香港長洲 The Ghost(s) Next Door
As mentioned before (for example, here and here), the beautiful island of 長洲 Cheung Chau in Hong Kong is a very endearing place to this humble blogger. An interesting, if not somewhat disturbing fact of the island, however, is that it was also once a rather popular destination of Hongkongers seeking to commit suicide.
The vacation rental house that had "cornered the market" on suicidal guests, so to speak, was 東堤小築, or “Bela Vista Villa” in English (now possibly renamed), located right on the beach on the east side of the island. According to this site, there have been 26 incidents of suicide committed at this Villa between June 1989 and October 2010.
Since then there have been numerous reports of ghosts appearing in and around this complex. I was completely ignorant of this when I checked into the "budget" (relatively speaking, it's HK you know) guesthouse right next door to this suicide hot spot during one visit to Cheung Chau. Having stayed in countless rooms while traveling in Asia, yours truly generally has much tolerance for a wide variety of room conditions (when the price is right). So, even though the room was dark, old, depressing, and poorly ventilated, I checked in anyway.
Outside view of the Villa in 2013 (source: Wikipedia):
Though the sleep was not entirely good in that room on the first night, there was nothing "unusual" to say about it. No sound of foot steps, strange voices, heads flying, black or white shadows, or an unexpected face in the mirror or something like that. In hindsight, that room was actually quite "perfect" (if in a movie) to be haunted. (Ha ha!) So the next day when the guesthouse operator asked me to move to another room which was much brighter, newer, and better ventilated, I happily obliged.