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5 tips to avoid ghosts in your hotel, from knocking before entering to covering mirrors

  • Travelling can be tricky enough without having to worry about a ghostly encounter or three in your hotel room. Here are five tips to avoid them

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We offer a few ways to avoid disturbing the spirits when you are travelling, even if your hotel is haunted like the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles is said to be. Photo: Reuters
Ashlyn Chak

Learn the ins and outs of feng shui, villain hitting, and fortunetelling as well as the dos and don’ts for cultivating good luck in our series on Chinese superstitions.

Everyone has their favourite haunted hotel story. One that has done the rounds in recent years concerns the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, California, where Elisa Lam Ho-yi, a 21-year-old Canadian tourist and the daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, died in 2013.
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The hotel, built in 1924, inspired a Netflix documentary as well as the fifth season of American Horror Story, an anthology American television series themed around the paranormal.

It is not the only hotel known for its chequered history. The four-star Bangkok Palace Hotel in the Thai capital is also said to be haunted, and if you Google “Grand Hyatt Taipei” and the first suggested search offered is “Grand Hyatt Taipei haunted”.

A still from security camera footage showing Elisa Lam Ho-yi entering a lift in the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, where she died in unexplained circumstances in 2013. Photo: YouTube
A still from security camera footage showing Elisa Lam Ho-yi entering a lift in the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, where she died in unexplained circumstances in 2013. Photo: YouTube

Opened in 1990, the five-star hotel in Taiwan has welcomed celebrity guests such as US rock band Guns N’ Roses, Australian actor Hugh Jackman, South Korean idol Lee Min-ho, and “Japanese Madonna” Namie Amuro.

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