The Door Won't Shut

This isn't my own story, but my Dad's, who doesn't believe in ghosts or any kind of life after death, so I am telling this story for him, as I do believe in ghosts and such, and also believe that this was an incident involving some kind of experience with life after death.

He was staying at a hotel with a work colleague and they were in separate rooms. It was separate to the rest of the hotel and I think it was the oldest part. Anyway, Dad was on one side of the corridor and his workmate was on the other. I should mention that the hotel was decorated to look older than it was - although it was already quite old anyway - which meant that the locks on the door were metal and heavier than most.

Dad was woken up in the middle of the night to the lock on the door opening. He said that he heard it click and lift open and then creak open slowly (just like in those horror movies).
He kept his nerve and walked over, looked around outside and went over to his workmate's room. He knocked on the door and his friend emerged sleepily to the door. Dad asked if anything weird had happened to him so far and he said 'No, why?' and Dad said that he had simply heard footsteps on the corridor (not true) and then went back to his own room.

He got into bed, looked around, flicked the light off and the moment his head touched the pillow the door opened again. This time he got up and checked all around the room and under his bed. He didn't find anything he could use to explain it. He decided that someone must be playing a trick and that it was just coincidence that it opened when he'd got into bed. He went outside to check that there was nobody there, but he couldn't help noticing that when he walked on the hall, the floorboards creaked loudly. This made him realize that it was impossible for someone to have come up the hallway without him hearing.

He got into bed and heard footsteps on the hallway coming from the stair towards his room. For the first time he felt quite scared, the footsteps came right up to his door, then stopped. He didn't hear anything else that night. I don't know anything else but I don't see any other explanation other than some kind of encounter with life after death.