What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

Nursing is a profession that often involves long lonely night shifts in eerie hospital wards. It's a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories. These stories often involve sightings of apparitions, strange noises, and unexplained events that are said to have taken place in hospitals, hospices, and other healthcare settings. Some of these stories are believed to be based on true events, while others are purely fictional. Regardless, they continue to captivate and intrigue both nurses and non-nurses alike - providing a spooky glimpse into the world of healthcare after dark.

I know you have seen and heard freaky things. Share your nursing ghost stories...

[Scorpio, MSN, RN]

that was beautiful that Gerald was comforted, and it also gave me the chills. God bless your grandmother for being strong through all her tragedy!

[Scorpio, MSN, RN]

i love this posting so i am bumping it back to the top! bump! : )

[laybell]

i love this posting so i am bumping it back to the top! bump! : )

where can I find this thread?? I just typed in ghost stories in the allnurses search and it came up. but I don't know what to go in to find it. I have a love hate thing going with this thread....it scares me but I can't stay away!! :crash_com

[sirI, MSN, APRN, NP]

where can I find this thread?? I just typed in ghost stories in the allnurses search and it came up. but I don't know what to go in to find it. I have a love hate thing going with this thread....it scares me but I can't stay away!! :crash_com

laybell, this is the Ghost Story thread. Just click on all the posts and read on...

[StatBlues]

I have enjoyed reading this thread.

Wish I had more to share....:typing

[sufferkate]

Aside: This is not a nursing ghost story. It's about something strange that happened to me years ago. I am not psychotic, or crazy, nor was my roommate. This is my story, as I have posted it on my blog.

I went to work in New York City during the late summer and early fall of 1995.

My brother had died in an accident the previous Easter, and I was finding it difficult to concentrate in Memphis, where so many people, it seemed, knew about it.

My roommate and I decided that we both needed a change of scene, and as she was from New Jersey, we easily secured positions at clubs in the Nanuet area.

For the term, we had rented a suite of rooms in a hotel that, although part of a chain, was rather seedy and not at all up to the usual standards of said chain. What did I care, though? I was gone from a place where everyone I ran into wanted to tell me how very, very sorry they were “to hear about Jason.”

I’d end up sobbing in the dressing room, the entire night a wash.

ASIDE:

I'm writing this from the other side of a passage of years, and although we are not in touch now, I want to stress that we were once very good friends, and that I cared about Emily a great deal.

We had been through a lot together. She was with me when I received the news about my brother, and she held me up - literally - several times over the weeks that followed.

She had witnessed some high strangeness while we lived together, and even though she wasn't comfortable with it (nor was I), she'd learned to take a lot of it in stride.

When everything was over, though, we couldn't get far enough away from one another.

RETURN:

The suite Emily and I rented was paid for by her sugar daddy, a much older man she’d met at a club in Memphis - and with the understanding that I would repay half the amount as I earned it.

It was set up so that as one entered, the bathroom door was to the immediate left, with the closet recessed in an alcove behind the door. A few steps brought you into the living room, with the bedroom area through an archway to the right. To the left, a desk and chair sat against the bathroom wall. There were three telephones in the suite. One on the desk, one on the bedside table, and the other on the table next to the sofa.

The bedroom was furnished with an armoire containing another television, a king-sized bed with a padded dressing bench at the foot, and a full length mirror. The armoire was angled so that one could see the television from the living room. There was a larger television in the living room, with a large refrigerator next to it. A microwave sat atop it.

On the night I will describe, Emily and I had been out with her friends. We had been working in N.Y. for a week, and so felt justified in taking a night off to hit the town. That had been the plan, but Emily had been taken ill right after dinner, so we returned to the suite after telling her friends good-night.

We had argued in the cab on the way back, and when she said she was going to shower, I simply nodded and said nothing. She went into the bathroom and shut the door, and I sat down on the edge of the bed. I wasn't upset with Em, because I knew she really was not feeling well, and I'd known her long enough to put aside anything she might say in anger - or sickness.

The lights were on in the living area of the suite, so I didn't turn on either of the two lamps in the bedroom. There was plenty of light to see by.

