Post by Joanna on Jul 20, 2014 15:59:22 GMT -5
Spooked! England cricketers Stuart Broad and Ben Stokes freaked out by 'haunted hotel'
LONDON – If you’ve been left stumped by the England cricket team’s recent poor form then wonder no more … it’s all because of ghosts, apparently. Several players have had sleepless nights because the team’s five-star hotel is “haunted.”
Fast bowler Stuart Broad moved rooms at the Langham Hotel in Marylebone after being “freaked out.” “One night I woke up in the middle of the night, around 1.30 a.m. and I was convinced there was a presence in the room,” Broad told the Mail on Sunday. “It was the weirdest feeling. All of a sudden the taps in the bathroom came on for no reason. I turned the lights on and the taps turned themselves off. Then when I turned the lights off again the taps came on. It really freaked me out. I ended up asking to move rooms.”
Some of the players’ girlfriends even refused to stay there. No one from the hotel was available for comment, but it apparently hosts seven ghosts. Ben Stokes has also had problems sleeping and the hotel’s own website even tells of one guest’s haunted encounter.
London’s Langham Hotel opened in 1865 and has been visited by several literary greats, including Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also has reportedly been frequented by a number of ghosts. The most common sighting is of a man in Victorian evening wear in Room 333, who apparently appears only during the month of October. One guest claimed to have seen the figure of a man in military attire standing by the window on the fourth floor. This is said to be the spirit of a German prince who jumped from a window before the start of the First World War. It is also believed that Napoleon III, another former guest, haunts the basement of the hotel.
Source: The Metro, July 20, 2014.