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Empty-Hallway Woman
2009:
In downtown Los Angeles I work in a classic old style building that clearly has been around for maybe a hundred years or more.
The business's offices are on the top and fourth floor, while down in the mostly silent cellar I maintain the company's hardcopy files, which at one time used to be bank vaults.
Banks are notoriously haunted, as my author friend
Marla Brooks
reports in her first
Ghosts of Hollywood
book.
I get to work quite early, long before other offices in the building even consider having people show up.
On several occasions as I walk the seemingly silent halls, the architecture reflecting a hard-boiled
Phillip Marlowe
detective story.
As I'd reach the end of the vacant hallway, now and then there would be the very distinctive sound of a woman's footsteps heard on the marble floor, the unmistakable clicking of high heeled shoes, despite the obvious absence of a physical person.
I know it is not my footsteps, as apart from my wearing sneakers, when I hear the footsteps I stop and turn around and watch as the footsteps approach.
They never quite reach me, but they are in the same relatively short corridor.
The cellar is shared by building custodians, as well as occasional construction by noisy workers, often berated by a loud supervisor for their taking so long on the project.
I rarely pay attention when such are about, as footsteps easily could be one of those people.
But most of the time, I am the only one within earshot.
Coworkers from upstairs now and then come down to bring down paperwork for filing and storage, and sometimes to retrieve documents, which I quickly find and provide to them.
I can generally hear them approach by their footsteps and sometimes voices if there are two of more coworkers.
Sometimes as the footsteps approach and I go to the gate, the footsteps stop... and no one is in the otherwise dead-end corridor.
Sometimes the footsteps make it to the heavy metal grate, making the loud slam-bang noise as it complains off its hinge by the shifted weight...
but there are no footsteps retreating... and no one stands at the gate or has gone back down the hall...
One morning as I boarded the elevator with a coworker who was headed to the fourth floor, I was asked if there were rats in the basement.
"None of which I've ever been aware," I replied.
"But I do often hear footsteps approaching, even up to the metal grate of my vault gate door...
only to find No On There."
"I hear that too...!" she exclaimed with excitement, referring to similar footsteps of the unseen, elsewhere in the building.
I told her how in the upstairs' corridors now and then I can hear a woman's footsteps, and it turned out that is the sort of footsteps my coworker has heard as well when she'd been by herself...
January 14, 2010
Once again I heard the footsteps of female shoes; this time as soon as I heard them, I stopped and turned around and stood silently.
The footsteps approached the hallway corner and turned in my direction, their owner obviously not visible to the naked eye.
Back east I designed and ran sound tech for stage productions, so I have a good ear for sound and audio.
I could tell where in three dimensional space the invisible walker would be as she approached and by a single step
passed me in the otherwise empty corridor.
There was no change in temperature; no "cold spot" passing around or through me.
The sound also was not one of someone coming to a stop: the footsteps simply ended.
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