The Vanishing Hotel - Room 244
In 1979, two British couples stopped at a charming old hotel in France. They photographed it, slept there, and paid an absurdly low price. When they returned two weeks later, the hotel had vanished. Their photographs showed no hotel. The exact location was never found.
The story of the Vanishing Hotel has circulated for decades as one of the strangest time slip cases ever reported. Two couples claim to have stayed at a hotel in France that, when they returned to find it, had apparently never existed. Even their photographs failed to show the building. The case remains one of the most intriguing - and difficult to verify - accounts of temporal anomaly.
The Journey
In October 1979, Geoff and Pauline Simpson of Ramsgate, England were driving through France with their friends Len and Cynthia Gisby. They were traveling to Spain for a holiday. Somewhere in the region between Montelimar and Avignon, late in the evening, they decided to stop for the night.
They found a small motel-style building and inquired about rooms. They were directed down the road to an old but picturesque hotel with shuttered windows, heavy wood beams, and an unmistakably antique atmosphere.
The interior was equally antiquated. There was no glass in the windows, only shutters. The beds had bolsters rather than pillows. The bathroom plumbing was primitive. The room had no telephone. The staff wore old-fashioned clothing that the couples found charming.
At dinner, they noticed other guests dressed in period clothing - long dresses for women, old-style suits for men. Two gendarmes in caped uniforms entered. The couples assumed it was some sort of historical establishment or that a costume party was occurring.
The Stay
The couples found the hotel delightful despite its archaic nature. They took photographs of the exterior and of the gendarmes who posed cooperatively. They slept comfortably in Room 244.
The next morning, they paid their bill. The total for dinner and two rooms came to 19 francs - approximately £2, an impossibly low price even for 1979. The manager seemed confused by their modern banknotes but accepted them.
They continued to Spain and had a pleasant holiday.
The Return
Two weeks later, driving back to England, the couples decided to stay at the charming hotel again. They returned to the same road, watching for it.
The hotel was not there.
They drove up and down the road multiple times. They asked at local establishments. No one knew of any such hotel. Buildings that should have been near it were in different positions. The road itself seemed to have changed.
Growing increasingly disturbed, they returned to England. When they developed their holiday photographs, the shock deepened: the frames that should have shown the hotel were entirely blank. Other photos from the trip developed normally, but the hotel and the gendarmes had simply failed to appear.
Investigation
The case was investigated by paranormal researcher Jenny Randles, who published it in her books on time slips. She interviewed the couples extensively and found them consistent and credible. They were not paranormal enthusiasts; they were ordinary people baffled by their experience.
Attempts to locate the hotel were unsuccessful. The region they described was searched, but no building matching their description was found. Local historians found no record of such an establishment.
Some researchers noted that the details the couples described - the shuttered windows, bolster pillows, caped gendarmes, primitive plumbing - were consistent with French hotels of the late 19th or early 20th century, not 1979.
Theories
Time Slip: The couples may have temporarily slipped into a past era, staying at a hotel that existed decades or centuries earlier. The anachronistic details and impossibly low price support this interpretation.
Parallel Dimension: An alternate version of reality briefly intersected with ours, allowing the couples to enter a building that existed in a different timeline.
Collective Delusion: All four people shared a detailed false memory, perhaps triggered by fatigue or suggestion.
Hoax: The story was fabricated, though no motive for fabrication has been established, and the couples maintained their account for decades.
The Photographs
The blank photographs are perhaps the most intriguing element. If the hotel had never existed, why would the film not capture the actual scene - the road, the trees, whatever was really there? The blank frames suggest not that nothing was there, but that something was there that cameras could not record.
The Vanishing Hotel remains one of the most detailed and consistently reported time slip cases. Whether the couples briefly visited the past, another dimension, or experienced something we have no name for, they returned with a story that has haunted researchers ever since.
Sources
- “Time Storms” by Jenny Randles (discusses this case)