"Travel Journalist's Ghost Month Special: Working Solo Away from Home – Who Was That Outside the Door That Night?"

▲Hotel illustration, not the actual hotel mentioned in the article.

By / Travel Sister

After spending one night in an overwater bungalow, the girl in the next room experienced a night of being rocked by something in the middle of the night. Early the next morning, we headed to a spot slightly closer to the city center to continue our itinerary. The weather was scorching hot, but without giving it much thought, we kept snapping photos and conducting interviews, determined to bring back a full account of the local sights, culture, and atmosphere to Taiwan.

After wrapping up the itinerary, we checked into another large hotel. I remember this hotel being quite impressive, with quite a few mainland Chinese tourists, and the atmosphere was fairly lively. I had a room to myself. After the room cards were distributed, we split into two groups—one group went off for more massages, while the others headed back to their rooms to work on their reports.

Usually when traveling on business in Southeast Asia, it’s common to stay alone in spacious rooms. A double room is the minimum, and sometimes you might even get a quad room. It sounds great, but for first-time business travelers, it might take some getting used to—sleeping alone can still feel a bit strange.

As I was packing up and organizing the photos from the day, the room doorbell rang.

The room was quite large, so it took me a moment to get to the door. So, I yelled out, “Who is it?” while quickly walking toward the door.
No one answered. I looked through the peephole—no one was there. I felt a bit annoyed and walked back to my seat by the bed to continue what I was doing. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang again.

I immediately dashed to the door and quickly opened it.
Peering out, there was no one there.
It couldn’t have been more than five seconds—even running as fast as possible, someone couldn’t have just vanished.

That’s when I didn’t dare stay in the room alone anymore. I grabbed my room card, went down to the lobby, and waited there. At least it was crowded, which made me feel a bit safer. Later, I ran into other members of our group and chatted a bit, trying to convince myself that it was probably just someone from the next room pressing the wrong button—or maybe the hotel’s doorbell system was broken. Summoning up my courage, I went back to my room, took a quick shower, and went to bed early, wrapped up in my blanket.

Thinking about it, the scariest thing about business trips isn’t encountering ghosts—the worst thing is not getting enough sleep, which is even scarier than ghosts.

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