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I used to work...

... at a hotel on IH35 in South Austin; it was the Exel Inn back then, but it is now the Rodeway Inn. Room 310 (or maybe 314, I don't remember) was supposedly haunted. An illegal immigrant had murdered another one in that room a few years before I started working there. He had hogtied the guy so that the more he struggled, the more he choked. Pretty gruesome way to die, ne?

It don't LOOK like the Haunted Mansion ;>

The door to that room would open occasionally even when it was locked. Every clerk that worked there had complaints from guests at one time or another. The door was replaced at least once to my direct knowledge, and the manager had told me it was replaced twice before that. Personally, I never saw the door open with my own eyes.

I laughed about it as bunkem until an older couple demanded a refund...their door wouldn't stay closed. Now I am skeptical in a couple of ways; I don't believe anything until I experience it myself, but I don't disbelieve anything either until I see it's premise refuted many many times. Even after the guests left that time, I didn't really think there was anything in the room.

About two months before my own encounter, the hotel changed out all the mattresses. Rogelio, the maintenance man, a mexicano de mexico, was a religious and superstitious guy would WOULD NOT enter room 310 (or 314). So to entertain him (read that as entertain ME) I took an empty coke bottle and started telling the ghost to get in the bottle. The manager, and I laughed our asses off. Of course, the manager didn't work nights and I did ;>

Sorry Rogelio, but it WAS funny!

So set stage a few weeks later, at 3 in the morning, as I am auditing the day's book. The fire alarm on the third floor goes off. I follow the procedure, as follows:
I run up the stairs (no elevators in a fire situation, you see)
I verify there is no fire

And I notice there are no fire alarms either...usually, there are two alarms mounted at the far ends of the 3rd floor hallway. They are rigged to go off if anyone messes with them. They are both missing from their mounting.

So it is a little strange that both are gone; a prankster has to run to the other side of the hall and remove the second one quickly b/c the alarm is already going off once he has taken the first.

Anyway, I see there is no fire, and run back down the stairs to answer the telephone and tell the alarm company that there is no fire, then I shut down the alarm noise. I sit back and wait to tell fleeing guests there is no fire...

...no one has waken up. No one calls to ask. The hotel is quiet again.

At 3:45, the alarm on the 3rd floor goes off again. I haul my ass up the stairs and I am not surprised to see there is no fire. I AM surprised to see the alarms have been replaced. Now I assume that the alrms would go off when the mountings were screwed with, so again I must assume that the vandal is a very fast runner.

As I must be to run back downstairs and reply to the alarm company.

Again, no one wakes up or complains and the hotel is sleepily quiet...other than my own disquiet.

I walk around the floors once or twice to catch whoever is pranking me, but I find no one.

Finally, at 4:30, the entire situation repeats itself. The alarms go off, I run to the third floor, there is no fire and again the alarms are gone from the mounts. I huff and puff back downstairs. No one wakes up, no one runs screaming out the door, and no one complains.

At 6:30, I unlock the manager's room (which is already behind my secured working area) to submit the night's reports, and the two fire alarms are sitting on his desk.

I never wise-assed a potential ghost after that...

OTOH, I never ran into another one either!

There was the possibility that some one on staff was playing tricks on me...but NO ONE ever came up to me and laughed about their joke...

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