Glancing at the phone to make sure we had no pending messages, I opened the armoire doors to turn on the television. I planned to put Emily to bed as soon as she came out of the shower, and I wanted to see if there was anything on she'd like to watch.

Movement on the surface of the television screen caught my eye, and I realized that the blank, darkened screen essentially functioned as a mirror, reflecting the archway to the living room and the space beyond.

What I was seeing in the 'reflection' did not immediately register, but it seemed there was someone else in the suite with us! I spun around to look at the doorway, and the desk/chair area.

You guessed it. Nobody there.

I turned back to the television. There WAS someone standing there! A woman! A woman in a very familiar black dress, with long platinum hair. The figure stood in front of the desk, evidently in deep thought.

She looked just like me, in fact, and was wearing my favorite dress.

Even though the night had been warm - muggy, even - I suddenly felt very cold.

I kept looking at the television, and turning my head to look at the empty space where the figure stood in the reflection. I leaned in very close, thinking to change the angle and hopefully, figure out what was making me think I was seeing myself one room over.

It was still there.

Dimly, I realized that I could still hear the shower, and though I wanted to call out for Emily - to scream for her, if you want the truth - I could not make a sound. I was freezing and my teeth were clenched, and all I could manage was a choking whimper.

I wanted to run, to barricade myself in with another human being, but I could not even go to the door of the bathroom. I would have to pass right by the thing I saw in the reflection, wouldn't I?

Somehow, I knew I didn't want to catch its attention. The 'not-me' in the reflection didn't seem to be aware of the observer me, and that was a tiny relief.

Then the figure moved, pulling out the 'chair.' The real chair beyond the archway did NOT move, and that's a good thing. I don't know what I'd have done, but the mind has ways to cope with stress like that.

I think it's called 'going crazy,' and I was nearly afraid of that as I was the apparition in the reflection.

The 'not-me' walked slowly around the chair, then sat. It seemed to be studying something on the desk, but I couldn't make it out.

By then I was as close to the television screen as I could get, because that was as far away from the doorway - and the 'not-me' - that I could position myself. It occurred to me that I might be seeing a possible future, and if that were the case, 'not-me' would never know I was there.

The 'not-me' stood up from the chair and turned, facing me, although it was still looking down, as though searching for something on the floor. 'Her' hand pushed back her hair, and she slowly turned in a circle.

I watched, horrified, but fascinated. It circled the chair, still absorbed in its search.

I was terrified that 'it' was going to look up and 'see' me, and I really, really did not want that to happen. I was filled with a sense of dread, and I shut my eyes.

The room was still chilly, and I heard the shower go off. Emily would spend up to twenty additional minutes lotioning herself, combing her hair, flossing her teeth - we'd lived together for a while, so I knew her habits.

This time, the bathroom door jerked open, and she stormed right out, drying her hair with a towel.

Giving me a quizzical look, she said, "What? What? Why were you screaming my name?"

Was I? I didn't think so, although I knew I'd been screaming for her in my head for at least ten minutes.

"Just, can you come in here for a minute?" I responded. "Come sit here on the bed and look at the t.v. Then tell me what you see."

I didn't look at anything while she passed by the 'not-me.' She sat on the bed, close to my original place, and for a minute or so, Emily did not say anything. She shivered, and I noticed I could see her breath. She turned her head as well, looking back and forth several times from the screen to the archway.

Finally, she spoke. "Oh my GOD, that's YOU!"

So she saw it, too. I was momentarily relieved that I wasn't going crazy, unless Emily was meandering down the same psychotic path. I'd heard of mass hypnosis, but we'd each had one glass of red wine at dinner. Her friends finished the bottle, and it sat at the table from the moment of uncorking.

Nobody had dosed us, in other words.

"What does this mean? That IS you, isn't it? Are you somehow doing this?" Emily kept on, giving voice to the questions I wasn't calm enough to ask myself.

WAS I somehow doing this? Projecting an image of myself, like a - like some shamans can? Is this what I was capable of, in moments of emotional distress? I hoped not, but I had only read about it, and I had no idea if there was another explanation.

