Plans For Friday Night: Sleep In A "Haunted" Building

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Preface: I consider myself an open-minded skeptic. Is it possible that sprits of the dead take on some sort of energy and affect their real-world surroundings in some way? Sure…it’s possible. But if I hear what sounds like footsteps in what is supposed to be an empty building, I think “heating system” or “raccoon”, not “spectral visitor”. And if it’s proven that it wasn’t the heating system or some wildlife, then I do not look at that as giving any weight to any supernatural theory. In other words, it’d take a major truckload of evidence to convince me of anything.

Anyway…a while back there was this thread about silly things your loved ones believe. I chimed in with Post #11…

…and Post #28:

Flash forward to present day – after hearing story after story about how this person heard footsteps and that person heard someone walking up the stairs (all while alone in the office), I’ve had enough. I’m staying the night there.

But first, a little background on the place. According to this inscription in the attic, it dates back to 1837. For about 120 years it operated as a funeral home – in the basement you can still find the cadaver coolers, as well as a (no-longer-functioning) large dumbwaiter used for bringing bodies from the preparation room to the viewing rooms (although the upstairs part of it is now a server closet).

Sometime in the 1950’s, the funeral home closed and the property became a bank. My wife even has an unused drive-up window in her office.

Then last year the non-profit my wife works for bought the property for their new local headquarters.

The building itself is three stories plus a basement. Only the first and second floors are used for day-to-day business…the basement is basically storage, and the top floor is unused (“a shambles” is the best way to describe it). Two staircases lead from the first floor to the second – one in the front of the building and one toward the rear. These seem to be the “hotspots” for what people are hearing – more on that in the next post.

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Now for the stories that people are telling. These are all, in just about every case, people I’ve met – some briefly, some I know pretty well. How much they’re prone to exaggeration, I can’t really say. For the most part, they seem to fall on the “want to believe” side of things.

There is one woman who currently works there who, many years ago, also worked at the bank that was in the building. According to her, “the drawers would open and close, the doors would open and slam shut, and the stairs sensors would go off all the time”. When I asked for clarification on some points, I was told that it wasn’t a case of a door slowly closing from a draft, rather it would open, slam shut, open again, slam shut again, etc.

Most of the other stories are very similar to one another. Someone will be working late in the office, alone, and they’ll hear footsteps. Sometimes they’ll be working on the first floor and hear footsteps above them. Very often, they’ll be working on the second floor and hear footsteps coming up or down one of the two staircases – this seems to be the most common story.

While they were getting the building prepped for occupation by my wife’s company, two of the maintenance guys spent several days working in the basement – running network cable and such. They kept having to leave the basement to go see who they were hearing walking around the office. No one there, of course.

One that surprised me was when one of their workers – a smart guy whom I like quite a bit and find to be very level-headed – ran out of the office after stopping by to pick up something by himself. He said he heard someone “stomping around” in an area where there clearly was no one. He had to call a coworker to come to the office and reset the alarm, as he refused to reenter the building. He still refuses to go back there at night.

Two other employees have also heard unexplained stomping.

Finally, there is the cleaning guy. He used to clean the office after-hours, but has changed up his route so he now cleans this building while there are still people in the office. He refuses to go into specifics, but will only say that he will no longer go into that building after dark. His is a story that intrigues me, because unlike my wife’s coworkers, he had no previous knowledge of any of the supposed ongoings in the building.

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So, that’s the background. Now, in an attempt to find out what has everyone there so spooked (and to respond to calls to my skepticism of “well, you’d believe it if you heard what I’ve heard”), I’ll be staying at the office overnight, this Friday-Saturday. I’m hitting up everyone in the office who has good electronics to loan in order to get this as well-documented as possible.

I’ll have my camera, I’ll have camcorders positioned on both staircases, I’ll have a thermal detector, and whatever else I can put together between now and then. Just for S&G, I’ll probably coat the stairs with baby powder as well.

Naturally, I’ll also have the SDMB fired up so you can get firsthand info on the family of raccoons, the homeless guy squatting in the building, or whatever it is that’s causing the hoopla.

