Trailer-Park Ghosts, Tollbooth Spooks
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7. Laundry Room Gremlins: If you're a spook, you need a clean white sheet over your head. So you have to do laundry regularly.
With that in mind, don't make a fuss if you're in Eureka Springs, Ark., and an unearthly presence is hogging the dryers.
The laundry room at the Crescent Hotel is supposedly a hotbed for paranormal activity. In the 1930s, cancer patients from across the country came to Eureka Springs for an experimental treatment. But the doctor who promised them a cure turned out to be a quack, and they died miserable deaths.
Now, these detergent demons are said to rudely shove people out of the way. They've ripped jewelry from women's necks.
"The laundry room is right across from where the hospital morgue was," says Dana Petty, a ghost researcher. "So it was once an unhappy place."
Don't feel bad for the hotel operators. It's known in the resort industry that thrill-seeking tourists love ghosts. Many inns like the Crescent Hotel even boast that they're haunted, giving a whole new meaning to the "spirit" of capitalism.
At the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Mass., for $200 a night, guests can sleep in the very room where Lizzie allegedly took an ax and gave her stepmother 40 whacks. Of course, that room is booked solid every Halloween.
Should we pity all those unfortunate hotels that weren't built atop a morgue? Do you need real bloodstains on the carpet to attract Halloween tourists?
The Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, Fla., is trying to scare up business this Halloween. If you dare, ask for a "guaranteed" haunted room. Blood oozes from the showerhead. Mirrors mysteriously crack in the middle of the night. And whatever you do don't check under the bed. You may never check out.
These rooms are $585 a night, and that's scary enough for me. Even if the blood is just ketchup.
Buck Wolf is entertainment producer at ABCNEWS.com. The Wolf Files is published Tuesdays. If you want to receive weekly notice when a new column is published, join the e-mail list.