These Hotel Guests Checked Into Their Rooms – What They Discovered Was Worse Than You Think

You check into a hotel, put your luggage down, and look around the room. Maybe you check the bathroom, the sheets, the view, the Wi-Fi, or whether the air conditioning works. I do some of these things almost automatically, especially if I am staying somewhere for several nights.

I am not examining every inch of the bed before getting into it and I am sure most people don’t do that either. But the situations I am about to share with you might make me reconsider that – and they may make you change your approach too.

One woman woke up during a hotel stay in California and discovered she had not been alone in the bed. Her complaint didn’t end with a room change: part of the conversation she recorded at the hotel is probably going to make some people far angrier than the original discovery.

Another traveler booked a hotel for just one night rather than pay for a taxi home. What happened during those few hours followed her for weeks, affected a family event, and eventually ended with a £2,000 compensation payment. A couple staying in Michigan saw nothing particularly strange until they put a phone against the bedding and switched on the flashlight. Millions of people watched what happened next, and they still couldn’t agree on what they were looking at.

Then there is the American couple who found something near their bed in Europe, brought it home with them, and eventually handed it over to researchers. Months later, their hotel-room discovery was in a scientific journal.

And I haven’t even reached the bathroom yet – though I have an incident from this hotel room too, and I am including it below as well.

ID 71533469 | People ©Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com 

She woke up with ants around her bed – and in her ear

The newest case happened at The Anza Hotel in Calabasas, California. A TikTok creator who posts as @wardrodewinter said they woke up with ants around the bed and found one in the ear. In the footage they shared, ants can be seen moving along the base of a wall in the room. By September 1st, the post had reached about 2.5 million views, more than 530,500 likes and over 4,900 comments. 

Wardrobe was already upset by what they had found, but the videos focus just as much on what happened when they tried to complain. The hotel guest says they contacted the hotel’s corporate office and claimed the call ended without resolving the issue. Then went to the front desk with their mother on the phone – talking to the staff. According to Wardrobe, staff went to the room and the discussion turned to what type of insects they were.

The type didn’t matter to them because they say there were insects in the room, they had been around the bed, and the guest had just found one in their ear.

The audio included in the video made a lot of people angry. A voice Wardrobe presents as a member of staff can be heard explaining that they were ants and saying they were “just looking for water.”

“They’re just ants (…) They’re just looking for water.”

Elsewhere in the exchange, the same voice acknowledges that bugs shouldn’t be in the room. Wardrobe kept returning to the same point: whether they were ants or another type of insect didn’t change the fact that they had woken up surrounded by them. I couldn’t find a report with an official statement from the hotel. 

People Were Not Impressed With the “Just Ants” Explanation

“Just ants?” was not going over well

“Looking for water? And im looking for my MONEY BACK !”

“Just ants ? It’s a infestation”

“what do she mean JUST ANTS??????!!!”

Others immediately thought about the bites and possible allergies

“THEY STILL BITE… PEOPLE CAN STILL BE ALLERGIC TO ANT BITES….. I’m the people that are allergic to ant bites”

“What if you were allergic omg”

For some people, the reaction was simply horror

“I would’ve died”

“Omggggg my skin is crawling 😭😭😭😭😭”

And one person pointed out another problem

“Omg Check your luggage too make sure the bugs didn’t get in your bag” 

She booked a hotel to save money on a taxi home. She woke up with more than 100 bites

Hannah Stephenson booked a night at the Travelodge on Newmarket Road in Cambridge after being out with friends on July 26. The next morning she woke up itching and noticed red marks beginning to appear. When she checked the bedding, she saw blood spots and black dots on the pillow. Then she found the bugs.

More bites became visible as the day went on. Stephenson eventually counted more than 100 across her body, including 37 on one hand. Her arms swelled, the bites spread to her face, and she took antihistamines, which she said made her drowsy. Weeks later, she was still waking during the night because of the itching.

There was a family wedding in the middle of all this. Stephenson said she bought different clothes, wanting to cover the marks, and later described feeling self-conscious enough to miss other social events. She also said she suffered a panic attack and had to deal with her belongings carefully when she returned home because the last thing she wanted was to carry the problem back with her.

She reported the bed bugs to the hotel. Stephenson later said that she initially felt ignored and believed posting the photos publicly was what finally moved the complaint forward. After the case gained attention, Travelodge’s Head of Customer Services contacted her. She praised how he handled the situation and said he explained what the hotel had done after her report. Travelodge eventually offered her £2,000 in compensation, which she accepted.

Travelodge told the BBC it was “deeply sorry” for her experience and said customer safety was a priority. The company said that when a pest issue is reported, affected and surrounding rooms are removed from service for inspection and treatment by independent pest-control specialists. In Stephenson’s case, bed bug activity was confirmed and treatment was arranged.

Bed bugs are also one of the reasons I pay more attention to recent reviews when I am choosing a hotel. A hotel can have thousands of reviews collected over many years, while several complaints from the last few weeks can tell you something much more useful about what is happening there now.

