The Haunting of Teabud Lodge

This was a wild involvement, the kind of encounter where you barely need the night to pass.

This happened in June 2021, at the peak of summer. My sweetheart and I arranged a trip from Chandigarh to Dharamshala, Palampur, and Bir-Billing. We have a soft spot for Himachal Tourism lodgings (HPTDC - Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation), which are government-run inns known for their unmatched hospitality and top-notch food. Most of these lodges are built in British-era buildings that were used as excursion stays by the British rulers during the pre-independence era in India. Our stays in Dharamshala and Bir-Billing were peaceful, but our stay in Palampur was especially memorable.

We booked Teabud Lodge, Palampur, for one night. It is located in a serene spot between the Palampur Tea Gardens; the lodge looks like an ideal getaway during the day, but at night, it's a different story. We checked in around 2 PM, kept our bags in, had lunch at the restaurant, and spent the day exploring nearby spots, including a church built in the 1850s. As night approached, we were in our room when we heard a lot of noise coming from the room next to ours and talking sounds from the hallway; it was as if all the furniture in the entire lodge was being moved in that room. So many people were talking continuously about moving furniture, and I decided to open our room's door to ask them to be quiet. As I opened the door, there was no one there, no sound at all, and complete darkness on both sides of the passage. I didn't think much of it, so we went to the veranda, opened a bottle of gin we had with us, and ordered a few lemonades from the lodge restaurant. After a few drinks, we decided to head to the first floor to the restaurant (we were staying in room 301, a corner room with a staircase on one side and other rooms on the other side). We had dinner at the restaurant and went into the lodge garden for a quick walk to digest the food before going to bed.

There was a long format of tables (similar to a conference format) with tables joined in a push and chairs all around the tables. Both the tables and the chairs were made of metal and painted white. As we walked closer to the table or passed by it, it sounded like a bunch of people were sitting at each of those chairs and chatting over dinner. As we continued encountering this during our walk, one of the lodge staff approached us and asked us not to go too far into the garden at this hour for security reasons. Once again, we didn't think much of it. We complied and went towards our room.

The noise from the room next to ours was getting louder and louder, like furniture moving continuously, as if they couldn't rest and were turning the bed in every possible direction. Continuous thumps on the walls and shaking vibrations (to the extent that the chandelier in our room was moving with certain thumps of the walls). Our room door would thump, and upon calling out who it was, there was no response. I called the restaurant to send us some drinking water, and the door thumped again, opened, and no one was there. It thumped at least five times between my phone call for water and until the fellow came with the water. I asked him about the thumps and sounds from the other rooms, and he said he would get it checked and cleared out quickly.

The commotions got terrible throughout the night, and we had trouble sleeping. The next morning, the same thing happened again—loud noises in the hallway, and upon opening the door to check, no one was there At any rate, while I thought all this was extremely unusual, I did not want to get myself frightened as I had to ensure the lady with me; if she thought I was frightened of something, it may only make things more difficult from that moment onwards.

Throughout this involvement, I kept my peace together and did not act frightened by any means. During our lodge checkout, my sweetheart kept asking me to inquire the lodge manager why there was so much noise all night that we could hardly rest or sleep at all.

As she kept asking, while making the payment at the lodge reception, I inquired the manager about all the noise and he replied, "Since you are a couple, we thought of giving you protection by giving you the ground floor room in the corner, so you wouldn't be disturbed (or disturb others)." 

We grinned and told him we couldn't sleep all night because of the nonstop sounds of people talking and furniture moving around all night, and in that moment, all the lodge staff looked at each other and back at us, while the manager said, "The room next to yours is empty (not allocated to anybody) and, in fact, there was no guest on the whole floor" and that's when we looked at each other (my sweetheart and I) in deep shock of what we had experienced the whole previous night.

As we left from that place, the staff continued to maintain their silence on our complaint about the stay. We checked out from there, drove to our next destination—Bir, Billing—and rested the whole day at Bir as I was so tired from no rest during the night before.

This stay is etched in our memory now. Please comment your thoughts on this experience or if you can help me understand what really happened with us that night.

Thanks