"I don't know," I managed. "I don't think I could do this. Let me try something."

I moved a little on the floor so that I could see 'not-me.' She was holding on to the back of the desk chair, and seemed to be - dancing? - swaying to music we couldn't hear.

Basically, I thought that if I was somehow responsible for this, I could either predict its next move, or control it. Couldn't I?

Fixing on the eidolon, I tried to make it sit down again. For a moment, nothing happened. The figure went on gently undulating to some ghostly melody. Then it walked around the chair again, and sat, palms on its knees, back ramrod-straight.

"Oh, my gawwwwd," whispered Emily. "Jesus, it's YOU - you're doing this, aren't you?"

I still did not know.

Answer the phone, I thought.

The figure stirred, and her hand went to the receiver on the desk phone. Her posture and movement was indicative of the silent 'conversation.'

Emily's face was now less than an inch from my own.

"Are. You. Doing. That?" she spat, condensation fogging the air with her every word. Her eyes were huge.

"I think so," I replied. "I don't know why this is happening, Emily, I promise," I went on. "I'm going to try to make it go away."

I peeked at the screen again. 'Not-me' was still on the 'phone.'

GOAWAYGOAWAYGOAWAY. Leave NOW. Get up and GO...out the door, or however you have to. YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE.

I kept my eyes trained on the 'not-me,' directing as much force as I could into my thoughts.

JUST GET OUT. NOW.

'Not-me' slowly lowered the phone to the cradle and stood, smoothing her dress.

"Push the chair in," I muttered through clenched teeth.

It pushed the 'chair' back under the desk, and slowly walked past the archway into the hall by the bathroom.

We waited. The room felt slightly warmer. I thought it was gone, but did not know for sure.

"Is she gone?" whispered Emily.

"I don't know. How would I know? I didn't exactly hear the door," I grated. I was fed up, and drained. We were a tableaux: A waxworks display of Damsels in Distress.

Then the phones rang. We sprang apart as though hit with a cattle prod. Emily ran one way - straight for the desk phone through the arch. I reached the bedside phone, first.

"Ye-hello?" I panted.

Silence. Not a buzz nor a click; not a hint of static.

Emily had the extension to her ear, and I could hear her breathing.

"Hello?" she tried. "Who IS this?"

"It's nobody, Em. Just put it down, it's just more weird ****," I said, cradling my own handset.

Emily, though, had had enough. She was dressing with the intensity and concentration of somebody late for work, hopping around to put her pants on; crashing into things.

"Oh no it isn't, it's somebody ******* with us!" was her explanation. "Come on, right now. We're going to the desk."

To the desk? The front desk? As though the night clerk could explain what just happened?

I thought it was a bad idea, imagining the smirking and eye-rolling on behalf of the hotel employees. Hell, if she went ballistic, we'd be thrown out - this, I knew from experience.

I couldn't let her go down there alone, though. Who knew what she might say? I grabbed my bag and followed her out the door. Too impatient to wait for the elevators, we charged down the stairs, emerging into the lobby at full speed.

Three clerks were on duty, and all three stood at the counter, heads turned to peer out the glass doors into the darkened parking lot. The doors whooshed open, then shut, again and again. For a moment, Emily and I stood on the other side of the counter, observing this strange phenomenon.

Those doors were moving far too quickly for a person to get through them without injury. What the hell was happening here? Why did the clerks look like someone goosed them?

"Uh, hi," I began. Three heads snapped around, fixing Em and me in a classic 'deer-in-headlights' gaze. Nobody said anything for a second.

I cleared my throat, and tried again.

"Some strange things are happening on the top floor, and I was wondering if there would be a way for the phones in our suite to ring without ya'll putting a call through."

There, that seemed nice and innocuous.

The doors continued to open and close off to my left. Emily had walked quite close to them, and I thought she might be trying to determine whether she could make a run for it.

The clerk licked her lips, glanced at the other two. "We're having some electrical problems right now," she finally said, eyes on the counter in front of her.

