I holiday with SPIRITS!
Whenever I stay in my favourite hotel, I have some really spooky company.
It was the perfect break – a weekend of ghost hunts at haunted places all over Nottingham. ‘Just my cup of tea!’ I smiled, booking my place on the trip hosted by a paranormal events company.
Travelling from my home in London I arrived at my hotel, a Victorian mansion on the site of a medieval hunting lodge.
After unpacking, I went for a wander around the building. As I walked through rooms and corridors, I had the feeling I was being watched.
That night, after the first of the weekend’s ghost hunts, I went to bed exhausted. But in the early hours, I was woken by the sound of horses neighing and hooves crunching on gravel.
I leapt out of bed, ran to the window, but there was no sign of horses in the hotel grounds.
The following morning at breakfast, I got chatting to a waitress.
‘Something really weird happened last night,’ I told her, explaining what I’d heard.
‘You’re not the first person to say that,’ she grinned.
She showed me an old photo of the hotel. Its drive was now tarmac, but in the picture it was made of gravel. And horses and carriages were lined up, drivers waiting to transport guests
There could only be one explanation –
I’d heard a ghostly echo from the past.
There hadn’t been much spooky action on the ghost hunts – but the hotel was a different matter. So in April the following year, I returned for a week.
Sitting in the bar one day, I watched a mist form, the shadowy figure of a man appeared. An old soldier, he had one eye and was holding a bayonet. After a few seconds, he disappeared. ‘Wow!’ I gasped.
By then I was even more intrigued so I visited the hotel again a few months later. One day I was sitting on a sofa in the lounge, reading my book.
‘You’re sitting in my seat,’ a man’s voice said.
I turned round, but there was no one there. Then I spotted a ghostly figure sitting at the desk in the corner. Doing some research, I discovered the desk had belonged to the aristocrat who’d built the mansion.
Since my first visit in October 1990, I’ve visited the hotel around twice a year and strange things keep happening. My belongings are often tidied up by a neat spirit. The kettle in my room regularly boils
at 2.30am on the dot. I’ve even captured an eerie snap of a spirit in the hotel’s chapel.
I think the spirits in the hotel know how much I love the place. And perhaps because I holiday there alone, they like keeping me company.
I went looking for spirits on a weekend of ghost hunts – but I ended up finding them in my very haunted hotel!