Unholy Vibes

Haunted Lodge: Rebecca, The Hat Man, & Hidden Passages

• Alex • Season 2 • Episode 8

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In this chilling episode of Unholy Vibes, Alex sits down with the captivating Erykah McManus, Miss New Mexico, to explore her spine-tingling encounters with the paranormal. From eerie childhood experiences to working at the infamous Lodge Hotel in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, Erykah shares her unforgettable stories.

Discover the haunting legend of Rebecca, a ghost tied to a tragic past, and hear about the shadowy Hat Man often seen with ghostly children. Dive into the hidden secrets of the Lodge, including mysterious tunnels, a sealed pouch marked "For Rebecca, Do Not Open," and unexplained phenomena during renovations.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this episode is packed with suspenseful tales that will leave you questioning what’s real.

What You'll Hear in This Episode:

  • Erykah’s childhood ghost encounters and family hauntings.
  • Paranormal experiences at the Lodge Hotel, including haunted rooms and chilling discoveries.
  • The shadowy figure known as the Hat Man and his eerie companions.
  • The spine-tingling mysteries of hidden walls, ominous chandeliers, and spectral echoes.

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If you or a loved on has a true horror story that needs to be told on the show, reach out via TikTok or Instagram @unholyvibespod or email unholyvibespod@gmail.com

Coming up.

Erykah:

They had just found a hidden wall doing renovations in the bar. And I was like, why are we unearthing things? Within that same week, we found a pouch in the ceiling that said, For Rebecca, do not open. And of course, my co workers open it, and dump everything out. There's crystals in there, there's dirt in there, and I'm like, what are you guys touching? Put it back! So and we put it back exactly where we had it. We're like, We're not touching this, we're not doing this. We're like, okay, now we know where to ghost hunt.

Alex:

Welcome to unholy vibes. I'm Alex, your host. And today we're joined by another special guest, my new friend, Erykah, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us who you are. Tell us all about you. And yeah.

Erykah:

Beautiful. My name is Erykah McManus, I live in New Mexico, I'm the current Miss New Mexico, and I'm a tattoo enthusiast, and you're probably never gonna see another goth pageant girl ever, so here I am. I'm also a streamer and a mom, among other things, and that's pretty much the gist,

Alex:

Goth pageant girls. We love it. Fantastic. No, the perfect niche, honestly. Erykah and I, I guess we met, but like E met on TikTok. I was doing what I do. I go through different people's lives just scrolling around and my tick tock algorithm just puts me into a, in front of a lot of goth girls. I don't know what that's all about. Anyway so I came across your live and I don't even remember what you were doing. I do it for networking. I go in and I say, have you ever seen a ghost? It's my go to line. And you said yes, if I remember. And so I was like, cool, let's get you on the show. I do, I love it. I love just asking strangers about their ghost stories and their non ghost stories. But the ghost is like the way to go. That's how you get, how you get started. Because I'll take any scary story, ghost or not,

Erykah:

those are the best ones. Ghost stories are the best ones.

Alex:

true. I have a plethora of them just here now from doing this for a while. And even in my daily life before I started this show, I just, anytime I met someone like tell me your ghost stories because it just fascinates me. So give me a little bit of background here

Erykah:

yeah, a lot of my ghost stories happened throughout my childhood, through my teenage years up until I turned about 20.

Alex:

Okay.

Erykah:

And that's where it, I stopped going out and doing a whole lot and then became a mom, so my ghost stories have kind of fizzled out. But a lot of the intense ones happened when I was a teenager, whenever I worked at the lodge here in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Very intense stuff.

Alex:

That's what piqued my interest. When you messaged me, you were like, I worked at this place and I have all this stuff. And I'm like let's hear about it. I need that. So give us some background, dive into it, tell your stories. And I will do my best to save my questions for the end, but no promises.

Erykah:

Okay, I got you. So my childhood, this will be background, background for what I'm about to explain later on in the story. When I was a child, me and my entire family, so my mom, my dad, my sibling, And I, we all saw ghosts, or we were more inclined to see ghosts, hear ghosts, feel them, all sorts of different things. And that could be because of my forebears, like my ancestors, and whatnot, but When we were children, my sibling would see this big man sitting at the foot of their bed. And I tried my hardest to stay up at night because I don't want to see mystery hat man sitting on your bed. And there was one night where I did see it and it scared the living bejesus out of me. I didn't know what to do. And then whenever we woke up the next morning, my sibling was completely turned on the other end of the bed. So where their headboard is, their feet were, so they were completely turned around. And after that point I started, anytime I went to the bathroom, I'd start talking to the ghosts that were in the bathroom. It was like, Hey, I'm coming in here. Is that okay? Like, I tried to befriend them, so I never had anything bad happen. I don't know, I befriend to the ghosts that never had anything bad ever happen. Whenever there, at least

Alex:

I'm a shy peer. Don't look at me. Ghost. Oh,

Erykah:

now, not while I be in the bathroom.

Alex:

that's funny.

Erykah:

any time I went to go brush my teeth, any time I went to go change in the bathroom, any time I went to go take a bath, it was always, I'm coming in here, because that, that instance scared me it's, it terrified, like as a child, you're like, what is that, moved my sibling, like, it, it was, it was horrifying and then there was, It was another night where one of my great grandfathers on my dad's side of the family was in the hospital and passed away. And my sibling woke up in the middle of the night and was like, freaking out. And so my parents go to her and everything like that and they're like, what's the matter? And they didn't know that he had just passed away. But she shot up and she was like, He's sick! He's sick! And then later on in that morning, they found out that he'd passed away.

