HAUNTED LEBANESE HOTEL

Perched on a hill in a village in Mount Lebanon, Al Aamirya Hotel stands witness to prosperous times this country once knew. Built in the Fifties by Qaysar Amer, a renowned fireworks and toys merchant, the building comprised a hotel, administrative quarters, cinema and church. It quickly became one of the most famous tourist attractions until the start of the civil war in 1975, when it was abandoned, like many other buildings.

Used by militias, refugees and others, it became a derelict ruin where many experienced paranormal events that shook them to the core. I explored the building in 2011, before helping a friend out with their graduation senior movie project, which was using the building as a setting. There was something scary about every room, hallway, staircase, old mosaics, and cinema… Underground vaults led to a grotto only accessible by an old rusty ladder that no one ever took downstairs. The cross on the church had been removed; Qaysar Amer asked to be buried under the church he built.

One small room with its walls knocked down was festooned in candles from top to bottom. The police said it had been used as a gathering place for Satanists in the 1990s.

On the night of the shoot, I was enjoying a smoke in the gentle breeze of summer at the former swimming pool, when I glanced up at the eight floors of the hotel and saw a woman in her late thirties, dressed in a nightgown, looking out of a window. When our eyes met, she let out a silent scream that still gives me shivers down my spine when I think of it. At the time, I thought this was nothing but a silly prank by the film crew and did not even ask any of my colleagues if this was one of them mucking about.

Now that I am more open to the paranormal, I researched the hotel’s history. Only one family was still living in the hotel after the civil war, until the father hanged his wife and child before killing himself. Rumour has it that a huge fire then ripped through the hotel, burning furniture and documents, and the many brothers and sisters who inherited the building decided to abandon it. Looking online, I found a video of the hotel shot by some teenagers, and in it I saw the woman again. This time she was sitting on a staircase with her back turned to the camera. She was wearing the same nightgown I saw her in back in 2011.

Was this the woman who was killed by her husband? Or maybe one of the many people killed in the hotel during the civil war…

Ralf Frem `

Beirut, Lebanon

Editor’s note: Ralf Frem is an art director for cinema and television, and has worked on several TV shows and commercials in Lebanon and the Arab world.

“THE FATHER HANGED THE WIFE AND CHILD BEFORE KILLING HIMSELF”

With regard to Albert Ravey’s “Dreaming the Future” letter

[FT425:62]: years ago I was on a skiing holiday and had an interesting dream about a cast of characters I went on an adventure with on a magic carpet. One was a beautiful woman, who ended the dream with an obscure quotation about always being together in Spirit, or something (it was a long time ago). The following day, when I was riding the bus around the ski resort, I found myself sitting opposite someone who had the exact face of the beautiful woman in my dream – and I remember the jolting sense of unreality, that something mystical was in the air. Years later I wrote and produced a student film that incorporated the same sense of ‘cosmic destiny’ around the people we meet, dreams and synchronicity. I freely acknowledge that people can rationalise backwards and give themselves false memories when it comes to premonitions, but I do remember this incident as being distinctly eerie. James Wright Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex