Zeke Newbold
Carbon based biped.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,249
I think I first came across this story in a Reader's Digest Bumper book of Mysteries, or such like, and am fairly sure I have since also come across it in a similar coffee table compendium. In both cases the story was related as though it were factual.
Perhaps you know it too. It goes like this: some time between the wars a wealthy mother and her daughter return from a sojourn in the Far East and, en route back to England, take residence in a hotel in Paris for the night. The mother and daughter take seperate single rooms - with the mother's room being just below the daughter's one.
The daughter decides to have a nap and the plan is for them to meet up again later in the evening. Later, after a short rest, the daughter duly goes downstairs to her mother's room only to find it completely empty - and indeed looking as though it had never even been tenanted !Even the furniture seems different. On making increasingly frantic enquiries she is infomed, by the non-plussed hotel staff, that she had arrived alone and that they know nothing of any tenant answering to the description of her mother. They even show her the Guest book - where only the daughter's name has been signed there. The daughter returns to England distraughtand her mother is never seen again.
Then a speculative explanation is given for this strange turn of events. Perhaps the mother had returned from the East with a deadly infection and had fallen ill that evening - and died. The Parisian staff, upon discovering this, initiated a quick cover up operation (with the assistance of government figures
). After all, any talk of a deadly illness in Paris during the tourist season, which so many relied on for their livelihoods, just would not do. So the room was swiftly refurbished and all staff who had dealings with the two British women were coached in how to respond to the young woman's enquiries and what to say....
I assumed that this - now rather topical! - story had some basis in fact, albeit with some added folkloric element, until I came acros, by chance, the following paperback:
Alfred Hitchcock's 14 Suspense Stories To Play Russian Roulette By. (Dell Publishing Co, New York, 1964).
In this compilation there is a story by a writer called Ralph Strauss. It is called `The Room on the Fourth Floor`. This features the same story as above except with more detail given for versimiltude. (For example, the story is told to the author by a politician at the Houses of Parliament). In this case the illness that the mother succumbed to was none other than the Bubonic plague. Also we are told that some important exhibition was going on in Paris that year However the whole tale is packaged and introduced entirely as a work of fiction.
I can't seem to find out when the story was first published - but the author died in 1950. The story seems to be well regarded enough to be the first thing that comes up if you put `Ralph Strauss` into a search engine. The story even seems to have been turned into a TV episode as a part of a show called `The Unforseen` in 1958:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5293508/
So...what happened? Is the whole event purely a work of fiction that somehow ended up as being reported as fact in books devoted to the unexplained? Or was the story an already existing urban myth about the cunning French - that Mr Strauss picked up on and fleshed out into a story and which meanwhile somehow found its way into the annals of non-fiction. Or...!?
Perhaps you know it too. It goes like this: some time between the wars a wealthy mother and her daughter return from a sojourn in the Far East and, en route back to England, take residence in a hotel in Paris for the night. The mother and daughter take seperate single rooms - with the mother's room being just below the daughter's one.
The daughter decides to have a nap and the plan is for them to meet up again later in the evening. Later, after a short rest, the daughter duly goes downstairs to her mother's room only to find it completely empty - and indeed looking as though it had never even been tenanted !Even the furniture seems different. On making increasingly frantic enquiries she is infomed, by the non-plussed hotel staff, that she had arrived alone and that they know nothing of any tenant answering to the description of her mother. They even show her the Guest book - where only the daughter's name has been signed there. The daughter returns to England distraughtand her mother is never seen again.
Then a speculative explanation is given for this strange turn of events. Perhaps the mother had returned from the East with a deadly infection and had fallen ill that evening - and died. The Parisian staff, upon discovering this, initiated a quick cover up operation (with the assistance of government figures
). After all, any talk of a deadly illness in Paris during the tourist season, which so many relied on for their livelihoods, just would not do. So the room was swiftly refurbished and all staff who had dealings with the two British women were coached in how to respond to the young woman's enquiries and what to say....
I assumed that this - now rather topical! - story had some basis in fact, albeit with some added folkloric element, until I came acros, by chance, the following paperback:
Alfred Hitchcock's 14 Suspense Stories To Play Russian Roulette By. (Dell Publishing Co, New York, 1964).
In this compilation there is a story by a writer called Ralph Strauss. It is called `The Room on the Fourth Floor`. This features the same story as above except with more detail given for versimiltude. (For example, the story is told to the author by a politician at the Houses of Parliament). In this case the illness that the mother succumbed to was none other than the Bubonic plague. Also we are told that some important exhibition was going on in Paris that year However the whole tale is packaged and introduced entirely as a work of fiction.
I can't seem to find out when the story was first published - but the author died in 1950. The story seems to be well regarded enough to be the first thing that comes up if you put `Ralph Strauss` into a search engine. The story even seems to have been turned into a TV episode as a part of a show called `The Unforseen` in 1958:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5293508/
So...what happened? Is the whole event purely a work of fiction that somehow ended up as being reported as fact in books devoted to the unexplained? Or was the story an already existing urban myth about the cunning French - that Mr Strauss picked up on and fleshed out into a story and which meanwhile somehow found its way into the annals of non-fiction. Or...!?