Poltergeists at the Desert Sands Inn
Witness: Nora
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Date of Encounter: first week of February 2001
I was moving across the country as a twenty year old hungry for adventure. Traveling with my best friend from Chicago, Illinois to Phoenix, Arizona it was late at night when we reached Albuquerque.
On the northeast side of town the pickings for motels on a budget are slim. So we chose the Desert Sands Inn and paid the clerk in the main building.
He assigned us to room 109. It is in the bottom corner nearest the office in the second building.
We took turns showering before bed and reluctantly admitted to each other we felt we were being watched. So we searched for video cameras and when we found nothing, laughed it off.
We turned off the lights and tried to go to sleep on the two queen beds. The TV came on by itself blaring at top volume and as we watched, horrified, the volume went up and down as channels simultaneously changed.
Freaked out we unplugged the TV but it stayed on for about forty-five seconds, the volume rolling up and down and the channels changing. That was when we ran from the room to the car. After half an hour of rationalizations we went back. The TV was plugged back in, but no one had been in the room after us.
As soon as we laid down, the TV came on, the volume changed as channels flipped, and the lights flickered.
My friend is Jewish and very religious so she calmed herself reading the Old Testament out of the Gideon’s bible in the room. As she read, the events stopped. Soon she got tired and asked me to read and I agreed though I was neither raised Christian nor Jewish and the Bible is unfamiliar to me.
The TV and lights kept going and then we heard the most horrific bestial sounds from the bathroom. It sounded like a very large dog in tremendous pain, reminding me of a neighbor’s Irish Wolfhound that went rabid when I was a child, in the way it was in pain but not screaming, just low snarling sounds. Again we ran, abandoning most of our things and slept in the car.
Tired and freezing cold from the night when the sun rose we returned to find the TV on as well as the clock radio. We turned it off and took turns showering.
When she showered she claimed a shampoo bottle flew at her head and when I showered I distinctly felt someone gripping my hair.
I felt a feeling of malice I have never before encountered. To my shock I have looked up the motel on the Web and found a few references to that very same room and almost identical occurrences.
I wouldn’t even recommend a stay there to the most hardened hunter. It turned me from a nonbeliever to a member of the wary faithful.
