I know I’ve mentioned traveling for work during previous 31 Ghosts – there was last year’s whole Las Vegas series of stories, after all. And like learning about the fire in that Vegas hotel, we’re so often dropped into these anonymous rooms in buildings that have histories, even if we’re not privy to whatever might be hiding just under our feet…
“That was the best lo mein I think I’ve ever had,” Nate said as we walked along Washington Avenue towards our hotel. “I think I ate too much, though.”
“That looked amazing – I can’t blame you. My sesame chicken was really good, but that’s why I took leftovers,” I said, shaking the plastic take out container.
“Smart woman,” Nate laughed as we crossed 4th Street and our hotel came into view. The Ashford Hotel St. Louis Downtown by Grandwell, stood modestly, its mid-twentieth-century architecture dwarfed by the newer steel and glass hotel towers in the convention district. Over dinner Nate and I had talked about how our rooms seemed a little dated, but we appreciated the convenience of staying in the same hotel as the conference.
“Which side of the hotel are you on? I’m on this side,” I pointed to the front corner of the building. “I can see the Arch from my window.”
“Seriously?” he said incredulously. “I’m overlooking a parking lot.”
“Luck of the draw,” I grinned. “You can probably see my room – I left the lights on and the curtains open…” I strained to pick out my window. “There,” I said pointing. My eyes traced the façade of the building. “That’s odd,” I said to myself.
“What’s that?”
“I know that’s my room – you can see my pink bag on the table by the window there. But I’m on the fourth floor…”
“Okay?”
“Count the floors…” I pointed to the row of windows and started counting up, “One, two, three, four, five – there’s my room.”
“Huh?”
We had come to a stop on the sidewalk at that point. “I’m on the fifth floor, not the fourth.”
Nate studied the building for a minute. “Okay… so?”
I let out a sigh as I realized I may be right, but Nate was right – so what? “I don’t know…” I said as we started walking again. “It’s just weird.”
“If you say so…”
We were quiet as the doorman held the door open for us. As we waited for the elevator, Nate looked at his watch and started, “I was going to hang out with the folks from Meridian at the hotel bar at eight. Wanna come?”
“No, I’m tired. I think I’m going to have a bath and go to bed,” I said as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open and we moved inside. I pressed the fourth-floor button for me and the sixth-floor for Nate.
“That’s probably the smarter move,” Nate smiled.
“Eh, you’re young – go enjoy yourself!”
Nate feigned offense, “Claire, this is purely business networking.”
“Uh huh,” I grinned. “This has nothing to do with their Southwest rep Erin… what’s her name…”
“Tyler. Erin Tyler.”
“Oh, you just happen to remember that?”
“What can I say, I have a great memory…” he grinned.
“Oh, I bet,” I smirked as we watched the elevator numbers tick upwards.
1… 2… 3… … …4 and the doors slid open.
I furrowed my brow. “That’s weird – did you notice how long it took to get between the third and fourth floor?”
Nate rolled his eyes. “I’m sure it’s just a slow elevator – you’re going to totally obsess over this tonight?” he asked as I stepped out onto my floor.
I blushed, “Maybe a little bit…”
Nate smiled. As the doors started to close, he hurriedly added, “Nine am at the booth?”
“Yes,” I agreed as the doors closed and the elevator whirred upwards.
I smiled as I walked down the length of the hallway to my room 412 at the very end. I touched my keycard to the panel and the light turned green as the lock clicked and I let myself into my unremarkable room. I traded my pantsuit for sweats, hanging the former up before crossing to the bathroom to start the bath.
As the water started to fill the tub I thought again about the floor count from outside the building, and then about the amount of time the elevator took to get from the third to my fourth floor. I looked at the water slowly filling the tub and figured I had a few minutes, so I went to my laptop and Googled “Ashford Hotel St. Louis.”
The top hit was a sponsored page linking to Grandwell’s corporate site and the landing page for the Ashford property – predictable. The second sponsored link was the neighboring hotel – have to appreciate the SEO hustle… Then there were a number of YouTube videos. The first was titled, “The Haunted History of the Ashford!” Another was captioned, “The Ashford Hotel Massacre – What Really Happened??”
“Ashford Hotel Massacre?” I mumbled to myself.
I searched for “Ashford Hotel Massacre” and got a number of archived newspaper stories. I clicked on one after another hitting a paywall each time. Finally, I found an image of the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from October 18, 1987. The banner headline declared, “TEN DEAD AT THE ASHFORD.”
