At the time this story takes place, I had left my studies and dedicated just to photography. I was young, but I had my money, enough to pay rent and some other bills. I dropped out of college, against the will of my family, but it all turned out right at the end.
I had a talent, I took nice pictures, and I had the fortune of having a rich uncle that helped me out when I needed it the most. This fantastic rich man had a gallery downtown, on the fancy side of the center of the city. He exhibited my photographs there.
I was 23 at the time the events of this story happened.
I was trying to help a depressed friend out of his sad situation and invited her on a trip to Mexico with me. We became very close, and all lead up to me asking her to be my girlfriend, which she refused to. I became sad, and my artistic photographs too. My pictures were gray, gloomy, and depicted my feelings perfectly.
I started taking pictures of sick people, abandoned buildings, street animals, homeless junkies, etc. I was planning to exhibit them all and call the project the "Eternal cloud". While doing this, I started talking to the girl, that I was in love with, again. I saw her one evening walking down the street and approached her, it seemed like she had forgotten our problems. I won´t say her name, but let´s call her Jane.
I ended up being friends with Jane again, and we started taking pictures together. The relationship got to a point where we lived together in my apartment, and we were basically a couple, but I had never asked her to be my girlfriend because I feared that it might ruin everything.
One day our trouble started. She had started taking pictures as well, and she also painted, Jane had serious skills in art. She became interested in the paranormal, and I continued to be interested in gloomy and sad stuff, especially old places, abandoned. This interests converged in urban exploration. We started exploring interesting abandoned sites throughout Washington and Oregon. We were very happy with our new hobby and continued exploring for a year. We made videos of our adventures, but we didn´t upload them anywhere. We focused on taking artistic pictures and enjoying the art that lays in abandoned man-made structures.
Somehow we found out and became interested in exploring an abandoned hotel that was located at the end of a 5-mile drive and a 2-hour hike up a mountain.
A little bit of information about the hotel... The building of the place started in 1908 and ended in 1934, it is located in a very hard place for any edification to be made. The hotel was intended to be a resort for spending summers. I never went there when it was still functioning, because the place closed in 1984 when it went bankrupt I hadn´t even been born. The people I asked about the hotel didn´t know it existed, there was no information on the internet and the only valuable source I had was an old newspaper, from 1984 that had an article about the hotel. It specified the location and some other things. I am not mentioning the name of the place, because I do not want people to find anything about this location and go explore it. I don´t want to be responsible for any people dying or getting injured there. Apart from the danger that the old materials of the ceilings and walls pose, there is a bigger threat, the threat of unknown forces, negative forces, that linger in the hotel. Whether or not you believe in this, I recommend not to go to this place, I was skeptical about these matters until I lived the experience. I am going to reveal the estate where it is located, it is in the state of Washington. Please don´t make the effort to find the place that will only lead you to death or insanity, I beg the reader.
The story itself... May 29. Jane and I found out that the hotel existed because we found an old newspaper in an abandoned house. This still amazes me.
June 8. We left home at 8 in the morning, went to a supermarket and bought some food and water. I remember I had forgotten my extra battery for our phones at home, but we didn't get another one and we also didn´t want to drive back home. I remember we were listening to old Tony Bennet songs and discussing a YouTube video we saw the night before, during the drive. When we reached the point of the road where we had to walk into the woods, I became a little bit nervous. It was still early, and the sun was shining up there, but I was afraid of what we were going to do.
We drove a bit into the woods and parked the car there, then we covered it with bushes and leaves.
The forest was dense, and we couldn´t see any manmade stuff, just green all around. We used our phones' GPS to locate the place, we zoomed in the map and distinguished the buildings of the hotel in the middle of the sea of trees. At some point in the afternoon, we discovered a trail, it was a clear path between the trees. We started going uphill, up the mountain where the hotel was built. We didn´t find anything interesting or creepy in the way to the hotel, it was a normal hike and my girl and I had enjoyed that, talking about stupid topics and eating our snacks.
By 6 pm we had reached the hotel. We arrived by the back, and there was a wall around the whole place, we weren´t very athletic, and we were carrying very heavy backpacks, so getting over the wall was no option. We walked some more to get to the actual entrance. The place was lovely. I started taking pictures like crazy. The entrance had two fence doors, and there was a big sign with the name of the hotel, it said "Welcome to *****" (I won´t tell you the name, and the "Welcome" was missing the "WEL"). The place looked very old and great for taking my gloomy pictures. My girl also loved it. Behind the fence, there was a driveway that led to the lobby. The outside of the hotel looked marvelous. It had big wide windows that showed the inside, which was in perfect condition. We decided to separate and go explore where we wanted and take our photos before it was dark. I went to the main building, and it was amazing. Everything was in place, there was a big shiny chandelier over my head, a nice black piano with a thick layer of dust, and many other things. The place appeared frozen in time and nothing had been touched. It was all nice, and everything, but I am going to skip these things and go to the creepy stuff that happened to my girl, and I.
