PERFECT day for a movie binge.
Instead of exploring new films, however, I decided to relive some favorites I'd not thought about in a while. Roku's Howdy channel is excellent for this, by the way. Super cheap too. (pssst, great option for 90's sultry thrillers).
Let's talk about:
I have seen this film once when it was first released although I can't remember if I saw it in the theater or not. At the time I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. Trippy. Oddly aggressive. Maybe even a little .... lame?
At the same time, I thought: is this good? I think I'm scared. This film makes me UNCOMFORTABLE.
Nearly 20 years since I first saw it, this visceral memory remained. Taunting me, intriguing me. *HAUNTING ME*. Experiences not dissimilar from the film, grossly, hilariously, enough.
Nearly 20 years later, revisiting, I can say this is a solid story. This is a solid experience of trauma, nightmares, madness - a visual panic attack, if you will. It's a lot to take in. Brilliantly, it also presented such a callous beginning that you also expect to be disappointed by the actual "haunting". This is by design - cleverly executed.
In short: this is a horror story about arrogance, also known as untreated grief and unrecognized fear. Which is an interesting take because I have felt nothing but Humble at hotels.
Hotels have played an alarming, pivotal role in my own life - sometimes very scary roles.
As a teen in the mid-late '90s I would stop in the office of my local motel and routinely ask if they needed a maid. I didn't want to work at Dairy Queen anymore and would much rather clean rooms.
It took a year, but the family owned business finally said: "Yes".
I loved it! Loved working in housekeeping at this remote motel catering to fishermen and hunters in my rural, prairie home town. Loved it all except for cleaning fish guts off ceilings, creepy men watching me with binoculars, etc.
The family running the motel later got run out of town based on a son's behavior (allegedly) - that's another story. But I did love my job there. I really did. It was meditative. In fact, it made me a very good independent worker - which would prove important later in life.
The Rolodex of memories I have with motels, hotels and holiday inns, also landed me at the Finlen hotel in Butte, Montana.
That was a Stephen King Stanley Hotel experience, if I ever had one.
My brother and I were traveling back home and decided to stay at the Finlen instead of the Motel 6 or Eddy's Motel where I was mistaken as a sex worker and possibly almost kidnapped. That's another story. Shout out to Eddy's though. I love that place. Get cabin #1 if you're traveling with two people. In any case, The Finlen was a TREAT. A ghastly, haunted treat!
It was empty - COVID times - so my brother and I wandered the empty, dark halls of this impressive tower for hours!
Touring the silent ballroom and seeing the countless photos of the hotel's heyday of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Can solidly say that this is one of the most haunted hotels I'd ever stayed in where I didn't see a spirit. The *walls* haunted the place.
Just talking in the expansive, empty lobby felt scandalous - like we were becoming ghosts ourselves.
One of the most actually haunted hotels I ever stayed in, though, was Manresa Castle in Port Townsend, Washington. That place is no joke!!! I've stayed in their two most haunted rooms and I don't need to do that again.
Like our dear character in the film, Mike, I walked into Manresa with some arrogance. The ghost stories were just too outlandish and also a little common - I was just delighted by the amazing, beautiful architecture. And like the film, Manresa, at the time, didn't want to be known as a haunted hotel.
I still feel sorry for the front desk clerk for my constant calls about weird stuff happening late at night. She sounded used to it, however.
Straight up - I'd never experienced stuff like I did at that hotel. And absolutely nothing can prepare you for suddenly seeing a short woman in a white dress walk behind you while you're brushing your teeth. The blood still drains from my face when I think about it.
The worst part though! The worst part is when my boyfriend and I heard something outside and we poked our heads out the window and saw something so ungodly crawling around in the bushes, under the window, that we noped the nopest nope - closed the window and never looked out it again.
It took a near decade and podcast interview later to realize what we were looking at was a child. It was a child crawling on all fours like an animal but it wasn't alive anymore.
In short, we had our very own 1408 experience there - questioning reality and our own sanity, except it was a dual experience.
My hotel stories can carry on for hours, from beer bottle openers next to the toilet to exquisite accommodations because of pure luck, and of course all the hauntings (feel free to share your experiences of *something* sitting on the bed when you're alone).
I'm so grateful for hotels, bottom line though. This could be because I have spent so much time in rural areas where a hotel is your lifesaver. Literal, lifesaver.
So while 1408 is a story about untreated trauma and arrogance, it's a reminder to me that I have the utmost respect for the hospitality business and I will never doubt a strange story that comes from an employee.
Also. I really should look into staying in more haunted hotels and talking about them as a side hustle. After all, hotels are such wonderful human experiences and beer money is nice.
I watched this film on Howdy. Use the Find It! Watch It! links on Horror Habit's side bar to see where else you can find this alarmingly brutal ghost story.
Stay weird, weirdos. 🖤