I stared for a long moment before silently standing, moving to the bathroom and turned off the water, leaving the tub half-full before returning to the laptop and zooming in to the grainy text. Shots fired on the fourth floor shortly after midnight… Hotel evacuated… ten fatalities reported… nine dead identified… suspected shooter among the dead… motive unknown… hotel closed until further notice.
“Shit…” I nodded seriously. Then I scanned the details again. The headline read ten dead, but the article identified nine… “maybe they’re not counting the killer?” I speculated aloud. “And the fourth floor…” I looked at the paper envelope the woman handed me when I checked in with my keycard inside. In black sharpie it read, “412.” Fourth floor. A chill went down my spine.
I took advantage of the Post-Dispatch’s first month of digital access free and made an account before hurriedly searching the archives for the digitized October 18, 1987 paper. I checked the front page on the 19th – quotes from evacuated guests…. hotel spokesman expressed shock… ten dead… and their names:
Daniel Mercer, 42 – the gunman.
Robert Hale, 51
Linda Hale, 48
Thomas Keating, 37
Marjorie Keating, 35
Evelyn Brooks, 63
James Foster, 29
Patricia Nolan, 44
Michael Ruiz, 32
Nine names. I scanned back to the top of the article, “…ten killed…” That’s weird…
Then I had a more chilling thought – what if they just… erased the fourth floor?
My rational brain told me it was a stupid notion – why would they get rid of an entire floor of potential guests?
I went back to the first search tab and started scanning the YouTube videos on 2x speed. Amateur hosts going over the bullet points from the articles in lurid tones… Some new details emerged, though. Apparently, no motive was ever revealed for the killer. Guests on the fourth-floor reporting screams in the middle of the night.
“Sure they did,” I said sarcastically, then I hit pause as a thought struck me. Wordlessly, I walked to the door of my hotel room and opened it. Directly across was the emergency stairs. I swung out the privacy latch on the door and gently set the door so it didn’t lock me out and moved to the stairway door. I eyed the signage on the door looking for any indication pushing the crash bar would set off an alarm… nothing. Still, I held my breath as I pushed the bar open to reveal the concrete landing under the hum of harsh fluorescent tubes with a stairwell leading up and one leading down. But my blood went cold when I saw the sign on the opposite wall: “5”.
“Oh my God, this is the fifth floor,” I said, then hurried back to my room to put on my tennis shoes.
I grabbed my phone and keycard as I retracted the privacy latch and let my door shut before making my way back into the stairwell. I let the door to the stairwell close behind me and then tried the handle – it opened fine, alleviating my fear that I wouldn’t be able to get out of the stairwell until the bottom floor. I started down the stairs.
Two short flights brought me to the next landing which was marked innocuously, “4”.
“The erased fourth floor,” I said quietly to myself.
I pulled out my phone and texted Nate: “Letting you know I’m in the stairwell – found the missing fourth floor! Spooky!” I hit “send” before I could second guess myself – nothing wrong with letting someone know where I was, even if it means he makes fun of me in the morning.
“Of course you are. lol,” the response came back quickly accompanied by a skull emoji.
I rolled my eyes and put my phone away as I reached for the doorknob.
It was unlocked.
Slowly, I opened the door and stepped onto the hidden fourth floor. I quietly closed the door to the stairway behind me and noticed two things at once: first, the carpet was not only a different pattern, but a completely different color. Second, as the door closed so did all ambient sound. The background hum of the ever-present HVAC system vanished. I listened hard for any sounds – a buzzing ice machine, a door closing, someone with a TV on too loudly. Silence.
I started down the hallway slowly. Aside from the dated carpeting, the wallpaper had iridescent gold stripes in the pattern that instantly dated it, but otherwise the corridor seemed in reasonable shape and was well lit. I passed a door with a “Do Not Disturb” hang tag on the knob, and another that had a room service tray outside waiting to be picked up. Further down, a rolled up newspaper lay in front of a door – I could see “1987” as the date on the newsprint as I continued past. My destination lay at the end of the hallway – the elevator. When I reached it I pressed the “up” button. No response. I pressed “down” and nothing.
“That explains why the elevator doesn’t stop here,” I said aloud.
I pulled out my phone and Googled “Ashford Hotel Massacre” again and chose a true crime podcast about the massacre. I sighed as I scrubbed past the hosts introduction, “like and subscribe,” yada yada yada… “…Just after midnight on October 17th, 911 dispatchers reported getting calls about shots fired on the fourth floor of the Ashford Hotel…”
“Okay, this is what I’m looking for…” I said quietly, though my voice still seemed loud in the stillness.
