Ghost Tour

by Claryn Vaile

  Yes! Rebecca wanted to cheer. Here was proof of what she’d been trying to tell Plotz all along. Surely now the marketing focus would reflect these results.

  But Riesen-Shyne’s interpretation of the data took none of this into account. Apparently they did not hear – or did not care – what current clientele valued about the hotel.

  Mr. Riesen brought up the next piechart. “The second round of focus groups was comprised of people who had never been to The Keep but who were considered desirable customers. When these folks were asked why they did not choose the Griffins Keep, time and again they responded with variations of ‘I heard it was old,’ or ‘I heard it was snobby’ – or exclusive or expensive. Here again, you can see the results charted.”

  And on those misperceptions, Riesen-Shyne chose to base their new approach to marketing the hotel.

  “So, how are we going to appeal to this affluent, mostly younger, demographic?” Mr. Riesen asked before presenting his solution. “Are you ready for the Griffins Keep’s first-ever TV commercial? Run the video.”

  Ready or not, here it came. An in-your-face blast of techno-pop music, quick-take images of young people posing around the hotel, and the tagline; “Griffins Keep: Trending Away from Traditional.” Dick Plotz and the sales staff applauded and hooted.

  “This is just a taste of the branding strategy and breakthrough tactics Riesen-Shyne is known for. We’re gonna make the Griffins Keep the chic and contemporary hotel of choice for a whole new generation of consumers.”

  From that moment on, history would become a dirty word in the world of Griffins Keep marketing, determined to ignore what made The Keep distinctive.

  “Why do we want to be like every other hotel?” Rebecca dared to ask when Mr. Riesen took questions. “There are plenty of places in Denver for people looking for trendy and modern. The Keep is the last place they’ll come for that sort of thing. This should be the one hotel where they can find the warmth and the charm of another era.”

  Fully intending to harsh the Riesen buzz, she plunged on,

  “And you’re wrong about young people dismissing the past. Kids into steampunk have their own creative take on old tech and old styles. Many of them love historical fiction, historical architecture, historical fashions. And millennials get hooked on the cable TV period dramas as much as older viewers.”

  The young marketing guru glowered at Rebecca, saw his grandmother, and discounted her as hopelessly out of touch. “Surveys don’t lie, ma’am,” he replied, pissing her off further with his disingenuous courtesy. “No one wants to turn back the clock except those who can’t keep up with the times.”

  So numerous and varied were reports of unexplained phenomena at the Griffins Keep that Rebecca often told different stories to different tour groups. She tried to gauge the particular interests of her audience and tailored her selections accordingly.

  “How many of you are familiar with the phenomena known as ‘orbs?’” she asked the guests on today’s tour. Nearly everyone in the group was, some enthusiastically so. For the uninitiated Rebecca explained, “Orbs are relatively new players on the paranormal scene. When people began using digital cameras in the 1990s, they were occasionally surprised to find in their photos these glowing, iridescent bubbles -- though they had seen nothing of the sort when they snapped the pictures. Theories of what these orbs might be range from motes of dust or specks of moisture to spirits of the dead or beings from another plane of reality. Whatever they are, The Keep seems to attract them like flies to honey.”

  At the tour stop overlooking the lobby from the mezzanine balcony, she cited an example. “Last year, one of our bellmen was taking pictures of the Griffins Fountain below us here, and when he got his photos developed, he discovered quite a mystery in three of them.

  “He was shooting from the Grand Staircase side, so in the background was the front desk, which is where it’s always been. In the first photo, there’s no one behind the desk, but there’s an orb clearly hovering over one side of it. In the second photo – taken, he claims, less than minute later – the orb is gone, and behind the desk stands a man that no one recognizes. And in the third photo – again, less than a minute later – the man is gone, and there’s an orb hovering over the other side of the front desk.”

  “Have you seen the actual pictures?” a skeptic asked.

  “I have.”

  “Can we see them?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “Sorry. Our managing director won’t allow us to share any of the ‘ghost’ images we’ve collected. He’s a non-believer, convinced they’re all trick photos created with Photoshop or something like that.” Note to self, Rebecca thought. Screw Beaumont and bring the pictures along next tour.

