The World's Creepiest Hotels (And Why You Should Stay In Them )

Desperate for a haunted room, prison experience or the chance to live out your worst-case horror scenarios? With these properties you can check-in any time you like, but you can never, ever leave…

- Dilvin Yasa

THE CLOWN MOTEL

NEVADA, USA

Psychologists have long maintained exposure therapy to be one of the most successful ways of getting over a fear or phobia. Got a ’90s Stephen King’s It hangover (and don’t we all)? Check into The Clown Motel, located at the halfway point between Reno and Vegas, and give yourself over the joys of sleeping in a room decorated floor to ceiling with hundreds of menacing clown figurines, dolls and posters — each sinister character seemingly waiting for you to go to sleep so that they can come alive and put your head on a stick for fun. Making your stay just that little bit more enjoyable? The hotel also shares the same lot as an abandoned graveyard. Inexplicably, the hotel tends to book out so reserve your clown– themed room (priced from $US34) well in advance through the hotel’s Facebook page.

GRAND HYATT HOTEL

TAIPEI CITY, TAIWAN

It’s not often you get to one-up martial artist and actor Jackie Chan, but you can do exactly that by checking into Taipei’s luxurious Grand Hyatt — and lasting through the night. The word is that the hotel — built on top of a former wartime political prison — is so haunted by the ghosts of several narky inmates that Chan stormed out at 3 a.m, refusing to return. Management has placed many amulets and religious scrolls in the lobby designed to keep the dead ones at bay, but one look at the hotel’s TripAdvisor review page shows that their approach may not be working; many have complained of ghostly experiences — as well as the odd gripe about ceiling height and the like. Visit taipei.grand.hyatt.com

PROPELLER ISLAND CITY LODGE

BERLIN, GERMANY