Haunted Hotel Key Tag Place Cards

Eighteen place cards on three letter sheets, each shaped like the brass key tag a hotel room key used to hang from. Every tag has the room number, a line for the guest’s name and a hole for twine. They go with the Haunted Hotel party blueprint and the Haunted Hotel invitation.

Why a Key Tag

Old hotel room keys hung from a key check, a numbered tag. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum has one: a brass token for room #33 from a hotel at Van Horne, Iowa, on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul line, 3 3/4 by 2 9/16 inches (Smithsonian). It belonged to Owney, the mail clerks’ dog, who according to the museum “was presented with more than one thousand baggage claim tags, hotel key checks, tokens, badges, coins, buttons and other trinkets” (Smithsonian). These tags are printed at that height, 3.75 inches, in a shape of our own.

The Numbers

• Sheet 1: rooms 1 to 6
• Sheet 2: rooms 7 to 12
• Sheet 3: rooms 14 to 18, and Number 13

There’s no Room 13 in the run. That’s the hotel in M. R. James’s “Number 13” (1904): the landlord’s board lists no room 13, and yet his guest keeps finding a door with that number on it. The one Number 13 tag is for an empty place at the table, and it carries a line from the story, “There was no Number 13 at all,” checked against the Project Gutenberg text. Its name line reads “Reserved for.” Leave it blank, or write in whoever you like.

For up to 17 guests, print all three sheets. For fewer, skip the high numbers but keep the 13.

Cutting and Hanging

Print at actual size. There’s no crop mark: cut around the outer edge of each tag with scissors, then punch out the printed circle at the top with a 1/4-inch hole punch. Thread twine through the hole and tie on a skeleton key, then lay the key across the guest’s plate or hang the tag on the back of the chair. Write names in dark ink on the brass of the dark version, or in black on the light one.

At the party the tags can hang on a board behind the check-in table, the way a hotel office kept its keys, and each guest takes theirs on arrival. The Halloween table setting ideas cover the rest of the table.

The Hotel Latecomer is an invented name, and the tags carry no real hotel’s name or mark.