Right off the bat I want to get this out there: I do not believe in ghosts—or did not, that was, until my experience last week.
Now I'm not too sure.
What changed my mind? My night at a creepy roadside motel.
I guess by definition all roadside motels can be described as "creepy". Nearby highways, dimly lit parking lots, shady characters hanging out of doorways smoking. And the one me and my girlfriend stayed in last week where I had this paranormal experience was no different. A place well and truly stuck in the 50s called The Lodge.
We found it just off the I-95 in the middle of Maine. We were on our way to Canada to attend a wedding in the province of New Brunswick and were driving because two weeks earlier my girlfriend had had the great idea of "taking the scenic route." (Basically because she hates flying).
Why not? I had thought at the time. What else could be more enjoyable than a nice summer drive up through Maine?
It turned out that a lot of things could have been more enjoyable, for the "scenic route" came with a lot of rain and not much else. A storm coming off the Atlantic pounded us the moment we left Boston, the music in our car accompanied non-stop by the swishing of windscreen wipers.
We had been due to stop at the night in Portland on the coast with a friend, but that morning he had called to say his mother in New York was sick and he would be spending the weekend with her.
Never mind. Why don't we stop somewhere else for the night? And that is where the roadside motel comes in.
It was just before sunset that we pulled into its parking lot. Over the noise of the storm I asked, "Is the place abandoned?" Which was not an unreasonable question since half the doors and windows in the U-shaped courtyard were boarded up.
My girlfriend simply pointed to a small office, where a neon light flickered that read "The Lodge." Just below the sign, through a dirty window, sat an old lady behind a desk, watching us.
I got out into the rain. Flashes of lightning zigzagged across the black sky as I jogged between the little rivers forming on the broken tarmac. Between the rolling thunder, you could hear the drones of the passing vehicles on the nearby I-95.
Upon my entrance into the office, a room which smelled of a mix of cigarettes and mothballs, the old woman merely stared at me, her eyes hollow and lifeless.
"Are you open?" I asked, water dripping from my coat onto the stained carpet.
The old woman did not say anything, only continue to watch me with her hollow eyes. Then, like she had been considering my request, began to nod slowly.
"Okay … how much is a room … ?"
She rose from the chair placed on the counter a set of keys, which had the numbers 66 attached as a tag.
Okay. Yes. At this point you turn around, get back in the car and hit the highway. It was that part in the horror movie where the lead role finds a staircase descending into darkness, and yourself (from the safety of the audience) are screaming, DONT GO DOWN THERE, STUPID.
But what do they always do? They always go down. I suppose it wouldn't be such a great story if the character slams the door shut and leaves the killer waiting in the dark twiddling his thumbs, would it?
But I digress. At the old woman sliding the keys forward, I got out twenty dollars and waved it in the air like a white flag. "Twenty dollars for the night?"
The old woman nodded and pointed at the keys.
I glanced out of the window towards the car. Lightning momentarily illuminated my girlfriend in the steam-up car, nervously watching me. Should we stay here?
I turned back round to the woman and grabbed the keys. "Thanks," I muttered, and headed back out into the rain.
Upon entering the car, I dangled the keys in front of my girlfriend. "Friendly woman," I said cheerily. "Though she said business was quiet tonight."
"Yeah just a bit," my girlfriend replied, looking round the dark courtyard. "It's kind of creepy here. Why don't we head straight on to Canada tonight?"
"Nah, should be fine." I shifted the car in gear and trundled it over to near room 66. "One night won't hurt us."
Famous last words.
Surprisingly, room 66 was fairly modern: whitewashed walls, a wide screen tv, refrigerator, clean ensuite bathroom, potted flowers, mirrors. It almost eased our nerves of being the only guests in this rundown motel during the middle of a storm.
Of course, there was a door—a locked door that is, at the back of the room, which at the time we assumed was a small cleaning closest. I tried the handle and afterwards forgot all about it as we each took showers, then settled into bed. My girlfriend, who would have been able to take a siesta on the edge of a cliff during a hurricane, fell swiftly to sleep. But for me, it took much longer, tossing and turning until I finally drifted off.
I woke around 2 am and that is when the funny business started.
It began with a noise on the roof. Now it wasn't the pit patter of rain upon the flat roof. No, it sounded like footsteps. As if someone was pacing up and down.
Okay, I thought. It's a bird. There is a bird on my roof. It's just a bird. Yet the more I told myself that, the more frantic the steps became.
Until suddenly they stopped.
I lay underneath the sheets, listening. The rain had ceased, and the storm moved on, but still the howling wind whipped around the courtyard outside. Relax, I told myself, and got up to go to the toilet, using the dim lights in the parking to guide my way to the ensuite bathroom.
Now, it was as I was in the middle of "my business" that the door to the bathroom, which I had purposely opened to full extent, began slowly creaking closed by itself.
My initial reaction upon seeing it in my peripheral vision was that the ground must be uneven. But then my brain began working on overtime to determine if the door had done that earlier. No, it hadn't. We were on perfectly flat ground.