"Like this?" I indicated the doors. Three heads nodded. "Anything else?" I asked, curious.

The male clerk spoke then. "Ma'am, if you wish to exit, you should probably use that other door," and he pointed across the room, to a single, non-electric door which probably led to another part of the parking area.

Turning to me, he continued, "The elevators are malfunctioning, and the security cameras are not working properly."

For the first time, I noticed the bank of monitors beneath the top level of the counter. I leaned over to get a closer look. Two or three of the seven had gone completely black, while another seemed to be showing a recording of a couple walking up and down the second floor hall. The two would approach and pass under the camera, and a second later, would re-appear walking backwards, away from the camera. Then again, forwards, beneath the range of sight.

"These things record and play back?" I sputtered.

"No, not usually," replied the third clerk, another woman. "The tape loops to a reel in the security office, which is locked unless a guard is on premises. We save them for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then record over them. This hasn't ever happened before," she admitted.

"Is the guard here?" I asked, interested in hearing his take on the situation. The woman shook her head. "We're short-handed tonight," she said.

"Those people on the screen," I began, pointing. The monitor abruptly went black. "I was going to ask if they were current guests," I finished lamely.

Back at the counter beside me, Emily opened her mouth. I kicked her foot gently, a warning against reporting our strange 'visitor.'

"Well, we came down because the phones rang, and no one was there," I explained. "Did one of us have a telephone call within the last half hour?"

Much shaking of heads in the negative. The other woman said, "This just started happening about thirty, forty-five minutes ago. The phones haven't worked properly since then."

Now the younger woman rejoined the discussion. "Right after you came in tonight, right about then, I think." Oh, really?

"Have you called someone about this?" I asked, pointing at the doors again. Three heads nodded. Those clerks were scared, or they'd never have offered up so much information.

One of the female clerks walked back up the stairs with us, and on the way, Emily gave her a brief rundown of what we'd experienced. The clerk was well and truly freaked out by our story. However, nothing prepared the three of us for what had happened to our suite in the interim.

As we rounded the corner, I casually inquired how many guests shared the top floor with us. At the same time, I heard the unmistakable 'bzzz-click' of an electronic lock opening, and right in front of our eyes, our suite door cracked itself open an inch or two.

I halted so abruptly that Emily ran into me, and the clerk grabbed my arm to steady me. I looked at her.

"Does THAT happen often?" I asked. She shook her head and said, "I think you're the only two guests in a suite up here right now."

So! Back down to the lobby we went, returning with the male night manager and the clerk who had originally accompanied us.

This time, the suite door was firmly shut.

"I'm not going in there," Emily stated. I think we all shared that sentiment, but hey, we had Mr. Night Manager there for that very reason.

He cracked the door, then pushed it open most of the way. In the hallway, we three brave women stood together in a huddle, peering in.

The living room was trashed. Completely wrecked; lamps on the floor, furniture turned over. The microwave was also on the floor, and the fridge was on its side.

Unbelieving, I stepped forward and pushed the door open wider.

There were clothes from both our suitcases scattered everywhere. Costumes, underthings, and t-shirts hung from the sprinklers mounted on the ceiling. Worse, the lock on Emily's travel trunk had been - well, crushed - and all the designer things she was so proud of were also thrown everywhere. There was a Fendi sandal in the toilet, and the curtains over the window at the far end of the living area were torn from the mounted rods and were lying in a heap on the floor.

Emily and I stared at each other, open-mouthed.

"Was it like this when you came downstairs?" asked Mr. Night Manager, rather idiotically. Still staring around us, we shook our heads. The female clerk had entered by then, and stood there, looking shocked.

"Well, what about when the door opened the first time you came up here?" he went on.

The female clerk answered him this time. "They don't know," she snapped. "We didn't look in, we just left."

Emily had begun picking up clothing and shoes, accessories and makeup. Several small eyeshadows had been broken and scattered, then ground into the carpet.

"Who could have done this?" I asked. "Does anyone else have access to a pass-key around here?"

The clerks exchanged a look that I'd have missed if I blinked.

"No," they answered, simultaneously.

