Tag Archives: victorian houses

Haunted Hotel in Manchester, England

Nationality: China
Primary Language: Mandarin
Other language(s): English, French
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing
Performance Date: Nov.28, 2023
Tags: #legend #england #Hotel #victorianhouses

“Once I stayed England and we decided to spend a night in Manchester. We chose a very famous hotel in the city center. The hotel itself is a historic building, built in the Victorian era and used to be the site of a refugee insurance company. This hotel has an old ballroom, corridors, and guest rooms, all furnished in the Victorian era. The guest room, when we stayed in it, felt too big and spacious for two travelers, giving people a sense of liminal space, which can’t help but feel a little creepy. When we had finished our dinner and were going up the old stairs to our room, we seemed to hear footsteps, and the feeling of being watched appeared, but no one was there. At night, I would lie in bed and listen to the trains passing through the window, and when the trains passed and quieted down, the same feeling that someone was staring at me from somewhere in the room occurred. The next morning, while having breakfast in the dining hall, a local staff told us about the history of the place. One of the staircases is said to be haunted by a grieving war widow who committed suicide by throwing herself down it from the top floor. The staircase in question was only accessible to men at the time. Also, the room 261, the one downstairs from us, is allegedly haunted, with reports of the sound of children playing at night.”

Context: This story, which I personally experienced, was told by a local tour guide in Manchester, where it took place in this haunted hotel. The tour guide tells us the story of the place, which he thinks may be true because Manchester experienced a severe post-Victorian recession and the great bombing of the Second World War. This has made the whole city full of many tragic experiences and legends.

Personal Thought: Given Manchester’s history and the way the tour guide tells it, the story is highly believable. The haunted experience is also my personal experience, so I think this building is indeed haunted. This hotel is a wonderful ghost story location, it includes plenty of history, outdated architecture and decoration, and many liminal spaces. It’s psychologically creepy. But the ghost story is also a reminder of Manchester’s painful, war-torn history

Haunted Victorian House

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20
Primary Language: English

This story was told when the informant was explaining the local legends of growing up in Eastern Tennessee.

“So there’s other little town called Jefferson city, it’s pretty small, pretty rural, all farms and shit, it’s kinda like midway between Bullsgap and Morristown which is my hometown, it’s kind of off the map places in east tenessee, but Jefferson City is particularly interesting because there’s this very, very big beautiful victorian house that’s like white and has a sprawling landscape and whatever, and nobody lives it, ever, it’s never ever been bought and I don’t think it’s even for sale anymore but that’s because there was a lady who lived in the house, and she had like fifty pets I think? Like, very many cats and dogs, so she died one day, because she was old, and then no one really, and she didn’t have family or anything, so she just, like, stayed there, dead, and eventually her pets, once they ran out of things to eat they started dying too. So by the time anybody came, they came because they could smell like the rot, overwhelming, so they come, and see this absolute horror scene of rotting bodies and stuff and they clean it out eventually and try to put the house back on the market. And every time it goes on the market and someone moves in, they say they cannot sleep because they hear the dogs and the cats all night rattling and moving around the house all night, and you can smell the rot and the decay still. Which is crazy! But there it is.”

 

Analysis:

The story is interesting because the house is empty now, and the local legends have become so engrained in the culture that it would be strange to occupy the house because you of the suggestion of the cats and dogs running around, you’d probably hear them!