Super 8 by Wyndham Millbury/Toledo

The desk attendant was kind and tried hard to find me a quiet room with a mini-fridge, even moving a fridge from another room. That was a challenge since rooms seemed to be missing something, often the fridge, but sometimes a chair, TV, or lamp. I was on a cross-country drive and needed sleep, yet my first room was next to a couple shouting from their room to the parking lot while a baby cried and a toddler fussed. After I asked to move, I wound up beside a friendly middle-aged former hippie and his elderly mother, who offered pumpkin bread, but their TV was loud and the walls were paper thin. The next move put me on the creepier second-floor back side, along a cat-patrolled walkway where a feral colony slipped in and out of the bushes and left messes on both levels. The place looks isolated and run-down in every direction, with abandoned buildings and broken pavement around it. At night the old Super8 sign is just a rusty shell with no glass, and the building is so dark I drove around twice before spotting the small neon Open sign. It was unsettling to see how deserted it looked and still keep landing next to noisy neighbors. A couple of men in a flatbed truck also told me it looked sketchy when they arrived. During my room tour, both smoking and non-smoking rooms smelled of smoke. Some bed covers had cigarette holes, some doors looked as if there'd been a struggle, desk drawers were broken, and a few bathrooms had cockroaches or sinks that wouldn't drain. The rooms were also missing fire and carbon monoxide alarms, which had me worrying overnight while the propane heat was on. In the morning, I saw two tidy, cheerful little girls with their grandmother. They asked politely to pet my dogs, then sat on the crumbling front step, presumably waiting for the school bus. I couldn't stop thinking that this run-down, isolated place wasn't for children. The people I encountered were pleasant, apart from the shouting couple, but the surroundings and room conditions made for a rough night. If distress and discomfort are what you're after, the price is low. You get what you pay for.

We were shown three more rooms after the first one smelled like something had died in it. Picking the least awful felt like choosing the least cursed room in a haunted house. We settled on one with a stained mattress, a clogged sink, and filthy floors. There were no chairs or fridge, and the door had no lock. There was a used rubber in the parking lot among all the rusted cars, and the stairs looked so rusty I worried a bad step could go through. My boyfriend came away with two unexplained bug bites. Not exactly the kind of free souvenirs I wanted. Stay if you like danger and mystery rashes. Otherwise, run.

Don't waste your money. The building looked awful, almost like a ghost town, and the room had barely any lighting. There wasn't even a toilet paper holder in the bathroom. They advertised a free continental breakfast, but all there was was a small muffin. It felt like a scam. Don't stay here.

I noticed several families seemed to live here, with kids running around without parents and going door to door selling rocks. There were junk cars, trash bags along the walkways, five stray cats by my count, and I saw two of them use the rock pad as a litter box. There was rubbish on the ground and junk left on the patio by maintenance. One heavier woman was walking around wearing a bra. This was the worst, dirtiest, most raggedy place I've seen, and I wish I'd checked it out before booking. I doubt there'll be any free breakfast in the morning, since they couldn't even provide a fork for my ramen cup. The location was hard to find, with no signs to guide you. The desk clerk was nice, though. We had a king bed with just two flat pillows. The floor was dirty, the room smelled, and the towels were so thin they felt like cheesecloth. I bought ramen cups behind the counter and asked for a plastic fork, but the clerk said they didn't have any. The washer leaked all over the floor when I did laundry. I went to tell maintenance and found him sitting in the shop, drinking a beer and looking at his phone. He stumbled when he came out and seemed clearly drunk. He told me to leave the water because it'd be fine, but didn't clean it up, so I put up a wet floor sign myself.