Carol Doyle

"I lost something once dear to me. Now all I have is memories of the past. Of better times..."

Carol Doyle is the mysterious woman in Room 301 of the Grand Hotel who asks Alex Shepherd to find and return her "memories", which are photos of three different locations, being Lakeside Amusement Park, Alchemilla Hospital, and Toluca Lake.

Once Alex has found all of these, upon return, she gives Alex a key he needs to progress through a locked door. Although she is never seen, she has a soothing voice and seems to be very sad.

Documents scattered throughout the Grand Hotel reveal that Carol is the widow of the late Clayton Doyle, an employee of the Grand Hotel. It's heavily implied that while he was dying of an unnamed illness, she had an affair with Sam Bartlett.

Her mentioning that she "lost something dear" and desire for photos of better times suggests that she mourns the death of her late husband. Her hiding herself in the dark also suggests shame and guilt for being unfaithful to him.

Trivia

 * Carol can be considered to be a female version of Ernest Baldwin.
 * Her first name "Carol" may allude to her tendency to sing.
 * Her last name "Doyle" is likely a reference to the author Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote The Lost World, which is the in-universe basis for the Air Screamer.


 * The song that Carol is humming to herself is the song "Wiegenlied" ("Lullaby") by Johannes Brahms.
 * Carol has the key to Room 306, though it is unknown how she got it and how she knew about it in the first place. Perhaps it was the room where Sam and herself would stay together. Room 306 also contained a valuable part of Alex's past (being Joshua), so perhaps Carol also had some valuable or memorable times of her own in there.
 * It is possible that Carol may had been deceased, therefore making her a lingering spirit when speaking to Alex. This is supported by the postcards suggesting she had fallen very ill, the fact Alex never sees Carol, and, most importantly, her difficulty with remembering important things and her remaining in the hotel. In the paranormal realm, it is a very illustrious claim that when one dies with a heavy sin (such as her affair with Sam while her husband was sickly), he/she is confined to where this sin was committed and can only recall the pain that it caused. Carol states that she cannot remember who left her in the hotel, nor can she recall without difficulty what her precious items were. It is also unusual to find a human in a building as decrepit as the Grand Hotel, especially in the Fog World.
 * Although Carol's voice actress is uncredited, she sounds very similar to Elizabeth Lambert, who portrayed Margaret Holloway and Lillian Shepherd.

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