The Ghosts of the Hotel

For years, the same terrible things happened every night in a hotel room in Tongeren. Guests could not stay in this room longer than one night. "It is haunted there," they said. No one dared to stay longer than necessary. The owner was desperate, for no one wanted to sleep in that room anymore.

Then came a brave man who said he would sleep in the haunted room. Carefully, he hung a curtain above his bed with a small slit to look through. "I will see what happens here," he said resolutely. That night he waited in the darkness.

At midnight it began. The man saw dozens of ghosts appear, dancing and making music with instruments that made no sound in the normal world. The room changed completely: the walls vanished, the floor became earth, and where the bed had stood, a dense forest now grew with a gigantic, thick oak tree in the middle. The ghosts danced in circles around the tree.

Suddenly, the ghosts began to dig between the roots of the oak tree. They unearthed a heavy treasure chest filled with golden coins. The man memorized the location of the oak tree precisely. Then he jumped from bed and marked the spot where the oak had stood. The next morning, the floor was broken up at the location he had marked. Indeed, there lay the treasure chest, still full of gold. The honest hotel owner, relieved to be rid of the ghosts, fairly shared the found money with the brave man. From then on, the room was no longer haunted.