Gareth Dunlop - CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop/folk artist, Gareth Dunlop, shares one of his stories from being on the road. You can check out the story below:

The craziest thing that’s ever happened to me on tour would definitely have to be the night I spent in a hotel in Falkirk in 2016. I was the last person in the world to get spooked or scared by strange noises or bumps in the night… until I spent a night at the Antonine Hotel.

It was the second-to-last stop on a string of solo shows through the UK. I got to the hotel, and the lady at reception told me I was the only one staying there that night. When I was leaving in the morning, she said to just lock the main door behind me and post the keys through the letterbox.

I’m not sure if the hotel is still standing… but it was huge. Like, the size of an IKEA—huge. Empty conference rooms on every floor and a massive disused dining area down in the main lobby.

The lady at reception set me up in the furthest room on the top floor (because the road out front could get a bit noisy at night).

The old, noisy elevator to the top floor was just across from the door to my room, and the hall lights were motion-detected, so everything was in darkness until you walked under a light in the hallways.

I checked in, grabbed a quick shower, and headed straight off to my gig in the local church.

After my gig, I got back to the huge, empty hotel, unlocked the front door, and made my way up the stairs to the top floor (I didn’t want to be stuck in an elevator in a hotel on my own, just in case it stopped working).

Deadly quiet, with the lights above me turning on and the ones behind me turning off—I got to my room.

Definitely feeling a bit uneasy, with my mind going a hundred miles an hour, I put my head down to sleep… and woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the old elevator running and the doors flinging open just outside my room. Then they closed, and I heard it go back down, and the doors flung open below me.

This happened every few minutes for the next hour or so… to the point where I thought there must be someone else in the hotel… but the light under my door in the hallway never switched on, so there couldn’t have been anyone getting on or off the elevator.

As soon as the sun came up, I made my way down to the lobby, locked the door, and posted the keys.

I’d left a couple of cables at the church I played in the night before, so I had to go back in the morning to grab them. I got talking to the priest, and he asked me where I spent the night. I told him I had an uneasy night in the Antonine Hotel, and he said, “You’re not the first. I could tell you stories that would make your skin crawl.”

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