When the night came, I went outside to the gate and shouted the name of my girl, she came quickly after. We shared our pictures and talked about what we saw. We had decided to stay the night there, but at this time, I was nervous and told Jane that it was better to go back (which was stupid, considering half of the way was straight through the woods and without following any trail), she told me it was better to stay the night there. So now we had to decide were to sleep, we were starting to get creeped out by the silence that persisted in the place. Jane suggested picking a room and sleeping there, but I told her that was exactly the type of stuff that gets you killed in a horror movie, so we decided to stay in the lobby and sleep in the couches that were there. It wasn´t cold, so we didn't really need anything else. By 11 pm, my phone had run out of battery, so we turned Jane´s phone off to save her power in case of an emergency. We had very good flashlights and lanterns that would last all night on, but we decided to make a fire in the fireplace that the lobby had. It all went right. An hour after, Jane was sitting by the fire eating snacks and I was playing the piano. We decided to go to sleep at 1 am. We chose a couch and slept. Then, our nightmare started.
Jane woke me up, she was very nervous. She told me that she had woken up suddenly and that she went to our backpacks to get some water, that´s when she noticed a light in one of the windows of the other building. I jumped out of the couch scared as hell but tried to show calm. The light was there. It was coming from a room on the third floor of the second building.
The fire had died and we had all our lights off, so I told Jane that if we didn´t move, we wouldn´t be noticed by whoever was living in the hotel. She wanted to go and check what was going on in the room. I told her what I had told her earlier "That shit is what gets you killed in the movies, girl".
I don´t remember how, but I had gone back to sleep. I was awake again, on the couch, and Jane was not around. I looked for her in the building where I was and I couldn´t find her, I was very scared, at this point, every heartbeat felt like a heart attack. I remembered the light in the window and became nauseous, I had never been this scared in my life. The light was off now. The only light source there was, was the moon in the sky.
I found a map of the place at the front desk, and it showed the rooms too, the room with the light had to be room 331 or something like that, according to that map. I didn't want to yell to call Jane, so I started walking towards the building that had the light in the room. You could get to the building by a dark hallway that connected the three of them, but I was not gonna get in that creepy hallway, so I went outside and walked through the gardens to get there.
I was inside the building now, and my whole body was sweating, even though a cold breeze caressed the place. I was nervous, but I was eager to risk my life for Jane, I was sure she was in danger. Suddenly, a pair of cold hands grabbed my shoulders and a loud scream penetrated my ears. I turned around ready to defend myself. It was Jane. She started to laugh in a very creepy way, I was sure that wasn´t her laugh. "Hey, you should have seen your face bitch." That´s what she told me after scaring the soul out of my body.
There was something very odd about her right now, she seemed like another person, it simply wasn´t her.
I remember the exact conversation that happened shortly after, between Jane and me. I am going to write it for you...
"What is wrong with you Jane that was cruel." I was angry at her. "I thought you were in trouble, you disappeared, that is not nice at all".
She laughed with a horrible laughter, that still gives me goosebumps to this day.
"Dumb fuck, where is him?"
I was almost losing my mind at this point. Her face was not Jane´s face, it was someone else´s, but it was oddly familiar, it had to be my girl. Every physical characteristic of the woman matched my girlfriend´s, but there was something odd in the facial expressions that made it look as if I were looking at a complete stranger. And her eyes, they were driving me crazy, in a bad way, they were not really looking at me, they appeared to look always at something behind me, that just shocked me. And the way she spoke... That woman wasn´t acting like the Jane I knew.
"What's up with all the cursing Jane?"
"Where is the damn son of a bitch?"
"What are you talking about Jane" She slapped me and tried to scratch me.
"Where is the damn kid Oswald?" Jane gave me a fierce look. "I could kill you right now damn it!".
At the beginning of her weird attitude, I thought she was just trying to scare me, but now I had no doubt that she was not acting, something or someone was controlling her. As she grabbed me again, this time by my arms, she clenched her hands, piercing my skin. I hit her out of self-defense instinct and she backed off. Once again she spoke.
"Fucking idiot, you said you loved me, now this. How could you do this to me, and to the child?". Jane started to scream and it made my head want to explode. "Where is Arnold, where is my baby?"
