A (3:18)
If you haven't seen 1408, I highly recommend it. Released in 2007, it's about a writer named Mike Enslin. He travels around the country staying in supposedly haunted places, and then writes about the experience. To him, it's a dream job. But at this point in his life, Mike is over it. He's been everywhere, seen everything, and his career is spiraling as a result. He even tells someone at a poorly attended book signing that he doesn't even think ghosts are real. He's just gotta pay the bills. But when someone hands him a pamphlet for a place called the Dolphin Hotel in New York, he decides to check it out. He's intrigued by the message do not stay in room 1408. And he thinks it's pretty clever that the numbers add up to 13. And when he gets there, though, the hotel seems surprisingly normal. But the staff is really determined not to let him stay in room 1408. The manager says no one has stayed there and lived through the night. In fact, nobody even makes it longer than an hour. Mike brushes them off, though he thinks it's some kind of gimmick to make sure the room seems extra scary. However, Mike soon finds out that room 1408 is no joke. At first, the room seems average and ordinary, like the rest of the hotel. But it's not long until things start to get weird. It starts off slow. Strange noises, random flashes. The thermostat malfunctions. And then the clock changes by itself to a countdown from 60 Minutes. Which is when the terror really starts. There's a ringing so loud it almost makes Mike go deaf. When he tries to open the window, his hand gets crushed. The water in the sink goes from ice cold to unbearably hot. And when Mike unplugs the clock and stops him from counting down, it just keeps going. Which is when the ghosts start to show up. Ghostly apparitions come out of the walls, some of them jumping out of the window in a recreation of their deaths. Mike is freaked out enough to try to leave, but no matter what he tries, the door won't open and he can't get anyone's attention from the street outside. Mike wonders if he's been drugged. The hotel's manager had given him some bourbon when he arrived and there were chocolates on the pillows. And then the haunting goes to another level as Mike is plagued with visions from his past, mostly of his daughter Katie, who died from an illness when she was young. Mike is able to call his ex wife from his laptop and asks her to send the police. But when they arrive, she calls Mike back and says that the room is empty. That's when he realizes the room isn't just haunted by ghosts. It's something far more evil. It's like some kind of alternate reality determined to drive him insane. And when the clock finally counts down to zero, it starts the terrifying loop all over again. The hotel operator says he has two choices. To keep experiencing this living hell on repeat or take the express checkout, which is a noose that's suddenly hanging over the bed. But Mike decides on a third option. He grabs the bottle of bourbon the manager gave him and turns it into a Molotov cocktail. Then burns the room down around him. And when he thinks it's the end, firefighters break into room 1408 and rescue him. This time it seems like he actually gets out. But for the person whose case inspired the story of 1408, there was no escape. The ghost story that inspired 1408 happened on the other side of the country from New York at the Hotel del Coronado, also known as the Dell. And unlike the Dolphin Hotel in 1408, the Dell was anything but ordinary looking. It first opened in 1888 on Coronado island across the bay from San Diego, California. The Dell was advertised as a modern, luxurious marvel with rooms running at $2.50 a day, which is only about $85 today. So not a bad deal. It was a place where people could escape the stress of everyday life and feel at peace. And peace was exactly what Kate Morgan was looking for when she arrived on the Coronado's doors on November 24, 1892. Kate's life hadn't been easy. Born as Kate Farmer in 1864 in Fremont County, Iowa, her mother passed away a year after Kate was born, and she was sent away to live with her maternal grandfather. Kate's dad didn't seem all that interested in raising her. He ended up getting remarried shortly after Kate's mom died and moved to Texas without his daughter. The details beyond that are pretty sparse. But in December 1885, when Kate was 21, she found some stability in her life when she married a Guy named Thomas Edwin Morgan. Although, unfortunately, it wasn't long before tragedy struck again. The next year, they had a baby boy who sadly died only two days after from an unknown illness. His death sent Kate into a tailspin. She looked for comfort in the arms of another man, and they ran off together. But the next time she resurfaced, she was alone. Kate ended up in Los Angeles, where she got a job as a domestic worker