“…for reasons unknown, Daniel Mercer emerged from his room – 401 – with a .357 Magnum revolver and a bowie knife…” the host continued. “He went room to room killing indiscriminately…”
I jumped as I heard a door slam behind me, from the direction I had just come. I spun to face the sound, but the corridor now looked completely different. A haze filled the hallway, and the several of the overhead lights were out, while another blinked on and off sporadically.
“What the hell…?”
I heard the creak of a door opening slowing down the now dim hall, but I didn’t discern any movement. I turned and stabbed at the up and then down button, but, again, no lights came on. There was only one way out of this floor. I turned to face the hallway. I pulled out my phone, unlocked it and started to type a frantic message to Nate, but in the upper right of the screen it read, “No Service.”
“What?” I choked out. The hotel has wifi. I’m in the middle of St. Louis – there’s plenty of cell service!
“No Service.”
I swallowed hard and started down the hallway back towards the stairway.
The door to room 401 stood ajar, the sound of the TV spilled through the partially open door.
I squeezed my phone in my hand for support. I clicked back on the YouTube video – had it downloaded before no service?
“…The Keatings were Mercer’s first victims. He forced his way into 403, shooting Thomas Keating twice before stabbing Marjorie to death…”
I looked at room 403 and now I saw a bloody hand print next to the doorknob. My heart was beating furiously and I had to consciously steady my breathing. I had just passed this room – there was no bloody handprint. This hallway was bright a minute ago…
A gunshot rang out down the hallway, snapping me out of my racing thoughts. I couldn’t discern exactly where it came from.
“…Robert Hale opened their door at room 404 to investigate the sounds. He and Linda were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary when Mercer shot them both…” the podcast continued.
I moved further down the hall and saw the door to 406 ajar, a blood-stained arm jutting out into the hallway. For some reason my brain noticed that her fingernails were painted nearly the same red as the blood. I jumped back as I heard a pronounced thud coming from a room further down.
“…Mercer kicked in the door to James Foster’s room before stabbing the man as he slept…”
I could see the splintered doorframe of room 407, and I hurried past as the door swung lazily closed.
Down the hall I heard a woman scream – just once, the sound cut off abruptly.
“…Patricia Nolan was found with defensive wounds on her hands and arms, but Mercer continued his murder spree…”
I heard glass breaking behind room 409. As I stared at it, I heard the door slam behind me and I spun to face the closed door of room 410.
“…Michael Ruiz confronted Mercer, but the larger man overpowered him, forcing him back into room 410…”
My breathing was ragged.
I looked to the last room on the corridor, 412…
“…which accounts for nine of the ten dead reported that night. The identity of the tenth victim remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Ashford massacre…”
The door to 412 was closed. I looked back at the door to 410 and immediately noticed that all these rooms had round doorknobs with keysets that took real keys. All of them except 412.
My room. With the modern key reader and the modern lever-style handle.
The handle that now began to turn.
I found myself frozen to the spot staring at the door lever moving.
The door to my room.
The tenth victim…
The door began to slowly open, and I could feel a cold, evil, darkness begin to spill into the hallway towards me.
I ran.
I sprinted back down the hallway, past the broken doorframe, past the dead arm jutting out. I didn’t dare look back, but I could feel the freezing chill closing in on my back as I sprinted past the bloody handprint on the door to 403. I heard a scream as I ran only to realize it was from my own throat.
Suddenly I heard a bright “bing!” and the doors to the elevator at the end of the hall smoothly slid open. I dove into the elevator just as the doors started closing again, collapsing on the floor of the elevator as it started to smoothly move upwards.
A moment later the elevator dinged again and the doors opened on floor 4 – the contemporary floor 4.
Upon seeing the dark blue carpet and the sterile white wainscoted hallway, I sprang out of the elevator, sprinting down the well-lit hallway, my eyes raking over each modern door in turn before slamming my key card against the reader for 412. The lock clicked and I threw myself inside, locking the privacy lock, the deadbolt, and in desperation, barricading the heavy wooden chair at the writing desk in front of the door before leaning against the wall and letting myself slide down, collapsing to the floor panting.
I closed my eyes while I tried to steady my breathing.
I was safe.
I was safe.
I was – I noticed something on the floor just inside the door. My trembling fingers closed around the object as I drew it back to myself. I stared at a brass key. Embossed on the square head of the key was “412.”