A phone flashlight changed what this couple saw in their hotel bedding

ID 6645285 ©Jie Xu | Dreamstime.com 

Ashlyn Dinger and her fiancé, Jacob Moore, were staying at The Center Hotel Grand Rapids Airport in Michigan when they discovered something that wasn’t visible in the usual way, according to The Nerd Stash.

Jacob pressed the flashlight on his phone against the comforter. With the light directly behind the fabric, brown areas appeared inside it. He then held more of the comforter against a bedside lamp, and the same patches were visible across a much larger section.

Ashlyn posted the footage, asking whether they could sue. By August 31, it had reached about 5.1 million views, with more than 308,000 likes and 2,400 comments. 

The interesting part is that the footage created two very different reactions. Some viewers were convinced the brown areas were mold. Others said the couple was simply seeing the material inside the comforter – feathers or cotton filling that had clumped or changed after repeated washing and high-temperature drying.

Ashlyn wasn’t persuaded. In the caption attached to the video, she said people kept telling her it was feathers, but that what she saw didn’t look like feathers to her. There was no laboratory test, hotel inspection report, or other evidence in the coverage I found establishing what the discoloration actually was. The video shows the brown material when strong light is placed behind the comforter; the explanation remained an argument among viewers. I admit I had never thought of putting a flashlight behind hotel bedding before seeing this.

A stained bed, somebody else’s eyelashes – and a $13 Wi-Fi refund

Ashley Grudzinski’s complaint about Caesars Atlantic City wasn’t based on something she found with a flashlight. She said the problems were visible enough: a stain on the bed and fake eyelashes left behind in the room. She posted photos from the stay and later made a video explaining what happened when she tried to get the issue resolved.

According to Grudzinski, the hotel contacted her after seeing her post and told her someone would follow up. Monday passed. Then Tuesday. She said she tried phoning the property herself, but the phone continued ringing without anyone answering.

When the hotel eventually called, Grudzinski said she was offered a refund of the $13 Wi-Fi fee, along with two resort fees that she described as $31 per day. Considering what she had complained about, she wasn’t satisfied with that.

She contacted the hotel again on Instagram. A screenshot shown in her video appeared to say that the team had already explained the resolution and that “no further compensation or follow up” would be provided. Grudzinski said she then disputed the hotel charge through her bank. The Mary Sue noted that it had contacted Caesars Atlantic City and Grudzinski for comment.

Stains and belongings left by a previous guest raise an uncomfortable question because we rely heavily on appearances in hotel rooms. If the bed has been made neatly, towels are folded and the bathroom looks clean, most of us accept that the room has been prepared for us. We don’t usually start checking whether every surface, appliance and textile has actually been cleaned properly.

I already had reasons to be wary of one hotel-room item in particular after covering the viral coffee maker “hack” in which a creator suggested using a hotel coffee brewer to wash underwear. I still cannot understand why anyone would put underwear in an appliance somebody else will later use for a drink. That story alone permanently changed the way I look at hotel coffee machines. Fake eyelashes on the bed are at least easier to identify.

The bug on the headboard travelled from Lisbon to the United States

The next case didn’t begin on social media. It eventually appeared in Parasites & Vectors, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

In August 2025, an American couple from the East Coast checked into a five-star hotel in an upscale area of Lisbon before a river cruise. They later described the hotel to researchers as “nice but needing cleaning.” On the morning after their first night, they saw an insect perched on the headboard above the bed.

They caught it with a tissue.

Bright red blood came out.

The couple believed the insect had probably fed during the night, and they photographed it before speaking with the hotel’s reception staff and manager. According to the published case report, the staff apologized and moved them to another room. They stayed at the hotel for three more nights and did not see another one.

They didn’t leave the insect behind.

The specimen went back to the United States with them. Once home, the couple contacted their primary-care physician because they were worried about what they had found and whether there could be any health implications. The insect eventually reached researchers at the University of Delaware, where specialists examined it morphologically and used molecular testing to confirm the identification.

It was Hospesneotomae protracta, a type of triatomine commonly known as a kissing bug. The species is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Researchers described this particular specimen as the first live triatomine bug documented in Europe.

That identification made the blood inside the insect more relevant. Triatomine bugs can transmit Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Researchers tested the Lisbon specimen and did not detect the parasite. The couple were also tested about six weeks after the encounter, with no antibodies detected in either person.

The scientific paper, published in June 2026, considers accidental importation the likely explanation. The hotel catered to international travelers, including other guests from the United States, and the researchers noted how easily insects can be transported unintentionally across borders in luggage and other belongings.

The bathroom discovery I would have noticed immediately

ID 43909234 ©Bogdanf1 | Dreamstime.com 

A family staying at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa in Anaheim, California, said they discovered their room problem near the end of a four-night stay in October 2025. They had checked in on October 19 and, according to the account later shared online, found it on October 22.