for someone named L. A Grant. Although she mentioned her husband Thomas a couple times, she seemed to have moved on from him and didn't even know where he was. And if Kate was struggling, she didn't show it. By all accounts, she was a model employee and had a great reputation. She didn't have men around and didn't stay out at night. So when she Left work on November 23, 1892, her boss had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. The next day was Thanksgiving, and he fully expected Kate to be there to help. Instead, she left all her belongings behind and booked a train to San Diego. She checked into the Dell the next day under the alias Lottie A. Bernard from Detroit. From the moment she arrived, Kate caught the staff's attention, but not in a good way. For one, she didn't have any luggage with her. She says she left LA with her brother, but he had to get off the train at the city of Orange, and when he did, he accidentally took their luggage claim checks. It doesn't seem like Kate really explained why he ditched her, but she must have seemed like she could afford to stay there because she was allowed to stay on credit. The Dell staff also noticed that Kate did not appear to be in good health. She was pale and sickly looking, and according to her, she had stomach cancer. But Kate didn't want them to fuss over her. She said her brother would be there soon, and luckily he happened to be a doctor. Over the next few days, she checked in with the front desk constantly to see if her brother had shown up. But he never did. And as she waited, her health seemed to be spiraling. Around noon on the fifth day of Kate's stay, November 28, 1892, Kate called the front desk. She asked for a bellboy named Harry west to come dry her hair after a bath, which I guess is the level of service you could expect back then. When Harry showed up, he noticed that Kate was in rough shape. She was really weak and said she'd fallen into her bath accidentally, which is why she needed her hair dried. Kate also made sure to mention to Harry that she was expecting her brother to join her at some point. But here's the thing. Kate had also been asking Harry to run other errands for her. Specifically, she asked him to get a couple drinks for her from the bar before her bath, a glass of wine and a whiskey cocktail, if you're wondering. And no matter how much the Dell's staff tried to get Kate to see a doctor, she refused. At this point, they started to think there was more to Kate's story. The hotel's clerk, AS Gohmer, even asked Kate if she had actually had the money to pay for her room. She told them to send a telegram to someone named G.L. allen in Hamburg, Iowa. Remember that name? We'll be coming back to it later. This was good enough for AS Gohmer, though. He sent the telegram and left it at that. But later that day, things kept getting weirder. On the afternoon of the 28th, Kate called down for the bellhop again. This time, she says she needed matches to burn some documents in her fireplace. And then, despite her seemingly poor health, she left the hotel sometime between 4 and 5pm she told another guest she was going to San Diego to get her luggage, but the first place she went was a gun shop. What are we doing? What are we doing, Kate? The owner later said Kate told him she wanted to buy a weapon as a Christmas present for a friend. He sold her a pistol and cartridges, no questions asked, and even showed Kate how to use it. After that, she went back to the hotel without stopping at the train station's luggage depot. Around 6:30pm the bellhop, Harry west, saw Kate standing on a balcony overlooking the ocean. After that, she went down to the front desk and asked as Gohmer if anyone had sent her a letter or telegram. But nobody had tried to contact her. The next time anyone saw Kate was at 7:30 the next morning on November 29, 1892, when the hotel's electrician found her dead body on an outside staircase leading down to the beach. The steps were covered in blood and there was a pistol lying next to her, the same kind she bought the day before. Working under the assumption this was a suicide, the hotel staff contacted the coroner, who came to remove Kate's body. That same morning, the funds for Kate's room came in from G.L. allen in Iowa. And here's where he starts to come into play. Gohmer sent a reply saying that Kate, or Lottie Bernard as he had known her, had died by suicide. But Gomer never heard from Allan. This is getting interesting. The next day, the coroner launched an inquest. Basically a formal investigation into the circumstances around Lottie Bernard's death. At this point, they had no idea that Lotte Bernard was an alias. Her dead was officially ruled a suicide. But that was hardly the end of Kate's story, because it would soon continue on into the afterlife. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.