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You, sir, are a brave man. I totally believe it’s all possible, but I won’t ever, ever go looking for proof!

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What a neat old building (the parts that aren’t bankified, anyway). It’d be cool to try to restore it to its historic 19th-century condition.

Enjoy your ghostbreaking adventure. Try not to dwell on how large a rat infestation would have to be in order to sound like a full-grown man stomping around.

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Don’t you mean, baby opossum?

I think you should get the cell number of one of your ghost-paranoid officemates, and then call them at a minute after midnight and shriek into the phone, “OH CHRIST YOU WERE RIGHT OH JESUS HELP AAAAAAAA” and hang up.

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That’s a response I’ve gotten from several people in my wife’s office, and frankly it baffles me. Just for the hell of it, let’s say her office is legitimately haunted. Sprits of those who have shuffled off this mortal coil have snagged the hem of their sleeves on some ectoplasmic nail in the doorway, and they’re partially stuck here. Why the thought that they would bear any ill will? Why assume that they would even notice we’re there?

And even if they’re stuck here, fully aware of us, and completely pissed off about it, the question still remains – so? Evidence so far seems to show that they’re going to do what, exactly? Slam a door at me? Ooooo…

I’m not trying to come off as Fearless McHugenads here, but I just don’t see what there really is to be scared of. My greatest fear is that there is some unnoticed access to the outside of the building, some strung-out junky is squatting there at night and will be pretty pissed off at my presence.

Believe me, if I hear a noise, and when I go to take a look I see a ghost…an honest-to-goodness holy-shit-it’s-a-fricking-see-right-through-them-as-they-walk-by specter, then yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a personal challenge not to soil myself. But I’d like to think my first thought it going to be “get this on tape”, not “get me the fuck outta here”.

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Check out the latches on those doors! Somebody made SURE that the occupants would not get out!:eek:

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Good for you, Hal! I admire both for being skeptical enough not to just accept the stories at face-value, and open-minded enough to look into it yourself.

I’m jealous, too. This sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll be watching to see your report.

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Heh…first thing I’m doing when I get there is checking the attic for droppings. I didn’t have a flashlight with me when I went to take pics this morning.

Snerk…nice idea, but the workers and I have a deal – they don’t pull any tricks on me, I don’t pull any tricks on them. I mean, how tempting must this whole thing be for them?

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Hurry up Friday night. Can’t wait to learn the outcome.

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Hal, when you least expect it, a pale form is going to lurch from the shadows crying,

BAA!

(I swear, I tried to resist, but…) :wink:

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While you’re at it, be sure to have a look round for anything else squirreled away up there… discarded 19th-century autopsy equipment, piles of moldy old correspondences, piles of human skulls and suchlike. Personally I’d happily risk dismemberment by poltergeist for the freedom to ransack the unexplored corners of an interesting old building.

If you do find any skulls or anything keen like that, and you don’t want it, I call dibs okay?

Except for rat droppings, that is. I’m already stocked up in that department.

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I just don’t see why a funeral home would be haunted. You’re already dead when you get there! Hospitals, maybe; prisons, sure; insane asylums, homes, battlefields - places where people either died or suffered. Nobody suffers in a funeral home.

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On the contrary, there’s been plenty of suffering on display at every funeral I’ve ever attended (except the one for Uncle Shorty, who everyone pretty much agreed was kind of a dick).

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Balance, that was great! I tried to think of some way to use something like that, but couldn’t come up with a thing.

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Wow, I am jealous! I think it would be neat to stay in a supposedly haunted building. You should totally turn it into a doper sleep-over and we could all bring sleeping bags, Stephen King novels, and various food stuffs. :wink:

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If you were stuck in limbo, where is the last place you would see all of your family gathered together? Remembering and mourning you, no less. I would think a funeral home would be a perfect place to hang around as it’s the place you last saw everyone you loved in life.

But I’m staying out of this. I don’t want everyone making fun of me. And this is Hal’s thing so I don’t want to steal his thunder.

<gracefully bowing out>

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The reading of the will?

Hey, maybe that explains the chthonic drear of the average law firm… :wink:

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OOO! I can’t wait to see your post-haunted sleepover report AND pics if they come out!