That´s when I looked over Jane's head, and out to the garden of the hotel, near the pool. There was a little kid just standing over there, he wasn´t facing me, he was facing the empty pool, I was seeing him from his back. The kid wore a gray shirt and some dark colored shorts, he had no shoes on. Curiosity took over my panic, I wanted to go and check I wasn´t hallucinating. This trip was becoming hell on earth. But, at that point in my life, I didn´t believe in the paranormal very deeply (like I do now), so I was desperately trying to create some explanation in my mind.
Maybe Jane was drunk or on drugs, maybe something she ate was making her act in this way... but then the kid, why was there a kid in that abandoned place?... I was feeding my mind bullshit I made up in order not to pass out because of fear.
"Jane, sweetheart, you´re not alright, maybe you´re sick, come with me please".
Jane was now unresponsive, she didn't answer me and didn´t move, but her blue eyes were still open, staring at the wall. I feared for her health, but the little kid standing outside could also need help. I opened the door of the closest room I found and sat Jane on the bed.
"Wait here Jane, I´ll be back soon". I gave her my flashlight and closed the door again. She didn´t move, the flashlight fell from her hand, she didn´t even react. I left her there.
I got to the garden and approached the kid silently. When I was a few feet away from him I noticed how bad he smelled. At first, I thought he was dirty, but when he turned around and I saw that he was completely covered in blood in the front and that his face was all soaked in blood as well, I identified the odor, it was death.
"Hey kid come here you need help right now!" I tried to pick him up but he spat blood at me and ran away shouting "Murderer!"
I passed out at that point. The next thing I remember is waking up on the sofa I was asleep in the beginning. It was still dark. I quickly checked the sofa in front of mine, and Jane was sleeping there. A wave of relief went through my body. It all had been a dream. I thought that all that had occurred was just a nightmare until I saw my hoodie covered in something dark and moist, it was blood. I quickly took my hoodie off and tossed it aside. I felt like my heart stopped and I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. I checked my watch, it was 3:10 AM. I went to my bag and drank some water.
I woke Jane up and hugged her.
"Are you okay?"
She was very confused and when I told her what I went through, she didn´t believe a thing. I showed her the blood in my hoodie and the marks in my arms that she had made with her nails. Her face went pale, she started to believe me.
We started packing our stuff and were ready to go when I noticed that my flashlight was missing. I remembered I had left it at a room in one of the buildings, where I thought I had left Jane. 'Fuck my flashlight, let´s get out of here', I thought. Then Jane said to me the most horrendous words that she could have said.
"Hey, there is a light over there, in that window". She pointed at the cursed building.
I couldn´t do anything to change her mind, she wanted to go check if someone was there, she walked towards the building with unbreakable confidence, like an innocent moth flying straight to the light bulb, to her death.
I followed her with fear, but also with curiosity. We climbed the stairs with ferocious speed and got to the room where the lights were on. Room 333. I looked at Jane and she shrugged. I knocked shyly on the door 3 times. Nobody answered I opened it, it was empty, like the other thousand rooms.
We got inside and saw the source of the light, it was a lamp, a big one, possibly used for reading, or I don´t know for sure. It was right in front of the window, and the curtains were wide open, like if someone wanted to lure us there. The door of the room suddenly closed itself and left us inside the room, the door handle wouldn´t work. I was still figuring out some explanation, but I couldn´t.
"Jane we should...".
Jane was not there.
I kicked the door, but it didn´t do anything to it. After a couple of minutes, I decided to get out of the room through the window. I opened it and dropped my backpack. It made a soft noise because, down there, there was overgrown grass and weeds. I wasn't going to jump, it was too high. I was going to climb down. I hung from the window, looking to place my feet on the ledge down below. Then I felt something cold in my hands, I didn´t want to look up, but I did.
"Hey man, you need any help?"
"Fuck you scared me!"
"Hey man, do you need help?"
It was a guy, it was asking me in the weirdest way possible, like if he didn´t realize in the situation where I was caught. The man had bright red stains on his shirt and on this face, I wanted to think it was paint or something, but I couldn´t keep pretending anymore, it was blood.
I was going to fall, so I decided to accept the guy´s help. He was way stronger than I thought. I was safe, standing in the room, next to him a couple of seconds later.
"There you go young fella".
He was tall, more than six feet, and he was strong, even though he didn't look that big. He had a green shirt on, all covered in blood, but he didn´t seem wounded, he had black pants, and was barefoot. His face had blood drops as well.
"I am Oswald by the way". The guy tried to shake my hand, but I was too shook to move. The name sounded familiar.
The man kept talking "Boy I helped you, now you have to return the favor". He pointed at the bathroom. He walked to the bathroom door and opened it, smiling proudly, while he dragged something out of there.
I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. The guy was just standing there, smiling, blood everywhere. The thing that he had dragged was a corpse, a dead woman.
