The Year of the Office: The ghost will see you now…

On our first day of moving in, we hung my bulletin board on the wall next to my desk and the next day, it was on the floor. It’s true! Of course I’m leaving out a bit of the story. We hung it with those sticky tab things they advertise on television–hooks with sticky stuff on the back of them. Super strong! Not. The bulletin board fell to the floor a few minutes after we hung it. So, we pressed the sticky hooks on harder and hung it again just before leaving, knowing we’d probably find it on the floor again when we came back the next day. And we did! We got permission to put nails in the wall and hung it again and it has yet to fall. Ghosts can’t do anything with nails.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I was heading home, and sitting on the sofa in the waiting room in the third floor lobby, was a lady. And for no reason at all, she spoke to me. She said, as I approached the door to the stairs, “I wonder why some people take the stairs instead of the elevator. Maybe they need the exercise.” I said that was certainly my reason. And then she mentioned that this building used to be a hotel! How spooky is that? It was very strange and could possibly have been a ghostly encounter.

There’s this guy here who sits at a desk facing the door to his office so he can see when people walk down the hallway. It’s a bit unnerving, let me tell you, to walk to my office knowing he can see me coming the whole way. Anyway, the sign on his office door says his name is Tim. But then I met Tim! And that’s not him! Tim is another guy who works in that same office! It’s possible that the guy sitting there at that desk watching me walk down the hallway to my office every morning–probably making mental notes on how much past nine I arrive–is a ghost. I’m wondering if I should ask Tim, but I’m too introverted.

Anyway, the only information I can find out about ghosts in this building tells me the main ghost’s name is Amelia and she was in love with a sea captain. She lived at the hotel and he would sail in for rendezvous, the salty dog. At some point, he never came back and Amelia either died of a broken heart, or killed herself. It’s hard to say which of those is the more romantic. But I’m going to say she tied sheets together, hitched them to a bed post, and hung herself out a third-floor window–maybe the very same window out of which I gaze daily!

And now she roams the halls of this building searching for her lover. Oh, Captain! My Captain!

I’m sure Amelia was a fine girl, and what a good wife she’d have been. But as anyone could have told her, he was a sea captain…his life, his love, and his lady…was the sea.

Some say the old captain went down with his boat in the lagoon, trying to get back to his dear Amelia for a much needed third-floor romp, and his ghost also roams the halls. I find this a tad unbelievable as the lagoon just isn’t that dangerous, unless he couldn’t swim at all and then what sort of sea captain would he have been?

Still, imagine the two of them searching the hallways, the stairs, the offices–confused and wondering why it’s so godforsaken cold in here–and not ever finding each other, either because they’re ghosts and can’t see each other, or because it’s just a big building and maybe Captain Lover can’t remember what floor Amelia is on. Maybe he doesn’t really want to remember. Maybe he’s boinking the other ghosts–the lady in the lobby and the guy who watches me walk to my office.

I like that I can’t find much information about the ghosts here. It means I can make up whatever I want about them–oh, wait…they’re ghosts so of course I can make up whatever I want. I don’t need to see a ghost, or hear a ghost, or get a freaky feeling of a ghost to write about a ghost. I think a paranormal romance is on the horizon.