The phones rang again. We all looked at one another. Mr. Night Manager answered the phone closest to him.

"Suite ***, this is Stan." Then, "Yeah. Nope, nobody. The suite's been wrecked, though. No, probably not. Yeah, I know. Will do." He hung up, turning to face us.

"That was Lisa, down at the front. We're going to switch suites for you tonight. Do you want us to help you get your things together?"

"No, but please don't leave us here alone for another second," I blurted.

The other clerk was helping Emily toss our stuff any which way into the suitcases. Everywhere I looked, I found more broken, torn up personal items. My journal was halfway shredded, with what looked like bite marks on the cover.

"Who could have done this?" I asked again.

Nobody had an answer (not even [especially!] the police officer who took the report), but a day or so later, in the hallway leading to the fitness room, I encountered the female clerk. She wanted to talk to me, and had, in fact, been looking for me or for Emily.

We sat on the steps while she talked. What happened to Emily and me in our suite had occurred before, she thought, but not while she worked there.

She had heard things, as all old, decrepit hotels have histories, but she'd largely disregarded a lot of it as just...fantastic ghost stories. Tales, told and re-told among third-shifters to pass the boredom of another long night.

The suite we had been in was at the crux of most of the problems, she went on to tell me. As nothing had happened in her six years there, she'd assigned it without a second thought. From the moment we arrived, she said, there had been electrical malfunctions at the switchboard.

Malfunctions? Like what?

Well, such as every single line lighting up, calls coming in from rooms that were unoccupied as well as the occupied ones. Nobody was on any of the inbound lines. There was a bank of pay phones in a hallway off the lobby, and they'd ring simultaneously. The security guard had attempted to answer them, more than once.

More problems with the doors, as we'd observed from the lobby. The people we'd both seen on the monitor downstairs had not been guests at that hotel since June, she thought. There was no way to explain why they hadn't been taped over, or why that particular loop had keep repeating.

Worse, their security guard had actually quit that night. He just walked out, she explained, right before the doors started acting weird. They were still waiting for another to be assigned.

We were interrupted then by another clerk I had never seen before; an older woman who gave off the 'management' vibe. My new friend jumped up guiltily and went off with her to attend to whatever needed doing, and I went to find Emily.

We were blowing this crazy joint, hell or high water.

[sufferkate]

Here's another story, fresh from the recent Thanksgiving. This street and this house are still standing, as evidenced below:

This holiday season, nothing says 'family bonding' like finding out your little sister experienced many of the same terrifying encounters as you, in the house in which you both grew up.

We started talking about the house on Blanding Drive, and sis shared with me how she made her husband drive her over there, and once she was in the cove (it was called 'drive' but was really a 'cove'), she just lost it. She couldn't stop crying, she said.

The very same thing has happened to me, I said.

In fact, I went on, that was the house where a lot of strange things occurred.

"Did I ever tell you about the voices arguing in my room?" she asked.

My jaw dropped. She was talking about the same bedroom in which I and our mother had experienced the same phenomena!

I sat down at the kitchen table with her. "A man and a woman, was it?" I asked.

She looked stunned. "YES! You heard it too then? I thought I was crazy!"

Aside: If I had known that my little sister, as a child, was witnessing this, I'd have done something about it. Anything, I don't know. I was seventeen, she was seven. We didn't talk a whole lot back then.

"No, not crazy," I mumbled. My lips felt numb.

"So, you could hear them, too?" she asked again. Her face was all eyes; I mean, she couldn't be having me on.

"No, it was a man and a woman," I said, "and every time I get up the stairs close enough to begin to make out the words, they would stop."

She nodded. She was clutching her stomach, as though the memory made her ill.

"It was coming from that playroom dad made behind the closet," she said.

I had never thought about that. I knew that I could hear it from my first-floor bedroom, and it seemed to be coming from the area above my bed. Thinking back, I realized that it really WOULD have been situated in that quasi-playroom dad made.

"But it WAS a man and a woman, right? They'd begin in normal tones, and quickly escalate, although you couldn't hear their words," I surmised.

