Room 322 at the ZaZa Hotel in Houston

What mystery lies behind room 322 of the ZaZa Hotel in Houston? Let’s start by saying that the number 322 itself recalls a Yale secret society, Skull & Bones, which carries it in its emblem beneath the skull and crossbones.

It is one of the oldest, founded in 1832, and many important and powerful people have been members, such as former US president George W. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State John Kerry. The society is full of esoteric rituals and symbols kept well hidden, partly reconstructed by the press over the years, also thanks to accounts from people who say they were members.

Besides the number 322, the room holds several images of skulls. Is that enough to connect the two? On the internet, of course, for many it is.

How it started

How was the myth of room 322 born? It all began in February 2013 with a post on the famous forum reddit.com, in the Houston section, titled roughly “ZaZa insiders question: what’s up with room 322?”. The user said that a colleague on a business trip had stopped at the hotel, which they often used, but found it fully booked.

The colleague was then given, as an emergency, room 322. Once inside he noticed it was not like the other rooms: to begin with, the floor was not tiled, just bare concrete, and it was much smaller, about a third of the size of the other rooms. But the oddities don’t end there:

there were other very strange details, such as a bed with chains fixed to the wall, several images of skulls, unsettling paintings and two exposed brick walls, one of them with a mirror set into it that looked like a two-way mirror. Could the rest of the room be hidden behind that mirror?

When he called the front desk, the clerk reportedly told him that room “isn’t supposed to be rented”, apologized and moved him to another room.

After this experience the doubts went online, where you can see the photos taken in the room. An alleged exchange of messages with the hotel also circulated, visible at this link, in which the hotel supposedly offered 1,000 dollars to remove the posts and photos from the internet. It must be said, however, that this exchange was never confirmed, and none of the papers that covered the case ever verified it.

A media case

The story went viral within days: Boing Boing covered it, describing the room as a sort of voyeuristic “dungeon”, as did Vice and several local papers, which called the hotel about it. The staff replied that “they would call back”, which they did only after the first articles about the room had been published.

The answer came from Kyra Coots, the hotel’s head of e-marketing. The explanation was that 322 is one of their themed suites, called “Hard Times”, which in slang means time spent in prison. According to the spokeswoman the room cost about 180 dollars a night, and the president of the owning company had even lived there for a couple of months, five days a week.

In reality the room has little to do with a prison, and it was not listed among the themed rooms on their website. After several stories were published, the hotel added 322 to its themed rooms, with a prison theme, precisely. That timing led many to suspect the whole thing was a viral marketing stunt, a hypothesis Vice also raised.

A theme that clashes a bit with the other special rooms and their romantic themes, such as the “Geisha room”, “C’est la vie”, “Casablanca” or “Villa Champagne”. Later, though, it was removed and to this day it does not appear on the Houston ZaZa Hotel website.

The mystery returns

In 2019 the case resurfaced thanks to a video by the YouTube channel Barely Sociable, which retraced the whole story and revived the darkest theories. In a new Reddit thread, a user claiming to work at the hotel commented that 322 is simply the room the owners use when they stay there. This too, however, is an anonymous account.

What remains is the official themed-room version, never truly convincing to those who saw it, and a handful of details, chains, mirrors and skulls, on which the internet has built everything: from Skull & Bones rituals to rooms for private meetings of wealthy guests.

What is the secret of this room? Are secret rituals held there? Or is it just a tasteless suite that became a legend?

Sources

• Reddit r/houston, the original post (2013)
• Houston Press, Does Hotel ZaZa have a creepy hidden room?
• Vice, Houston Hotel ZaZa’s Room 322 has got the internet freaking out
• Swamplot, Room 322 isn’t an expensive bondage dungeon (22 February 2013)
• The Daily Dot, Room 322 mystery
• Texas Monthly, Hotel ZaZa Houston