Monday 22 April 2013

A Haunted Hotel


In April last year I got a job as a hotel receptionist in a town not far from where I live. I started as extra and now I've worked my way up to being a full-time night receptionist. We are only 2 who share the shifts all the time, so that means we always work alone. The hotel itself is practically just a big tower, with a total of 111 rooms. Part of the job is to go rounds; make sure everything is locked and secure, that everything is in it's place etc.
The back office of the reception is surrounded by frosted glass walls. Behind the glass wall on the right side is a corridor that leads to the elevators and nothing else, which means you see when a guest is arriving from their rooms. Well, you see their shadow to be more exact.
One evening I was working alone and I saw a shadow approaching from the elevators. I got up and walked to the front desk, ready to help the guest. I stood there for a moment, wondering where the guest went. I knew he/she didn't take the elevator back up since you hear the doors closing and the elevator moving. I walked behind the corner and looked out in the corridor. No one was there. I even walked up to the elevators to check if it had gone back up without me hearing but both of them stood with their doors open on the entrance floor. This spooked me a bit but I tried not to think too much about it. The rest of the night went on without anything more happening.
After that both me and the other girl, Louise who works the other nights, see the shadows regularly, but now we've learned which shadow is which. The spirit/spirits shadow appears to be more "smudgy" around the edges, while the guests is solid.
Also, when you work nights you have to go a conference round. The conference is located in another building, where you have to go through a big mall to get to it. That mall is kind of freaky, almost every time you pass through it you feel like you're being watched. Against the walls of the mall is huge plants in pots, and just a few weeks ago Louise saw a solid person stand behind one of those flowers and look at her. She didn't think too much about it since we have guards coming and going throughout the night. But when she passed the flower and the person was still there standing, still just watching her; she approached it. The person stepped around the flower out of her sight and vanished. There is no way it could've been a real person, there is nowhere to hide and everything is locked. Louise searched the mall but the person was nowhere to be seen.
I have never experienced anything in the mall itself, but in the conference hall (which also is a very scary place) things happen quite often.
When you have passed through the mall you reach a stair, which leads up to a locked door. Behind the door is a long corridor, with locked conference rooms on the right side. If you continue through the corridor it turns left, where there is chairs and a table, and then to your left there is more conference rooms. The first conference room is the biggest one, and during your rounds you have to open each room to see if no window is open and that everything is in place.
One night I went in to the biggest room, and suddenly I felt the urge to snap a few pictures in there. I took my phone, snapped a few shots with nothing in them and prepared to lock up and leave. I turned the lights off, and through the camera lens of my phone I saw someone standing in the middle of the room (it was not pitch black, the light from the emergency exit was on). I saw it so clearly: a head, shoulders and legs. I gasped and turned the lights back on, but the room was empty. I started to freak out and quickly locked the room and planned to leave when I started to hear noises coming from around the corner of the corridor, by the chairs. I froze and listened. It sounded like someone stomping around, dragging their feet behind them. And at the same time, like a lot of paper being shredded.
Note that I knew that the place was empty; I had already taken the round and no one was there except me, and no one could get in either.
I listened a while at the sound, while I was absolutely frozen in fear. I felt that whatever it was, it was not someone or something nice. I remember thinking that I should NOT go around the corner. Instead I backed out of the corridor, locked up the hall and ran back to the front desk. I can't remember ever being so scared like I was that night, every sound made me jump.
The morning came and I decided to spend the night in one of the rooms since I was too tired to drive home. I always lock the room when I'm sleeping during the day, so no one can get in, not even the cleaning ladies. There is only one key that can open the doors when they're locked from the inside and that is the skeleton key that is located in the back office, and we just use it during an emergency. Anyway, I'm sure I locked the door because I double checked it 3-4 times before I went to bed. But when I woke up, the door was unlocked. That's when I decided to go home.
After that night I've only seen shadows behind the glass wall from time to time, but never anything big. I feel like I should do something though, try to contact whatever is there but I'm not sure how. Any help would be much appreciated!

