Amazed to hear of a haunted hotel up in the mountains in Cyprus. For every person asked, a different story was told as to why the hotel is haunted, by whom or what. Almost nothing really adds up. It's the old cliche of the old man who gave the hotel to his sons, the inheritors did not take care of it and the old man cursed it. Another story tells of the owners being a rich couple. The woman got ill and died and the husband in despair killed himself by jumping from one of the windows of the second floor. Then there's the myth of how the husband buried his wife in a room whose door was never opened (then again if the husband killed himself then the latter story doesn't make sense). There's the hollywood horror story of an announcement being made, making the residents of the hotel running out without picking any of their stuff, some even jumping out the windows. The story with the father and his son, I read and heard in a variety of versions (sometimes the sons are two, others three). The enchantment is multiplied by the name of the owner, Kokkalos, which translates to "bone". My mother says she remembers visiting the hotel as a child with her family. It was a very aristocratic hotel, ladies having tea in the garden, socialising, my mother and her sister throwing peanuts from the top windows and making fun of them. The photographs I found of the building at the time of its flourish are pretty stunning. It was regarded as "the hotel of kings". Many rumours are going about regarding its renovation by a famous developer here in Cyprus, and the myths perhaps, are a good way of advertising it. The band Death Habit and myself visited the hotel as I thought it sounded like a good place to film their forthcoming music video. We went to take some photos of the place, film the rooms and the courtyard so as to start making some storyboards. No eery feel to the hotel, nowhere near the stories I've heard. What the hotel is definitely haunted by is football and fascist graffiti slogans, love vows and the classic "giannis was here". Some people were there filming the place and the cameraman asked us: "have you seen anything yet"? No, we hadn't and we didn't expect to. No ghosts, no voices, no murmurs, nothing. Silence. And immense history. A once proud structure now hardly stood, partly naked and raped. It's victorian architecture is still evident. And there are small traces left, reminders of its former elegance. There's bricks and wood planks scattered everywhere, holes from gunshots on the boarded windows. There is a spades pattern on the only tile left and the dancing halls' stage's boards screech. Traces of people who camped there over night are evident. Leftovers of bonfires, coke bottles, and other party necessities. And no ghosts.
