Flight attendant checks into hotel. Then a man in a collared shirt knocks on her door: ‘We don’t have anyone from maintenance working tonight’

Staying in hotels is a pretty mundane thing for frequent travelers. Most stays blend together without much thought. But occasionally, guests may experience something genuinely unsettling that sticks in their memory.

One flight attendant says a single overnight stay did exactly that. And her story only got stranger.

‘We don't have anybody working maintenance tonight'

Flight attendant Chelsea (@fivetenflying) shared a multi-part story from a personal hotel stay a year ago. Her videos have collectively accumulated more than 135,000 views.

Chelsea said she checked into a reputable, unremarkable hotel near an airport, and the system assigned her room 317. At check-in, the front desk clerk asked if Chelsea would prefer a room farther from the elevators. Chelsea brushed off the question, since she wasn't picky about room location.

“I go up to my room, everything seems normal, I do my nighttime skincare routine,” Chelsea said. “Then around 10:30 at night, I get a knock on my door and I look through the peephole. And it's a guy with a collared shirt, like a polo, and what looks to be a toolbox … I was like, okay, this guy must be for the hotel.”

Chelsea said the man identified himself as a maintenance worker, responding to a report about her door. Chelsea said she hadn't made any such report, and that her deadbolt was working fine. The man said he was “just making sure” and walked off.

About 20 minutes later, the front desk called to ask whether someone from maintenance had come by and, more importantly, whether Chelsea had let him in. When Chelsea said no, the clerk sounded “relieved.”

“She said, ‘That's good, because we don't have anybody working maintenance tonight,'” Chelsea said. “So I'm like, ‘Okay, then who was that guy?' And she says she doesn't know. And so she told me to lock my door and to like call if … he comes knocking.”

The morning after: ‘Did he come back?'

At checkout the next morning, the front desk clerk asked Chelsea, “Did he come back?” In a follow-up video, Chelsea said the clerk confirmed a previous guest in the same room had reported an identical incident weeks earlier: A man claimed to be “maintenance,” there was no actual maintenance request on file, and no one had any idea who the man was.

When Chelsea asked why the hotel kept assigning guests to that room regardless, the clerk said the hotel had checked the lock and found nothing wrong with it. She confirmed the previous guest had also seen the man standing outside her door. Chelsea asked to speak to a manager, agreeing to let him call her.

“Once I'm in the airport, I actually get a call … from the manager,” Chelsea said. “He apologizes and told me that they were going to review the security footage … Then he asked me something weird. He said, ‘Did you happen to leave anything in your room?'”

After Chelsea said no, the manager told her housekeeping found a key card in room 317 after she checked out. It wasn't hers. It was a master key card, and according to the manager, hotel records showed it had been used to open her room's door at 2:15 a.m.

@fivetenflying follow along for the full story #scarystories ♬ Spooky, quiet, scary atmosphere piano songs – Skittlegirl Sound

What are your rights?

Security experts consistently advise guests to verify before they open their door to anyone, no matter what. Travel security consultant Carrie Pasquarello told Yahoo Travel that if someone knocks claiming to be hotel staff, guests should “verify their identity with the front desk before opening” and are “under no obligation to answer” at all.

The BBC also reported on a case in which a woman was assaulted in her hotel room. Staff had handed a room key to a man who simply claimed to be her boyfriend at the front desk. Consumer advocacy site Travelers United reported on a comparable incident at a Marriott, where staff gave a room key to a man who falsely claimed to be a sleeping guest's husband without confirming his identity first.

If something feels off to you as a hotel guest, always ask hotel staff directly what security measures—like keycard-only floor access or 24-hour camera coverage—are actually in place. And never let anyone outside of hotel staff know which hotel room you're staying in.

Buzz News has reached out to Chelsea via email.