And the others

Why did I ask the question, “Is it haunted?”

It wasn’t a particularly old building, no sinister story trappings I knew about. Nothing eerie. No creepy corners, creaking floorboards, cold dark cobwebbed passages. Nothing like that. Yet I asked, “Is it haunted?”

Maybe I was just making conversation. Inoffensive chat instead of an awkward silence.

I took with a pinch of salt the barmaid’s story that on arriving for work getting out of the taxi she’d seen a woman standing in the window, top floor room 14, and enquiring been told there were no guests anywhere in the hotel. And finger marks keep appearing on the same window. We wipe them off but they reappear, come back exactly the same over and over again.

I remembered but didn’t give much weight to the stories until one Sunday night several weeks later a contractor who normally went home for the weekend was having a drink at the bar. There was only the two of us when he asked, “Who’s that man I see walking about?” A youngish person, very slim, straight back, very black longish hair and wearing a long brown jacket was a description I recognised. I’d seen him in the bar coincidentally one Sunday afternoon. He’d walked straight through the crowded bar, not looking at anyone, and went straight into the public toilets. I remember it well because he never came out. I was paying single-minded attention but decided I must have lost concentration momentarily and missed his departure.

In fact, I’d seen him twice. The first time he came out of our room, room 16 into the entrance lobby and up the stairs. Mystified, wondering had he been stealing I asked a small group talking nearby was he with them but they said ‘Who?” They hadn’t seen anyone so naturally I thought they were hiding something but knew it was hopeless to worry.

Anyway, my new friend at the bar said he’d seen him twice. The first time he’d walked into the communal bathroom (the bathroom I mentioned earlier that I’d converted into room 1) when he was in the bath.

“I told him to bugger off! And he left straight away. When I got out of the bath I was shaken to find the room door was locked on the inside. Which at the time, startled by the intruder I’d forgotten doing. Bolting the door would after all have been an action done without thinking. I saw him next”, he went on, “coming out of my colleague Garlic’s room, room 8 along the passage from mine. I asked Garlic who the person was but was told he’d had no visitors.”

Only after being told all this did I tell him my story.

A little girl in a long blue dress was another mystery. She used to say “hello” in a rather husky voice, a kind of seductive whisper. She was always behind you when she spoke and you had to turn quick to see her. She was there and then she was gone. She didn’t dissolve, just seemed to float out of your company. She only appeared when you were alone.

These sightings were confirmed when a guest asked about her, having if you like met her himself more than once. Funnily hers wasn’t a frightening presence, felt absolutely natural, pleasant even but she wasn’t there. There in spirit only. Definitely an apparition.

And the first mentioned room 14 story of finger-marks on the window. I was sceptical. A likely story I thought. Until there appeared 4 parallel wavy lines down the right-hand side of the glass. I cleaned them off.