The ghost B&B

I had some business to attend to in the UK at the end of last week and I made a reservation with a bed and breakfast near the village of Cheddleton in northern England. As the booking was done just under two weeks prior to my arrival, I didn’t think it necessary to re-check. But then I got to “a” place I thought was the B&B after driving all day long and being completely knackered. I looked around and saw the house looked deserted. There were only a few caravans in the yard. It was 9 PM and I was lucky to have gotten somebody out of the caravan - it was apparently the only one occupied. Based on the help from the caravan chap I found out was was at the wrong place and the “farm” I was looking for was just about 100 m further down this very very narrow road. As I drove to this other location I again saw very little life there. The place was obviously a farm There was a car parked in the yard but otherwise, besides from some cows and pigs I could hear, the place looked deserted. I knocked on doors, rang bells, tapped on windows - nothing.

I thought there might be two possibilities: as they are farm people they couldn’t be bothered to stay up for me and went to bed early like they do on farms (I am presuming quite a bit here :-) or they have completely forgotten about me and had themselves a holiday or they had some sort of emergency and had to go somewhere.

I presumed the latter was the case as I found out that there was a key in one of the doors to the rooms. I unlocked it and saw the room was vacant and all tidied-up. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I presumed they probably left this for me but I would expect at least a massage on a piece of paper. I hesitated for a while but then finally settled in still expecting someone to barge in and accuse me of trespassing. After half an hour nothing happened so I showered and went to bed. At about 23.30 just as I was falling asleep I see car lights through the window and in a minute or two a figure appeared at the window and then someone knocking on the door and shouting who is in the room. My adrenalin rose about 1000% and as as I opened the door I got a strange look from a woman who I later found out was one half of the owners. I explained what happened and they let me go back to sleep. Needless to say I had a lot of trouble going to sleep.

The next morning, as I came to have breakfast, they told me that they thought I was supposed to arrive the next day - on Saturday. They changed calendars that had the week start on a Sunday (or vice versa) so they wrote my name down for the wrong day of the week.

Only when I got back to Slovenia did I realize I forgot to ask them what was the key doing in the door. Who then were they expecting?? I will never know and I am not that interested in finding out enough to call them back. Lets leave it to the old twilight zone, shall we.