Getting to know Guadalajara’s ghosts

I stayed at a haunted hotel one night – an old building from the early 1800s. Its original owner, according to legend, still roamed its halls and one room in particular.

pg7Naturally, I asked to occupy that particular room. In the paranormal world of the undead, I wanted my chance to learn about these wandering phenoms, exchange pleasantries and a funny story or two, and ask why many of them wear sheets with eyeholes.

Let me just say, it was one of the creepiest nights of my life. I went into the place mocking all the  nonsense. Then, that night I had a dream so vivid, so real, so full of lurid color and disdain, it paralyzed me. In it, a large gray cat I’d never seen in the building when I entered had my bed sheet elevated up several feet over me and flapping wildly in stormy waves from headboard to footboard. I wound up waking myself up with a loud scream. The next morning, I couldn’t get the hell out of that place fast enough, skipping the continental breakfast and forgetting my shoes. And to add to the horror, the very cat in the dream, whom I’d never seen before in the hotel, was sitting at the door seeing me off. (True story.)

I don’t imagine many of you would want to try visiting a haunted venue. But it is an adventure, if real or psychological. And there are several sites in Jalisco, officially certified as really “goonie places.”

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