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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories From: an160082@anon.penet.fi Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 23:44:02 UTC Subject: Haunted Office Hi, please don't think this is a hoax. I am posting it on my sister's account while I wait to set up my own and she would have a fit if she got e-mail responses about it because she will have nothing to do with ghosts. If you post a reply I will answer. My best friend works in an office we both swear is haunted. I used to work there too. I started working just before Christmas and a lot of the people there took their vacation between Christmas and New Years. Just a couple of us who were hourly came in each day. One day Keith and I were the last to leave. I told him to go on ahead and I wanted to finish typing something and would follow in about 10 minutes. He said ok but warned me not to stay too late or to ever be in the building alone because "wierd things happened". He would not go into detail. I finished my work and left and nothing happened. I chalked it up to his caring nature and decided he just didn't want a woman to be alone. At other times I was the first one in the office in the mornings and nothing happened. I forgot all about his warning. A few months later my best friend got a job there too. Around the same time we started taking some night classes together at the university. A couple of times we came back to the office at night to use the computer to print reports for classes or xerox readings, something our boss did not mind. It was then we noticed the building was really creepy at night. We kept hearing things we could not explain and finally pinned down the most disturbing sounds as the sound of footsteps following us whenever we walked down the halls. Since we were both interested in ghosts we did some exploring and found this never happened except late at night. The halls are carpeted but the sound was louder than footsteps on carpeting. Also the nature of the business we work for requires that the building be at the same temperature constantly so it was not the air or heating being on or off that caused us to hear the sounds at some times and not at others. Well one night after class around 10:30 we went back to the office to finish printing a report that had to be on the bosses desk when he walked in the next morning. It was a huge report and took quite a while to print. We were both sitting on the floor in the office with the printer doing our homework. I was facing the door which led into another office. Through the door I could see the door of this other office which led into the hall. The door was closed and the venetian (sp?) blind which covered the full length window was also closed so I could not see out into the hall. I had become bored and was sitting facing the doors looking at the closed venetian blind. Suddenly as I watched two of the horizontal slats pulled apart at a person's eye level as if someone were trying to look out into the hall. They closed with a snap that left the entire blind swinging. My friend did not see the blind open but he saw it swing and we both jumped up startled. In whispers I told him what I saw and we checked for a draft that could hava caused this but there was none. We were scared but felt we needed to finish the report so we stayed. Then when my friend went to the mens room (just outside the room) he left the door cracked open. We both heard a cough right next to the door and then the door was slammed shut. Back in the office we debated whether the door had just swung on it's own. Then we heard the cough again in the room with us and we did not stay around to investigate! We took off and returned to finish the report early the next morning without incident. My friend talked to several others in the office and Keith denes saying anything to me. Another girl who is interested in auras says she feels uncomfortable in the building but won't elaborate. Another girl said "Oh you saw and heard it too." but later refused to discuss it further. We decided to stay away from the building at night but one night I was printing a report for class the next morning and my printer broke. We ran over to work to use the printer and I stayed in the car while my friend went inside. (I was scared). He came out with my report running! He would not talk untill we were some distance away. He told me the "ghost" had followed him as usual but this time it almost caught him. (Before it had always been at a distance.) Neither one of us will go in that building at night since then. I no longer work there but I still wonder about it. The people who work at that office seem to fight and be unhappy a lot more than normal office politics and I wonder if this spirit is having a negative effect on them. I have always wanted to try filming the halls but I am too chicken! Linda Stevenson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories From: an160082@anon.penet.fi Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 23:42:47 UTC Subject: Haunted Office Responses Thanks for the responses. To answer some questions I have recieved: The office is on the top floor of an office complex. Small offices are along 2 hallways with a connecting hallway making this shape | | |x_____| y| | | | the men's room is marked with a x the office where this happened with a y. The hall marked with _____ has picture windows on either side. North is at the bottom of the drawing. To the south, north and west are large roads, an intown freeway system. To the east is vacant lot. There was no one in the building because we checked and there is no place they could hide and slip out without being seen. Many of the offices have had the walls between them removed to make large lab rooms. The office in question is the only one with a covering of any type over the window in the door. None of the sounds ever came from the bottom floor and we went down there and made sounds to see if that was the case. For a while we were really interested in finding out what this was and tried to prove or disprove any causes we could come up with. I can't tape now because the building was robbed and they put in security. It does not seem to trip the alarm system. The office marked y was used by the department of transportation before the current company moved in and took over the entire floor. The southwest wing was never completed. It is one large room with bare wooden walls and floor. I know the building was built in my lifetime I would guess it is about 20 years old (Im 33). No one seems to know if anyone died there. I did not include this in the original post because I wan't sure if anyone would take the story seriously and it sounds like I made it up. At the time we did not know it but in one of the storage rooms were a number of human skeletons waiting to be retuned to the tribe for reburial. I am not afraid of a skeleton at all - I study them. I am wondering if they had anything to do with this though? They are gone and it is still there. It has never moved the blind again but it walks up and down the halls. Oh something else about the skeletons. When they were removed from the ground by the archaeologists some of the tribe were upset. The individuals in question had been burnt in their houses when they died and no surviving members of the tribe would go to those areas. Makes me think they know something the archaeologists dont! But the archaeologists were just doing their job and moving the remains before the highway was built. It was not their choice but the state law. Anyway I guess I will never know what it is but it is nice to know there are people out there who believe in ghosts and spirits and have had similar experiences. Linda