I’m ensconced in my room in Vegas on the fourteenth floor. My streak of absolutely terrible views is unbroken. But I’m also feeling a bit under the weather, so I’m going to keep it short tonight so I can go to sleep. …With the lights on, after writing this…

I love Las Vegas.

You might think someone who died alone in a hotel room with no one there when he died, no one mourning him or even remembering him… You’d think I’d hate this place. But, oh, you’re so wrong. I don’t even remember the exact room I died in. It doesn’t matter, because that room more than likely doesn’t exist anymore.

This hotel I haunt, the Aurora Grand Las Vegas, is a pretty recent place – opened in 2023. Two gleaming 26-story towers and the latest in garish carpeting and amenities, built to attract a high-end clientele with an 18-hole golf course built by esteemed golf course builder blah blah blah blah blah.

But until 2019 it was the much more modest, The Solara, which itself was a rebranded version of The New Starlight, which was a renovated version of The Starlite that first lit its neon shooting star flying out of a martini glass in 1981. Oh, the disco and coke…

Did I die in one of those iterations of this hotel? Hard to say. Maybe it was the Desert Comet that replaced the unassuming Silver Palm that first stood on this spot back in 195—you know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because no one remembers. Or cares.

Oh, spare me the YouTube Las Vegas histories, the museums, the shut-ins who keep yellowed clippies from long-shuttered newspapers about gangster hits and who lost which license. Those are few and far between. And no one—no one – remembers a man in a hotel room that died alone. It took them days, weeks to find his – my – body.

Or maybe they found it the next day when maid service came – I don’t remember. No one does.

And I love that.

I love the anonymity of this place. I love the labyrinthine hallways and alleyways that would give Sarah Winchester an anxiety attack#. That aforementioned garish carpet that plays tricks with your eyes and makes you question whether there was a shadow in that spot just a second ago…

And you’ll never hear that room 1416 of the Aurora Grand Las Vegas is the most haunted room in this ever-changing city, and I love that. I’ve watched ghost shows where geeks with gadgets travel to The Most Haunted Room In The World and then dither about with spirit boxes and temperature measurements for ratings.

No one knows I’m here – no one expects it. This room didn’t exist, say, before the Pandemic. It can’t possibly be haunted. “Hey, why is the AC on 68 but it feels a lot colder over here?”

Why indeed.

I’m not going to prostrate myself for some purported psychic or knock three times like a trained show pony. I’m beyond unexpected – I am the least thing on anyone’s mind. Like these people who just came in the door…

“Will you look at this place!” he says.

“Oh wow, John, this is so fancy!” she responds.

“Huh, the view isn’t anything to write home about…” he sounds disappointed as he surveys the roofof the casino out the window.

“Well, we won’t be spending much time in here anyway – I have a full itinerary of shows to go to, and there’s the spa… and of course we’re going to gamble—but not too much!”

“…Jane… did you just lock the door?”

“How could I?”

“It just locked… on its own…”

“Maybe it’s an automatic lock. This place is so fancy.”

The television turns on and they jump at the high volume I left it on.

And then the lights go out.