“The Vanishing Lady,” also known as “The Vanishing (or Disappearing) Hotel Room,” or simply, “The Foreign Hotel,” is an urban or contemporary legend in Anglo-American literature and culture that can be traced to the late nineteenth century. The most common variant of this tale recounts the trials of a young British woman and her ailing mother as they arrive in a foreign city, typically Paris, alone and without knowledge of the local language. However, there are variations in which the women are not related but are merely traveling companions.
Upon their arrival they find Paris crowded with festivities for the opening of the World Exposition. Consequently, the women consider themselves lucky to quickly find lodging in a respectable hotel. Once the women have checked into the hotel and settled into their hotel room, the mother falls gravely ill. Her daughter summons the hotel physician, who upon examining the elderly mother, decrees that she must have a specific medicine. The medicine cannot be obtained from the local chemists but only from the physician’s own home, which is located on the opposite side of Paris. The physician claims not to have a telephone and urges the young woman not to trust a messenger. Instead, the doctor provides the daughter with an instructive letter to his wife, detailing the situation and ordering the medication, and sends her to fetch the medication herself. The daughter must then traverse the busy city, a journey that reportedly takes considerable time as either the coachman is inept, the city streets are crowded, or both.
Once the daughter arrives at the physician’s home, his wife prepares the medication. Again, this process takes considerable time. The return journey to the hotel is equally prolonged. Once the young woman arrives at the hotel, she is dismayed to discover that the hotel staff insists that she is not a guest at their establishment. The lady simply vanishes.
In some versions, neither the hotel clerk nor the hotel doctor recognizes the young woman. In other versions, the clerk and doctor are not the same people the young woman originally spoke to, but in many they are the same people the young woman recognizes. The clerk insists that the hotel room she claims is occupied by another guest. When she asks to see the hotel registry, she is shocked to discover that neither she nor her mother are recorded as guests.
Common to most versions, the young woman is then forced to live out her life in a mental institution. However, in some variants the young woman finds a friend in a new acquaintance, who is also British. Her newfound champion, despite all contrary evidence, believes her tale and undertakes to solve the mystery. His faith in the young woman is confirmed when he manages to glimpse the room the young woman insisted she checked into. The woman’s description of the hotel room is a complete match. The young man’s investigation finally reveals that the mother died of a plague (sometimes the black plague, sometimes smallpox, sometimes cholera), and the hotel—and occasionally even the entire city—conspired to cover up the illness for fear that news of the illness would spread and cause a panic, ruining the hotel’s—and even the city’s—reputation.
In yet other versions, the young woman is aided by a police officer who finally tells the young woman that her mother’s illness and death were concealed from her so as to preserve the reputation of the city. When the young woman asks to see her mother’s grave, the policeman admits that the grave is unmarked.
Numerous attempts have been made to trace the origins of the Vanishing Lady. Among the earliest, Alexander Woollcott alluded to this tale several times, first in his column in The New Yorker (1929) and later in his book While Rome Burns (1934). Woollcott himself sought earlier versions from column writers, including Karl Harriman, who wrote for the Detroit Free Press and published a version of “The Vanishing Lady” in 1898 or 1899. Woollcott also reports in While Rome Burns that a version of “The Vanishing Lady” was published in the London Daily Mail in 1911. It also appeared in Marie Belloc Lowndes’s The End of Her Honeymoon (1913). Most recently, Bonnie Taylor-Blake and Garson O’Toole (2010) have attempted to trace the origins of the tale. They were able to find examples of “The Vanishing Lady” that precede Belloc Lowndes’s novel. There was a story in the Chicago Daily Tribune (1912). There were also two versions of “The Vanishing Lady” that appeared in the 1890s, but they are not attributed to Harriman. One version, “Porch Tales: The Disappearance of Mrs. Kneeb,” was published in 1898 and attributed to Kenneth Herford. Taylor-Blake and O’Toole argue that Herford is a pseudonym for Harriman. An earlier version appeared in 1897 titled “Dropped out of Existence: A Strange and True Mystery of the French Capital.” The Philadelphia Inquirer published an identical version that claims that the events of the story are true, and that the author was acquainted with the persons in the tale. Such claims are one of the classic elements of an urban legend.
While “The Vanishing Lady” is no longer transmitted orally, it remains culturally relevant through its adaption into popular culture, as seen in novels and films, including Marie Belloc Lowndes’s The End of Her Honeymoon (1913), Lawrence Rising’s She Who Was Helena Cass (1920), and Ernest Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring (1928). More recent adaptations include Alvin Schwartz’s “Maybe You Will Remember” in Scary Stories 3. Similar films include Hitchcock’s famous The Lady Vanishes (1938) and So Long at the Fair (1950). More recently the story was adapted for television as a “true story” on the Fox program Beyond Belief (2002). Such retellings keep the tale in the cultural imagination.
Amanda L. Anderson
See also Conspiracy Theories; Runaway Grandmother, The; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith. 1996. Contemporary Legend: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1981. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meaning. New York: W. W. Norton.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2012. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Updated and Expanded Edition. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Hobbs, Sandy. 2006. “Disappearance and Denial: A New Look at a Legend Motif on the Screen.” FOAFTALE News 65 (August): 1–6. http://www.folklore.ee/FOAFtale/ftn65.pdf. Accessed October 17, 2015.