Alex:

Wow.

Erykah:

So, that was pretty much our childhood. When we get to like our 10 to 11 age range, we moved, which was awesome. I was like, I'm so excited! Nowhere

Alex:

problem now.

Erykah:

we go! I know, I was like, oh my gosh, not me anymore. I'm so excited. We moved found out that a kid got hit. So a kid lived at this house, and right across the street, he had gotten hit and killed. I didn't know that, and I was I had the privilege and the pleasure of getting his bedroom, so it was, it was great. I was like, great, this would have been, like perfect information beforehand, but, you know, my parents wanted a house, so whatever, what can I do at 10 years old? Um,

Alex:

that's kind of messed up.

Erykah:

I was like, okay, this is great, solid,

Alex:

no asterisks to my, no asterisks when it comes to my rooming. Okay, cool. Thanks. Don't tell me anything.

Erykah:

I got the big room, so who's really gonna complain? Not me. I got my own bed. I didn't have to share a bed anymore. I was like,

Alex:

Wins. Wins all around. Hell

Erykah:

thing that happened in that house that I remember was when we were moving in. I was in my bedroom doing what I needed to do. Getting things set up and the door slammed on me. And I was like, Whoa, went to my dad. It was like this door slammed on me. Just so you know, first day in here, this door slammed on me. And he was like, it's the wind. I was like, the windows are shut. It is not the wind. So we kind of brushed it off, we moved past it, no big deal, whatever. After that everything sort of died down a little bit. I just did my thing. I did sports, got out of the house as much as possible. And there was a moment in time where everything was very tense in our house. Like family arguments were going on and everybody in the house seemed like they hated each other. I was in the background. I was like, not me. I'm good. But I was hanging out with my sibling, having some sibling time and I just freshly cleaned my room. And for me, that was an accomplishment because I never cleaned my room. So I fresh cleaned my room and I hear this loud whooshing noise in my bedroom. Like it sounded like. A tornado had gone through the house, almost, and I went back to my bedroom and everything in my room, papers, were all strung across the room, everything that I put away was all messed up, and then I had this lovely, I'm not usually typically one to get into like religious aspects of things, but I, I walked in there in the bedroom, and my porcelain dolls were knocked down, I love porcelain dolls, they were all knocked down, and one of them was missing a foot. And then I had this beautiful, handmade, artistic piece that was a cross. Cause I was heavily Christian back then, and it was completely flipped upside down. Now, typically, I'm not the one to believe in symbolism like that, but I, personally, Could not handle that. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Got my room clean, told my parents about it. They were like, That's not, I don't think that happened. I think you'll be fine. And then I was like, okay, whatever you guys say, like, I'll trust you. I trust my parents. I love my parents. So I was like, I trust you guys. And they're also like spiritually inclined to see different things. So I was like, I trust you guys. And then I was messing around with my DS, as teens do. Um, if you remember, if you remember, I had the, I got the fresh new 3DS in pink and I was like, I'm gonna take some pictures. And I used this effect that was I don't even, I don't even remember what it's called, but basically it kind of shifts the colors and it turns everything like white and blue and black. I don't remember what it's called, but I'd use that filter and right next to me was a face. Like, a giant face next to me proportioned correctly and everything, and I was like, huh, grand.

Alex:

Hmm, I don't like that.

Erykah:

my mom, and she was like, okay, never mind, you guys might actually be

Alex:

Delete, delete, delete.

Erykah:

Yeah, I kept that. I still have it. I'll have to find it one day, but I still have it

Alex:

dude, take a picture and send it to me.

Erykah:

I will, I will. You'll be the first person who gets it, I promise. I'll have to get through all the cringe photos I took as a kid, but that photo is definitely worth it. It's definitely worth it. And then really everything again, everything died, like fizzled out, died down, tension in the house, died down. So everything kind of died down. And then my grandfather passed away and my mom was my, my sibling was seeing my grandpa in the house. And then my mom saw him in a dream where he was telling her to get out. So we moved. We moved like three hours away to a whole different town. No questions asked. We just started a new life here. We were like, okay, this is our sign. So we moved here. We all needed jobs. I was 16 whenever we had moved over here to Cloudcroft. And everybody kind of knows the story of the Lodge Hotel. One of the oldest hotels in New Mexico and notoriously haunted hotel in New Mexico. So my dad got his job first there. He was like, yeah, that sounds great. He gets a job there. And then my mom gets a job there, and then I get a job there, and then my sibling gets a job there eventually. So all of us, again, together, in the Haunted Hotel, just running the entire place. It's a family unit.

Alex:

affair here, jeez.

Erykah:

So the Lodge Hotel has a famous ghost story. Not one that I particularly believe in, but it's one that everybody really does. Associates with the Lodge, and it's Rebecca the Ghost, the beautiful, red headed ghost that wanders the halls. Apparently she was a chambermaid, so she'd clean and also service the guys. And her lumberjack boyfriend got jealous and either killed her and her love lover and dismantled all of their parts, and dismembered,

Alex:

dismembered, okay, yeah.

Erykah:

dismembered, I was thinking of it like a Barbie, I was thinking of dismantle, uh,

Alex:

Just a piece of furniture, no big deal.

