Alison Hammond Has 'Scariest Night Of Her Life' After Checking In To A Haunted Hotel
February 27, 2023 1:00 AM ‐ Television • Paranormal
This article is more than one year old.
Photo: © ITV
ITV's hit entertainment series 'Saturday Night Takeaway' returned to screens at the weekend, and Ant and Dec did not disappoint with their first prank of the series, which had a paranormal theme.
The Geordie comedy duo targeted 'This Morning' host Alison Hammond, after she'd told them in a previous interview, "you would never ever get me." The Saturday night hosts took this as a challenge and created a haunted hotel especially for Alison to spend the night in. However, their scares turned out to be almost too good.
Alison was tricked into spending the night at the Speech House Hotel, a former 17th-century hunting lodge in the Forest of Dean. She was there under the guise that she would be filming there the next day for 'This Morning'. Dec explained, "there is no VT, it's just a ploy to get Alison to spend the night here, because we're going to make her believe that this hotel is haunted."
Ant and Dec had taken over and rigged with hidden cameras, and gone to great lengths to create an eerie atmosphere at the hotel, complete with flickering lights, creepy dolls, and unsettling decor. However, Alison's intuition proved too strong, and she soon became convinced that the hotel really was haunted, even before the prank got underway.
After checking in and discovering her room was also home to a collection of eerie dolls, viewers watched as Alison was heard saying, "I'm not staying here," on the hidden cameras. After declaring moments later, "it's so haunted," she decided not to stay the night and got back in her car. This potentially signalled a premature end to the prank and caused Ant and Dec, who were watching from behind the scenes, to panic and do all they could to get her back in the building.
Once back inside the hotel, things got worse for Alison when she learnt about the ghost of a milkman that walks the hotel's corridors, and witnessed poltergeist activity right in front of her eyes over dinner. But the scariest moment was yet to come, when Alison would see the shocking apparitions of two particular cheeky, yet familiar ghosts in her bedroom.
Despite being pranked, Alison took the experience in good spirits and praised the duo for their efforts. She later tweeted: "Scariest night of my life ! So glad I didn't have to stay in the end 👻"
Although the paranormal activity that Alison encountered was staged and carefully planned, perhaps there are some genuine spooks at the Speech House Hotel. One Trip Advisor review from 2016 leads with the title, "Haunted as Hell," another reviewer says that the hotel has "a kind of haunted atmosphere."
Alison is no stranger to a haunted house, having reported for 'This Morning' from the famous Cage in Essex, and the former Tudor House Hotel, which not only featured as a haunted location in Danny Robin's podcast series, 'Uncanny', but it was also the inspiration behind the board game Cluedo.
The prank was a fitting start to the new series of 'Saturday Night Takeaway', which has become a staple of Saturday night TV since its launch in 2002. Over the years the award-winning duo have pranked the likes of Richard Madeley, Aled Jones, Simon Cowell, Mark Wahlberg, and Gino D'Acampo.
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