Can I just say that I love features like this so very much—Jezebel is at its best when people in the comments get inspired to tell stories they have, and Jez readers have some GREAT, funny/bizarre/scary/sad/amazing stories. Love storytime. Read more
Anna Merlan
annamerlan
Anna Merlan was a Senior Reporter at G/O Media until September 2019. She's the author of Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power.
PGP Fingerprint: 67B5 5767 9D6F 652E 8EFD 76F5 3CF0 DAF2 79E5 1FB6
That last story is 100% true! The last three hotels that I've stayed at, the front desk warned me that this scam was happening and to call if anything like that happens before going out. I'm disappointed in the hotel staff for not calling the police and checking on the situation. Read more
The second haunted one is from a movie or a tv show. I can't place it, but I saw it in the past couple of months, probably on Netflix. Read more
Re: Ron Henderson scam Read more
This reminds me of the time my family stayed in the Big Texan motel in Amarillo. My aunt recommended it, which should've been a big tip off that it was a total dump, because she is just a mess of a human being. She lives in a trailer that she's let fall completely apart, she lets the chickens in the living room, her… Read more
OH MY GOD! That last one!
I was staying at a Holiday Inn on Thanksgiving night on Hollywood Blvd with my family. My dad was getting a cosmetic surgery the next day at Cedar Sinai so my mom and sisters and I were all going to initiate ourselves into the madness that is Black Friday.
We checked in around 8pm and at… Read more
In my 20s, I went on tour with my husband's band. We were all broke and mostly staying with friends, but at one point we needed a hotel. I was driving and at around 2:00 a.m. they convinced me to pull over into some cheap hotel (I wasn't tired and could have kept going). There was some poor girl manning the desk. We… Read more
Maybe the boyfriend is the problem, not the ghost. Maybe Casper was trying to help you and you ignored all his warnings.
Story time: I once worked as the midnight desk clerk at a seedy motel in a California resort town. The managers were a horrible, racist elderly couple who treated the housekeeping staff like dirt. One night, I rented a room at 2am to a bunch of hippies who pulled up in a van and paid cash. They seemed like they were… Read more
So, when I was in high school I worked at a small-ish film developing company. At our branch, we routinely processed film for a crime scene clean-up crew. They photographed the scene before and after their clean-up. This was after the bodies and a lot of the evidence and fixtures were gone, but I'd routinely see… Read more
We went to Hawaii for a major birthday for my mother. Long before Yelp, my father did his best to find a hotel that was nice but also not outrageous in price. He scoured through travel guides and found one he liked. We arrive at night and the hotel looks wonderful. Check in, exhausted from a long flight and we crawl… Read more
Things I have learned:
1. I never got the memo of the standard mattress check, and now I'm terrified at what syringes and other craziness I have missed out on.
2. I would absolutely be lured outside and robbed and murdered at 2a in a motel parking lot. Read more
I stayed at a Holiday Inn in Dover, Delaware while on my way to do a morbid history tour of the Northeast. It was a nearly 16-year-old me, my 17-year-old girlfriend, and my mom. While my mom was going to check in to the hotel, me and the girlfriend stayed in the car, and we saw guys in suits bringing prostitutes out… Read more
the grossest thing I've ever seen in a motel: Read more
I once had a lady post a Tripadvisor review about my property saying that I specifically ruined Christmas for her and that her children are scarred for life now. All because I wouldn't let her family have an impromptu party by the pool with glass containers and two extremely drunk parents. Hotel reviews are fun. Read more
On a sort of related-ish note, this is my favorite Yelp review of an awesome little local restaurant, that admittedly, seems to keep odd hours and only accepts cash (but is delicious): Read more
Remember how Hitler did that anti-Jew rap album that made all the Nazis hate Jewish people? How'd that one song go? "I don't know how to find the volume of a prism/But I do know I love anti-Semitism." Read more