Erykah:

yeah just dismantled them, they were dismembered. dismembered and placed and scattered around the like the woods and there's a story that they still kind of run the halls there. Another interesting fact is that there was a child A place for children who had tuberculosis and everybody thought back in the day, at least in New Mexico, the higher in altitude you went, the cleaner the air was and it would clear out your tuberculosis with the clean and crisp air. On the contrary, it killed everybody. Like anybody who came up here they ended up passing away from tuberculosis and there

Alex:

that's wild. That's such sound science. I don't know what the deal

Erykah:

I

Alex:

Why didn't that work?

Erykah:

how, I don't, I can barely breathe, I could barely breathe when I moved up here. What made you think it would make you breathe better? I don't understand the logic, but, New Mexico, who knows? so they had a, a child ward near, or a house for children with tuberculosis near the the lodge. And a lot of children did pass away over in that sanatorium, sanitarium, I don't know what they call it. They have signs all along the lodge that tell you all of the history, which is fascinating for me. I read it every time I cleaned all the rooms. I would stop by, I'd read a new plaque, and then keep reading every day. So, I got a lot of different bits and pieces of information of the hotel that I could. The original lodge was built In the late 1800s and burnt down in 1901, if I'm correct. And then they had rebuilt it. So, the new lodge that we have isn't the original, but it's still from the 1911s. being a house

Alex:

It's

Erykah:

Yeah, it was still it was still old the rooms were still original when I had started there before we had done the remodels, but being a housekeeper there was the scariest job I I had ever had in my life and I have dealt with People in pharmacies older people in pharmacies. So To to go and say that this was the scariest experience like it was it was horrific So My second day there, I was getting the rundown on how to do everything, and they had shown me the tunnels where we would go grab our linens, which were underneath the hotel. So we'd have to crawl through this little rabbit hole just to get into where the clock in was, and then we would go underneath the hotel and grab our sheets. We also have a piece of our bar. So I also have some older history with that as well. so we have one bar downstairs where the workers are, that's called the Red Dog. It also has a tunnel that connects to under every room in that hotel, and that door would randomly open, it would randomly shut on people, the lights would randomly turn on and off on people. So my dad did most of his work underneath those tunnels all the time. So he would tell us, Everything that happened there before I had started working there. So I was already like, yay, I'm so excited. I put in my application to work at this hotel. I'm very glad I did. But as a 16 year old, I was like this sounds just fantastic. my

Alex:

a great

Erykah:

day there yeah, already. Already to a great start hearing all these stories. my second day starting, it was the rush New Year's. I had started on New Year's Day, and it was, it was busy. So, they threw me on third floor. Third floor is where we see a lot of our children ghosts, or our children spirits up there. So, you'll hear like a lot of running around. You'll find toys up in the attic, if you go up in the attic. So my, my, my second day there, it was You're working straight on the third floor by yourself. And I was like, oh! Awesome! I love this! I was vacuuming room 328. And, is it 328 or 358? It's been a while since I've been there, but I'm pretty sure it's 358. I was vacuuming That, that entire room and then the hall, I had made my way into the bedroom and disconnected the cord, plugged it in the bathroom and the main door to the hotel room, mind you, solid wood, very heavy, it slammed on me and I was like, I gotta start talking to spirits again. I gotta start talking just to get through today. And then I moved to 360. 360 is notorious for being our, one of our most haunted rooms in the hotel. I didn't know that. So I, I go in there like, yeah, I can't wait to finish this and get home. Cause it was five o'clock at that point, and I'm cleaning, and I have one of my spray bottles fall off of my counter. And of course, I'm like, I definitely knocked that off. There's nothing else going on. I knocked that off. And then a toilet paper roll knocks off the toilet seat, and I'm like, okay. Y'all can stop messing with me now. And I exit the room to go grab some supplies, and I walk back up to the door, and I heard walking in the room. I was like, this cannot be happening right now. I thought somebody had checked in before check in before they were supposed to. It was like, I was paging front desk. I was like, There's somebody in here, and they were like, nobody's checked in here, and I was like, okay, solid. So I open the door, and I go in, and there's nobody in there. All, everything that I heard stopped as soon as I opened the door. There was nothing in the room. I was like, oh, this is, this is horrible. This is horrific. I finish my shift, and then I go home, and I tell my dad, and he was like, oh, you went in 360? You had to clean that room? I'm so sorry. But I was like,

Alex:

for the heads up.

Erykah:

I was like, you're so great. Thank you for the warning. I appreciate and I love that so much. After that there's a chandelier that I dealt with on third floor that if you talked up to it, it would answer you. Yes would be one flash, two flashes was no. It was really weird and you could only catch it if it was you and another person that worked there. It couldn't be anybody visiting. It couldn't be anything else like that. It had to be another employee. So, I would always be talking up to it. Are you here? What are you doing? How old are you? Are you young? Are you old? It was kind of like my little Ouija board, but a chandelier. Like a tiny chandelier. I was like, okay, this is, this is cool, actually. This is cool. Right below third floor, there's a connecting staircase that goes to meds. We don't have elevators in this hotel. So anything we had to do, we had to carry ourselves up, upstairs. Horrible. It felt like child labor, but I was 16 and I could work. So, okay. But there's a staircase that connects all the way down to the Mez, which is our second floor. We called it the Mezzanine. It had a conference room or a luncheon room. And there was one particular hallway that is dark. And I don't know if you know any lore about, like, silver backed mirrors or anything like that. a lot of what I've read is that silver backed mirrors can be entry points for how spirits go through. different rooms, different areas. So we always had, we had also silverback mirrors in all of our floors. And there was one in particular in this skinny narrow hallway where the light, there was never a light there. Anytime I looked up in there, it was like a sense of dread. I didn't want to go in there. I didn't want to work on those rooms in that hallway. It was very, ominous and that's where me and my coworker saw what we considered our hat man or our version of a hat man, just this tall black figure that stood there and watched us. And he always had children with him. So there children all with him.