"Yeah," sis nodded.

"But from the room behind the closet?" I asked. Sis nodded again.

"No, I just thought it was coming from that bedroom," I said. "Although, now that you mention it..."

"What?" she wanted to know.

I made her come out into the garage for this little tale; I didn't want to risk any little ears overhearing.

On the night we moved in that house, the bedroom in question had been designated as mine. I was unpacking my closet, and re-arranging my shoes in a row on the floor, toes pointed to the wall.

At that time, there wasn't a door in the back wall, nor was there a room behind it. It was semi-finished storage space, accessible by a knee-high cubby of a door. The actual 'door' was a square that was pinned over the opening.

As I was finishing up, there was a scratching from behind this door. Bemused, thinking there was a squirrel or something behind the wall - as would be normal in this part of the south - I scratched back.

More scratching, and a gentle tapping knock followed.

I tapped back.

More tapping from the other side.

I wasn't alarmed at all by this point. I gently rapped with one knuckle ("Shave and a Haircut..."), stopping short of the last two raps ("...Two Bits!").

The thing on the other side rapped twice, slowly and deliberately.

Two. Bits.

*****

It takes a lot to scare me, but I was a teenager, and I hadn't experienced as much as I have today. I was a little frightened, but thought it could be my brother, having a bit of fun with me. I thought he may have gotten back there via the other side of the 'attic,' which was finished, but was on the same level as the two bedrooms on the second floor.

It never occurred to me that the stairs blocked this portion of the floor in, and thus, what I was surmising would be impossible.

Thinking to scare him, I pounded on the door. Hard.

Hard pounding from the other side.

I fell back from the door, suddenly feeling...observed, for lack of a better term.

I was angry, too. I'd show him!

I kicked the door as hard as I could.

The responding blow from the other side knocked that piece of board completely off the opening, but I didn't stick around to see what was on the other side. I was more than halfway down the stairs, dragging my brother by his shirt.

He had come up the stairs to see what all the pounding was about, you see, and was standing in the doorway around the time I delivered my devastating kick to the door.

"What are you DOING??!?" he yelled. I think I was out the door with him even before we heard the blow that knocked the door off the crawlspace.

I had to make our dad go up to my room and re-pin the cover on the opening. He nailed it shut, and asked nary a question.

He, too, had a story or two of his own already.

[ambersnight]

With halloween now over, does anyone have any ouija board stories?

I recently stayed at the Myrtles plantation in St. Francisville,la and was too scared to bring a ouija board. Like many, im fascinated about the idea. Please share:uhoh21:

[SmilingBluEyes]

VERY interesting topic for discussion. But since this is not nursing-related, I have to move thread to Allnurses Central area, as this is the place for such topics.

Enjoy!

[j_b_221]

I had a patient once who was dying. When I had her the previous week, she was alert and oriented but in a lot of pain and kept telling us and the doctor that she wanted to die. So when I came in that night she had declined and been put on a morphine drip. She was pretty much only responsive to pain and her son was there for the night. She started having periods of apnea where she would stop breathing for like 30 seconds-1 min. and then all of a sudden she would take a huge breath and open her eyes and start saying very loudly "MOMMY!, MOMMY!, MOMMY!". I was in the room and her son and I just looked at each other at the same time. I was trying not to let it show that I was freaked out! He just said, well, we can't begin to know what all she is going through right now. She continued doing this off and on for a couple of hours and then she died. That remains to be the scariest death I have ever seen.

[laybell]

As we rounded the corner, I casually inquired how many guests shared the top floor with us. At the same time, I heard the unmistakable 'bzzz-click' of an electronic lock opening, and right in front of our eyes, our suite door cracked itself open an inch or two.

I halted so abruptly that Emily ran into me, and the clerk grabbed my arm to steady me. I looked at her.

"Does THAT happen often?" I asked. She shook her head and said, "I think you're the only two guests in a suite up here right now."

So! Back down to the lobby we went, returning with the male night manager and the clerk who had originally accompanied us.

This time, the suite door was firmly shut.