  “I think the orbs are angels,” declared a 60-ish woman in a periwinkle blue polyester pantsuit, taking pictures with her phone in hopes of capturing her own phenomena. “They’re spirits of the dead, but only the good dead.”

  “Oh yeah?” said an irreverent young man in the group, apparently no acquaintance. “Then what happens to the spirits of the bad dead? If they’re not orbs – or angels – what are they after they die?”

  Unfazed by his challenge, the woman replied bluntly. “Nothing. Total, absolute nothing. Death is the end. Evil souls don’t get eternal life. Not in any form. They’re just suspended, forever and ever, in a terrible black void.”

  Rebecca hoped no one saw her shudder. She believed she had experienced that fathomless oblivion in recurring nightmares, decades ago. She remembered the terror as if it were yesterday.

  The woman turned to Rebecca and asked directly, “Do you believe in angels?”

  “Me? Um, sure. Why not?” But Rebecca couldn’t take the whole idea of angels seriously. Wings and robes, harps and halos? She believed in them about as much she did Santa Claus now. It was all part of the anachronistic Christian doctrine with which she was raised, but which she had finally come to see for what it was. Its dogma ranked alongside fairytales and legends, moralistic fables from a less sophisticated age. Rebecca considered herself more intelligent than the unquestioning faithful who swallowed its mythology. She had not counted herself among them in a long, long time.

  Chapter 7

  If the guests on her ghost tour looked to be a hardy lot, Rebecca often escorted them down the Grand Staircase from floors 8 or 9 to the seventh floor, the highest open floor encircling the atrium. “The view of our skylight from that level is spectacular,” she’d promise, “as is the view of the lobby.”

  They were never disappointed; though a few were disturbed by the dizzying height and chose to stand considerably back from the railing. Guests going to and from their rooms and staff in the performance of their duties were visible on six floors of balconies ringing the atrium.

  “So here we’ve returned to the Victorian era, décor-wise. You can clearly see the intricate detail of the stained glass just above us. Most of the year,” she continued, directing their attention to the void before them, “this eight-story atrium space is completely empty, as it is today. But from the Monday before Thanksgiving until after New Year’s, our huge holiday chandelier, suspended from the center of this steel support structure below the skylight, hangs from about the fifth floor to the second floor.”

  Guests looked up and then down, trying to imagine the atrium decoration. Then, before she could herd them back to the elevators and down to the ground floor, someone asked, “Has anybody ever fallen or jumped from up here?”

  The question was almost inevitable. Gazing down over the edge at the dollhouse-sized lobby furniture far below, one couldn’t help but wonder about the possibility. But the hotel tour guides were not to discuss such things. Mr. Beaumont was intractable on this point. Didn’t want anyone getting ideas -- as if the accident/suicide potential of the space weren’t obvious. So Rebecca, when faced with this question, gave the answer their managing director had officially sanctioned.

  “The only instance we know of that happening was back in 1911,�
� she began. “A youngster named Millie was walking on this seventh-floor railing, trying to balance, when she fell all the way to the lobby floor.”

  She paused for the predictable gasps of horror.

  “Of course, she was knocked out cold for several hours. A doctor was called, and he finally managed to revive her. Astonishingly, after a few wobbly steps, Millie actually walked away from the fall, apparently unhurt.”

  At this, brows knit and skepticism abounded. Then, with the timing of a consummate storyteller, Rebecca added innocently, “Did I remember to mention that Millie was the hotel cat?”

  Even with that key detail belatedly revealed, the story was astonishing. It usually satisfied the fall-curious, as the guide moved swiftly on. But of course people had fallen from the balconies into the open atrium on several occasions over the decades. And people had jumped.

  Rebecca never shared with tour guests the tragic suicide tale of Dolores Cruz from just a few years earlier.

  At 9:18 that January morning, the lobby of the Griffins Keep hotel had been quiet and nearly empty. Few witnessed Dolores’s final act. The heavy thud had startled a gentleman checking out at the front desk and had caused a young lady setting tables for afternoon tea to drop her tray of china cups. It took several moments for the reality of the incident to register with those present.

