Story originally written as a response at r/WritingPrompts (u/PrimitivePrism)
Prompt:
You are alone and haven’t been able to find another human for years. Starved for interaction, you now travel to haunted houses and locations because at least at one point, these spirits were once human too.
Response:
I’d walked the earth for years before the idea came to me. The roads no longer had vehicles upon them. The cities were empty buildings. In all my wandering and searching, drinking from streams and foraging for food in the wild, forgetting to eat for days at a time, I only happened upon the idea when I came across that face-down book on the musty floor of a souvenir shop for tourists on the Atlantic Coast.
The book was called Maritime Haunts, and, true enough to its name, it featured a collection of folklore and semi-journalistic accounts about haunted locations across the region–hotels, hospitals, graveyards, and houses that were long gone, marked only by their old stone foundations in forgotten groves and meadows.
I examined the table of contents, finding the name of an old hotel in the city of Halifax, whose curious desolation I was currently exploring.
The city itself was resilient, I’d found. The public gardens, by some fluke of nature, gave the impression of still being manicured. The treated lumber of the boardwalk along the harbor waterfront, which I’d expected to be moldering, still somehow held strong. I wondered, too, if the story I’d found was correct, and if the spirits of this place were resilient as well.
I found the historic Lord Nelson Hotel and Suites without much trouble, as the city’s downtown was not as sprawling as others I’d been through in my lonely journey. Room 504 was said to be haunted, with a good deal of lore surrounding it.
The front door of the hotel swung opened and closed, as though by some immense draft within the structure that pushed and pulled.
The lobby was still immaculate, with little sign of degradation. Knowing the elevators would probably be long out of order, I didn’t even try them, and instead located the stairs, tromping my way up to the fifth floor.
The door to 504 was cracked open, and I felt a strange otherworldliness emanating from it. I thought it was my imagination, but as I opened the door all the way and stepped through into that room, a potent, eerie feeling, almost of a connection to some other dimension, assailed me.
I closed the door behind me and seated myself on the soft bed. There was a chocolate on each pillow and towels folded at the foot of it, as though it had just recently been made up.
I waited there, speaking aloud to the room a bit, asking for any presences to make themselves known–telling them, even, that I searched only for company. Connection. A simple chat. I wanted only some semblance of togetherness, to be able to share the contents of my mind, my experience, and to hear that of another’s.
For a long time, despite that eerie sensation I felt, of being in a place where some veil between worlds was worn thin, there was no response.
A sound came from the door, and I looked to see the doorknob turning.
Suddenly petrified, I couldn’t bring myself to move. My shock gave way to anticipation, as the door slowly opened and a man and a woman, looking entirely corporeal, entirely present, stepped in from the hall.
They somehow took no notice of me, and I supposed that ghosts, even ones repeating some eternal cycle that marked a portion of their bygone lives, were not always able to observe the living.
The woman dropped her bags with a thud that was weirdly tangible, and then she flopped, exhausted, onto the bed. She stayed reclined like that for a moment while the man removed his jacket, and then she shivered.
“Brrr, babe, it’s freezing in here.”
“Is it?” He frowned. “Seems warm enough to me.”
“It’s cold, really.”
The man glanced at the antiquated wall thermometer. “Says here it’s 26 degrees.”
“Come here,” said the woman, ushering him over with her hands.
He came to the bed, hovering right beside me–both ghosts still not catching so much of a glimpse of yours truly–and a look of bafflement came across his features.
“It is cold here. What the…”
I stood up.
“I don’t mean to disturb you, but I came here to–“
“What was that?” cried the woman. “I heard something.”
“Huh, I heard it too. Like a voice.”
“Hey, it was me,” I said more loudly, feeling myself draw strength, in a way I couldn’t explain, from the presence of the couple. “I know you are long dead, but I came here to connect with your spiri–“
“Jesus!” cried the man, as they both jumped away from the bed.
“Don, there’s something wrong in here. Where’s that voice coming from?”
They backed up to the door.
The man grumbled bitterly. “I knew we should’ve gone somewhere else when they said this was the last available room. The concierge said those ghost stories were just a silly legend.”
“I’m not staying here. Absolutely no way.”
“Listen!” I called. “I just want to talk with you, for god’s sake! Please!”
They both bolted, the man sweeping up his jacket in one smooth motion. They didn’t even close the door behind them.
Though I felt deflated, I still sensed that mysterious strength in myself, as though I’d pulled it out of them, fortifying my being like it were hot food. I felt more there somehow. I saw more details in the room, heard more. I…
…I heard voices. Noises. Out there on the street.
Those couldn’t be engines. That couldn’t be a horn…
I rushed to the window, throwing open the curtains to look down upon the bustling street, filled with the creeping dread of true understanding.
I looked upon the world of the living that, at some point, my soul had left behind.