The footage shows discoloration on part of the bathroom wall. Closer to the floor, small mushrooms appear to be growing directly out of it. Disney Dining reported that the family described both mold and mushrooms in the bathroom.

The family said all three of them had been feeling unwell during the trip, reporting sore throats, headaches, allergy-type symptoms and breathing problems, and said they had bought medication to get through the stay. Their post connected those symptoms with the conditions they later found in the room. The report I found did not include medical evidence establishing what caused the symptoms, so I would keep those two parts of their account separate.

They said they contacted and emailed Disney after checkout. When Disney Dining covered the case in December, the publication said it was unclear what remediation had taken place or whether the family had received compensation, and it had not found a public statement from Disneyland Resort addressing the case.

The room was at Disney’s Grand Californian, one of the company’s premium Disneyland Resort hotels, where nightly prices can run into hundreds of dollars and considerably more for some room categories. You don’t need to expect perfection because a room is expensive. I do think “nothing growing out of the bathroom wall” is a reasonable expectation at any price.

These aren’t the only hotel-room cases that made me change some of my habits

I have stayed in hotels in many countries and, fortunately, most of my experiences have been perfectly normal. I have had rooms that weren’t as nice as the photos, bathrooms I didn’t particularly like, noise, small maintenance issues, disappointing breakfasts, and the usual things that happen when you travel. Nothing remotely similar to waking up with an insect in my ear or finding more than 100 bites after one night.

But over the past year I have also covered several hotel room cases that have nothing to do with bed bugs or visible dirt. Guests have filmed questionable housekeeping practices, reported belongings being handled or used, and in some cases discovered people inside rooms who should never have been there.

Those reports were the reason I started thinking more carefully about what I do immediately after entering a room. I used to care mainly about practical things: does the AC work, is the bathroom fine, is there enough space, where are the outlets, what is the Wi-Fi password? Now I also check the lock, adjoining doors, the emergency information, and several other details before I start unpacking. After these latest cases, the bed itself moves higher on the list.

What I would check before unpacking

I am still not going to dismantle a hotel room when I arrive. I want to enjoy my vacation, not spend an hour pretending to be an inspector. But taking another minute before putting clothes in drawers or getting into bed is easy enough.

I would pull the bedding back and look at the sheets, pillowcases and mattress area rather than judging the bed only by whether it has been made neatly. I would check around the headboard and nearby seams for anything unusual. If there are obvious stains, insects, blood spots, black specks or something else that concerns me, I would photograph it before touching or removing anything and call the front desk while I am still in the room.

The bathroom deserves more than a glance too. Damp patches, damaged caulking, peeling paint, unusual odors or visible growth are things I want to notice when I arrive, not on the last night.

This also connects with something I already recommend in my checkout checklist: photograph problems when they happen and keep messages you send to the hotel. If you later need to discuss a refund, a damage charge, compensation or a complaint, having your own photos and a written record is far more useful than trying to reconstruct everything afterwards.

I also never t put an open suitcase directly on the bed – as the suitcase itself might not be clean enough.

Conclusion

There is no way to guarantee that every hotel room will be flawless, and I don’t want to approach every stay expecting to find a problem. I have spent too many wonderful vacations in hotels to travel like that.

But I also know how quickly we stop looking once a room appears clean. We see a made bed, folded towels, a clean sink, and our brain moves on to dinner plans, sightseeing, unpacking, charging the phones and everything else we want to do.

The woman in California didn’t discover the ants during a careful room inspection. She woke up with them around her. Hannah Stephenson learned about the bed bugs after sleeping there all night. The couple in Michigan needed a flashlight to see what was inside their comforter. And the insect found on a Lisbon headboard ended up being unusual enough for scientists to publish a paper about it.

I still won’t inspect every inch of the bed. But I will probably look more closely than I did before.

Sources and original videos

Ants at The Anza Hotel, Calabasas
Original TikTok video: @wardrodewinter

Hannah Stephenson / Travelodge Cambridge
Original TikTok post: @thecapetownblog

Michigan hotel comforter
Original TikTok creator: @ashlyndinger – the original video is embedded in the report linked in the relevant section above.

Caesars Atlantic City
Original TikTok creator: @ashleygrudzinski – the original video is embedded in The Mary Sue report linked above.

Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
Original TikTok video: @lalos.fitness

Violeta Loredana

Violeta-Loredana Pascal is a communications expert, business mentor, and the founder of Earth’s Attractions and PRwave INTERNATIONAL. A pioneer in the Romanian digital PR landscape since 2005, she holds a degree in Communication and Social Sciences from SNSPA Bucharest. Violeta is a senior trainer at AcademiadeAfaceri.ro, where she leverages over 20 years of experience to teach professional courses in PR strategy and workplace productivity. By blending high-level business consulting with a passion for holistic travel and wellness, she empowers solopreneurs to overcome procrastination, build profitable brands, and design a life of purposeful adventure.