Alex:

No. Hey, hey, really quick. Just really quick. No. You know what I mean? No thank you.

Erykah:

I would always avoid that floor. And then third floor also connected to the tower. We have a tower in our hotel where coincidentally enough, there's a box of this elderly woman's ashes up there. She loved the lodge so much that she put her ashes up in the tower, but that buddy would see our famous spirit, Rebecca, and they would always Spirit in there and that's where they'd always do like paranormal investigators would always do their spirit box sessions And that's one of our our main attractions to the hotel. So

Alex:

Question.

Erykah:

Yes

Alex:

Was it really a main attraction? Like, hey, come to the hotel and go in the haunted tower. Like it just was, and people were like, we're here for that thing. Does that make sense

Erykah:

Yeah, yeah it in fact whenever they had their old owners The original, like, not the original owners, but an older set of owners before our current ones. They, yeah, early 2000s, they really made that place known for the spirits. It was, they even had a binder and they put papers on every little stand or in the hallways, where if somebody had an experience, they could write it down and then it would go in this binder. So we had this. Finder full of just ghost experiences, paranormal investigators photos, Ouija board sessions that people have conducted in the hotel,

Alex:

That's

Erykah:

Pictures of furniture moved all the way to one side of the hallway that my boss, my, one of my original bosses had taken whenever she came into work. Um,

Alex:

So they sensationalized it to get more visitors essentially,

Erykah:

yeah. And that's where my main thing with the hotel is. I was like, I don't believe in the ghost stories here. Like it's an attra it's an old hotel. It's very, you could tell it was an old hotel. And I was like, they just wanted to get some more people to come in there until I started working there. And then it was, Oh, nevermind. We got, they don't really like to focus that on the hotel. Yes, the restaurant in the hotel is called Rebecca's, but not a lot of people really know the story or have heard the legend. It's just the restaurant now. And they've kind of stopped talking about a lot of the ghost stories that have happened there. So I like to keep it going every time. Anytime I talk to anybody about the Lodge, I tell them my ghost stories. Especially when I work there, Have you, have you seen Rebecca? Any, any guest would come up, Have you seen Rebecca? And I'd be like, Of course I've seen Rebecca!

Alex:

So do you, when did you stop working there? Do you still work there? What's, what was the timeline like you were 16 when you started?

Erykah:

I was 16 when I started and I stopped when I was 20.

Alex:

Okay.

Erykah:

Or right before I turned 20.

Alex:

okay. So you were there for a few years.

Erykah:

Yeah, I was there. I took a little break for college, but I came back. I always came back to the lodge

Alex:

so for you, it became kind of normalized how all the spooky shit happening. Yeah,

Erykah:

something weird happened you blamed it on Rebecca and you moved on

Alex:

so I had a, I had a guest on previously that was telling me about a haunted like hotel ship. It's called the Queen Mary. It's in California and it just sits on the water. You can go stay at this haunted ship hotel. And that's kind of funny because I asked her, I'm like, what do you think it's like being an employee there at this haunted hotel? And now we know you just do the job and it kind of, you just grow numb to it.

Erykah:

where I live there's like there's not really a lot of opportunities for jobs You either work in a hotel or you work in a restaurant and I was good off working in a restaurant So I was like hotel that's what I have to do now.

Alex:

Haunted or not, I'm taking that job. Yeah.

Erykah:

Yeah.

Alex:

So of all the experiences in your four years, what do you think was like scariest to you that like shook you? Was it the cleaning of the specific room and hearing footsteps, seeing a specific thing? Like what do you think is like your top walked away kind of

Erykah:

like you had said, a lot of things became very normalized, so nothing really shook me until we closed down for COVID. So I worked there whenever we had completely our state made all the businesses shut down and everything like that. I had worked there and it was just the employees that worked there. We weren't allowing guests. We were doing complete renovations of the hotel. Which. Was great. I got to sift through a lot of the binder that is hidden in the manager's office. We got to go in, we got to look at it, we got to read it. So that was really cool and interesting. And after that, it was kind of like the ghost stories started circulating back in your head because you had forgotten them for so long. Like you're, it was just another shift. It was another day. You just worked. But when you start reading a lot of everybody's experiences, you're like, you start to psych yourself out a little bit. You get that little adrenaline rush and you're just like, Oh my gosh. So me and my coworker, we're really into the paranormal stuff. We listened to a lot of paranormal podcasts whenever we were doing a lot of the. Work with trim for the renovations. So we were like, let's go on a ghost hunt because that's so much fun when the entire hotel is shut down, it's just us. So we're like, okay, we're going to go on a ghost hunt. And so, she pulled out all of her tricks and tips. Cause she was Quite a bit older than me. And they had just found a hidden wall doing renovations in the bar. That was a staircase that connects to Mez that connects to the third floor. And I was like, why are we unearthing things? Why are we doing that right now? Like that's

Alex:

open walls that go into stairs. You just don't do it.

Erykah:

why are we doing that? And,

Alex:

sealed it up for a reason. I'm sure.

