Halloween trip becomes holiday from hell as woman tormented by rat infestation

12 November 2023 , 14:04

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Bill and Elaine Jones say their stay at the Schooner on Halloween was a 'nightmare' (Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

A woman who went on a Halloween getaway ended up in a nightmare after her hotel was pulled up by the local authority over a rat infestation.

Elaine Jones, a 62-year-old retired civil servant from Walker, Newcastle, had been planning for a stay at The Schooner in Alnmouth over the Halloween weekend with her husband Bill. But rats turned out to be only part of the problem, as when she arrived she found the establishment's rooms were dirty, besides dangerous trailing wires and patches of mould scattered around the building.

A woman has said she had a Halloween nightmare trip to The Schooner in Alnmouth (Google Street View)

According to Chronicle Live, Elaine and her husband have been regular visitors to the village for more than five decades and have stayed in the Schooner on two previous occasions, so she was looking forward to her three-night Northumberland Coast getaway.

However, on arriving on Sunday, October 29, she claims that the rooms were dirty and she also had safety concerns about the famously haunted hotel. She added that the hotel's website (which is now defunct) showed older pictures of the bedrooms, which do not reflect the current décor – and that she would have booked somewhere else had she seen the hotel in its actual state.

The ex-civil servant said she had to sleep under a towel beneath her duvet as her room was so cold, and that water was leaking from the roof in the hotel bar when she and Bill went for a drink. They considered leaving before the first night of their trip, but having both had "a couple of drinks," they were unable to drive back home.

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Bill and Elaine Jones stayed at the Schooner on Halloween and left one night into their three night stay (Newcastle Chronicle)

And on the second day of their stay disaster struck, as Environmental Health officers arrived and told her the owner was serving a suspended two-year-sentence for fire health and safety breaches – and the hotel's bar and kitchen was being closed "with immediate effect". The also issued an emergency prohibition notice due to a rat infestation.

This forced Elaine's hand and feeling unsafe, she and Bill decided to leave. She said: "I was thinking 'just get me out of here' because we weren't safe and we felt very, very vulnerable."

She admits that she did not read the reviews posted on http://Booking.com (4.5/10 on average) or TripAdvisor (2.5/5 on average) for The Schooner until she had returned home, and booked her stay through the hotel's website.

After booking directly and paying £267 for the stay on her card, she then asked for a refund, and was told over the phone that she would be issued with a cheque in the post covering the full cost of her stay, as well as being offered a further complimentary night – however, Elaine is yet to receive the cheque and claims emails she has sent to the hotel have bounced back.

She added: "I just feel so disappointed because the place used to be so beautiful. The Schooner was very traditional and olde worlde and Alnmouth has got such a history and they have knocked the place to bits. It must be so aggravating for the staunch people of Alnmouth because the Schooner was such a focal point. It was an old coaching inn from the 1600s and now it's fallen down the pan, and they must be so embarrassed. Because I was."

And she thinks the situation will lead to the hotel losing one of its main selling points. There are said to be more than 60 individual spirits inhabiting the three-star 17th century building, and it has been voted as the UK's most haunted hotel twice by the Poltergeist Society.

However, Elaine believes that the ghosts have fled, saying: "I'm annoyed that my ghosts are gone. They have fled because ghosts don't like disruption, and that's what I went up to have the feeling for, they're comforting for me."

Northumberland County Council confirmed that it was "working with the owners" of the Schooner in the hope of addressing the current situation and allowing it to reopen for food service in the future.

Paul Donald