Ghost in the Hotel

 It was my second day working as a security guard at a shopping mall in a small town in northern Manitoba. My partner and I arrived at the site, and our first task was to do a patrol (checking all the points located in different parts of the mall). Each point had an NFC chip that needed to be scanned through a mobile app. There were many points, so I volunteered to go alone to memorize their locations faster and better. One of the closed but still guarded areas was an old two-story hotel. It had plenty of interesting spots: a kitchen, storage rooms filled with junk, a bar, something like a conference area, service rooms, and, of course, lots of guest rooms. To remember where all the points were, I was as focused and attentive as possible. When I climbed to the second floor via the side emergency exit stairs, I felt something strange. After taking a few steps down the corridor toward the opposite exit, the feeling intensified. I didn’t understand what was happening and stepped slowly and cautiously. After passing a few rooms, I felt the peak of this anxiety. My mind wasn’t afraid, but my body tensed up. It was as if the goosebumps didn’t just run across my skin but crawled out of it and froze, straining all their sensors and receptors, waiting for something. It was like my body, independently of me, became hyper-aware of the surroundings. This feeling lasted for about two seconds before it started to fade, though it never completely disappeared. I decided to look around. These were ordinary hotel rooms: in the entryway, there was a space with hangers for coats and a shelf for hats; depending on the room, a door to the bathroom was on the left or right, followed by the living area. All the rooms were empty, without furniture, but in some, there were old cassette players and lamps, which, despite no one being there for years, didn’t have much dust. In the room opposite the one where I felt the strange sensation most intensely, I found a Bible on the hat shelf in the entryway. I don’t know why I picked it up and opened it, but on the first page, someone had written in pencil, “see Exodus 6:3” and “see Psalm 83:18.” This made me think it might be a good idea to try reading the Bible. Maybe now, as I’ve started seeing the world a bit more broadly, I could understand something in it, and it wouldn’t seem like nonsense, as it used to. I added the Bible to the list of books I want to read in my phone’s notes and moved on.

When I went down to the first floor, I decided to look around a bit more. As I walked down the corridor, peeking into rooms, I saw a large, pink plush toy in one of them, sitting on a chair with its back to me, looking out a big window. I thought it was a bit sad that it was all alone here, but still very cute. As I got closer, I saw it was a pig. I decided to pet it and noticed a rope wrapped around its ear. Unwinding it, I saw the rope led to its neck. At the end of the rope was a noose—not just some knot, but a real, tightly pulled noose around the poor pig’s neck. I untied the noose, tossed the rope aside, and for some reason said, “Now everything will be okay,” petted the pig, and left the hotel.

I didn’t stop anywhere else, scanned all the points, and returned to my partner. I asked him if anything bad had happened in that hotel. He said that someone was once killed in the bar on the first floor, another person was killed on the second floor in one of the rooms, and a woman, while staying there, looked into a mirror, and it cracked, so there are rumors that a ghost haunts the place. I was glad to hear this because it proved I wasn’t going crazy. Plus, it was a great opportunity to try interacting with a ghost—how unusual and exciting! On the first floor, I didn’t feel anything, even when I found that cracked mirror. On the second floor, with each patrol, the feeling got weaker and weaker, though it never fully went away. And when I pass that spot and keep going, I often feel like someone is watching my back.