Erykah:

within that same week, we found a pouch in the ceiling that had been covered. Um, and it was a purple pouch, and it said, For Rebecca, do not open. And of course, my co workers open it, and just dump everything out. There's crystals in there, there's dirt in there, and I'm like, what are you guys touching? Put it back! So we put it back, like, we put everything in there, and we put it back exactly where we had it. We're like, We're not touching this, we're not doing this. So, we find the binder, we start going through these ghost stories, we're like, okay, now we know where to ghost hunt. Because now we have the time to do it, nobody's in here, we're not gonna bother any guests let's go down and let's go ghost hunt. So, me and my coworker, we're walking up to Miz, and I'm pulling out my phone, and I'm just taking pictures, and There's that tall man with two little things next to him, which I can only assume are what we think the children from upstairs. So we're like, Oh, this is great. So we're going upstairs. I pull out my phone. I'm still taking pictures. I'm using different types of filters to kind of sift through everything. And then I see him upstairs again. So as we're walking upstairs, he's already made it upstairs. So he's there. Waiting for us, and I'm just like, I get goosebumps, and I'm like, I don't want to be up here right now. But my coworker's like, no, we've already made it to the third floor, we're gonna make it to the tower, and then we're gonna hit that hallway again. So I'm like, okay, I can't deviate from our plan. So we start talking into the chandelier, because that's, that's just what we do. And we're like, are you here? And then it flashed, and we're like, no way. And then we're like, are you okay? And then two flash and we're like, no, he's not okay. So we start just walking the hallway. We're like, okay, we're going to skip the chandelier part. That's fine. And then a little smaller figure appears at the end of the hallway, which again, we think it's the, are the children. I hope our children. and then we decide, okay, we're going to go up to the attic that connects to the closet on third floor. And So we go up, we make our way to the attic, which is an actual ladder. We had to pull up an actual ladder and climb up it. And then we get up there and we noticed that there's burn marks. My dad had already explained that he thinks that this part of the hotel had burned, but they had just covered it up. So we get up there and we're shining our flashlights and there's very obvious burn marks all over. The third floor attic. And my dad's like, what if it had burned and somebody got hurt and nobody knew about it? And they covered it up. So we're over here thinking that this could be a possibility now, that it could have been a family, or it could have been the kids that passed away from the tuberculosis. We had no idea at this point. So we're continuing to walk through here and we find candy. Mind you, the hotel shut down. There's no guests, there's no other housekeepers are working there, it's just us and maintenance. So we find candy upstairs. So I add it to the little collection in the housekeeping department in our little cubby area, where we find toys and we find candy. We don't know where they come from, but we find little, little train pieces. Either in front of the housekeeping door, in attics, like we just find little chewing pieces everywhere. So we just started collecting all of those, the candy, so I, I, I grab it cause I know we're gonna go collect it. And we go to leave, and as we're walking out, that door to the closet slams on us. And we're like, Nope! Even right now, I'm like getting goosebumps. I'm just reliving it. But I will admit, we did that. We did that to ourselves. So, we go down to that staircase that connects to the mezzanine, to the bottom section, and we're going through that creepy hallway where I always see that hat man, where I always feel a sense of dread and just Outright fear when I walk down it, so I'm, I'm creeping around the corner and I just feel this overwhelming sense of heaviness just cloud over my entire body and I'm like we have to go through this, this hallway, there is no other way out. We up for that hallway. And I was like, I'm not walking back upstairs. I'm not doing that. So we walked through the hallway. I I take a picture of the mirror. I'm pretty sure I can find the image, but there's a face in that mirror, in that silverback mirror, of a child down below me. And I was looking through the pictures as I was I took a picture. Looking through it, and I was like, I'm leaving this hallway right now. So we walk out, and we bolt down back to the main lobby, and we stay there for the rest of the shift. And I'm walking out to go ask if anybody needs anything before I leave, and I hear my name get called. So I turn around and I was like, did you call my name to my coworker? She's an older lady. So she's very serious. She's like, I didn't call your name. And I was like, you're lying. Like, why are you lying to me? This is going to send me on a, on a mental spiral. Like my name. And she was like, no, I didn't call your name. And I was like, interesting. Because I just heard my name. And whenever I heard my name get called and she just flat out denied it. I left, I left. I was like, I'm not coming back until my next shift. I'm not doing it.

Alex:

Oh, man. She wasn't pranking you. Um,

Erykah:

pranking me.

Alex:

no, that's, that is wild. This place. I'm going to have to come see this place. That sounds awesome. Oh,

Erykah:

you to a lot of the rooms that I know are more inclined to have spiritual activity. Second floor, apart from mezzanine, there's the honeymoon suite. That one's pretty intense to be in. And then there's the room where Two months before I started working there, a man passed away. Yeah, and they didn't know what procedures to do. The housekeepers didn't. And nobody really informed them what to do. He was a healthy, older gentleman. Went on the hike and then had a heart attack in the hotel room. So

Alex:

Just adding to the pool of ghosts. Very

Erykah:

yeah just adds to everything. I love it. So they accidentally took the sheets off and instead of red bagging it, they circulated it through the washing system. And it is still to this day, circulating those shelves. Don't know which ones they are.

Alex:

Blech! Oh, wow.

Erykah:

see them. So I worked here. I'll never stay here.

Alex:

Bring your own sheets, you know? Just to be safe. Oh.

