Smiling Ghost

Smiling Ghost


Although this story may seem hard to believe, it is a true account of which I am just about to narrate the facts as they happened, without the slightest addition of any sort.

Years back, I used to work as a night receptionist in a hotel, in the old town area of Edinburgh. A city well known for its beauty, haunting atmosphere and terrifying history. How many people lost their lives through the pest some hundreds of years ago, I don’t know but apparently, like in other parts of Europe, a great deal of its population fell victims of it. Medical experiments was another gruesome and inhuman atrocity, especially for those most vulnerable who were used as subjects for those horrifying enterprises. And finally, I couldn’t not mention the splendid Princes Street gardens, where so many people today delight in strolling, lying in the grass or simply sitting on a bench for a good read. These gardens used to be a lake centuries ago, where those women accused of witchcraft were thrown into its depths. If they happened to come afloat they were guilty and if they drowned they were innocent. Either way, the outcome was the same with the peculiarity that if they were found guilty, their families would follow the same fate as well.

Back to our hotel now, it was a very cold winter night in the late 1990’s and the time was about 3.00 am. The hotel, which comprised a pub, had been very busy but by that time everyone had left and I had been left by myself, which always gave me this uncanny feeling, a contrast of a huge multitude of people around me and then suddenly utter silence. So I started doing some work in the midst of this silence and tranquillity, when a few loud knocks on the main door startled me. Of course! It was the domestics. Obviously, they were here to clean up the mess that hundreds of people had left. I dare not describe the state of the bogs and that’s only part of the whole picture, the entire place was a shambles.

I greeted them affably and we chattered briefly in the usual friendly manner. It was three of them, all in their forties and always cheerful. So they got to work without further delay and I said to them: “Look! I’m absolutely starving! So I’m going upstairs to the kitchen to get something to eat, so if anyone comes, please give me a shout!”. They nodded with a smile and told me they would. I knew I could entrust them to keep an eye downstairs in case something happened.

It didn’t take me more than 10 or 15 minutes to devour a few sandwiches that I had made and to down a couple of glasses of juice. When I finished I came down to the pub to see how they were getting on. Two of the domestics were cleaning the bogs and the other one, Claire was by herself in the pub. She looked at me and I noticed that her eyes were watery, so I asked her: “Claire, are you alright?”
She responded with another question: “Have you heard anything unusual?”
I replied: “No, not really! Why?”
“Have you ever seen or heard anything out of the ordinary here?” She asked.
“No, never!” I replied.
“An old woman has just come up to me”. She added.
“What woman?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen her before. She was walking towards me with a pleasant smile on her face and then she vanished”. She said.
I knew there were no old women in the hotel since the few customers we had that night were all younger people and the only two exits to the outside were locked.
“So, did she vanish like a ghost?” I enquired.
“Well, I don’t know! You see, I’m feeling a bit tired and confused today and maybe it was just my imagination playing tricks on me.” She said in a serious tone of voice, although I could tell she was not telling the truth, probably embarrassed and afraid people could think she was making up stories or that she was having visual hallucinations. So she went back to work and for the rest of that night she never said a word nor smiled nor did she behave in her usual cheerful way.

On my following shift in the hotel, I asked a few people if they had seen or heard anything unusual. To my surprise, Claire was not the only one who had experienced strange events. I even found out days later that right underneath the hotel were the City’s Undergrounds where many people had perished many years ago.

The end