ALPENA (WWJ) – A group of seven senior women have filed a lawsuit against Airbnb and the owners of a Northern Michigan home where they say they were subjected to what their attorney calls “a scene from a Halloween horror movie”
The women were renting an old Victorian style home in Alpena nicknamed "The Castle" to celebrate their 50th high school reunion in late July, according to a lawsuit filed this weekend by Marko Law, PLLC.
The women had already been at the home for three days on July 26 when they went to their bedrooms for the night. Shortly after they turned out the lights, two of the women staying in the large turret room “saw a dark shape darting around the room,” according to the lawsuit.
They both screamed and ran to the hallway. They slammed the door shut and sealed the door frame with blankets.
The lawsuit says the women laughed it off, “thinking that one rogue bat had somehow made it into the home.”
But as the women convened outside their bedrooms, another bat came screeching down the hallway. It went up one stairwell and down the back stairs to the kitchen.
“Then another… and then another… and then another,” a press release from the law firm said.
The women ran to the stairwell, but found it “consumed with bats” so they “scrambled for any bed that was close by and blocked doors with window sashes, towels, and pillows.”
The women “cowered underneath their covers” as more and more bats began entering the living quarters. The lawsuit says the bats were coming down the old lathe walls and entering through the gaps in the baseboards.
“The night was littered with screams that could be heard from one room, then the next, then the next,” the lawsuit said, noting the women felt trapped.
Some of the women were bitten and others were hit by flying bats. After the ordeal the women were instructed to undergo a series of rabies vaccinations.
Officials say “the horror only ended when dawn broke and the bats retreated to their roost in the attic.”
An exterminator who was called to the home found a large colony of Michigan Brown Bats living in the attic with “multiple inches of bat guano caking the floor.” They also found bat urine running down the basement walls, according to the lawsuit.
The suit claims Airbnb”negligently allowed the bat infested home to be advertised on its platform” and that the homeowners and those in charge of maintenance “had a responsibility to ensure that the home was safe when renting it.”
“This is every renter’s worst nightmare,” Attorney Jon Marko said, per a press release. “What was supposed to be a fun vacation turned into a house of horror for my clients. No one expects to be attacked by a horde of bats. This played out like a scene from a Halloween horror movie.”