24 Hours in the World’s Most Haunted Hotel

24 Hours in the World’s Most Haunted Hotel

Subtitle: They said Room 313 was cursed. I didn't believe in ghosts—until I met one.

It started as a joke.

"Spend one night in the world's most haunted hotel," my best friend dared, sliding her phone across the café table. The article displayed an aged photo of the Red Hollow Inn, an ivy-draped Victorian structure nestled in the remote hills of upstate New York. Faded shutters. Cracked windows. A sign that looked more like a warning than a welcome.

“You won’t last 24 hours,” she smirked.

Challenge accepted.

I arrived at Red Hollow on a rainy Friday afternoon. The building loomed in the mist like a forgotten painting—sepia-toned and peeling at the edges. A wrought iron gate creaked open as I stepped through, the gravel path crunching under my boots like brittle bones.

The receptionist—if that’s what she was—appeared as soon as I entered the lobby. Dressed in black, with skin too pale for daylight, she barely spoke. Just handed me a tarnished brass key marked “313” and said, “The elevator hasn’t worked since ’92. Stairs are to the right.”

No smile. No instructions. Just that.

Room 313 was at the end of a long, dim hallway. The wallpaper peeled like old flesh. The lights flickered. My phone had dropped to one bar of service the moment I entered the building—and by the time I reached the room, it was completely dead.

The door creaked open on its own.

Not a good start.

Inside: a canopy bed draped with moth-eaten curtains, a fireplace filled with ash, and an old rotary phone on the nightstand—disconnected, yet unsettlingly clean. The room smelled faintly of roses and mold.

I dropped my bag and said aloud, trying to be funny, “Alright ghosts, let’s get this over with.”

The first few hours were quiet—too quiet.

I journaled. Ate a protein bar. Tried to read, but the words blurred. Around 9:30 PM, the temperature dropped sharply. Not a breeze. Not a draft. Just sudden, biting cold. My breath fogged the air like smoke.

Then the fireplace lit itself.

I jumped to my feet, heart slamming. No switch. No gas. Just open flame crackling in the hearth that had been cold all day.

I took a step back.

The rotary phone rang.

I stared at it. No connection. No line. No reason to ring.

It rang again.

I picked it up, hand shaking. “Hello?”

A long pause. Then a whisper, dry as paper:

“She’s still in the walls.”

The line went dead.

By midnight, I was no longer pretending to be brave.

I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Shadows moved in the corners of the room. The mirror above the fireplace began to fog—despite the fire—and words slowly appeared on the glass, written by an invisible hand:

GET OUT

I backed into a corner. My phone, though dead before, suddenly buzzed once. One new image in the gallery.

It was a photo of me—sleeping.

I hadn't taken it. I hadn't slept.

I left the room.

The hallway was darker than before. Doors I passed earlier were now open, revealing pitch-black voids behind them. Floorboards groaned under my steps. Somewhere, a music box played a haunting lullaby on repeat.

I reached the lobby.

The receptionist was gone.

The front door was… bricked up. As if it had never been a door at all.

I turned, heart in my throat—and there she was.

A woman in a 1920s gown, standing barefoot in the center of the room. Her skin was too white. Her lips sewn shut with black thread. Blood seeped from her eyes like tears.

She raised one hand and pointed… toward the stairs.

I ran.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up in the bathtub of Room 313, fully clothed, drenched in freezing water.

The walls were now covered in handprints—small, childlike ones—all smeared in red.

I grabbed my bag, ready to smash a window if I had to.

Then I saw the newspaper clipping pinned to the back of the door.

“Local Woman Found Dead in Room 313—Body Never Recovered.”

Dated: October 13, 1963.

The photo was grainy, but unmistakable.

It was the same woman from the lobby. The one who pointed.

The one still trapped here.

At exactly 3:13 PM—24 hours to the minute since I arrived—the lights in the hallway flickered to full brightness. The bricked doorway crumbled, revealing the open exit. No one spoke. No one stopped me.

I walked out.

The receptionist was back at the desk.

She looked up with that same expressionless face and said, “Thank you for staying at Red Hollow Inn. Would you like to leave a review?”

I never went back. But sometimes, late at night, I hear that same rotary phone ring. I never answer.

And when I look in the mirror, sometimes the words come back:

GET OUT

Only now… they’re written backwards.

From the inside.