Halloween English Lesson The Guest in Room 13

The Guest in Room 13

Read the story. Then complete the activities that follow.

Clare Bennett had never believed in ghosts. As a journalist, she had spent fifteen years exposing fake psychics and debunking miracle cures, so when her editor asked her to spend Halloween night alone in “Britain’s most haunted hotel”, she laughed.

“It’ll be the easiest article I’ve ever written,” she said. “Creaky floorboards, a few draughts, and a hotel owner desperate for publicity.”

The Blackwater Inn stood on a cliff above a grey, restless sea in Cornwall. By the time Clare arrived, the rain had been falling for hours and the last bus had already left. The owner, a thin man called Mr Pengelly, handed her an old brass key.

“Room 13,” he said. “Nobody has slept there since 1952. Not all night, anyway.”

“How convenient,” Clare replied, smiling politely.

The room was cold and smelled of damp wool. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a stern woman in a black dress, and whichever corner Clare stood in, the woman’s eyes seemed to follow her. She put it down to clever painting and unpacked her laptop.

At eleven o’clock, she heard footsteps in the corridor. They were slow and heavy, and they stopped right outside her door. Clare held her breath. When she finally opened the door, the corridor was empty, but there were wet footprints on the carpet. They led to the end of the corridor and stopped at a solid wall.

Someone must have spilt water, she told herself. Or Mr Pengelly can’t have been as subtle as he thinks. All the same, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

At midnight, the lights went out. In the darkness, Clare made out the faint sound of a piano playing downstairs. It was a sad, old-fashioned waltz. She was certain the hotel didn’t have a piano; she had walked through every room on the ground floor when she arrived.

Grabbing her phone, she crept down the stairs. The music grew louder with every step. Then, just as she reached the door of the lounge, it stopped.

Inside, she found a piano covered with a dust sheet. Clare lifted the sheet. The keys were thick with dust, untouched for years. There wasn’t a single fingerprint on them.

For the first time in her career, Clare jumped out of her skin.

She ran back to the reception desk, where Mr Pengelly was calmly drinking tea by candlelight.

“Very impressive,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt. “The footprints, the power cut, the piano. You must have spent a fortune on the special effects.”

Mr Pengelly looked at her blankly. “Special effects? Miss Bennett, the power cut is the storm. It knocked out the whole village twenty minutes ago.”

“And the piano?”

“That piano hasn’t been played since my grandmother died.” He paused. “She was a wonderful pianist. Her portrait hangs in your room.”

Clare put two and two together, and her blood ran cold.

“Well,” she said after a long silence, “I think I’ll call it a night.”

She didn’t sleep, of course. She sat in her car until sunrise with the doors locked and the engine running, writing the most honest article of her life.

When it was published a week later, bookings at the Blackwater Inn tripled. Mr Pengelly sent Clare a thank-you card. Inside was a cheque, and a note:

“My grandmother sends her regards. She says you have excellent taste in music, and that you might have stayed for the second waltz.”

Clare never cashed the cheque. But she did notice one detail, and it still keeps her awake at night: the card had arrived in an envelope addressed in old-fashioned handwriting, and it had been posted from the Blackwater Inn two days before her article came out.