In November 1998, Kuala Lumpur played host to the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit attended by leaders of countries in the Asia Pacific region. The summit’s actual meetings took place at two venues in the capital city. As a staff for the summit I was stationed at one of the venues in KL. The summit lasted three days and we were given accommodations for two nights at a hotel within walking distance of the convention centre.

The first night was uneventful as all staff benefited from hotel reservations for registered participants who failed to turn up. We were given a suite to stay in and for three women it was very comfortable.

On the second day, we lost our suite privileges and had to move to a room on the 11th floor of the same hotel. That night two of us took the queen sized bed and one slept on the floor. At about four in the morning, I woke up to find my friend sitting up beside me on the bed.

I asked, “What’s wrong?”

She said, “There’s someone knocking on our door.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“Five, ten minutes or so.”

I kept quiet and listened. There was an intermittent, rhythmic knocking on wood/plaster sound emanating from somewhere outside the room or next door. It was not very loud at that time. Of course, the thought of a supernatural origin crossed my mind but being a sceptic and due to the muted quality of the noise, I told my friend, “Someone next door is doing something. It doesn’t sound like it’s on our door. Go back to sleep.”

As soon as I said that, the knocking sound increased in volume. This time it sounded like it was indeed at our door. The knocking became quite frantic, although before that it had sounded kind of relaxed. I leapt out of bed and went to the peephole. The knocking had subsided at the time I went to look. In my heart, I knew I wouldn’t see anything and as a matter of fact, I saw nothing. The corridor was brightly lit and there was no one there. I went back to the bed and told my friend to do so too. With that I turned on my side and closed my eyes. After a minute or two the knocking started again, loud, soft, interval, soft, loud. I said a prayer.

“Lord God, whatever it is, please make it go away and don’t let it bother us. We have a long day ahead tomorrow.” And then I fell asleep. My friend said that knocking stopped for good not long after I winked off.

We checked out the next morning. I told my parents about the incident and my mother said that she would ask my aunt who used to be in the management team of that place. A week later my mother came back to me with another story from that same room.

There was once a guest of the hotel who went to the reception desk after a night’s stay and asked, “Why does your hotel staff clean the windows in the middle of the night? It’s rather disturbing.”

The receptionist was stunned but recovered soon enough to apologise for the inconvenience. The guest left the matter at that. Of course, the truth was there was no window cleaning going on at night. The guest must have heard something else knocking on his window that night.