Whelp, it’s Friday the 13th, folks.

Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, because the travel gremlins are messin’ with errbody out there!

Take this gem from my fellow editor Sid Lipsey:  He and his wife decided to extend their stay in Miami after a Caribbean cruise. When they arrived at a last-minute cheapy hotel for the night, the elevator opened… and was filled with blood. “Dripping, literally dripping!” Seriously. The front desk clerk’s response to this Shining moment? “Well, it’s Friday night…”

More in the blood-boiling than blood-dripping realm, Executive Editor Laura’s plane recently got diverted to a tiny town in Illinois town requiring her to take a $130 cab to Chicago… which turned into $170… which turned into $200… at 2am. And her bags? Well, thanks to a full overhead (#CarryOnShame, people!), she had to gate-check her carry-on so it remained in the belly of the plane. To arrive… let’s not even talk about it.

And let’s not talk about that other time she ate some bad meat before a 11-hour flight from Buenos Aires. 

Or when Associate Editor Greg narrowly escaped being conscripted into the Syrian army.  

Or that one time I had a flip-flop stolen — ONE flip-flop! — from outside an internet cafe in Laos. Good luck finding a size 12 replacement most anywhere in Asia, let alone a jungle village. Going barefoot through rocky, muck-strewn streets sure was fun. 

What about you, travelers? What horror has happened on the road? What creepiness has crept into your vacation plans? What’s your best bad luck travel story? 

Tell us below in the comments and the best will be part of a group therapy sesh at a later date.

(Photos: Planes, Trains and Automobiles via Giphy)

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