Erykah:

have to stay during a heavy snowstorm, they did have to stay the night. Because I live in the mountains, I live in the altitude 9, 000 feet in elevation, so, we're pretty high up here. And when it snows, it snows. So a lot of the times, employees got trapped in the hotel and had to stay the night. And some of the stories I heard alone just from them made it to where I never wanted to stay the night, ever, ever.

Alex:

So this is making a little bit more sense. I'm looking up Cloudcroft right now. Is this like a ski kind of area because it's so mountainy and snowy during the winter season? These are all like ski resorts?

Erykah:

We, we do have a ski resort way down, but it's small. This town is mostly just, it's kind of like an oasis in the desert. So you have straight desert in the basin, and then it goes straight to our national forest. So it's a huge forest.

Alex:

Forest.

Erykah:

Yes.

Alex:

Oof. I genuinely may have to come see this place. I'm being dead serious. Cause like, I like to go visit. Well, my goal is to visit these places, right?

Erykah:

Yeah. If you would like to, just to make it like an entire trip for you, I could take you by the lodge, obviously give you a tour, put you in some housekeeper scrubs, so that way you can get the same treatment the ghost gave me, like pushing me down the stairs or trying to push me down the stairs when I'm carrying heavy bags. that happened once, but

Alex:

cosplay for a ghost tour. I'm down for it.

Erykah:

they're, they're malicious to the, to the workers, to the housekeepers specific.

Alex:

That's rude. Oh,

Erykah:

that the other housekeepers, whenever Rebecca died that they had covered up her murder. Yeah, so I'm like, well, that would make a lot of sense. Like glasses flying off of the bar shelves and everything like that on the bartenders. So, the ghosts kind of don't like the employees, but they love the guests for whatever reason. They love the attention.

Alex:

as wild. And this place doesn't stay pretty busy. Like it's. Pretty occupied by guests a

Erykah:

It's got a golf course. It's the only golf course in Cloudcroft. And it's, It's a pretty popular golf course. In fact, it was one of the highest golf courses in elevation in the country at one point.

Alex:

okay. because in my mind while you're telling me all this It's a functioning place, so I'm assuming, yes, there are guests here, but in my mind, I'm like, oh, it's kind of like The Shining, where there's like no one there the whole time, which doesn't make any sense.

Erykah:

COVID made it feel like the shining when I was, it was just me and other co workers. It was anywhere you look, anywhere you went, you had to like look over your shoulder. Every single time you were just constantly on edge every single day. And especially when we were renovating the entire hotel, it was one of those things where we were kind of riling them all up at the same time. So interesting. It was very interesting.

Alex:

I like it. And here's the thing. Anytime you said that someone's, that her ashes were in the tower, right? That's just a no no in my book. You just, ashes. So I've talked to a few people that are like, oh, haunted basement or haunted this, that or the other. And several of them were like, yeah, someone's ashes were in there and like, well, that might have been part of the problem. You know,

Erykah:

Yeah, yeah.

Alex:

the older a place is, the higher likelihood hood. It has to be haunted. First of all. And this place is old and renovated and burned and just have a lot of history attached to it. It seems like in a lot of negative vibes. And then you're like, Oh, let's just put a dead person's ashes in here. Like, that can't help.

Erykah:

She loved the place so much. She spent all of her time in the tower. So she was like, I'll just stick my ashes in here. And you can see where they're at. Because it's kind of got like these pillars. And then it's just got one platform. And then you can see this giant wooden box. And those are what I was told where her ashes are. And they even have a plaque. of her picture up there in the tower as well. Another fun thing, Judy Garland has signed her name on the walls here, as did Vincent Pratt . So that's interesting.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah,

Erykah:

Yeah,

Alex:

is a hot spot. This is quite the destination.

Erykah:

It is there's Pancho Villa has stayed at the lodge before, and he was very famous down in Mexico. And it was, it was a hotspot for a lot of famous, the people who were from Mythbusters, they stayed there at the hotel. So we've definitely attracted a lot of higher profile people throughout the years. So we do have that history there in the tower as well. So fascinating.

Alex:

Very fascinating. I'm fascinated.

Erykah:

much. But outside of the lodge, if you, because it is like seven hours out of your way. I have also been to one of the most haunted hotels in El Paso, Texas as well. I'm pretty sure ghost adventures did an episode there. I watch it. A lot of times because what I experienced just walking in the alleyway of that hotel made me terrified. Now that place was burned down, but it's still an interesting experience. And then you've got the El Paso High School that I've also toured. 3 a. m. I was like, let's do it. This is awesome, because I, I started going to like this little ghost hunting phase when I lived in El Paso. And whenever we were touring there it was genuinely a horrifying experience. It is such an old, it's one of the oldest schools in Texas. And I was walking, and they had like this ledge that was high up. And I looked at it, and I saw somebody lunge at me, so I ducked, and when I looked, nobody was there. At all.

Alex:

I don't like that either.

Erykah:

a couple of areas around here that are pretty famous for their hauntings, and I happened to work at one for four years.

Alex:

So outside of the hotel. And your experience is in El Paso. Does anything ever like happen to you just in your personal life, day to day at home, anything like that, or have all these experiences been pretty isolated to those locations?

Erykah:

Other than these locations, my experiences are can be isolated unless I'm driving on the road. There are Apache like, where the Apache Indians had had little battlegrounds and sometimes when I'm driving the main highway, highway 82, I kind of get glimpses of people walk in front of my car.

Alex:

Hmm.

