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!

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