I am the only guard on duty at a hotel during the graveyard shift. Actually, I’m the only employee at night in the whole place.
This hotel used to be a bank back in the day, and it’s one of the oldest structures still standing in this town. This is great for tourists, but not so much for the piping and wiring systems. Aside from all that, there’s always been something weird about this place, though I’ve gotten used to it after ten years. Lately, though, things got out of hand.
Every once in a while, we get backpackers that are traveling long term. That means they smell bad, and they have a lot of friends that stop by, some with unusual beliefs in energies and other things like that. I’ve been known to shut down drum circles on the sidewalk at night, and I’ve gotten rid of a few dream catcher devices that they leave in their rooms.
A while ago, I saw a lonely traveling man light a bowl full of leaves on fire through the cameras. When I went up to the roof to tell him that he couldn’t be doing that, he apologized and left me alone in the roof. Crazy people.
He would always give off an odd stare, almost like he wasn’t completely there. Either that, or he was always high. He spoke to very few people. One evening, he went out to eat and never came back. He left his backpack and everything, which the police came by to pick up. There were no reports of any missing people in the area, nothing suspicious.
There was one occasion like that in the past, so it isn’t too big of a deal. What is weird though, is that strange things have been happening to me at night.
I’m not supposed to sleep in the office, but I sleep anyway. I wake up with every single sound, and we have motion sensors in the backyards and hallways. Nothing has ever happened during my watch.
Well, to other people.
I was woken up by someone tugging my arm one night. Then they tugged my leg. In the dark, I reached out to the lamp and realized that I was alone in the office. It must have been a dream.
The following evening, we had around 10 guests in the whole hotel and it was a quiet night, when I heard loud coughing next to my window, which faced an external hallway. I expected it to stop, but they didn’t so I grew concerned that someone was smoking in a no-smoking area by our propane tanks, so I stepped outside and found nobody there. The coughing had stopped.
I told my boss about the occurrences at night, and he agreed to double check the cameras. We couldn’t see much action until I caught a glimpse of what looked to be a dog walking through the exterior hall. He stopped suddenly, and stood up to lean against the office’s window. A dog? Dog’s aren’t allowed anywhere in the hotel.
I decided to get some of my paperwork done well into the night instead of sleeping, they were a bunch of guest sign up sheets that needed to be inputted on the computer.
It was around 3am, when I heard some shuffling outside, and this time I turned around quickly to see someone’s face through the window. They backed away, and ducked under the window trying to remain out of view. I turned on the exterior lights manually, since the sensors didn’t go off this time, and I heard footsteps running away from me through the hall and into the storage areas.
The person was obviously not really trying to hide. Why would they be peeking through the window? There’s really nothing interesting in there. At all.
I grabbed my flashlight and went straight to the back storage areas. As I was walking around, I saw a familiar scene. It was the crazy guy, sitting on the dirt with his legs crossed, a bowl in front of him. Full of leaves. Then he vanished.
I tried explaining this to my coworkers, and they say they believe me, but they also think that I’m making far too big of a deal about this. I know what I saw that night. I’ve sought advice from a priest, but he couldn’t help. Some of my friends have suggested to dig around in that area and maybe I’ll find something, but there’s no way I’d ever be able to explain my reasons to be doing so.
I think I’m going crazy too. The weird events at night have stopped, though. Maybe seeing what I saw was all that was required of me to make it stop.
Leave a Reply