Haunted Hotels

It is Labor Day weekend and I am in McAllen, Texas for a long layover (30hours). We had a San Diego turn yesterday and then one short leg from Dallas to MFE. We landed around 10 pm. I slept great and woke up hungry. The Hotel has a fabulous restaurant so I cleaned up and wandered downstairs to the lobby to enjoy a stuffed chicken with veggies. It was amazing. Since I was the last customer and I ended up talking to the Chef and he was an interesting guy. We started talking about the ghost that haunts the Hotel. Last night our San Francisco based flight attendants told us to have a good night and watch out for the ghost. I have stayed here at the Casa De Palmas Hotel before, but I was unaware that we had a resident ghost. According to the Chef there is a ghost in the kitchen as well. The ghost turns the radio up and down depending on her mood. The bartender claims that she is a waitress and he has seen her. She even speaks to him in English sometimes when he is not looking. He says he is respectful to her but asks her to leave him alone in Spanish. He does not want to make her mad. After watching many scary movies I tend to agree that making the ghost mad is not in your best interest. Throughout my 13 years with American I have heard a few great stories from crew members. It makes great conversation pieces and I think most people love to hear a good ghost story. For instance we used to layover on the Queen Mary which was converted from a ship to a Hotel in California. I never stayed there but did take a tour of it on a layover. AA pulled us out of there because there were too many complaints about scary stuff and the rooms were kind of small as well. In Portland I ate dinner at a Italian restaurant that had an old elevator shaft where a woman supposedly died in the early 1900's. She was reportedly still hanging around. I love scary movies and I love the television shows about haunting s. My favorite is celebrity ghost stories. I even have a ghost story of my own. It was 1999 and I was a new hire at American Airlines. I freely admit that I was tired and discombobulated because of the crazy schedule that the Airline profession throws at you. We had an Orlando layover and it was a Hotel that had rooms were the door opened to the outside. I didn't have a cell phone so I called Mike with a calling card. I watched some television and went to sleep. When I sleep I prefer the room very dark so I turned off all the lights. Around 3 am I suddenly woke up and the floor lamp was on and I was laying in the fully lit room. It made me feel uncomfortable. I got out of bed and walked over and turned off the light. I get back into bed and fall into a deep sleep. About an hour later I again wake suddenly to find that the same light was on. It sent a jolt of fear through me because this time I knew that I had turned off the light. I didn't want to get out of bed and turn off the light. I was scared. The crazy thoughts that went through my head were, is someone was in the room? or maybe there was a spirit in here with me. I finally get the nerve to get up and quickly go over to the light and unplug it. I run and jump into the bed and pull the covers over my head. I laugh about it now because it was kind of silly. But it felt very real at the time. My common sense tells me that probably the switch was bad. The light did not come back on. I love to hear people tell their ghost stories. Funny, scary and even just a matter of fact ones. I planned on having just another layover eating good food, watching the US Open (tennis), maybe going to the pool and working on my certified flight instructor renewal online. Fortunately, the Casa De Palmas Hotel told me the ghost stories that make a normal layover just a bit more interesting. Maybe, I should unplug all the lights tonight?