The Real Ghost in Room 313

I never believed I would be the person who writes one of these stories. Ghosts were the stuff of old family tales, or movies you watch when you want to scare yourself on a rainy night. I used to laugh when people said they’d seen a ghost, until I checked into a run-down hotel off Highway 22 one cold October night, and ended up in Room 313.

I was driving cross-country for a new job. Money was tight, so I picked the cheapest place I could find that didn’t look like it would collapse on top of me. The innkeeper was a thin, jittery old man who kept glancing over my shoulder as if someone stood behind me. When I asked for a room, he hesitated. Then he handed me the key to 313 and said, “Don’t worry about the noise. Sometimes pipes bang in the walls. Old building.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes after that.

Room 313 was at the end of a long hallway on the third floor. The carpet was worn thin, the wallpaper yellowed and peeling. The door creaked when I unlocked it. Inside was simple enough — a small bed, a desk with a chipped lamp, and a single window overlooking the empty parking lot. I threw my duffel on the bed, exhausted from ten hours of driving, and sank into the mattress without even pulling the covers down. I didn’t even bother to change clothes.

At first, I thought the sound I heard was my mind playing tricks. A soft tapping, like fingertips on wood. Then a soft, almost inaudible whisper. I sat up, heart pounding. I could swear I heard someone say, “Don’t go.” The radiator hissed, the wind moaned outside. I shook my head, laughed at myself, and laid back down.

Sleep didn’t come easy. I kept waking to the feeling that someone was standing by the bed, watching me. I’d sit up, turn on the lamp, and find nothing but my own heavy breath fogging the cold air. At around 3:13 a.m., I woke again — this time to a coldness so deep it made my bones ache. That’s when I saw her.

She was standing near the window. A young woman in an old-fashioned dress, pale as moonlight. Her hair was dark and wet, plastered to her neck. Her eyes were wide, brimming with something between sorrow and terror. I couldn’t move. My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to run, to scream, but all I could do was stare as she lifted one hand and pointed at me.

I managed to croak out, “What do you want?”

She didn’t speak. She just looked at me, then turned and pointed to the corner of the room. There was nothing there, just shadows. Then she was gone. One blink — and she vanished like smoke.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. At dawn, I went down to the front desk. The old man looked like he’d been expecting me. He didn’t ask how I’d slept. He just said, “You saw her, didn’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded.

He poured me a cup of stale coffee and told me the story. Her name was Claire. In 1967, she and her husband stayed in Room 313 on their honeymoon. Her husband left to buy cigarettes and never came back. The police found him three days later — dead in the river behind the hotel. Some say he jumped. Some say he was pushed. No one really knows.

Claire waited for him in that room. When they told her he was gone, she wouldn’t leave. She stayed another night, and another, until one night she slipped into the bathtub and opened her wrists. Housekeeping found her the next morning. They say her ghost never left. She waits in Room 313 for her lost love to come back, tapping on the walls, whispering for him to stay.

The old man looked at me with tired eyes. “Most people run screaming in the night. But she doesn’t hurt anyone. She just doesn’t want to be alone.”

I could have checked out that morning. Any sane person would have. But something about the look in her eyes — that bottomless grief — made it impossible for me to leave right away. I stayed another night. And another. Each night she came to me, standing by the window, whispering words I couldn’t quite hear. Sometimes I’d wake to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me sleep, her cold hand brushing my cheek.

I started talking to her. I told her about my life, my worries, my regrets. Maybe it sounds insane, but I think she listened. The room felt less cold, the shadows less heavy. It was like I was giving her a piece of the life she never got to finish. In return, she gave me something too — company, when I’d never felt more alone.

On my last night there, she came closer than ever. I felt the mattress dip as she sat beside me. I heard her voice as clear as my own thoughts: “Thank you.” That was all. Just those two words. Then the room felt warmer than it ever had, and when I woke up, she was gone.

I checked out that morning. The old man just nodded, as if he knew I’d done something right. I’ve never been back to that old hotel, but sometimes, on cold nights, I think I hear her voice in my dreams — soft and sad, saying, Don’t go.

Some people say ghosts are just memories trapped in time. I think maybe they’re something more. Maybe they’re hearts that couldn’t bear to stop beating, love that refuses to be buried. Maybe we’re not so different, the living and the dead. We all just want someone to stay.

That’s what I learned from the real ghost in Room 313.