Taylor-Blake, Bonnie, and Garson O’Toole. 2010. “On the Trail of the Vanishing Lady.” FOAFTALE News 76 (September): 8–12. http://www.folklore.ee/FOAFtale/ftn76.pdf. Accessed October 17, 2015.
Woollcott, Alexander. 1934. While Rome Burns. New York: Viking.
Vanishing Lady—Primary Document
W. L. Steward, “A Page of Secret History” (1908)
Nothing lends more credence to urban legends than their perpetuation by major news sources. Just as the Internet today produces hundreds of hoaxes, so too did newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century. The vanishing lady motif was among the most common urban legends of this era in both British and American sources, reflecting the cultural interest in the personal lives of the rich and their journeys abroad, as well as the xenophobia common during that time. The author of this piece cites his source as a British secret service agent, thus alluding to the murky world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century secret diplomacy. The use of such a mysterious source is the hallmark of such conspiracy theories, as it makes it impossible to disprove or confirm their veracity.
(The following story contains the actual facts of one of the most extraordinary disappearances that has ever occurred, and until the publication of this story the facts were only known to the few people concerned. The names, of course, have been altered.)
We were spending a beautiful July night at the Franco-British Exhibition. Seated, as we were on the green lawn of the Garden Club, we could placidly enjoy our after-dinner coffee and cigars and watch the ever-changing crowd passing in front of us.
I was the guest of Hugh Thompson, half newspaper and half (but let it only be whispered) Secret Service Agent. On many occasions, although the service was, of course, never officially recognized, he had rendered estimable service to the British Government, and knew more secrets of the inner workings of Continental diplomacy than many a Foreign Office official.
“I suppose I am at liberty to tell the story now,” he was saying, “although had it been known a few years back the consequences would have been serious.”
I lit a fresh cigar and settled down in my chair expectantly.
He commenced:—
Probably you know this Franco-British Exhibition is the largest Europe has ever seen; but, large as it is, it does not involve the huge financial responsibility of the great Paris Exposition of 1900. The “White City” before us is the work of private enterprise; but the great show of Paris was the work of not only Paris but the whole of France.
…
You may or may not remember that Paris even went so far as to build special hotels to accommodate the enormous number of foreign visitors, who were expected from all over the world, and many, anticipating the crush, booked their rooms months ahead, so as to secure accommodation.
Amongst the latter were an American lady and her two daughters, who were coming from Baltimore. They had arranged to travel across the Atlantic to Havre and to arrive in Paris on the eve of the Exhibition.
The hotel at which they had booked their rooms, although not one of the best-known in the city, was yet very select, and not very far from the fashionable Rue Vivoli. They travelled by the “boat special” and drove straight to their hotel, arriving about nine in the evening. On entering the vestibule they were received by the manager, who welcomed them with the usual affability of a true Parisian, and they were asked to register their names in the hotel register.
…
The mother had been given a bedroom on the second floor, and the two girls a room on the third floor. The daughters decided to see their mother into bed. They entered the room and sat down. While their mother was undressing, they noticed the French wooden bedstead, the pattern of the wall-paper, and commented upon the pictures on the wall.
…
Sharp to the minute of half-past nine the following morning they were down in the hall anxious to set out and enjoy the opening of the Exhibition. Five minutes, ten minutes passed, but the mother did not appear, and at a quarter to ten the girls got impatient….
The younger daughter flew upstairs, and, with a hasty knock at the door, entered the room in which they had seen their mother to bed the night before. But she stood aghast. Surely this was the room. It was the same number, and yet the bed had not been slept in. The wall paper was a different colour, and the pictures were different.
She hastily retreated downstairs and told her sister.
“Oh rubbish … You’ve made a mistake. Let’s make certain,” and she went to the hotel bureau and asked for the clerk at the office what number they had given their mother the previous night.
“I beg your pardon, m’selle. I do not understand you. You two young ladies came here alone last night.”
…
All this time I had been listening to Thompson’s narrative without a word. The whole story seemed so fantastic that I sat spell-bound, but I could not repress an exclamation.
“What in the name of creation had happened to the mother then?” I asked.
…
“You will remember I mentioned she went to bed feeling unwell. That was about half-past nine. About two in the morning the night porter was startled by hearing a continuous and violent ringing of the bell in her bedroom. He hastened upstairs and knocked. All he could hear were groans proceeding from the room. Without much more ado he entered the room and, to his horror, he saw a woman writhing on the bed.
…
The manager told him to go to the telephone and ring up the nearest doctor, who arrived in a few minutes. Together they went into the bedroom. The woman was quite still now, and the doctor made a hasty examination, and recoiled with horror.
…
“Do you know what this is? It will ruin the Exhibition—ruin Paris. It is a case of black plague. She is dead.”
…
“Wait here,” said the doctor. “I am going down to the chief of the police.” In half an hour he returned with that official, who was accompanied by six subordinates. Quickly they went to work. The body was disinfected and removed to be interred in quicklime on the outskirts of the city. With silent shoes on their feet others removed the pictures, and re-made the bed.
Source: Steward, W. L. “A Page of Secret History.” The Star [Christchurch, New Zealand], October 10, 1908.