So now I'm doing "my business" in a race against time against this slowly creaking door. And the bathroom, having no natural light, is in near total darkness, and that is when my heart starts beating fast because I have a very strange feeling that there is someone stood in the bathtub—no other than a little girl—watching me.
The moment that door closes I know that I am toast—and I would have my throat ripped out by whoever, or whatever, is standing there.
In the last moment, I lurched for the door and jammed my fingers between the gap, flicking on the light switch.
There was no one in the bathtub. It was just my imagination.
I stood there, panting, my body covered in a thin layer of sweat. I put the door back into its position, fully open, and waited for it to move again, disproving my theory of the perfectly even ground.
It did not move a millimetre.
I moved it into another position. Maybe it was the angle you had to get right for it to move.
No, it remained in place.
Okay. That's creepy. I turned the lights off and returned to bed, where I lay motionless, staring up at the ceiling while my heart pounded in my ears.
That is when I saw a silhouette move past the window outside. It was a faint silhouette … but all the same, something did walk past.
I sat up, watching the curtains and the dim lights in the parking lot. It could have been the old lady from the office maybe checking on something? (The old lady who never said anything and accepted my $20).
"Hey," I said, shaking my girlfriend awake (no time to act brave now. No sir, request dismissed, sir).
"Hey, Emily," I continued, shaking her harder. "Wake up God damn it".
But she just lay asleep … or unconscious.
I felt a plunge of fear. And that's when the parking lot light went out, casting the room into total darkness.
WAKE UP EMILY! I wanted to scream but no words came out … and then I heard a key being placed into the lock of that door on the other side of the room—the one that we had assumed was the cleaning closet.
And the key slowly began to turn … until the lock clicked, and even though I could not see it due to the darkness, I felt a draft of cold air and knew it had drifted open.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, I'm thinking, sitting there next to my unconscious girlfriend, shivering with fear.
"What do you want?" I called out feebly.
I was answered by the flick of a light switch, revealing that what lay behind that door.
It was a corridor.
There couldn't be a corridor, though? The motel was a small U-shaped courtyard of single units. There was surely not enough space. Yet, right before my eyes, was a secret passage.
I got out of bed. Yes, that's right, in my PJs I got up and started inching towards the corridor. Why? I don't know why, something was drawing me in. It was like my body had a mind of its own, and was taking me towards the corridor.
"No …" I croaked, trying to convince my body to stop. I could only control the neck muscles, however, so I turned to look at my girlfriend in the bed, to try and plead with her to wake up and save me from the imminent disaster that I was soon to befall.
But as I turned my neck, I quickly found that she was awake. Watching me with hollow and lifeless eyes like that of the old lady at the desk.
"E-m-il-y?" I stuttered.
She rose her finger to lips, shushing me. Then she grinned and blood spilled out of her mouth and ran down her chin.
"Wwwwh-a-t t–he f …"
I never got to finish the sentence because the force that was pulling my body had brought me into the middle of this secret corridor. On either side it ran off into darkness. There were other doors that lined the passage—doors which all had the number 666.
Then, out of the darkness, one end of the corridor began to glow red. It grew brighter, and strangely, I could feel a throbbing, like somewhere down there was a beating heart.
I turned my head away and as I did, I glanced back into my room, where I saw that my girlfriend was now standing beside the TV, her body slumped, her face hidden by her hair. As if she was Possessed.
EMILY! I tried to scream, but yet again, no words came out. The corridor glowed so brightly now I could feel the heat on my skin …
The next part was the worst. From behind the doors that lined the corridors came the sound of voices. People I knew. A friend who had passed away long ago started calling my name, beating against the door with his fist. He calling to me to let him out, telling me it was my fault he died.
How long I stayed in that corridor for I don't know. It might have been a minute, maybe a day, who knows maybe I am still trapped there, perhaps in one of those rooms, waiting like my friend for the next victim to be ensnared in the trap.
Somehow, however—I don't know how, I found myself back in the car, driving down I-95. I was shaking violently, and my girlfriend lay in the passenger seat unconscious.
I pulled right off the highway and made it to the nearest town, where I collapsed at the front door of the nearest house, babbling incoherently about demons and witches and corridors in motels.
It's been a week now and my girlfriend is still not awake. That night she was airlifted to Maine Medical Center where it was diagnosed that she was in a coma.
I gave my statement to the police about what happened at the motel. They don't believe me. Of course they don't, would you? An officer told me that The Lodge closed in the 60s after a father murdered his whole family there one night.
But that's my story. Emily's family are here in the hospital and are refusing to speak to me. They think I tried to murder her.
I rang my folks and they flew out a few days ago and are with me now. My dad's been sorting out a lawyer because he heard whispers of myself being charged if Emily fails to wake up.
I'm sharing this account because I don't know who else to turn to. Maybe I'm mad, but I experienced something dark and disturbing last week in that motel.
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