"I'm not going in there," Emily stated. I think we all shared that sentiment, but hey, we had Mr. Night Manager there for that very reason.

He cracked the door, then pushed it open most of the way. In the hallway, we three brave women stood together in a huddle, peering in.

The living room was trashed. Completely wrecked; lamps on the floor, furniture turned over. The microwave was also on the floor, and the fridge was on its side.

Unbelieving, I stepped forward and pushed the door open wider.

There were clothes from both our suitcases scattered everywhere. Costumes, underthings, and t-shirts hung from the sprinklers mounted on the ceiling. Worse, the lock on Emily's travel trunk had been - well, crushed - and all the designer things she was so proud of were also thrown everywhere. There was a Fendi sandal in the toilet, and the curtains over the window at the far end of the living area were torn from the mounted rods and were lying in a heap on the floor.

Emily and I stared at each other, open-mouthed.

"Was it like this when you came downstairs?" asked Mr. Night Manager, rather idiotically. Still staring around us, we shook our heads. The female clerk had entered by then, and stood there, looking shocked.

"Well, what about when the door opened the first time you came up here?" he went on.

The female clerk answered him this time. "They don't know," she snapped. "We didn't look in, we just left."

Emily had begun picking up clothing and shoes, accessories and makeup. Several small eyeshadows had been broken and scattered, then ground into the carpet.

"Who could have done this?" I asked. "Does anyone else have access to a pass-key around here?"

The clerks exchanged a look that I'd have missed if I blinked.

"No," they answered, simultaneously.

The phones rang again. We all looked at one another. Mr. Night Manager answered the phone closest to him.

"Suite ***, this is Stan." Then, "Yeah. Nope, nobody. The suite's been wrecked, though. No, probably not. Yeah, I know. Will do." He hung up, turning to face us.

"That was Lisa, down at the front. We're going to switch suites for you tonight. Do you want us to help you get your things together?"

"No, but please don't leave us here alone for another second," I blurted.

The other clerk was helping Emily toss our stuff any which way into the suitcases. Everywhere I looked, I found more broken, torn up personal items. My journal was halfway shredded, with what looked like bite marks on the cover.

"Who could have done this?" I asked again.

Nobody had an answer (not even [especially!] the police officer who took the report), but a day or so later, in the hallway leading to the fitness room, I encountered the female clerk. She wanted to talk to me, and had, in fact, been looking for me or for Emily.

We sat on the steps while she talked. What happened to Emily and me in our suite had occurred before, she thought, but not while she worked there.

She had heard things, as all old, decrepit hotels have histories, but she'd largely disregarded a lot of it as just...fantastic ghost stories. Tales, told and re-told among third-shifters to pass the boredom of another long night.

The suite we had been in was at the crux of most of the problems, she went on to tell me. As nothing had happened in her six years there, she'd assigned it without a second thought. From the moment we arrived, she said, there had been electrical malfunctions at the switchboard.

Malfunctions? Like what?

Well, such as every single line lighting up, calls coming in from rooms that were unoccupied as well as the occupied ones. Nobody was on any of the inbound lines. There was a bank of pay phones in a hallway off the lobby, and they'd ring simultaneously. The security guard had attempted to answer them, more than once.

More problems with the doors, as we'd observed from the lobby. The people we'd both seen on the monitor downstairs had not been guests at that hotel since June, she thought. There was no way to explain why they hadn't been taped over, or why that particular loop had keep repeating.

Worse, their security guard had actually quit that night. He just walked out, she explained, right before the doors started acting weird. They were still waiting for another to be assigned.

We were interrupted then by another clerk I had never seen before; an older woman who gave off the 'management' vibe. My new friend jumped up guiltily and went off with her to attend to whatever needed doing, and I went to find Emily.

We were blowing this crazy joint, hell or high water.

Weird, I wouldn't have been able to handle this emotionally. That night I would have been gone from there. Between the actual seeing "it", and then finding the room trashed! Scary.....:chair::behindpc::stone

[StatBlues]

sufferkate

I enjoyed your stories. Ever think of writing a book??? You are a great story teller! :)

Leaves me wanting more.