Author: phantasma@evildeadclowns.com

It all started a few months ago, during the construction of the hotel I work at. Being new and all, you wouldn't think we'd have to worry too much about ghostly visitors. I've learned over the years, though, that when it comes to matters of a supernatural nature, there really isn't any strict set of rules that apply.

This particular hotel was built in a suburb just outside of Raleigh, NC. Our owners are very nice people, but I think they would kill me for using the real name of our hotel, so lets just call it The Gates Inn. As I said, it all started happening while we were actually building. Nothing truly spooky, just unusual. The building was always locked at night, and yet one day we came in to find all of our telephones missing. Now that's 285 telephones, unnacounted for. The outside security cameras showed nothing. A few days later, we came in to find that all of the sofas had been moved out of the first floor hallway and stacked into one suite on the fourth floor. Again, the cameras caught nothing, at least not outside the building. Who knew what was going on inside.

The months went by with only a few more minor incidents, and though what had happened still seemed strange, it was all but forgotten.

A few days before opening, I was busy cutting the plastic wrappers off of lamp shades. I felt fine on the first and second floors, but while I was standing in the first suite on the third floor, I suddenly felt a wave of panic, the kind which seems to come from nowhere. The sun had already started setting, and one of the lamps had been left on (it kept out vandals when no one was in the building). The room was very cold, and as I looked around, I felt the hair on the back of my neck rising. Finally, my eyes fell upon the lamp, and thick black smoke was pouring out of it. I immediately thought that the bulb had gotten hot enough to burn through the plastic (this had already happened a few times) but as I walked towards the lamp, terrified, the smoke disappeared, and I laughed at myself for being so silly, thinking it was probably a shadow. Satisfied that it was all in my imagination, I turned to walk out of the room , and that was when the fire alarm started screaming.

After we opened, we had a few strange complaints. One woman (let's call her Mrs.X) who stays with us all the time calls up and complains about her neighbor's TV being too loud or that someone is fighting, but only when she's in room 314. The funny thing is, room 315 is still being worked on, so no one stays there, and there is no room 313 (superstitions), only a storage closet. She only stays here on Sunday nights, when we only have a few people staying in the hotel, and I make sure not to put anyone below or above her. Besides all that, our walls and floors are solid concrete, so they're sound-proof. sometimes the elevator goes wacky, going up and down, up and down for hours with no one in it, and our automatic front door seems to actually LIKE closing in peoples' faces or trapping them in between its doors.

A few months ago, Raleigh had its first snow storm in about ten years. Because they aren't prepared with snowplows and such, I got stuck at my hotel. My manager was nice enough to let me use a wuite on the fourth floor so I wouldn't have to worry about getting back and forth to work, and I thought that was great. I'm not one to turn down a free jacuzzi suite. Problem was, I didn't have any clothes. We stock everything from toothbrushes and medicine to make-up at our front desk, but the only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing.

Basically, I waited until three in the morning to go wash the clothes I had on, having nothing but a trenchcoat (complete with slit in the back) between my naked butt and the world. I knew no one was on the fourth floor with me, but the laundry was on the third, and I didn't want to run into any guests in the elevator. I pushed the button and got into the elevator. I waited while the doors shut, shivering. Both of our elevators are always ice cold, even now when the weather is typically about eighty degrees. I heard the usual hum, and suddenly the elevator lurched, falling about a half a floor. This doesn't make much sense, because our elevators are run by hydrolics, no cables, so if the elevator breaks down it will slowly coast to the ground floor. The lights flickered, and then the elevator went the rest of the way down like normal.

By the time I got to the third floor, I was about ready to yank the doors open, cursing myself for not walking down the stairs. But it stopped and the doors opened normally. As I walked out of the cart, I heard someone whisper my name, almost as if they were right in my ear. I felt a small a small breeze on my neck, like a breath of air.

I shrugged it off and walked down the hallway. Suddenly, I stopped, trembling. Some instinct inside of me told me that there was something behind me. Struggling with indecision, I finally stuck one foot out and turned around quickly, just to show myself that I had nothing to be afraid of. And that's when I saw her coming straight for me.

She looked like she was floated just above the ground,silently, with long black hair and wearing a slightly old-fashioned nightgown. She was quite pale, and she actually would have been beautiful if she hadn't looked so scared. Her mouth was open and twisted, and her eyes were pleading and almost bulging out of her head, her hands splayed open like she was trapped. Suddenly, her clothes and her hair burst into flames, and she writhed in agony for a moment or two, then she just vanished, only inches away from me. I heard the elevator chime as its doors swished open.

Needless to say, I ran down the stairs and out the door, my co-worker looking at me like I was insane. I checked into a hotel across the street, and payed full price to stay there for the rest of the week.

I still work at my hotel, and the slow business gave me plenty of time to do some research. I haven't seen the woman again, but I still hear the elevator open and close, rising to the fourth floor and coming back down again. And I get strange, silent phone calls that our monitering systems say are coming from inside the hotel, the third floor storage to be exact (also right behind the elevator). There's no phone there. Mrs. X in room 314 still complains.

Recently I found out that another hotel once existed on this site, which is something that I enver thought of because all the hotels in our chain must be built from the ground up, and I just assumed this had always been a vacant plot. Turns out several several businesses tried to start up here, but all had several accidents throughout their construction and eventually gave up. The old hotel that had been in our place was a mom and pop place, only three floors, very quaint. Well, from what I've gathered, a fire broke out during the middle of the night, and the fire alarm failed to go off. Nevertheless, they managed to get everyone out of their rooms safely. Almost everyone, anyways. There was one woman on the third floor who, woken out of a deep sleep by the screaming all around her, panicked and took the elevator instead of the stairs because her room was located next to it. The cable had been badly burned and broke on the way down, sending the cart and the woman plummeting to the first floor. The firefighters desperately tried to release her, but the doors were bent and stuck together, and they heard her agonizing screams as she was burned alive in the searing metal cart. They found the elevator phone melted into her hand later on. She had been trying to call someone for help, to no avail. No one ever got that phone call.

Oh yeah, all the other businesses that tried to construct here? They burned down, mainly. Seems like she liked us, considering we were the only business that didn't burn to the ground and who actually made it to opening day. I guess she decided she still needs a place to spend the night. Sorry I can't tell you exactly who or where we are, but if you've stayed here on the third floor, you know. You've heard her walking down the hallway at night. You've definitely heard the elevator go up and down during the late hours. You may have even asked me about it, and if you did, I told you not to worry about it, it's just a mechanical malfunction.

Don't be worried, though. We have an excellent fire system.