Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I'm not driving longer in this Good evening, I'm Ben and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new or returning camper, I'm happy to have you Urban legends are often passed around in our circles when we are younger. They are, in my opinion, modern day folktales. While many of them have kernels of truth within them, most of these stories I think it's fair to assume that whatever version of the story we hear is just the latest iteration in a Long Game of Telephone Tonight we will engage in this supernatural game of telephone to hear a story that was sent in by a camper named Ellie Garrett and to put it in her own words, this is a story that started as a friends vacation horror story, but as a kid we all decided we needed stories just like it. I think it was rooted in our childhood fears of being left alone. And while my family members are standing in as the characters of this story, just know that this is meant to be told as more of a tall tale rather than something that was specifically experienced. Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
[00:01:24] The Garretts were on their first day of their summer road trip, a long, sticky drive from Milwaukee to Myrtle Beach. By late evening, the mood inside the car had shifted from the excitement of the early morning to the stale boredom. When you ask your parents how much longer till you get there? Hank's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Nicole stared blankly out the passenger seat, the quiet sighs of defeat becoming more frequent. Ellie, their 15 year old, had been fighting with her little brother Jonah, on and off since lunch, mostly about music, volume and whose feet were on whose side of the seat. The last energy drink in the cooler was flat, warm, and the clouds ahead had turned a heavy charcoal gray.
[00:02:10] Raindrops began to slap against the windshield in a sort of rhythm that almost put you to sleep.
[00:02:17] Hank, squinting through the glass, muttered, I'm not driving longer in this.
[00:02:24] When he saw it, the road trip companion, the all too familiar sign for a hotel just off the interstate. Just another common chain with a forgettable name, the promise of free Wi Fi and continental breakfast. Hang didn't even bother to ask his family. He just took the exit. It was a comfort lodge or maybe a Travel Inn, one of those corporate hybrids that blend into each other like suburban wallpaper. You know, beige brick, four stories, a narrow building sandwiched between a gas station or McDonald's and an overgrown patch of wood that looked like it would swallow up more than just weeds. The parking lot was almost empty. Five, maybe six cars, all spaced far enough apart like the drivers didn't want to get too close to each other. The yellow parking lines were faded, and the only light in the lot flickered like it was winking at you. Inside, the air smelled of lemon cleaner, hiding a stench underneath it, something damp and old. At the front desk stood a man in a navy polo with the stitched logo over his chest. His name tag read Dennis. He had thinning hair, but a kind expression that made you wonder if he was always tired or was just always pretending to not be.
[00:03:45] I have a room with two queens available, he said. Yeah, that works. Just for one night, hank responded. Nice. Okay, here are your keys. It's room 209. Elevator's just around the corner. The Garretts grabbed their bags and shuffled down the hall. The elevator was old and slow. It creaked and shuddered as it passed up to the next floor, like it resented the extra weight of the family. The second floor hallway smelled of stale air and old carpet. Somewhere nearby, the ice machine hummed like a distant lawnmower trying to start.
[00:04:18] Room 209 was tucked away at the end of the hall. Ellie noticed that the numbers on the doors weren't evenly spaced, like maybe one had been removed or replaced. She chalked it up to bad design and kept walking inside. The room was fine. Two beds with stiff sheets, a desk with a cracked play, the chair, a buzzing wall, AC unit that worked a little too well, and a bathroom light that flickered before settling into the dull yellow glow. All of these hotels have nothing special, Nothing wrong.
[00:04:52] Well, nothing you'd remember anyway. At least that's what the Garretts thought.
[00:04:58] Later that night, everyone settled in. Jonah fell asleep halfway through an old cartoon, Ellie with her earbuds in, scrolling her phone under the blanket, her parents whispering quietly by the bathroom door, debating whether it was worth it to wake up early to be traffic or just wake up at the normal time.
[00:05:16] At around 2am Ellie pulled out one earbud. She wasn't sure why, but there was a strange pressure in the room, a strange quiet.
[00:05:27] She heard a soft whisper, words being spoken just out of reach of her comprehension. She sat up, listening harder.
[00:05:39] Nothing. The room was silent now, except for the AC groaning. She was about to lie back down when the TV turned on. No sound, no channel, just a blue screen glowing dimly in the dark. Ellie sat frozen. There was no remote on the bed and no remote on the nightstand either.
[00:06:00] She slowly walked over to the tv, clicking it off manually. As she turned to walk back to her bed, she stopped. The door to her hallway was open, not wide, cracked enough to see the thin slice of light bleeding in across the carpet. She knew her parents would have locked it. In fact, she remembered the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place.
[00:06:24] Ellie crossed the room slowly, pushing the door shut and locking it again as her fingers closed the bolt. A giggle. Light, airy, the child's laughter right behind her. Expecting it to be Jonah, she spun around, but there was no one there. She didn't sleep much after that, laying there under the covers, afraid to look out, listening to music.
