As a rule, all motels are scary motels. They have doors that open directly to the street and they tend to be inexpensive enough that any drifter with a wad of cash can stay for a night or three. Creepy hotel stories featuring ghosts ring true because most of them stem from something very real occurring on the premises, whether that's a gruesome crime or a weirdo lurking around the parking lot. These scary stories from motels come from all over the world, and they contain all different kinds of bumps in the night, from feral ghosts to eerily uncomfortable rooms.
Ghost stories from hotels are so affecting because they speak to humans' fear of the unknown. Ghosts that haunt motels seem especially chilling, not to mention sad - why aren't they haunting a house or a still-living loved one? These tales of haunted motels might seem like the stuff of horror movies, but they felt all too real for the guests who lived through them. They're enough to make you stay home indefinitely.
There's something off about room 127 in the Motel 6 in Lincoln City, OR. As one reviewer on TripAdvisor recounts, around 3:00 a.m. they "felt a huge and malevolent force" holding them down on the bed:
It took a lot of effort, and prayer to get this unseen force to set me free. I prayed and went back to sleep. It happened again, two more times. In the morning, the presence was gone. I read Psalms 25 and 24 and checked out. I told my experience to a young employee there and she said she was not surprised. According to her, the staff always hears weird noises and footsteps when there's no one there.
The Joshua Tree Inn offers a welcome retreat in California's Mojave Desert. If you stay in room 8, you might run into Gram Parsons, one of the most important country singer-songwriters of all time.
Parsons overdosed in the motel in 1973 and supposedly his spirit haunts the room. Odd shadows sometimes appear and objects have been known to shake by themselves.
At a Motel 6 in Vancouver, WA, a family ran afoul of a pair of ghosts. First, the spirit of a man appeared. According to the story's author, they would "notice him at night, usually when everyone else was sleeping, and he would stand in the dark corner where our jackets hung and stare at everyone sleeping."
The second ghost was a feral young woman named Anna, who would crawl around the room, covered in dirt, and with twigs in her hair. Despite her unusual appearance, she didn't seem quite as threatening: "She seemed to like me, and she gave off an almost maternal feel sometimes. Though at other times, she seemed to be not so happy to see me. She would stay far away in her corner, and not approach me for days."
Vagabond Inn in Bakersfield, CA, received a blistering review of room 106. It was so negative, in fact, that the motel removed the review from its Yelp page.
Room 106 is f*cking haunted. Bad evil spirit in there. It literally choked my boyfriend. Lights would flicker. TV would change on its own. When we got there the weird thing was the window. It was wide open along with the blinds. The haunting started an hour after we were there. We left after only being there for about two hours. It did not want us there. It kept getting worse and worse. If [we] would have stayed longer it could have led to possession or worse. It hated my boyfriend. I recommend you stay away from that entire property. God Bless the people who are there.
While on a road trip from New York to Virginia, a couple stopped at a Red Roof Inn. The woman who wrote about the incident said that she woke up to the sensation of being pulled down the bed by her legs.
She assumed it was her partner, but the interruptions continued:
I wake up to [the] feeling of being pulled 2 more times. Each time getting more and more frustrated at the guy. I murmur 'stop it.' Finally the last time... I wake right up shouting 'STOP PULLING MY LEGS' As I'm crawling back up to my man, shouting this, I whack him on the chest! He wakes up very surprised 'WTF! I'm sleeping!' I was so angry I said 'STOP PULLING MY LEGS!' He sat up and said 'How can I be pulling your legs? I was sleeping HERE!'
The couple was unsettled, but was planning to stick around - until something happened to the man in the bathroom. He wouldn't say what it was, but whatever occurred convinced them to leave as fast as possible.
Tombstone, AZ, already has a spooky name - and it might have the ghosts to match. The Tombstone Motel is especially notorious for paranormal activity, particularly in room 119, where someone hanged themselves.
Multiple visitors have said that they've seen full bodied apparitions, heard voices, and had their furniture move around.