Friday 19 April 2013

Hitler's

HitlerDental detective work gets to the root of Hitler mystery
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
A NEW portrait of Adolf Hitler's last days before he committed suicide in the Berlin bunker emerged yesterday, revealing how the Nazi leader was tormented by tooth decay, abscesses and gum disease that caused "terrible bad breath".
The whole tooth: Prof Michel Perrier with some of the photographic evidence used to confirm that remains found in 1945 were Hitler's The study of film footage of Hitler, enhanced by a computer, has confirmed that remains found by the Russians in 1945 were his, helping to end half a century of speculation about his fate and validating an identification technique of increasing value to forensic scientists.
A paper was presented yesterday at an international conference in London by Prof Michel Perrier, 52, of the University of Lausanne, and will be published in the Journal of Forensic Science. It links newsreel footage with X-rays of Hitler's skull, jaw remains found in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden and his dental records.
Even if Hitler had a double, so many characteristics in his teeth match in each source of evidence that Prof Perrier said yesterday he had no doubt that Hitler died in the bunker.
Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, during the night of April 28/29, as Soviet troops advanced towards his bunker complex. On April 30 he committed suicide with his wife. In accordance with his instructions, their bodies were burned.
Russian forces found the remains and conducted the autopsy of the bodies the following month, said Prof Perrier. "What they found were charred pieces of bone, such as pieces of skull, the lower jaw and part of the upper jaw consisting of a bridge with nine units."
Nothing was revealed to the public until 1968, fuelling speculation about Hitler's fate. That year a book by Lev Bezymenski contained a description of Hitler's autopsy and his remains.
The jaw remains were compared with dental evidence given to the Americans by Hitler's American-trained dentist, Hugo Blaschke, who had been arrested in 1945. Blaschke, an SS general, had treated Hitler from 1934 until shortly before his death.
When his testimony was added to that of his assistant, Kate Hausermann, there was a great deal of material to check the jaw remains against, and they seemed to match. "Hitler had very bad teeth. He had periodontal disease. He had many reconstructions, some done before the time of Blaschke," said Prof Perrier.
There were no X-rays of Hitler's jaw available at the time, which could have helped to provide even better confirmation. Then, in 1972, archives in Washington released five X-rays of Hitler's head, taken on July 20, 1944. They revealed bridge work, periodontal (gum) disease and "very unusual dental work", said Prof Perrier. These matched Blaschke's evidence and the Russian autopsy.
Prof Perrier has now provided further evidence to link the remains in the bunker to footage of the Führer. He combed Swiss archives for newsreels of Hitler and produced computer-enhanced images of his teeth to compare with the autopsy, X-rays and Blaschke's report. Prof Perrier found clear-cut matches between the computer-enhanced footage of Hitler's teeth and the bunker remains.
Hitler once referred to his dental problems openly, albeit indirectly, after negotiations with General Franco. Hitler's interpreter, Paul Schmidt, wrote that "they talked to or rather at one another" until 2am and failed to agree on anything. Hitler later told Mussolini he would "rather have two or three teeth out than go through that again".
[Previous story]
 
 Daily Telegraph story: Dental detective work gets to the root of Hitler mystery: Using forensic dentistry and computer imaging, scientists have proved that the charred remains of Hitler found by Red Army soldiers in Berlin were those of the Führer | Sunday Times version of same story
 Apr 2000: Adolf Hitler's skull went on display in Moscow, along with documents revealing what happened to the dictator's remains after they were seized by Soviet troops in 1945
 Elena Rzhevskaya reminisces about carrying a piece of Hitler's skull around in Berlin
 Jewish historian Daniel Goldhagen says remains of Hitler's bunker must be preserved

click to enlargeNotes:
DAVID IRVING first published the X-rays of Hitler's head and sketches by dentist Blaschke in a readers letter in Die Zeit thirty years ago. They are also depicted in his book Hitler's War (New York, 1977; London 1991 etc). It is good to see the "scholars" catching up.