Haunted hotels and their ghost stories

The Grumpy Serving Girl

At the opulent Best Western Lion Hotel in Worksop you might come across Alice, a 20-year-old serving girl, wearing a cloak, who lived around 1800. Alice is a bit of a grumpy ghost – she doesn’t like change. Legend has it she hung herself when the owner of the hotel spurned her romantic advances, so we can forgive her for a little bit of ill temper.

First spotted by builders working on the hotel, she can be heard walking the floorboards and room 201 is her favourite. Alice has been known to knock things off the bedside cabinet and one male guest even said she folded his clothes! The hotel itself is an old coaching inn with magnificent beamed ceilings and open fires. Look out for Alice in the older parts of the building.

The Dripping Ghost

At the Best Western Lord Haldon Hotel near Exeter, witnesses have reported seeing an upset and soaking wet 18th century servant girl wandering through the hotel. The story is she was made pregnant by an aristocratic house guest who drowned her in a lake in the grounds to avoid a scandal. Nice. She’s not alone in this haunted hotel and there have also been sightings of a burly man with rolled up sleeves, who appears in the window of the lounge and a young girl who might knock on your door in the middle of the night.