Samuel L. Jackson is happy to check in when it comes to hotel horror stories. "Last year, I went to South Africa, and when I checked in the guy didn't ask for a credit card. He asked me to sign a release. I said, 'Why, man?' He said, 'Well, a hotel guest was eaten by wild animals walking from dinner back to his room. Anything could happen.' I said, 'That's very bad!' "

As it turns out, John Cusack has a similar story.

"I was also at a game reserve in South Africa. They said, 'Mr. Cusack, we have to make sure you go to your room with a guard. Some woman went to change her heels the other night and got eaten. The animals live around the hotel.' I guess the moral is: It's pretty dangerous to change your shoes."

Cusack and Jackson also share a hotel-hell experience in their latest film, "1408," which is based on a short story by Stephen King. Cusack plays a man who writes books about haunted places. He's skeptical about most of them, but a postcard intrigues him and he sets off to check into Room 1408 at New York's Dolphin Hotel.

Jackson plays the hotel manager, who advises him not to go into the room. "Most people don't last an hour," he says.

At first, Cusack is fine in the 14th-floor suite, but then the window slams shut, the doorknob breaks off, the clock goes kaflooey and he starts seeing ghosts.

Cusack says he took the movie for one simple reason: "I thought it would be cool to be in a poster with Sam Jackson."

Kidding aside, Cusack wasn't sure if he was sold on the idea of doing a movie where he's basically trapped in a hotel room.

"I think I had Stockholm Syndrome, where the room actually did keep me captive," Cusack says. "There were a few scenes in the movie where I'm out of the room and there are extras. All I could think was: 'Gotta get back into the room. Gotta get back into the room where it's safe and awful and I'll get tortured.' It made more sense than dealing with people.

"But all in all, it was a pretty fun acting exercise," Cusack says. "This piece was very ambitious, and I didn't know if I could pull it off."

Cusack relied on a few creepy experiences in his own life.

"I remember when I was 12, I went with my parents from Chicago to Nantucket to visit some cousins," Cusack says. "And 'The Shining' had come out and it was already a classic. I snuck into a revival house at 6 o'clock and had to walk back to this cottage where we were staying.

"When I got out, it was night and I had to walk down a winding road. That was the scariest walk home ever," he says. "I thought I heard Jack Nicholson around the corner of every bush."

But Cusack still became a quick fan of Stephen King.

"That was my first entry into Stephen King. Then I saw 'Carrie' and read The Stand in one sitting over a whole night. Couldn't put it down. I think he's underrated as a writer. Everyone dismisses his literary talent because he's so pop culture. I think he's damn good."

The new movie does allow Jackson one trademark line with his favorite cuss word -- which peeves Cusack. "I was actually pissed off about that," Cusack says. "I was getting tortured in this room for 13 weeks. All you want to do is just swear. F---. S---. But they give it to Sam."

Jackson says, "I got the two swears because I get the cool lines. I got 'evil f---ing room.' That was the T-shirt line."

Cusack says the ghostly theme of the movie wasn't hard for him to buy because he is a believer in the paranormal.

"I thought one of the fun things about the piece was King wrote a cynical character who dares the devil to come show himself. Secretly, he wanted to have proof of another world. The guy I play is a paranormal debunker, but he's also screaming, 'Show me!'

"I wouldn't be that cynical," Cusack says. "I think there is definitely stuff going on beyond our sense. I start where this character in the film ends up. I think there is definitely much more than meets the eye."

Jackson can go one better.

"I grew up in Tennessee, where I was told ghost stories by my grandfather," he says. "There was one lady in my neighborhood who we would go to when we got hurt and couldn't afford a doctor. We called her the root lady and she put all this stinky stuff on you to get you well. She put the herbs on you, kill a chicken and she'd do things with the head and feet.

"There were also people in our neighborhood who we saw long after they were dead," he says. "There was that lady who used to call up your mother and say you did wrong. But she was dead. And you weren't the only person who saw her."

Jackson says he has had other strange experiences. "I heard a school bus turned over and if you'd go there you would hear the kids crying and hear the tires screeching. Sure enough, I went there and you could hear it," he says. "There are a lot of things we just can't explain."

From his onscreen tough-guy roles in movies like "Pulp Fiction" and "Snakes on a Plane," Jackson seems pretty fearless.

"I'm quite the opposite of fearless," he says. "I'm the guy who sits in the horror movie and says, 'Don't go in the dark room!' "

He's also a little skittish in his own home.

"Let's say I'm home alone in Beverly Hills. My house is big enough that if I hear something down the hall, I'll sit in my room and say, 'Oh, well. I'm not going down that hallway alone.' I might set an alarm. And I do have a gun. I will take my gun out and sit on the bed.

"Don't just pop in my room," he advises.

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on CHICAGO Sun-Times