Erykah:

I've, I've, sometimes I've stopped because I genuinely thought I, and, the side of the road is a cliff. So you kind of get to a point where it's, or not just a cliff, but like, it's pretty steep, so a person shouldn't be walking there. But then they walk right in front of my car, so I stop, because I genuinely think I hit somebody, and then there's nobody there. Not a soul on the highway. After that, I just stopped checking because it became such a constant thing where I'd see somebody walking the side of the road and then they'd just disappear.

Alex:

Hmm. I don't like that either. That's fun. Better than, I mean, I mean, at least you're not like swerving. They're like, ah, we're going to get you and you'll swerve off the road. That's no

Erykah:

Yeah, I just kind of cut my losses and I'm like, oh, you shouldn't have been walking in the road.

Alex:

Yeah, that's on you guys, sorry.

Erykah:

I

Alex:

There's no crosswalk here.

Erykah:

then I'm gonna be like, oh, I hit somebody and then they pop up in the backseat of my car and I'm just like,

Alex:

No thanks, that would be the worst. That would actually be the worst thing that's happened. That's

Erykah:

yeah,

Alex:

One time I was driving from Utah to California. And It was late, I was reaching my destination, I still had like 2 hours left , and I was driving, and I was by myself. And it was one of those like mountainous kind of winding roads, you know? And it's one way, or like one lane each way I should say. If I remember correctly, it's been like 5 years. And it's super dark. I didn't see anything in the road, but I kept seeing something in my backseat actually. And I would like peripherally I was like seeing something like it could just be like my headrest, whatever, just peripherals playing tricks on me. Right. Cause you know how it is like, Oh, it's over there. My mind's not really focused on what that is. But I keep seeing, I want to say it looks like a woman. Like, just like, I see the hair, like long, like white colored hair and that's about it. And I keep looking because I'm like, there's no way, right? Like there just isn't. But the thing is like the night before I had been with a bunch of friends and we were all telling our scary stories and ghost stories and all this stuff. And you just like bring in those vibes and they kind of stick with you. So you have to like play in the mood or like change the subject or whatever to kind of like, let that go. so I had like stayed up late with all these friends and then we end at like, I don't know, midnight one in the morning and then I go to bed, wake up super early because I have like a 12 or 13 hour drive and it's just kind of stuck with me. So anyway, I digress. I'm driving and this truck pulls up behind me and it's not like a semi truck size, but it's like, it's a pretty big truck. It's like, I don't know, anyway, and it keeps flashing its lights at me, and then it will pass me, and I'm like, I'm going over the speed limit, like, a little bit. So anyway, this truck keeps flashing its lights at me, and then it'll go and like, get right up on my butt, and it's higher up, so I'm being blinded by this guy, and I was driving a Hyundai Elantra, so I'm kind of like lower down, and then he would pass me, and he's like a, he had like a big water tank on his, on his, in like his truck bed kind of thing. And then he would get in front of me and again, I'm going like five over and then he would slow down to like 10 under and make me ride his butt. And then I would pass him because I'm like, what are you doing? And he would honk at me and like flash the lights and he kept doing this, kept doing this. And I'm like, I, I don't think it was anything other than just idiot driver, maybe I genuinely don't know. But the fact that I was like seeing something in my backseat in addition to like, and he was doing this at the same time I was seeing it. Thing in my backseat potential thing. I'm like, I wonder what this could have been. It could have been nothing. I was very tired. It was a long ass drive and when it gets late, I get sleepy while I'm driving. I could fall asleep driving and which is not great. So I genuinely don't know but I think about that every so often. What if that guy like was seeing something in my window? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. It's probably nothing. But anyway, nighttime driving stories.

Erykah:

if he brought it in there? What if it was him?

Alex:

We were going like 65 or 70. I mean, he just came and it happened. I kid you not. It happened four or five times. He would like, ride my ass, flash the lights at me, honk, and I'd be like, dude, I'm going over the speed limit. He would pass me and then slow down. I'm like, what have I done to you? What am I? If you want to go fast, just go, just be gone. Just go get in front of me and go. Don't like break

Erykah:

I've heard stories like this where like somebody will be in like a semi or something of that nature And they'll genuinely, their main goal is to make you crash, is to hurt you. So they'll play tricks on you, and then there is one stretch of road, and I can't remember what it's called. But something essentially along those lines will happen, where a truck will flash you, will look at you, and will just try to get you in a wreck. And if that doesn't work, you'll see somebody in your backseat. If you acknowledge that person in your backseat, Then they'll try to hurt you or try to distract you and make you crash kind of thing I don't remember what stretch of road that's on but I watched something I think it's like Highway 666 is what it was called or something like that

Alex:

I I could be thinking of something differently, but I've heard similar, like weird. Anyway. Yeah. Who knows? That's the thing. Who knows?

Erykah:

Whenever you say that I'm thinking about that and I'm like, what if you wanted you to crash? And that just, I'm like, no.

