The man who talked through my hotel room door, and the bartender who saved my vacation

We were on the first family vacation in several years. We headed off on a road trip for a week to a beachside city and to stay in a hotel on the beach. This was not a 5 star hotel, but it was nice, and was in the middle of a bunch of bars, restaurants and surf shops. We flew in to a nearby airport, and rented a car to drive our family of 5 to the hotel.<br><br>When we arrived, the room was like most hotel rooms in this class. A long room with two beds, a couch, little kitchen area, a balcony and a bathroom. The bathroom had a tub, toilet and sink.<br><br>On the first night of our trip, we arrived around 7, and we went around to a collection of food shops, bought some sushi, wings and fried chicken, and came back to our room to spend the night.<br><br>Just as we were getting settled, I heard our door open slightly, and I got up, thinking it was one of my kids coming back to grab something, and I was shocked to see the front door of our room standing open.<br><br>I walked to it, pulled it shut and locked it, and looked for any sign of someone, but didn’t see anyone. Thinking it was just a mistake, as a family, we checked the door and found that the door could be opened with just a little bit of force, and the door was damaged.<br><br>I called down to the front desk, and they apologized, and said they would send security up to check out the door. A few minutes later, a man in a hotel uniform came to the door, and I showed him the damaged door, and he said he would call maintenance to fix it. We were a bit concerned, because it was already 8, and the front desk had said someone might not be around to fix it. We decided to go to bed and the next morning take steps to have the door fixed.<br><br>Around 11, I woke up to a scratching sound on the door. It sounded like a key card being swiped, except the swipes didn’t sound electronic. They were more like the swipes were scraping, like metal against metal. I looked over and saw that my wife had woken up, and she was looking at me, and she just whispered “what?”<br><br>I got up, and looked through the peephole. I looked for a moment, and didn’t see anyone. Thinking it was just the wind or the hotel settling, I went back to bed.<br><br>As I lay in bed, I heard whispering, and it sounded like it was coming from the door, and it sounded like someone was talking to us, but I couldn’t make out the words. I got up, and tried to listen, and my wife got up and got the attention of our kids.<br><br>She had them all go in to the bathroom, and lock the door. While they were doing that, I heard the whispering a bit more clearly and it sounded like it was someone trying to talk through the door to us. It was a man and he sounded like he was slurring his words. It sounded like he was saying something like “let me in, I’ve been coming to see you for 8 months” or something like that.<br><br>I texted my wife, and told her what I heard, and when she read my text, she came out of the bathroom and whispered “call security”.<br><br>I was concerned because I didn’t think it would be good if the person at the door heard our voices and knew we were awake. They would know someone was home and that we would call security.<br><br>I left a voicemail at security, and we decided to call the front desk. When the person at the desk answered, my wife told them that there was someone talking at our door, and they said they would call security, who never showed up.<br><br>By this point, the man at the door had stopped talking, and we didn’t hear any noise, until a few minutes later, when we heard footsteps and he sounded like he was walking away.<br><br>The next morning, we went down to the front desk and asked to speak to the manager. The manager told us that the previous night, there was nobody at the desk, someone had left early, and was supposed to have been replaced, but it hadn’t happened. He said that maintenance would come up and fix the door, and that he would comp our stay.<br><br>He said that they hadn’t had any problems in the hotel, and the manager thought that someone was just walking around and testing the doors to see if they were unlocked. He said that he didn’t think the man at the door was trying to get in to our room specifically.<br><br>Feeling better, we went back to our room, and got ready for the beach. After a morning of swimming and laying on the sand, we decided to go out on the town and have a couple of drinks and get to know the neighborhood.<br><br>We went to a few bars and had some drinks, and with a bit of a buzz, we walked in to a bar with a view of the ocean, called the Hideaway.<br><br>Inside, the bar had a bunch of surf pictures on the walls, and the bartender was a surfer dude who looked like he was in his mid 30s. We took a few seats at the bar, and we ordered our drinks. The surfer bartender chatted us up as we sipped our drinks, and as we chatted, he asked where we were staying, and we told him we were staying on the beach at the hotel.<br><br>He asked what part of the hotel and we told him, and then he dove in to a bunch of questions. So you guys were there last night? So what did you do last night? Did you hear anything weird?<br><br>We were blown away by his questions, and we told him about the events of the night before. He listened as we told him about the door opening, the person trying it and talking. He listened as we talked about security not coming and the manager comping our vacation.<br><br>When we were done, he looked us dead in the eye and said “that wasn’t the first time that this has happened at that hotel”. He went on and told us that the night before, a few hours after we called security, a man was found on a balcony, and when they asked him how he had gotten there, he said that he had walked up the stairs and then pulled himself over to the balcony.<br><br>The bartender said he had heard that the man was in his 30s, and that he was a resident of a local mental hospital. He said the man who ended up on the balcony, had walked away from the hospital the day before, and he was still on the loose.<br><br>My wife and I looked at each other. This was not what we wanted to hear, and we decided to terminate our vacation. We got the kids together, and drove to the airport and got on a flight home, and when we got back to our house, we cancelled the car rental, and the rest of our trip.