"This is my wife Catherine" the guy laughed "Was".
I was standing still and hadn´t moved an inch. I started to smile awkwardly. After a while, the guy started crying as he sat on the bed. He started talking to himself, while he sobbed. These are the exact words he was saying:
"You killed her, and the kid is lonely now"... "It is your damn fault"... "There aren´t any voices in your head to blame, you did it, it was you demon!"
I looked at the window, still open, I thought of jumping out. The man turned and faced me.
"I did not forget you". He stood up. "Help me hide her body".
I was confused and scared of him, so played along.
"Yes, I will. Mmm Where?"
"Let´s bury her in the woods".
I approached the body slowly. When I got closer, I was able to see the whole scene. The bathroom floor and walls were covered in blood, and there was a knife by the shower. The dead woman was dressed in a bath gown that used to be white, now it was all covered in red as well. I started to feel dizzy after seeing so much blood. I couldn't see the woman´s face, it was a mess of blood and hair.
A few minutes later, I was in the hallway, holding the legs of the woman, helping the man move the corpse. The guy didn´t look nervous or anything, he had a very peaceful look in his eyes, even though he, apparently, had just killed his wife. When we were near the stairs, preparing to go down to the second floor, the man stopped and dropped the body.
"I forgot the murder weapon, wait here".
He started running towards his room and, all of a sudden, I was alone, in the middle of the night, in that scary place, holding a dead lady. I creeped out. I didn´t want to look at the corpse, but curiosity overpowered my will and I got down to my knees to take a closer look. While contemplating the body, I noticed that it was moving, slowly, and rhythmically. I screamed. The woman was alive, she was still breathing. I couldn´t take part in a murder, I would never forgive myself. I had to help her.
I picked the woman up and with all my strength and will, and descended to the first floor and out into the night. I quickly got to the lobby. I had to call for help, or else, the woman would die soon. I left her on a sofa and tried to find the phone we had brought, but our stuff wasn´t there. I remembered that Jane had disappeared with her backpack, the phone was there, and my backpack was back in the building. This was bad, the woman would die soon.
I went to the sofa where I had left her to check on her, but I couldn't find her, she had vanished. This couldn´t be happening. I searched the whole place and she wasn´t anywhere. The blood stains on the sofa were there, as a proof that I didn´t imagine the whole thing.
I went back to room 333. The door was locked. There were noises inside the room. I put my ear on the door and listened to the sounds, it was a kid laughing, and a woman´s voice. It was Jane´s voice. I was panicking again, I started crying and scratching my face out of fear. I knocked on the cursed door.
"Jane open the door and let me in!"
A moment later, Jane opened the door. She was holding the kid´s hand. It was the same kid I saw in the garden. Jane smiled.
"Hey, where have you been?"
The voice wasn´t hers. Her eyes weren´t looking at me. My Jane was not her.
"Listen, we have to leave now".
"Do you mean now?" Jane laughed. "It´s dark outside, and I just found this cutie" She pinched the kid´s cheek. "Can we keep it?"
The kid was staring at me. I swear those devil eyes would drive anyone crazy. I wanted to punch that face.
"No. We leave, now". I tried to sound convincing.
At that moment Jane smiled again, it was like if she was smiling at another person. She got out of the room with the boy and, ignoring me, she ran away in the hallway. Both were laughing like crazy, the laughter filled the whole building and made the walls vibrate. Jane and the boy were no longer in sight.
I was convinced that if I didn´t get out, I would end up losing my mind and dying. 'Fuck Jane, she didn´t listen to me'. I started to run towards the stairs, and as I ran, I heard every single door on both sides of the hallway pound. Lights were turning on and off, doors were being pounded and women screamed behind my back, but I didn´t stop, I ran until I was outside, then I jumped over the fence and continue running in the woods until I passed out.
A couple of hikers found me days after. They saved my life. I was dehydrated and traumatized. I didn´t talk for several weeks, I was depressed.
I have asked several people about the hotel and nobody has heard of it, I have done my research, and found nothing. It seems like the place isn´t real. My only source of information about the place was the newspaper I had found.
I still had proof, or so I thought. My backpack was also found by the hikers, my camera was there. I had all of the pictures I had taken that day, and there it was the hotel. I showed the pictures to many people, but nobody saw what I saw, there was no hotel, every single person that saw the pictures told me that they were just pictures of the forest. I burned them.
I had never seen Jane again, and I am sure she is gone. I will never return to that place. I know it exists, but you will never find it on your own, the hotel is the one that will find you.
Submitted July 04, 2018 at 06:36PM by PiterBruh https://ift.tt/2tTgOyn
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