Two-way mirrors and blank walls: Popular theories about children disappearing in hotels

“You are being watched at the hotel” – this is the thought that haunts many travelers, who instead of sunscreen put sensors in their luggage to check the double mirrors, locks and walls in their rooms. For several weeks now, videos have appeared on Instagram* of tourists finding bugs, hidden cameras, empty walls and secret doors in their rooms. And even without the terrifying true stories of children disappearing, we can classify this as another urban legend and horror story to increase the number of views.

According to statistics, every year, about eight million children go missing worldwide. For example, last year there was an incident in Florence – a child was taken from a hotel in a suitcase. And in 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann was kidnapped from her bed. It is noteworthy that in none of the cases that we will discuss later is it proven exactly how the thieves managed to get into the room. This is where theories arose that the kidnappers followed the children through a two-way mirror and sneaked into the room unnoticed using secret doors.

In this article we will recall the most discussed cases of disappearances of children in hotels.

On June 10, 2023, Cataleya Chicllo, a five-year-old girl, the daughter of Peruvian immigrants, disappeared from the Astor Hotel in Florence. That season, the hotel was completely occupied by families of illegal refugees, and the area where it was located became the city’s crime center. There were occasional showdowns and fights on the streets here, robberies and attacks on both locals and tourists. Nevertheless, Kata lived in this hotel with her mother and younger brother. On that unfortunate day when the girl was kidnapped, she was completely alone in the room. As neighbors recall, Kataleya was often alone; her mother would lock her in her room and only return in the evening.

On the day Cataleya disappeared, none of the adults saw any strangers in the hotel. The girl’s disappearance was noticed by her mother when she came home from work in the evening. Surprisingly, there were no signs of forced entry into the room; it was as if the thief had suddenly appeared. Later, the police put forward a theory that the girl had been taken out of the hotel in a suitcase. However, there were no cameras in the hotel area, and all the guests who were near the exit at the time unanimously assured that they had not seen anything suspicious.

The girl’s father has put forward a theory that the hotel management may have had a hand in the kidnapping of his daughter. They say that the whole operation was carefully planned by a group of people, including hotel representatives. Otherwise, how else could the kidnappers have entered the room and left the hotel with the child without being noticed? Some of those who are still following the investigation are sure that the father’s speculations are not unfounded. This is where the theories about the double mirrors and blank walls that could hide the back door of the building come from.

The story of Madeleine McCann is perhaps one of the most famous unsolved missing child cases. On May 3, 2007, a three-year-old girl disappeared in the small Portuguese village of Praia de Luz in the south of the country. She was literally kidnapped from her bed, where the other children of the McCann family, twins Sean and Amelie, were sleeping. On that vacation, their parents, Kate and Jerry, put their children to bed every evening around seven o’clock and went out to have dinner with friends at a very nearby restaurant; there was no need to go to the city. Just walk out the back door of the house, down the street, and walk around the pool. That’s what happened on that terrible evening – the McCanns went to dinner for the penultimate dinner of this vacation, but at the same time, every half hour, they took turns returning to their rooms to check if everything was okay with the children.

At around 10pm, Kate McCann was approaching the children’s bedroom when the door slammed shut due to a draft. When she opened it, she saw that the window was wide open and her three-year-old daughter Madeleine was not there.

After 15 minutes, the police arrived at the scene. It was known for sure that the abduction had taken place in the last half hour, since the children were visited by their father at around 9:30 pm and no suspicious circumstances were noticed. The search did not lead to any results, and after a few months, parents Kate and Jerry became the main suspects. It was alleged that the DNA of three-year-old Madeleine was found in the trunk of a rented car. However, all charges against them were dropped, as the amount of genetic material found was not enough to conduct a proper study. 17 years have passed since Madeleine’s disappearance, but the investigation has not solved the girl’s disappearance.

The story of the McCann family, by the way, was also the subject of the Netflix documentary “The Mysterious Disappearance of Madeleine McCann”, in which the film crew conducted its own investigation. The filmmakers do not give a clear assessment of what happened that evening throughout the eight episodes, but they also consider the participation of the hotel owners as one of the versions. They say that at that time the Praia de Luz resort became a transit point for drug trafficking from Morocco to European countries. Therefore, it is possible that one of the hotel employees helped the kidnappers enter the room without being noticed, knowing when the parents would not be there.

Meanwhile, last year, Polish woman Julia Wendell said that she was the missing Madeleine McCann. Posted on a page on a banned social network, the girl claimed evidence that she was the person who was kidnapped from a hotel room in Portugal 16 years ago. Julia showed her childhood photos and compared them with photos of Madeleine McCann. And according to her, Julia’s kindergarten teacher told the girl that she joined the group before the fall of 2007 – just after McCann disappeared. However, DNA tests showed that the girl was not who she claimed to be.

The mysterious disappearance of the children occurred in Brighton, England, at the beginning of 2023. It was learned that at least 79 refugee children had disappeared from the hotel where the Home Office had accommodated them. The children were living in the hotel without their families, so their disappearance was not immediately noticed and was not made public. According to information received from the Observer, which is investigating the disappearances, the attackers waited for the children at the entrance of the hotel, put them in cars and took them to an unknown destination.

It is believed that one of the hotel employees knew about three cases of human trafficking. They say that the attackers contacted the young people through fake accounts on social networks and accepted their offers. Meanwhile, some local media outlets claim that the children were regularly monitored through cameras in the hotel, but their recordings were not used in the investigation of the case.