I don’t believe in ghosts. They do not exist.
So why am I lying awake at 3.30am in a strange hotel room trying to convince myself of this – and not doing a very good job?
Well, it’s all down to the Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro, the man behind movies such as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.
A couple of months ago, he was staying in Ardoe House Hotel just outside of Aberdeen while filming a Frankenstein adaptation for Netflix in nearby Dunecht.
One of his producers reported strange goings on in her room — room four, just up the stairs from reception on the first floor.
She reported “odd electrical and physical occurrences”, an experience that disturbed her so much that in the morning she checked out.
For Mr del Toro – who loves a good ghost story – this was catnip. When his colleague moved out, he moved in, tweeting out to his 2.4 million followers on X to get ready for some supernatural action.
“I always stay in the most haunted rooms,” the director wrote alongside a photo of him in room four.
“I have high hopes.”
Meanwhile, I’m reading all of this thinking, this is interesting.
Wouldn’t it be fun to spend the night in room four and see if I witness any of “odd electrical and physical occurrences”?
And I was right. It WAS fun.
Until it wasn’t.
The history of Ardoe House Hotel
Drive down the B9077 from Aberdeen to Ardoe House and you pass a number of stately homes, legacies of Aberdeen’s industrial past and the rich men who built them.
Constructed in 1878 Alexander “Soapy” Ogston, a local soap merchant, Ardoe is typical of the genre — a solid square of local granite with turrets, imposing arches and extensive grounds.
Today, it is a busy four-star hotel, with a large 1960s-era extension that includes a ballroom, function rooms and a leisure complex with pool, gym and spa.
But, as I inch up the driveway in the gathering gloom of on a recent Monday evening, it’s just the original building I can see.
Oh, I think, that looks a bit spooky.
Not for the last time, I consider going home.
Room four’s ghostly goings-on
In the car park, I meet Ian Pennington and Julie Reid.
The couple — Ian gregarious, Julie precise — are ghost hunters, owners of their company Deeside Paranormal Investigators.
I’d called them up a couple of days before and they’d kindly agreed to lend me a selection of their ghost hunting gadgets for my stay.
On the phone, Ian and Julie revealed they already know about room four.
During Covid, they’d conducted an investigation of Ardoe House when the hotel was empty and learned about the room’s spooky past, mainly that it is haunted by the ghost of Mrs Ogston, the wife of Soapy himself.
Legend has it she was cheated on by her husband, and now likes to appear in the window of room four, looking out over the countryside, no doubt plotting her eternal revenge.
She failed to appear when Ian and Julia spent the night monitoring the room, though Ian says he saw several balls of light – so called “orbs” that in the world of ghost hunting are said to be the first stage of a supernatural manifestation.
A spooky encounter in Ardoe House Hotel’s room four
Something else happened, too.
Ian was in room four while Julie was downstairs checking out the basement.
So when Ian heard the set of swing doors in the corridor outside start flapping he assumed Julie had finished up and was coming back.
“So I sat there for about 10 seconds, and I called out,” Ian recalls. “No reply. So I ran out of the room, and there was nobody in the corridor.
Was it a ghost? Who knows? Certainly not Julie and Ian, who — despite their line of work consider themselves sceptics when it comes to the supernatural.
“We don’t automatically assume that it is paranormal if we see or hear something,” Ian says.
And for someone like me, who doesn’t believe?
“You don’t need to believe,” Ian replies. “You just have to go in with an open mind.”
Who ya gonna call? Ian and Julie
We enter room four. It is everything you’d want from a haunted hotel room — big bay window, imposing four poster bed and a wardrobe so large it could contain portals to several hells.
Opening up three metal briefcases they brought with them, Ian and Julie show me how to use the ghost-hunting equipment.
There is a temperature sensor, which looks like an orange ray gun, and a night vision camera, which Julie tells me to set up by the bed and leave running all night.
Julie also hands me little plastic orbs that look like cat toys, perhaps because they are actually cat toys — “For actual cats!” says Ian, delightedly.
When switched on, they light up whenever they move, so are perfect for both distracting felines and detecting poltergeist activity.
The Rem Pod operates in a similar fashion.
Essentially a battery attached to an antenna and a speaker, the Rem Pod detects movement, making an increasingly high-pitched sound the closer something is to it.
It also lights up in a variety of colours, again depending on distance. Red equals no movement detected, amber means something is closing in and if the light is green then a ghost may well be sitting in your lap.
A mystery guest makes an appearance
Before Ian and Julie leave, they suggest that during the night I call out to any spirits that might be around.
To show me how, Ian grabs a pair of copper dowsing rods – the type used to find water – and before I can do anything to stop him starts apparently communing with a spirit.
In a matter of seconds, he’s chatting with a 16-year-old boy called Alex who — through a series of yes/no questions — tells Ian he died of tuberculosis a century ago.
The rods swivel in two directions; inwards for yes and outwards for no.
Perhaps the most disconcerting thing is how Ian is talking – like he’s chatting with a friend down the pub.
It’s all over fairly quickly — “Thanks, mate!” chirps Ian — and I’m left wondering what on earth just happened.
“Just one piece of advice,” Ian says to me as he and Julie pack up. “Ninety-nine percent of the time of paranormal investigating is spent twiddling your thumbs. Don’t be disappointed if nothing does happen.”
And with that, the couple leave.
I’m on my own.
The night begins, and doubts creep in
It is around this time that the excitement of playing with cat toys and hearing Ian and Julie’s stories starts to wear off and I realise that I really am about to spend the night in a haunted hotel room.
And not just any haunted hotel room, but one where only moments before — and right in front of me — a man claimed to have communed with a long-dead teenager.
Yes, I don’t believe in ghosts. But I also know that horror movies aren’t real, and a few of them have scared the absolute willies out of me.
I didn’t sleep for a week after watching The Sixth Sense even though I’m pretty sure Bruce Willis is an actor and (spoiler alert) not a dead person.
As I clamber in to the giant four-poster, I quickly discover that the ghost hunting equipment isn’t helping me relax.
The Rem Pod’s red light gives off a ghostly glow in the near-dark room. Every time I open my eyes I imagine Mrs Ogston manifesting.
Then there is the video camera.
I must not have charged it fully, because just after midnight — the witching hour in any good ghost tale — the damn thing switches itself off with a very loud beep and a mechanical whir.
It is a jump scare that has me practically levitating, and almost sends me straight back to Aberdeen.
So, to summarise, I didn’t see any ghosts. The cat toys didn’t light up once and the Rem Pod stayed reassuringly silent.
But did I sleep?
No. No, I did not.
An ‘underdone potatoe’? What happened in room four
At 6am, I give up and go to the spa.
As the sky brightens, and as I relax in the soothing confines of the steam room, the discomfort of the night dissipates.
I think of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol — the ghost story granddaddy — who when confronted with the reanimated form of Jacob Marley puts it down to something he ate.
“You may be an undigested bit of beef,” Scrooge cries out, “a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potatoe. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
My interrupted sleep, I tell myself, was the product of my imagination — and possibly the four white chocolate Oreo cookies I had for lunch, the modern day equivalent of an underdone tattie.
But then I remember Mr del Toro’s tweets after his night in room four. His experience now seems oddly familiar.
“Nothing has happened yet,” he wrote, “but the atmosphere in the room is oppressive and I am not gonna spend much more time there.
“It may be suggestion… but something is in that room with me…”
In the heat of the steam room, a chill runs down my spine.
Yes, I still don’t believe in ghosts.
But I’ll never stay in room four again.
Conversation