Alex:

This was a weird, like, this was on, I think, like 85, like the 80, Highway 80 going West. I mean, I don't know. It wasn't anything special. If I remember correctly, it was just, it was just weird. But I think about it often because I'm like, I was, it was late. I was tired. And while I do, I do this show, I love. Spooky shit, and I'm fascinated by it all, but I like to have a healthy amount of skepticism, you know? And because it's, if I'm just like, I believe everything everyone says, then it's like, eh, I can't, I genuinely don't. I want to look at it a little bit deeper and say, okay, I see where you're coming from, but also it could have been this, but it could have been the thing you're thinking, like, you know, it could have been that so with my own stuff. And anyone who's ever listened to my show, I say this shit all the time. I'm not sensitive to scary or spiritual things. I'm not on that wavelength or spectrum or whatever you want to call it. I'm just not tuned into that frequency. So that's why I do this show. I just like everyone else's stories. Give it to me. Nom, nom, nom. I love it. You know, I can't get it out. But nothing really, I've had like two things happen to me ever. And that was one of them that I just told you I don't even know if that was a thing I, I just like to live vicariously through other people and their scary shit. It's fascinating to me. I love it. I'm in it for the love of the game. Erykah: Right. So anyway, we went off on a weird tangent with my dumb story. So I apologize.

Erykah:

It was, it kind of connected to my story. So, I get it. I get it.

Alex:

exactly. Driving at night. That is wild though. And I have yet to, but have a couple scheduled. I've yet to have anyone with any like native horror stories. anything native related. So if you have any of those or know anyone with those, send them my way. Because I,

Erykah:

definitely know, living in New Mexico, we're majority Hispanic, Native, and then White, and then so on after that. So, We, we definitely have a lot of stories involving not just spirits, but cryptids as well,

Alex:

Mm-Hmm,

Erykah:

and then I've definitely heard quite a few stories, so, my own, not necessarily as much you know, I'm kind of, you know, A daredevil at night, I, along with you have some level of like skepticism with some things. So when I'm out with my friends, it'll be, I'll whistle in the dark. I'll start whistling and they'll genuinely freak out. And I'm like, we're going to have a fun night.

Alex:

Yeah. I, being that I'm not like sensitive to these things and I haven't really had any experiences.'cause I have, I've met people and I have friends that are like, oh yeah, I see shit all the time. I'm in tune with that. I have this feeling that if I were to go to this hotel, or the theater I'm going to in a couple weeks, or whatever, wherever, I feel like nothing's gonna happen. Well, I'm there. I just feel like I am a repellent to or I'm just not again. I'm just not able to recognize things. Maybe, maybe. But then there are other people that they're like, something happens every time I go. Well, dang. I don't know if I should be

Erykah:

will say with this hotel, we had stayed there the day before we had moved into town and nothing happened, not a thing happened. It wasn't until I started, it was, it was whenever I started working there. Whenever my family started working there, that's when we all started experiencing some things. And it wasn't like every day at work we were experiencing something, but whenever we did, it was. It was usually something pretty massive to get our attention.

Alex:

That is very interesting.

Erykah:

if you antagonize the gu I'm not saying do it, but I'm saying do it. If you antagonize them just enough, they will So you know that furniture slide that I was telling you about, they have no idea how that happened, but they do know that a couple that was staying there or it was friends, they were roommates. I don't know what they were, but when they were staying there, they were antagonizing the spirits that were there. They were calling her Becca and they were just, they were going ham. They were going ham on poor Rebecca out there and all of the furniture was moved on their side of the, to their room. So, um,

Alex:

Wild.

Erykah:

We also have the governor's suite that was also on that end, that is also a pretty freaky room. It's every governor in our state has stayed in that room. governor's suite. Yeah, so That, yeah, it was all the furniture was pushed over towards that end and they actually have a picture of it as well. I mean if we antagonize a little bit,

Alex:

I'm not going to say I wouldn't, but yeah, so yeah, if I can make a trip up there and you can give me a tour, I'm down. It's like, I'm here. Might as well go hard. You know what I mean?

Erykah:

I got all the furniture. I have all the cool hotspots for you, don't worry.

Alex:

excellent. Yeah. We'll figure something out, but is there any other stories that come to mind that you want to throw out while you're still here with us?

Erykah:

not particularly. Other than driving down the road. That's typically a daily thing. Or a nightly thing, I should say. So, it's kind of one of those things where I say it once and that's pretty much all that happens.

Alex:

Yeah. Well, good. No I'm satisfied with all of your stories. I just wanted to make sure that you were like, Oh wait, I've got one more. Are you?

Erykah:

no, no. I, I have, I have probably told you more of the ghost stories than I have told any of my friends or anything like that.

Alex:

well, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you coming on and, giving us all the goods here. This has been fascinating. I think I will be planning on making a trip out there just because I want to start visiting more places like this. So yeah, we'll have to chat about that. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. Go ahead. If you want, go ahead and plug your socials, if you want, tell people where they can find you,

Erykah:

you can find me on TikTok. That's where I do most of my streaming. It is Mo Dope, Erykah, E-R-Y-K-A-H for Erykah, because I spell it super weird. And then that's super social

Alex:

Okay. It's the cool fun way of spelling Erykah, right?

Erykah:

I'm

Alex:

Excellent. And I'll link that in the description when this episode publishes. So, thank you again. If you're listening, be sure to check out Erykah's TikTok, watch her streams, give her a like, give her a follow, say hello if you came from the show. If you or anyone you know has any good scary stories, whether supernatural or not, like I've said, demons, ghosts, aliens. Killers, stalkers, near death experiences, cryptids, anything, whatever. I want them. I'm in it for the love of the game. I just want more. It's fascinating to me. So please reach out at Unholy Vibes Pod on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or you can email Unholy vibes pod at gmail. com. I also will take anonymous stories. If you're too scared to be attached to the story you're telling, we've had a couple submitted to us, So yeah, I'm here for it. Thank you again for listening. Thank you, Erykah. Coming on, remember everyone stay spooky and we'll see you next time. Bye.