My Night Job at a Haunted Hotel Turned Deadly

I should have known something was wrong the moment I saw the place.
The Edelweiss Hotel stood like a ghost at the edge of the city — thirteen stories tall, its sign flickering with half-dead bulbs. The manager told me it had been built in 1912 and “modernized” sometime in the seventies. Judging by the cracked marble floors and the faint smell of mold, I guessed that modernization didn’t go very far.

Still, I needed the job.
Night maintenance wasn’t glamorous, but it paid enough to cover rent, and I figured most nights would be quiet. Replace a few bulbs, fix a leaky pipe, maybe help a drunk guest with a jammed door.
Easy money.
Or so I thought.

When I signed the contract, the manager — a thin man with colorless eyes — slid a paper across the desk. It wasn’t a checklist or a duty sheet. It was titled:

Rules for the Night Maintenance Shift

I laughed and asked if it was a joke.
He didn’t smile.
“Follow them,” he said, “and you’ll see the sunrise.”

Rule #1: Never take the elevator after midnight.

At first, the rules seemed like nonsense. I used the elevator during my first shift anyway — how else was I supposed to move between thirteen floors?
But at 12:15 AM, while I was replacing a broken bulb on the seventh floor, I heard the ding of the elevator arriving.
The doors slid open.

No one was inside.
But the floor indicator above the door kept changing — 7… 8… 10… 3… 13… — over and over, like it couldn’t decide where to go.

I stepped closer. The air grew colder, a metallic smell filling the hall. Then, faintly, from inside the elevator, I heard whispering.

It wasn’t static or wind. It was voices.
Hundreds of them, whispering in a language I didn’t know.

I backed away, heart pounding, and the doors shut on their own.
The elevator descended to the basement — a floor that didn’t exist on the map.

That night, I used the stairs.

Rule #2: Never fix the lights in Room 404. The guests in there prefer the dark.

The next evening, around 11:00 PM, the front desk radio crackled. The receptionist — a sleepy college kid named Rob — called me.

“Hey, uh… can you check 404? Guest reported flickering lights again.”

I froze. Rule #2 had been bolded in red ink.

I asked Rob if he was sure. He said yes, and that the guest had been “complaining for hours.”

When I reached the fourth floor, the hallway lights were dim. Every door was shut except for one. 404.

The door stood slightly ajar. Inside, the light flickered like a heartbeat.
I called out, “Maintenance,” but no one answered.

I pushed the door open an inch and instantly felt something wrong — the air was colder, and the shadows seemed thicker. The flickering light revealed glimpses of the room — torn wallpaper, a single chair, and on the wall opposite the bed, something written in black:

“We never left.”

Then I saw them.
Dozens of pale faces staring at me from the darkness — silent, motionless, their eyes reflecting the light like glass.

I slammed the door shut and ran down the hall. When I looked back, the hallway light above 404 went out completely.

Rule #3: If the elevator opens to a hallway you don’t recognize, do not step out.

By my third shift, I’d learned to avoid anything that made noise. But the elevator… it always found a way to call itself.

That night, I was on the 10th floor when the elevator doors opened on their own again. This time, the light inside was brighter, almost inviting. The display read “6.”

I shouldn’t have looked.
But curiosity is a dangerous thing.

Inside, the walls were covered with faded wallpaper — flowers and vines — and the floor numbers stopped at six. I stepped in, intending to ride it down to the lobby.

The doors shut.
Then the lights went out.

When they came back on, the panel showed “Floor –1.”

The doors opened to a long hallway, carpet torn, walls burned black.
I took one step out, flashlight trembling — then heard the faint sound of crying.

A woman’s voice.
Soft, distant.

“Please… help me.”

I wanted to run, but something in her tone sounded so human, so desperate.
I walked halfway down the hall before realizing… the crying wasn’t ahead of me.

It was behind.

When I turned around, the elevator was gone.
Just solid wall.

Rule #4: If you hear someone whistling in the service tunnels, don’t answer.

It took me two hours to find a way back upstairs through a stairwell that shouldn’t have existed. My uniform was covered in dust. Rob said I’d been gone for nearly four hours.

The next night, while checking the boiler room, I heard it — a faint tune echoing through the service tunnels.
It sounded like an old lullaby, slow and haunting.

At first, I thought maybe another worker was down there. But the whistling moved too fast, like it was circling me.

I called out, “Hello?”

The whistling stopped.
Then, right next to my ear, I heard it again — the same tune, played softly, breathily, like someone standing inches away.

I ran, nearly tripping over my own boots. When I looked back, there was no one there — but the tunnel walls were wet, like something had been crawling along them.

Rule #5: Do not touch the lobby clock.

At around 1:30 AM, I returned to the lobby to calm down. The massive grandfather clock stood beside the front desk, its pendulum swinging slowly.

Then it began ticking backward.

Rob was asleep on the counter, so I shook him awake, shouting, “Do you see this?”

He blinked, confused. “See what?”

The clock was ticking normally again.

When I looked closer, though, the minute hand wasn’t metal anymore.
It was bone.

Rule #6: If the clock ticks backward again, run for the nearest fire exit.

It happened on my sixth shift.
Everything seemed calm — too calm.
The air in the lobby felt heavy, like before a thunderstorm.

Then the clock chimed once.

Every light in the hotel flickered off.
The elevator dinged.
And the clock began ticking backward again.

The second hand spun faster and faster until the glass shattered. From behind the broken face, something started to crawl out — long, bony fingers gripping the edges of the frame.

Rob screamed. I grabbed his arm and ran. Every hallway we turned down was wrong — the signs twisted, the numbers backward.

The elevator opened again. Inside, the floor indicator showed “13.”
But the hotel only had twelve floors.

A voice whispered from inside:

“Maintenance… overdue.”

We didn’t stop running until we burst through the fire exit and into the cold night. Behind us, the Edelweiss Hotel loomed silent, its sign flickering again.

Except now, the bulbs formed new words:
“Now Hiring.”

Final Entry

That was three weeks ago. I quit, obviously, but sometimes when I pass by the building, I swear I can still see lights flickering on the upper floors.

And two nights ago, I found something in my work locker that shouldn’t have been there — a brass key engraved with the number 404.

I threw it away.

But last night, I heard a faint ding in my apartment.
The sound of an elevator arriving.