitated that I was uneasy. After some arguing and some going back and forth, we finally settled on a solution where some of us rode out and the other ones of us hiked in with the dogs. Anyways, he ended up dropping us off at an old hunting cabin.
The walls were covered in knives and various other weapons. And the relief that I felt when the outfitter left us was replaced by more unease when I saw that. My boyfriend's parents ended up deciding that they would sleep in the cabin, but I couldn't bring myself to. So my boyfriend and I found a site a little bit away and we set up camp there. The whole time we were out there, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.
We had lots of wildlife run-ins, like coyote packs, rattlesnakes. We even had a fresh kill outside of our tent one morning. But if you grew up doing this type of stuff, you know that's just nature being nature. And I don't find it scary. But what I found scary was I constantly felt the need to check over my shoulder and to sleep with one eye open because I felt like someone was out there. Anyways, after a few days, the outfitter picked us up again and
We rode and hiked back to the cars. After that, we said our goodbyes at the end of the ride, and I still did not feel comfortable around him, so I kept my interactions with him to a minimum and immediately put my dog in the car.
When we were leaving, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. And since we got back later in the afternoon, the plan was to stay in the hotel in the neighboring town for the night and then return home the next day. I was looking forward to a shower. I was looking forward to just being able to relax for the first time in a week, just have some time and a comfortable bed to lay in.
So we arrive at this old sleepy town and it had one tiny historic hotel on Main Street. We checked in. My boyfriend and I were in one room and his parents were in another. Mind you, we're out in the middle of nowhere, northwest Colorado. There aren't many people up here staying. Many of them just pass through. And at this time in the summer, the town was quiet and the hotel was vacant.
After we checked in, I decided to take a shower while my boyfriend took the dogs out. So while I'm showering, I hear my boyfriend leave. Literally a minute later, the power shut off. Everything went dark and most of the rooms in the hotel were interior rooms, so there were no windows.
I was standing there debating if I should continue showering or get out and attempt to find a towel and a flashlight when I heard our room door open. A man and a woman walked through talking to each other. I didn't recognize their voices, but it sounded like any other person. I thought maybe it was my boyfriend's parents come to see if I needed a flashlight.
So I turned off the water and called out, saying I was in the shower and give me a minute to find the towel because I really did not want them to walk in on me naked. These two people never answered me. They just kept walking and talking around the room. I could see their shadows underneath the door, the light coming in from the hallway. So I started calling out for my boyfriend, hoping it was him instead. I remember them saying, oh, we should leave.
And I heard them walk out and close the door. I frantically found a towel in the dark and went out into the room to find my phone and a flashlight. Then the lights came back on. And in the moment, I told myself it was someone else checking in and they had gotten the wrong room. Maybe there was a mix-up at the front desk. I didn't know, but I was finding every possible way to explain it away.
But I decided to quickly finish washing up, got dressed, and went out to find my boyfriend. Downstairs in the lobby, my boyfriend and his parents were chatting with the front desk lady about the local restaurant recommendations. I told everyone what had happened, and the front desk informed me that no one else had checked into the hotel and we were the only residents for the night. And my boyfriend and his parents had just returned taking the dogs on a walk.
The front desk also informed me that the power had never gone out. And the look on her face was not one of surprise. So of course I was a little freaked out, but convinced that they were playing a prank on me. But they swore up and down it wasn't them. That night, my dog kept following something with his ears and his eyes, and he never once relaxed. He would also get up and follow something and occasionally growl at the corner.
Anyway, we got a terrible night's sleep. Couldn't wait to leave in the morning. And I haven't had the opportunity to go back yet. Strange stuff like this has happened to me my whole life. But this was by far one of the strangest experiences I've ever had from start to end.
I wonder if this was a case of a modern day ghost. The front desk lady did say that the hotel was haunted, but not that room. And I'm also wondering if there was a bit of time lost as I was in and out of the shower in about five to eight minutes. But my boyfriend and his parents had been walking around the farmer's market with the dogs. So there seems to be a little bit of time missing as well.
Don't really know, but it was a very, very strange experience and not one I hope to repeat anytime soon. Thank you, Sarah. No, I don't have a dog, but I do have two cats. And I can tell you that there is zero chance I'm leaving either of them with anyone that fits this description. So good decision there, Sarah. And that outfitter sounds like something straight out of a horror film. Career goals, I guess. And as for the hotel experience...
Common sense wants me to think two people just wandered into your room, Sarah. Just as you first suspected. I think that's the most logical conclusion we can jump to. But as she explained, it's a small area. Not a lot of people. So in my opinion, it seems less likely that a person can wander the hotel and enter a booked room without anyone noticing. Surely they had cameras installed. And the possible missing time
How do you connect that to the story? Now perhaps the friction with the outfitter had you on edge, Sarah. And maybe you didn't hear or see what you thought that you did. Maybe your overworked nervous system simply flipped to panic mode immediately. Maybe that's what happened to you that day. Or as we learned here tonight, a lot of hotels seem to be haunted.
Many of these places both old and new seem to collect and redistribute energy of some sort in the form of disembodied voices moving objects and even full-bodied apparitions so The next time you find yourself staying in a hotel in addition to the break-ins theft bedbugs loud neighbors and hidden cameras remember
you also have ghosts to watch out for as well. And folks, that's going to do it for this episode. I sure hope none of you are tuning in from your very own hotel room here this evening. And if you are, you have my apologies. The Monsters Among Us podcast was written and produced by me, Derek Hayes. Copyright Red Crow Media. Additional support is provided by Sarah Carter Hayes, Delaney Bowers, and Connor Ryan.
All media used in this production is done so under the protection of fair use. Give us a like and follow on our Instagram and Facebook pages. Give us a like and follow at YouTube as well. And while you're at it, leave us a rate and review wherever that sort of thing is possible. Don't forget that you can catch the show every Saturday evening at 11 p.m. Eastern on the Unexed Digital Network. Just visit UnexedNetwork.com to tune in.
And finally, tonight's score was provided by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse, Co.agmusic, and Carl Casey at White Bat Audio. Now be sure to watch our film, Shadows in the Desert High Strangeness, in the Borrego Triangle. Just visit borregotriangle.com to learn how. And join us in the beyond. Visit our Patreon page or Apple subscription page. Or just visit monstersamonguspodcast.com and click the Patreon tab.
Now, folks, I'll catch you back here on Thursday with a brand new episode. But until then, keep it spooky and have yourselves a good night.