  Intending to minimize the mess when her body struck the lobby floor seven stories below, veteran hotel housekeeper Dolores had wrapped herself in a sheet before she jumped. Tidiness was her hallmark.

  What she had failed to reckon into her grim preparations was the ricochet. Her falling form hit the ledge protruding from the third-floor balcony with such force that her shoes flew off in different directions.

  Hotel management later explained that Dolores had been undergoing cancer treatments for several months. The prognosis was bleak. Her job performance suffered. The morning of Dolores’s suicide, her supervisor had ordered an indefinite medical leave of absence – without pay. After 23 years of service, the dedicated employee had been devastated by the decision.

  “The hotel was Dolores’s whole life,” a co-worker quoted in the newspaper recalled afterwards. “She told me she would never leave The Keep. Not ever.”

  Rebecca knew the story from Lochlan, one of the few unfortunate eyewitnesses to the plunge.

  “Of course she haunts the place,” he’d told the historian. “Sometimes when I step around – never over -- the spot where she hit, I’ll look up and speak to her in my head. Your work here is done, Dolores, I try to tell her. You’ve earned your rest. Maybe one day, she’ll accept her death and move on.”

  The street vendor peddling “Brains-on-a-Stick” waved a sample in her face. A sunken-eyed bride in shredded gown staggered alongside an eviscerated clown. Denver’s annual Zombie Crawl pervaded the Sixteenth Street Mall with walking-dead wannabees.

  A sore thumb in Victorian period costume, Rebecca approached an official crossing guard at the nearest intersection. The last thing she needed after a long day of leading tours was this plague of pseudo-corpses complicating her commute.

  “Excuse me, sir. Weren’t the mall shuttles supposed to resume operations at 6:30?”

  “Yeah, they were,” the guard confirmed as he held up traffic with one gloved hand and beckoned the horde across with the other. “But time is lost on these guys.”

  Spawned years earlier, the Crawl had morphed into tonight’s malignant mass of fifteen-thousand. It spread slowly southward toward Civic Center Park and a pointless conclusion, clogging the city’s heart.

  Rebecca should have checked her moon-phase calendar, should have had a contingency plan. She had relied upon public transportation almost exclusively since the self-destructive drinking binges surrounding her divorce had resulted in a near-fatal car collision with a child on a bike. The child had recovered. But more than 30 years later, the scare still haunted Rebecca. Most of the time, her old Volvo sat in the garage, gathering dust.

  Not even the pedi-cabs ventured out this evening. No option. She would have to buck the zombie tide to connect to her bus home at Union Station, 15 blocks away. The journey had never seemed so endless. At last Rebecca pushed through the heavy doors of the recently renovated train depot into light and life. The vaulted space vibrated anew with arrivals and departures, just as it had more than a century ago.

  Sanctuary.

  Rebecca breathed easier as she traversed the Great Hall and collapsed on a high-backed wooden bench, Her arthritic feet ached. She unlaced her vintage boots and hobbled out through the back doors in stocking feet. She inhaled the chill air and plopped ungracefully onto the lip of a concrete planter to await her bus. The cheeky moon flirted through peek-a-boo clouds. A whirlwind stirred dry leaves into a rising funnel, many yards away. As she watched, the funnel swirled nearer, gathering debris as it progressed across the plaza. A moment later it surrounded her, shooting higher into the air before instantly dissipating overhead, showering her with autumnal confetti.

  Rebecca couldn’t help but smile as she brushed herself off. Magic still had its moments, even in a zombie-obsessed world.

  Rebecca discounted ghosts, had lost faith in the church, and had written off the myth of “true love.” But she still believed in magic and knew it was not something to trifle with.

  When she was 12 years old, her father had been fired from his job. As a child, she was not privy to the reason for his dismissal. It didn’t matter. She knew with certainty that her father was in the right and that his boss, Harold Proctor, was unjustified in his action.

