Gerry's Hostel in Scotland.
Gerry's hostel was an independent hostel at Craig Achnashellach, Western Scotland operated by the legendary grumpy creepy owner, the late Gerry Howkins.
Back in the late 1990s my university geology class went on a field trip to the west of Scotland. We visited some great hostels e.g. Assynt but our next stop after Assynt was Gerry's Hostel. We really wanted to stay at a hostel on the Isle of Sky, but the journey was a little too far in one day's travel so we had to spend one night at Gerry's.
We were warned that our stay would be uncomfortable, creepy, that we might find the experience freighting, some might perfer to sleep in the vans. We arrived at night, a little snow on the ground, miles from any village or other cottage.
We meet the tuttular Gerry. A gruf bearded gentleman in his 60s m who showed us our bunks and asked if we brought our own pillow cases. This, we learnt, was a precaution due to a recent lice outbreak. Not a good sign.
We then retired to the sitting room to warm ourselves by the fire, then one of the students said, "Gerry is looking in my bag!"...
He Could see Gerry rifelling through people's bags, his bag Gerry was checking for pillow cases. The student had to be held back from beating up Gerry, if that happened we'd be homeless. I could see rage in that student and others showing concern over the violation of privacy.
Gerry then came into the room and said he was very upset we didn't have pillow cases. We feared he'd tell us to leave as, but he compromised. He said could use T-shirts to cover our pillows. He then said he was off to meet a friend to arrange a game of golf for the next day, he left and the tension subsided somewhat but this was temporary.
Some of the class decided the rather sleep in the vans, they asjdx each other who was sleeping in the hostel and who was goimg to the vans. The the bacj door just opened and a old homeless guy came into the room and asjdx where Gerry was, he wasn't to see if her could stay the night. We told him Gerry left and the hostel was full, he left and that was the end of the idea of sleeping in the vans.
We then started to notice various disturbing eccentricities distributed about the hostel, the record collection of 100 records of just just one classical composer and then the toilet.
There was a scream, one of the girls ran into the room and said to look in the toilet. It was decorated with animal bones and teeth set into the plaster wall, human teeth extracted from dentures (I assume). The arrangement was phallic, depicting fellatio and various other sex acts. Then we discovered the diary...
It was the diary of a geology student who stayed at the hostal for several week the previous year. The first entries recorded mudane activities associated with his geological mapping project, but as the diary progressed the entries delt more with Gerry. It was clear the student started to feel creeped out, threatened, a little frighten of Gerry. His fear grew page by page, eventually he was only recording what Gerry was upto noting about geology. Then the diary abruptly ended. He didn't write that it was his last day, or his project was coming to an end. The diary just ended.
Anyway, we just spent one night there and left. Creepiest hostel I ever stayed in.