It’s that time of year again- spooky season! And while not all of us here at Freemind Seattle are as big into the horror genre as our fearless leader (quite literally- she laughs at jump scares) Melissa, we have all experienced some events where we would have much rather have been watching the incidents unfold from home, under a blanket, with snacks. We acknowledge that sometimes the scariest thing in the world isn’t a haunted house, or a jump scare in a psychological thriller, it’s a Karen (or Kyle…). The true horror of all event crew and service workers alike. A person who thinks the rules of polite society don’t apply to them. The ones who live in infamy in stories whispered over late night glasses of wine back in hotel rooms. But this post isn’t about them, it’s about the situations we’ve found ourselves in that make your heart drop and your stomach slosh. If you haven’t read last year’s post Event Horror Stories, be sure to read that as well for more terrifying events we’ve lived through…
So, in the words of the Mistress of Darkness herself, Elvira, “Well, it is a potluck. And believe me, when they open that pot, they're gonna need all the luck they can get." We’re feeling lucky, so let’s dig into this year’s installments of Event Horror Stories.
The Hauntingly Helpful Hotel Ghost
They meant well…we hope
Beth was staying in a hotel near Chinatown in NYC while working an event that was taking place during the week. Now, every day, Beth would get ready in the morning, and leave the hotel room, putting the ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on the door. Beth noticed that even while she got ready in the bathroom, her hair products would be on her nightstand each evening when she returned.
At first, she assumed she was mistaken. Long days on your feet, with stressful work sometimes has us all a little confused. Perhaps she really did pick up her items every morning and place them on the nightstand on her way out the room. The room was never ‘cleaned’ in the way of housekeeping, but could it have been the hotel staff coming in and just tidying up the bathroom? After a few more days of her items being moved, Beth was not only confused, but annoyed. This was happening every, damn, day. It wasn’t quite a scavenger hunt, but it wasn’t a relaxing way to decompress after work either. [cue suspenseful music- foreshadowing!] Finally, Friday arrived.
It turned out that Beth’s room was directly over the hotel’s nightclub. Once the bass was turned on, the vibrations hit, Beth noticed that OTHER things in the room have been moved as well. Again, the room had not be serviced by hotel cleaning staff- when Beth asked, they confirmed that no one had accessed her room due to the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. After a long week, Beth was pissed, she couldn’t sleep because of the bass from the nightclub below and started pacing the room. It was while she was making laps around the small space, trying to decide what to do, that she discovered spots that were ICE COLD. The room itself was toasty, but there were spots that would be cooler, and then suddenly be downright chilly, goose bump inducing even. The realization was startling- Beth had a ghost in her room! At this point, she wondered if the ghost was trying to help her all week by moving things around to ‘annoy’ her into leaving the room before the weekend. Trying to warn her about the obnoxiousness of nightclub she was directly above. Another option was that the ghost was also pissed off because it just wanted to rest in peace but Mr. Worldwide himself was blasting through the floor…
Beth decided to check out of that hotel, not because of the ghost, but because of the nightclub. Thankfully the event had another hotel nearby with a room block that she was able to get a room at. But coincidently, her work colleague had just checked out of the hotel she just moved to because they realized that they had been staying in that hotel when 9/11 happened, and it was a little too much too soon.
Terrible Times in the Big Tent
Another time when Mother Nature was not to be trifled with…and everything goes wrong
Meg was managing the in-person registration for an event with around 1,500 attendees. The event was taking place in a large event tent, which had all the power, heat, supplies and crew with expertise you could need for this sort of thing, but even that wasn’t enough to keep things from going wrong.
The plan was this: Registration for the event was supposed to be outside the tent and then attendees would file in, get drinks and snacks and then be seated for the show. Unfortunately, the weather turned, the temps dropped to 55 degrees, and the wind picked up (with intense gusts), and rain was on the horizon. The call was made 20 min before registration opened, to move everything inside and reset the entire system. That meant packing up and moving ALL of the 1,500 name badges and tickets and relocating to a much smaller space, one of the two food service areas inside the tent. It didn’t matter how fast the team was moving, volunteers were scrambling, and about 20% of the tickets were misplaced or lost during the reset, picked up by the wind a tossed about the venue parking lot.
The attendees who arrived early weren’t prepared to be waiting outside in the cold. And because needing to reset the registration area, volunteers trying to snatch tickets out the wind’s grip, it took more than the 20 minutes before it was scheduled to open, the attendees got antsy. Against security and volunteer’s instructions, they essentially forced their way into the event tent. Making an already small space insanely crowded, with volumes increasing and emotions running high. If you have ever been in a large crowd of confused, uncomfortable people, you’ll know the drama that was ensuing.
Now- you’ll recall that the registration table was moved inside, where it wasn’t planned on being, and therefore took over one of the food and bar areas that was originally going to be open for the 1,500 attendees to go and get food and drink. So now, instead of there being an open area for attendees to mingle after checking in and getting a name badge and ticket, with two options of where to grab food and drink, there was just a mass of bodies pushing and yelling- tensions running high. The crew working the one and only food area was overrun and couldn’t even restock to fulfill the never-ending demands.
Before the main entertainment show, there was an award ceremony that was put on by sponsors and other corporate teams. During the ceremony, all the AV tech, including the 20 huge LED TV Screens around the tent, died halfway through the show. No audio, no visual, nothing. Black screens, eerie silence. The sponsors were beyond upset- there was VP was screaming and cussing out the AV production team as they are frantically trying to trouble shoot.
Meg looked around as everything was going up in flames [metaphorically, of course], crew members were being screamed at to “do their job”, while in fact, trying to do exactly that- their job. And told all the volunteers that were helping with registration to go home, to escape, to save themselves! Because registration was mess and there was no way it was going to get fixed. She grabbed a glass of wine and sat under the registration table to watch the world burn [again. metaphorically].
And in the words of our own copywriter Eric- ‘From time to time, everyone needs to be under a table with a glass of wine.’
