fourth pair of footsteps behind them, despite her husband saying that he couldn’t. While her husband was taking an afternoon nap, she decided to take Thomas outside to play in the snow and spotted a figure in the elevator as the doors opened, but once fully opened, she noted that the elevator was in fact empty. Dismissing it as her imagination, they went down to the ground floor and stepped out into the cool December air.
Mrs Swanson sat down on one of the wicker chairs on the front porch as Thomas ran out in the snow towards the play area. The waiter came over to take her order and that was when she heard the sound that made any mother shiver with dread – her son screamed in agony. She turned to face the play area, but Thomas was nowhere in sight.
“Thomas!” She called out as she jumped to her feet.
She could still hear him screaming, “It’s got me!”
She rushed down the front steps and followed his footprints towards the play area, but the footprints stopped halfway across the snowy lawn and she could hear his terror-filled screams for help somewhere in the air above her.
“It’s got me!” Thomas screamed from somewhere unseen above her, “It wants to feed me to the hotel!”
“Thomas!” She cried out, “Where are you?”
As her eyes searched the sky above her, a thud against the hotel roof sent snow tumbling down to the covered bushes below and Thomas’s screams were gone. With the help of the security guards, Mr and Mrs Swanson searched the entire property, but couldn’t find Thomas anywhere and so the police were called out.
The new police chief had some concerns about what allegedly happened and remembered reading an old police report about similar happenings in the neighbouring town of Ashley back in the 1950s and asked the mayor of Haysville to close the hotel, but Mayor Green dismissed the request of the police chief without any reason, but Chief Davids decided to keep a close eye on the hotel.
Chief Davids had the Swansons put up in a small bed-and-breakfast in Haysville and decided to do some further investigation into the disappearance of their son… nobody ever heard from him again. The only piece of evidence in the disappearance of Chief Davids was the note he left his wife; ‘Going to the hotel to look for the boy.’
Mayor Green quickly appointed a new chief of police and did his best to cover up the disappearance of the old one and it wasn’t long before rumours started circulating that Mayor Green somehow had an interest in the ominous hotel and would do what he had to in order to protect it – but as with all rumours, it was impossible to prove it.
Less and less guests started checking into Odendale Hotel and in January 1983 it was completely vacant. Haysville residents said that they could hear hollering during the night coming from the direction of the hotel as if the building itself was calling out to victims to come and stay in its rooms of doom.
With no more rumours of people disappearing in the now deserted hotel, life returned to normal in Haysville until Chris Conner checked into the hotel on April 9th, 1983. He was on his way to a conference and decided to stop for the night after spotting an old billboard along the highway advertising the Odendale Hotel as his home away from home.
While checking in, the front desk clerk received a telephone call from a distraught woman claiming to be Chris Conner’s mother and that she had to speak to him as a matter of urgency. When she spoke to her son, she begged him to come home. She had a horrible vision of him burning to death in the hotel he was staying at – so upsetting was the vision that she called around until she could track down the hotel from her vision.
Chris tried to calm her down and reassure her that he would be alright and that he’d only stay the night, but she was persistent that he get out of the hotel immediately. To put her at ease, he told her that he’d simply rest for a moment and then leave as she wanted. The front desk clerk took the phone receiver from Chris and handed him the key card to his room.
When housekeeping came to his room the next morning, they found Chris burnt to a crisp where he sat in the chair with his hands upright as if clawing at something. His clothes were completely singed away and his corpse emitted black smoke as if he’d just been extinguished… everything else in the room was untouched – including the chair.
A message was written against the wall above the bed in what seemed to be soot; ‘Mom was right.’
An inquest was opened into the death of Chris Conner and his death was declared accidental, but the incident sparked just enough controversy to draw in more curious guests, including Tom and Anthea Black – a couple who travelled the country as part of their 40th anniversary. They’d heard about the strange occurrences at the Odendale Hotel and decided to make it the final stop on their roadtrip.
The Blacks thought they’d merely experience the same shadowy figures they read about, but being as open minded as they were, they awakened something in the hotel they weren’t prepared for – something so unbelievable that both shocked and confused them so much that it caused them to be arrested for disorderly conduct at the Haysville train station. On their day in court, they told the judge of the occurrences in the hotel that led them to be arrested. Their testimony formed part of the transcribed record;
JUDGE:
State your name.
TOM:
Tom Black.
JUDGE:
Do you swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth so help you God? Raise your right and say “I do”
TOM:
I do.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
Thank you, your honour. Mr Black, could you please tell us what happened on the day you were arrested? June 20th, 1983?
TOM:
My wife, Anthea and I, were on a roadtrip to celebrate our anniversary and decided to stop for the night at Odendale Hotel just outside of Haysville.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
Right? And what happened?
TOM:
(Hesitates)
We retired to our room at about nine that evening and while my wife was preparing for bed, we both heard scratching noises coming from inside or outside the room.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
Scratching noises? Could you please specify whether it was inside or outside?
TOM:
It was hard to tell. It might’ve been coming from beneath the floorboards. I called the front desk and told them what we heard, but the clerk simply said that it was the hotel floors settling in for the night.
JUDGE:
Where are you going with this?
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
Your honour, I’m trying to ascertain in what state of mind the Blacks were when they were found and arrested. (A moment of silence). You may continue, Mr Black.
TOM:
We awoke at three AM the next morning and heard the same scratching sounds coming from beneath the floorboards, but this time it was louder than before and we both had the overwhelming sensation that the floor was giving way beneath us.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
What do you mean?
TOM:
It felt almost like the feeling you get when you dream of falling – only, we were both awake.
My wife turned on the bedside lamp and the floor of our room seemed blurry and seemingly spinning. That’s when I called the front desk and told the clerk what was happening. I told him that we needed help in room 53 and he said that he had nobody checked into room 53 – but I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was lying and quite enjoyed hearing my distress.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
And what happened next?
TOM:
The line went dead and the receiver fell out of my hand as something jerked the phone underneath the bed. We heard footsteps out in the hallway and started calling out for help, but… (stutters) our calls for help sounded weird.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
What do you mean?
TOM:
Our calls for help had a strange echo and was being repeated by voices from unseen beings as if they were mocking us. It sounded as if the
voices came from all around us, but we were alone in the room… all the while the falling sensation we were both feeling increased.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
And what happened next?
TOM:
The lights went out the same time that the door flung open. We could see shadows being cast by the hallway light, but the shadows entered without any bodies casting them. The shapeless shadows surrounded the bed and that’s when the floor opened up and tried to swallow me. (starts crying) Anthea grabbed me by the arms and pulled with all her might while something in the hole was pulling my legs down into the darkness below. She finally managed to pull me free and we made a run for the door. It felt like my 70 year-old heart was about to explode, but we didn’t look back. We just kept running to get as far away from that evil place.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
And then you ended up at the train station?
TOM:
Yes. It was just after seven AM. Somehow we lost four hours. We tried to get people to help us, but nobody wanted to… and the worst part of it all was that they all looked like they knew exactly what we were talking about – they simply chose to ignore us.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR:
I have no further questions.
The front desk clerk of Odendale Hotel was called to testify to the events of the night in question and informed the court that they had no record of the Blacks ever checking into the hotel. The judge ruled that the Blacks had suffered a collective hallucination and discharged them.