[00:06:50] In the morning, everyone looked off. Her mom, Nicole, was sipping the bitter lobby coffee like it might keep her grounded. She said she had had the strangest of dreams, that the room was filling with water. Slowly, ankle deep at first, but rising, she couldn't move. She couldn't scream until she woke up gasping, hands clutching the sheets. Her father, Hank, said he'd gotten up twice, convinced he'd heard footsteps pacing in the hallway. The second time he decided to check out the people, but there was nothing there.
[00:07:23] However, Jonah had the strangest story.
[00:07:27] At some point in the night, Jonah had slept walk out of the room. They found him around 6am when they woke up, silently sitting in the hallway, staring at the door like it was some sort of tv.
[00:07:44] Dennis, the hotel attendant, didn't seem surprised. Happens sometimes kids get turned around in their sleep, he said. And so the Garretts chalked it all up to road trip exhaustion, overactive imaginations, and just overall bad sleep. But Ellie couldn't let it go. While her parents packed, she decided to investigate, Searching the Internet on her phone, she searched the name of the hotel, the town, and for some reason added room 209 to the end of her search.
[00:08:15] At first all she found were generic complaints about dirty sheets, stale bagels, slow WI fi. But deep within a thread from almost a decade ago, on some random paranormal message board, she found this.
[00:08:29] I used to work night audit at the Comfort lodge in Wheeling, West Virginia. There was a room, room 209, that always gave me the creeps. One summer a family checked in and never checked out. We called the cops and they found all their stuff but no sign of them. The weirdest part? Their keys were turned in like someone dropped them off on the desk.
[00:08:52] This was back before we had local storage for our security cameras. They were mostly just there for show, so we don't know who turned them in.
[00:09:00] But someone did.
[00:09:02] There were no replies, just that single post.
[00:09:06] Forgotten. Elise stared at the screen her stomach turning cold.
[00:09:13] That night, for some reason that Ellie couldn't explain, they stayed again.
[00:09:19] Her parents seemed to be in some sort of trance. We don't want to lose the reservation money. It's just one more night, hank said. Everybody needs to sleep. Her mother backed him up. Her father ran out for pizza while her mother stayed with her and her little brother. So Ellie wandered into the lobby and waited until Dennis wasn't busy. When she asked him directly, is there something wrong with room 209? We were supposed to leave today, but my parents seemed to forget. He paused too long.
[00:09:55] There's stories about every room in this place, he said. But it's 209. One of them, Elliot, responded.
[00:10:05] Instead of answering, he slid a phone charger across the counter to another guest. Ellie decided she wasn't going to get any answers, so she went back upstairs. The air in the room now felt different, thicker still.
[00:10:19] Lights flickered more often now, like there was a storm, but there wasn't. The hall outside was always too quiet, like a silence that had weight to it.
[00:10:29] That night, as Ellie lay awake, the power went out. At 11:42pm to be exact. Not just her room either, the whole floor.
[00:10:39] When she noticed Jonah was gone, she woke her parents up and they eventually found him by the vending machines, barefoot, talking to someone who wasn't there.
[00:10:51] He turned to them, smiling, like it was a joke.
[00:10:55] She says we can stay here forever, he said. Maybe he was just sleepwalking again. His father, Hank, shook him awake and they decided that they didn't want to stay there anymore. They didn't wait. In fact, they had already packed. They should just go now. Nicole grabbed Jonah and told Ellie to grab the bags. They ran down to the lobby, but the front door wouldn't open. No chain, no lock. Just one budge. Nicole tried to call 911, but there was no signal. Ellie's phone showed full bars, but when she tried to call anyone, all she got was static. Loud, garbled. Ellie walked over to the door, shaking it as hard as she could as a ringing started to pierce her ears, growing louder and louder, screaming and shaking the door as she eventually passed out, waking up in the backseat of her parents car, alone. Sunlight poured through the windshield. The lot was empty except for their car parked at a lone rest stop outside Wheeling. She sat up slowly, checked her phone. Full signal. There was no call history.
[00:12:06] She called her mom, but her number was disconnected. She opened her photos, but there was only one. The hallway from the hotel. In the center of the frame was one door, slightly ajar room 209.
[00:12:19] Thank you Ellie for allowing me to share your story. It seems the show has a theme this week, something I would love to say I planned but is actually more of a happy accident. Both this show and our bonus episode are stories sent in that are meant to be told as more urban legends, more folktales. We tend to forget the space that stories like these take up in our psyche. We are bombarded by people trying to debunk or get to the truth of these stories. And while I can't appreciate these more sterile takes on these types of stories, I personally get more enjoyment from just sharing them because I find that most people are at least familiar with a similar story. So what's yours? Did you have a similar story passed around your circle as a kid about going missing at a hotel? Or is there another more prominent urban legend thus passed around?
[00:13:11] For show announcements this week, I would like to welcome our three newest camp founder, camp counselor and a lost camper, Amy, Mair and Catherine. If you'd like your own shout out at the end of an episode or access to our monthly bonus episodes, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear a ghost story? But as always, I am just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. Please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you are enjoying it, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. Until next time.
