Alan and Joan normally made their hotel reservations for their annual spring trip to New Orleans far ahead of time in order to stay at the Royal Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter. It was their own special way of renewing their precious wedding vows. However, time managed to get away from them this year and as luck would have it the Royal Orleans was booked solid. They had been going to New Orleans every April for as long as they could remember and this year it was to be no different. With the advent of the Internet, a person is able to go online and take a virtual tour of hotel rooms in just about every city. Joan was doing just that as she happened upon the New Orleans Une Grande Hotel. For some fortunate reason this hotel had a vacancy and Joan immediately booked the room for fear of losing that one too.

One month later they landed in New Orleans and took a taxi to their new vacation accommodations. The only odd thing was that the hotel once was a warehouse that manufactured plastics and had been converted in early 2001. The bellman led them to their suite which was grand in style with a large marble bathroom and king size bed. Plants adorned the curtained windows and beautiful portraits hung from the walls.

It was decided that the next day would hold for them a leisurely walk around the Quarter and Jackson Square, to be followed by lunch on the river and antique shopping for the remainder of the afternoon. For the rest of their trip, they also intended to visit the zoo, the aquarium, a horse drawn carriage ride and of course Hurricane's at Pat O'Brian's. The steamy, humid air was a welcome relief from the cold of Chicago in April. Soon they retired to their room and slept well past their wake up call.

They finally awakened and although they knew the climate in New Orleans is mild at this time of year, Joan still wanted a look out the window to peek at the day. Imagine her surprise when she pulled the curtains back and the windows were nothing more than a boarded up brick wall, left over from the factory days. It was like being in an intensive care unit with no knowledge of whether it was day or night. It seemed an insignificant inconvenience and they gave it no further thought. To check on the elements Alan turned on the television set to find the weather channel and the strangest images began to appear. Instead of regular programming the set seemed to have only one channel and that channel was displaying chilling footage of a voodoo ritual which looked like it dated back to the 17th century. Eerie music played in the background while hooded kinsmen circled a cauldron, chanting in tongues. Joan and Alan merely thought this was a local advertisement for one of those cheesy attractions for which New Orleans is quite famous and that the other channels simply needed repair.

Alan reached for the phone to order room service breakfast and heard the following prompts screeching wildly in his ear: "Press One for Torture, Press Two for Cannibalism, Press Three for The Insane Asylum, Press Four for Witch Hunts and Press Five for Rescue Attempts". High pitched, ferocious laughter followed and the phone line went dead in his hand. Although the television set seemed eerie, the phone message had chills running down Alan's spine. Alan was trying to decide if he should even mention this bizarre happening to Joan when he heard her screaming and shrieking at the top of her lungs from the shower.

As he ran through the door to the bathroom his nose was assaulted with a bitter, toxic odor. Joan was clinging to the glass shower door, unable to move as poisonous gas spewed from the showerhead. Her skin was coming off in folds, her hair was burning her face into shreds and the harder she tried to extricate herself from the lethal fumes, the effort only reduced her strength to the point of falling down in the shower stall and surrendering.

In a panic, Alan ran to the room's front door only to find that it had somehow been sealed or padlocked from the outside. His fear went to horror as he relentlessly pulled and pulled on the doorknob, knowing full well that without a window in this room there would be no escape.

Suddenly remembering the telephone prompts; Alan dialed Five for Rescue Attempts. Immediately a member of the hotel answered and inquired as to who was calling and the room number, please. As soon as Alan responded, the hotel representative tried to calm Alan and reassured him that help was on the way, pronto!

Within seconds the hotel room door was opened, it had not been shuttered in any way, as it turns out. A rescue team raced to the bathroom to attempt to revive Joan, to no avail. A police squad handcuffed Alan and read him his rights as he was charged with murdering his wife. Alan screamed with objection, it was a haunted room, he insisted! He reiterated the locked door, the brick window, the eerie television station, the haunting phone prompts and of course, the gas from the shower which killed his wife.

However, the team discovered that the window had not been a brick wall, the television set was not programmed to only one station and the phone was working properly. After all, the rescue team was contacted and actually gained access, didn't they? And it didn't take a genius to poison a person through the shower pipes.

Kicking and screaming Alan was led away by the authorities. After due process a trial jury found Alan guilty of murder by insanity and sentenced him to an insane asylum for the remainder of his natural life.