This story dates back to when I was on tour with Caribou some time ago. We were playing in Birmingham, and after the gig for some reason we couldn’t find our hotel – we were driving around in this terrible wet weather, just lost.
After one turn we drove past this huge, creepy red brick building. It immediately made us laugh – we were like, “wouldn’t it be funny if that was our hotel!” It was simply the classic stereotypical haunted mansion – there was even lightening going off behind it.
I got up and looked outside the door, but there was no-one there...
Anyway, we drove round the block, checked the maps and of course – we realised that it was indeed out hotel. We walked in to find a deserted lobby, so we rang the bell and this old guy came along, gave us the keys and that was it… off to bed.
I was sharing the room with our drummer that night, and we were both exhausted, so we crashed immediately. We were just about to doze off, when we heard what sounded like children running down the hallway. “That’s weird,” I said to my drummer, “it’s 2am.” What’s more, we’d seen no other vehicles in the car park.
At first we thought nothing of it and went back to sleep. Then I heard a knock on the door and some giggling. “Shit!” I whispered under my breath. “Who is it?” I got up and looked outside the door, but there was no-one there. I genuinely thought I was having some kind of dream, but then the drummer asked me “Who was it?” I didn’t realise that he was awake, and couldn’t believe he’d heard it too.
Several hours later I woke up with this strange sensation, that there was something at my feet. I opened my eyes slowly and there were two girls sat at the foot of my bed, looking down at me and giggling from behind their neat, dark hair.
I nearly shat myself and just froze in fear. I couldn’t move. All I could think was “This is fucking nuts. This is fucking nuts.” Then, they started crawling towards me and I shut my eyes.
I don’t know how much time passed – I’d had my eyes closed for maybe an hour. I finally got up the courage to open them again, and there was no-one sitting there. I jumped out of bed, shaken, and woke up the drummer to tell him what had happened. He just stared at me with this look of fear in his eyes, and said “No way… I’ve been dreaming about these two little girls with dark hair…”
We checked out the next day and told the crew the story. It was truly incredible. Then about a week later, we finally got round to searching for the hotel in Google. It turns out that it was incredibly old, and one of the most haunted buildings in England.
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