Even in this age of online reviews, most people have had the unfortunate pleasure of staying in a hotel that wasn’t exactly up to snuff. The brief sight of a few creepy crawlies on the curtains or unusual stains on the sheets probably stuck with you. Yet for several unfortunate guests, such stomach-turning encounters would’ve been the least of their worries.
That’s because after checking into one unassuming hotel on the English coast, these individuals faced phenomena that sent their hearts racing faster than any cockroach or dirty pillow ever could. Even today, guests can’t help but pack their bags early — that is, if they can manage to survive the night.
From a distance, the Mermaid Inn gives no indication of the horrors lurking within. Nestled along Mermaid Street in the coastal town of Rye, the quaint-looking inn has served as a landmark within this sleepy seaport for nearly 900 years.
Wikimedia Commons
In its early days, the Mermaid made a name for itself as an alehouse, renowned for its home-brewed ales. Coupled with its location and cheap lodging — just a penny a night — the Mermaid thrived as a popular hangout among sailors and swashbucklers alike.
But in 1377, nearly all of Rye burned to the ground during the Hundred Years’ War, the Mermaid included. Surviving residents managed to rebuild the inn in the 1420s, though it wasn’t until the 18th century that the Mermaid returned to notoriety — and for all the wrong reasons.
Pixabay
During the 1730s and 1740s, the Mermaid became associated with the notorious Hawkhurst Gang, who used the inn as one of their primary hangouts. Their reputation for violence was known far and wide, leaving them with free rein over the Mermaid and its guests.
In fact, the gang even altered the inn itself to support their criminal activities. The Mermaid features dozens of secret compartments and corridors behind its walls, including a tunnel that runs to another nearby inn for easy escape.
Yet the Hawkhurst’s control over the inn proved bad for business, and in 1770 the Mermaid ceased operations. From there, the Tudor-style structure took on a variety of identities, including stints as a private residence, a military garrison, and even a nightclub.
Pixabay
Then, in 1993, the Mermaid was revived as an inn once more, much to the delight of the people of Rye. Unfortunately, these feelings began to fade as soon as the first guests checked in.
heartfullofpoison / Flickr
As it turned out, many of the Mermaid’s original occupants had never left. Guests began reporting unusual disturbances and ghost-like figures plaguing the premise, each encounter more terrifying than the last.
Steve Donna Omeara
The first notable entity was the form of a woman in a white gown resting in the rocking chair beside the fireplace of Room 1. Guests who found themselves in the woman’s presence reported waking up to find their unpacked clothes inexplicably soaking wet.
In Room 10, the ghost of an unidentified man is known to linger. On several occasions, the spirit has passed through the wall of the bathroom and into the sleeping area in order to terrify guests.
A few doors down, Room 19 is haunted by a ghost that also doesn’t mind getting up close and personal. One guest reported waking up to find a man in old-fashion clothing sitting at the foot of her bed; she spent the rest of the night hiding beneath her mattress.
Room 16 features the spirit of a man whose body was stowed beneath the floor after losing a duel. One inn staff member encountered this presence when every bottle on a far shelf suddenly fell to the floor — he resigned the next day.
Zavela / CBS Los Angeles
There’s even the ghost of a maid that wanders the Mermaid’s halls. She’s believed to have been the girlfriend of one of the members of the Hawkhurst Gang, though she was murdered when the others began to feel that she knew too much.
Unsurprisingly, Room 17, named after Hawkhurst smuggler Thomas Kingsmill, is easily the inn’s most haunted. It’s believed that the wife of gang founder George Gray now calls the room home — and, boy, does she make her presence known.
Guests staying in Kingsmill have claimed to see the corner rocking chair moving on its own, followed by an icy chill that consumes the entire room. And whatever you do, don’t even think about actually sitting in the rocking chair.
One guest foolish enough to do so while taking a photo felt an unseen force bump into her, followed by that inexplicable chill. When she checked the picture afterward, the image showed several strange orbs floating around the room.
Such encounters have drawn plenty of ghost hunters to Kingsmill, including the crew from Channel 5’s Most Haunted. These experts also managed to pick up a range of paranormal phenomena, including those very same floating orbs.
Reporters from The Sun also decided to get to the bottom the strange happenings within Room 17, though their experience was nothing like that of the Most Haunted team. After setting up a night-vision camera pointed at the rocking chair, the crew woke to find a chilling sight.
In the middle of the night, the camera had somehow ejected its tape, which would normally require a pretty hard push to do. And what’s more, when the crew tried to pop the tape back in, the camera couldn’t detect it at all.
Yet despite these ghostly occurrences, the Mermaid Inn’s many rooms are almost always filled — with both the living and the dead. But for any would-be ghost hunter visiting Rye, the next stop on their spook-tacular journey should be across the Atlantic to a hotel with an even grislier history…