  Young Becky had recently seen or read something about voodoo practices. She decided to employ the cult’s mystical powers to get even with Mr. Proctor for the wrong he had done her father. She crafted a voodoo doll of geometrical styrofoam shapes joined by toothpicks. She hollowed out the torso with a paring knife and stuffed it with a work glove she had snatched from Proctor’s yard, which she passed every day on her way to and from school. She knew a personal article incorporated into the doll was essential to its sympathetic magic.

  By the light of the next full moon, she cursed the doll by reciting Proctor’s name 13 times, then chanting “Die, die, die!” and stabbing a steak knife into its head with each recitation. She poured all her vengeance into the act.

  The next day, her father announced that Harold Proctor had succumbed to a massive stroke. He had died, died, died.

  I did it, Rebecca had believed. I killed him with my magic.She panicked. The power of life and death was far beyond anything she was ready for. Never again, she’d vowed in fearful contrition. Never again will I call upon magical powers for personal reasons.

  As it turned out, Mr. Beaumont went out of town, looking for new employment, the last two weeks of October. Plotz waited until the last minute to publicize the special paranormal package on social media, but it didn’t deter attendance in the least. Word of this unique opportunity to investigate the Griffins Keep spread fast among the supernaturally-inclined. Within two days, reservations surpassed the 80-person limit Rebecca had wanted to set, and another 60 people were waitlisted. Plotz was thrilled. Everyone else was worried.

  Rebecca had watched the usual “ghost adventure” shows on TV and expected all sorts of paranormal investigative equipment on site that night. EMS – electro-magnetic sensors – purportedly detected the bio-energy of spirits, the electro-magnetism that makes hair stand on end. Full-spectrum cameras picked up light beyond the visible, including ultra-violet and infra-red. Night vision cameras and thermal imaging cameras, originally developed for the military, had been adopted by serious ghost hunters to detect and capture things lurking in the dark.

  Parabolic microphones picked up subsonic frequencies at levels below the human capacity to hear. Used with so-called “spirit boxes,” the special mics were believed to capture phrases or whole conversations uttered by spirits, which were then displayed on the boxes as written words onscreen. The ever-expanding arsenal of high-tech ghost detection devices
sought, paradoxically, to prove scientifically the existence of things beyond the explanation of science.

  It was going to be quite an evening.

  The Banquets and Catering staff outdid themselves in decorating the Silver Spoon. Beyond the entrance dripping with cobwebs and skeletons, corpses with glowing red eyes lounged in the foyer chairs. Dry ice and fans created a swirling mist. Bats dangled from the chandeliers. Rats peeped from the eyeholes of skulls set around the room. The window ledges along one wall of the triangular room displayed nearly 20 entries from The Keep’s interdepartmental jack-o-lantern carving contest.

  An open mini-coffin served up ghoulish appetizers. After dark, only city light through the stained glass windows lit the room. Candles glowed in the center of each round table.

  Spirits aplenty poured forth from the bar as The Keeps’ special guests arrived. The “Mile-High Haunt Hunters” wore matching T-shirts. So did the double-D divas who called themselves the “Ghost Busties.” More than one witch had taken her costuming cue from Stevie Nicks. Several wizards flitted about in tall pointed hats, one with a Gandolph staff. The Mountain West Paranormal Investigators identified themselves with MWPI logos emblazoned on the backs of leather jackets. The eclectic crowd included people of all ages and approaches who shared but one thing in common: a determination to believe.

  This was not, Rebecca recognized immediately, an audience that would settle for Casper stories. As the cocktail reception cranked up, a few of the curious visited the “gypsy” palm reader and crystal-ball gazer hired for the occasion. But kitschy Halloween trappings were not what they’d come for.

  These hunters were loaded for game. Bring on the phenomena! they seemed to demand.

  The plan was for a 45-minute abbreviated cocktail hour before Rebecca presented a Powerpoint with the backstories of several potential Keep specters. What the plan failed to take into account was that eager ghost hunters with a few drinks in them had little patience for a presentation. Sensing their restlessness, Rebecca foreshortened her spiel and got right to the business of organizing the guests into four roughly equal groups and launching them, under the guidance of her three associate historians, into the allegedly “spiritually active” spaces of the Griffins Keep.