Haunted Hostel in Ecuador

[00:00:02] Welcome to Tell Me A Ghost Story. The late night call in podcast where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained. I'm your host, Michelle Newman. This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine

[00:00:34] and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hey Michelle, it's Edwin from California and whenever I think of a ghost story that's happened

[00:00:51] to me, I think of this one because it was the very first time that I ever experienced like a full blown apparition, a full like a ghost that I actually saw.

[00:01:02] It all started when I was in Baños de la Santa which is a small town, very very small town in Ecuador and South America. The town itself is very naturey, there's a lot of outdoor activities, it's been featured

[00:01:15] in National Geographic and it's a very nice place and that's where this hostel was right and I was in charge of running it. Like I was in charge of you know along with my girlfriend and some other guys who

[00:01:27] were like in charge of like reviving the place and bringing it back up to like its former glory, like what it used to be because it was like the main place to stay for travelers in that town and we're in charge of that.

[00:01:39] So the owner was very hands off, he actually showed up just to fix the place and then left so we were just kind of left there. And you know trying to sort everything out I remember trying to be cool with the

[00:01:52] employees right but also at the same time knowing that they're trying to figure me out to see what I'm like which is kind of going to play an important role in the story here because it had a lot to do with how I reacted to things.

[00:02:06] Anyway the owner had built this thing called the Temazcal which is like this, imagine Igloo right? It's a place where you would like a sweat lodge, it was a sweat lodge. He built at the very top of the building out of like concrete just to have you

[00:02:22] know some type of ceremonies in there and everything. And there was always a guy who would visit us and have breakfast there sometimes and he used to be like you know you guys need to clean that as in we need to

[00:02:36] give that a cleanse because when people do ceremonies in their even sweat lodge, meditations and everything sometimes a dark energy can stay so you have to you guys have to clean that. I used to just be like okay yeah yeah whatever sure we'll get to it right

[00:02:53] because there were so many things to do in that place that it was like adding another thing was just like oh I don't know. But anyway one time I was coming into work one afternoon and as soon as I

[00:03:05] opened the door I see some guy standing in the reception desk area and no person should be in there like only employees because you know we have sensitive info in there we have passports and keys and you know files and

[00:03:19] you know information for like banks and stuff like that. So I go in there to try to figure out who he is and as soon as I open the door I realize he's not there like there's only the receptionist who's sitting

[00:03:35] down at the desk and I look around I look behind the door and I'm like what just happened right like I mean right now I say like normal but then I remember it was so trippy I was like I felt like vomiting it was like this weird sensation

[00:03:55] knowing that like reality isn't reality it was odd and then the receptionist she turns around she's like what's wrong right and I'm like leaning against the wall like I'm kind of slipping down to the floor and she's like what

[00:04:09] happened and I tell her like I just saw somebody standing here this man kind of tall small beard he was literally just standing here looking at some papers and she's like oh like that's the chiquito.

[00:04:23] Basically it was a nickname for a ghost that all the employees had already seen roaming the hallways of that hostel and they had like seen them out in the back the back area around the hallways up in the roof you know like it was this common

[00:04:41] occurrence I remember thinking like okay I got to get out of here so I went upstairs all the way up my girlfriend Carla by the way she's she's working in like on her computer up in the cafeteria area which is again on the roof and I tell

[00:04:57] her like you're not gonna believe what just happened I just saw a ghost like I just laid it on her like I just saw a ghost and she's looking at me like what

[00:05:05] like kind of like just waiting to see my reaction like if I'm gonna laugh and my serious what's happening as I'm telling her what I when I saw it downstairs the light above where I'm where we're sitting because it's at that point

[00:05:20] where like the Sun is setting so like without the lights it's too dark but like it's at that awkward stage anyway the lights were on in that the cafeteria but right above us it was flickering you just turning on and off

[00:05:31] on and off like it was really annoying right the guy in the table next to us kind of noticed that he went up to try to tighten the light bulb but he couldn't

[00:05:41] get it to work either so eventually we just gave up he left it like that and started flickering a little bit more and then it stopped and I'm like this is weird but like I didn't think these two things were related right I kind of

[00:05:56] forget about it and I just kind of you know get back to business as usual and I needed to go back to the US to get you know some visa stuff ready like my work permits to work in Ecuador get everything you know get everything

[00:06:13] signed and all that so I did I went back to California this took about two to three weeks and I got back we got back to Ecuador and I started you know catching up with how everything was and they said you know while you were

[00:06:25] gone this is one of the employees talking to me he's like while you were gone we did have a small issue but everything's been fixed we had this restaurant the very first floor and he said that one time they were getting ready for the

[00:06:41] dinner service and they couldn't turn on the lights like they were like customers were about to come in and lights couldn't be turned on like they couldn't find the problem they searched through everything they flicked on the switches everything was working nothing seemed to be off they called

[00:06:56] somebody to come and check it it's something was just not working for like no reason so eventually one of them gets the idea to like go in and check on the light bulb itself and they realized that all of the light bulbs a dozen of

[00:07:13] them had been unscrewed just enough so that they wouldn't turn on for me that's where it clicked they they hadn't they already knew about you know what had happened with me with the thing I had seen but nobody knew about the light

[00:07:28] bulbs and we all find it odd like who would go in there only the cook goes in and he goes into the kitchen doesn't go into the actual restaurant and those who do go into the restaurant they would have no reason to unscrew every single

[00:07:41] light bulb plus it's really difficult to unscrew right so we're thinking like okay there's all these changes that are happening to the hostel this place is really old it used to be a thing it used to be a bank and the whole place was

[00:07:54] owned by nuns like a convent like that wasn't the convent but like this this association of nuns own that place so it's very old and we were thinking like maybe you maybe we do need to do something about this right

[00:08:09] and one of the volunteers at the time had this idea to make like an offering to the building and I remember he burned a dollar bill I gave up a like a steak kebab other people you know give up other things and they went out to

[00:08:25] the backyard and they dug this hole and gave it to the building and you know it was weird I didn't believe in all this stuff but after that all these things stopped and now when I think back on it on that experience with the hostel

[00:08:43] I realized that the owner was also like not a very nice person he used to have these strange ideas to make money like for example to give ayahuasca to people and use a fake shaman to give it to them like these things that I wasn't okay with

[00:09:02] right because it's where something happens right plus they were trying to get the ceremonies done up on the roof very dangerous stuff there was just a strange vibe that this guy gave off and then there were other things too you

[00:09:16] know about the place like turns out that the previous administrator the guy that was running the hostel before like not before me but like one person before that he had been caught stealing money like from the operations a day-to-day

[00:09:31] operations of the hostel and when he was caught he had a bunch of money on him and he literally like took off from the place and turns out that as he was leaving he had a car accident and died so could that be the ghost that roams

[00:09:49] around I don't know but I for sure saw something that day and when I think about it now like it's I try to tell myself that it didn't actually happen but all

[00:10:03] the signs point to yes it did so anyway that's my story it's very creepy to me so I hope you guys liked it thank you Edwin for your story that's all we have this week folks do you have a ghost story call 701 484 2666

[00:10:32] that's 701 484 2666 or go to tell me a ghost story comm and leave your story there go ahead and leave me a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts was something particularly scary in this episode or maybe you've had a similar

[00:10:56] experience leave your comments via our Spotify page thank you to all the callers who left messages this week and as always I'm your host Michelle Newman signing off see you next week