The "Overlook" Hotel
Following are some of the
happenings at the local hotel. All the interactions between the
living people actually happened. As far as the other interactions,
judge for yourselves. The names have been changed to protect the
living. The author bears a resemblence to Jack Nicholson , and,
like Nicholson's character in "The Shining" is also an
author. We keep him away from sharp objects.
The Winter Of '98 & '99
by
Jack Torrance
Due to circumstances beyond my control, or the
ability of my accountant to assuage my creditors, my bookkeeper
insisted I find a job. "But," says I; "people
with jobs need to pay taxes." With a quzzical look she
replied: "Jack, you need to find a job to pay off last year's
delinquent taxes, or they'll come and take your home and
automobile. Besides, you still owe me for keeping you out
of jail so far."
It was because of this unfortunate situation, and
her insistent demanding nature, that I began scanning the want
ads in August of 1998 in an effort to improve my financial
stability. Right off, I noticed that the Overlook Hotel was
desperately seeking a Night Auditor and Desk Clerk. This
local hostelery is always looking for someone to work for them.
I've since found out there's more than one reason for this.
When I applied for this position, I was instantly hired on the
spot. No doubt this was because of my charming personality,
my ability to get along famously with most people, and my sincere
and industrious work ethic. My employer and manager
informed me that first they would train me for checkins and
checkouts, then they would work me into the night audit shift,
that runs from 11PM to 7AM. I said that would be fine.
This training period lasted for three weeks.
Charlie was the afternoon desk clerk. It became his
responsibility to train me. After two weeks of making a
mess of things, Charlie wrote down in plain English the simple
procedure involved with my job that even a fifth grader could
understand, and after this I got along with things in an
acceptable manner.
On my third day at work during a slow spell,
Charlie asked me: "Do you believe in ghosts?"
"Oh," I replied. "I like to keep an
open mind about things." "That's good."
He said. "This place is haunted."
The Overlook Hotel is a large, L-shaped, two-storied
structure, that sprawls across a three acre plot in an isolated
location in the Flathead Valley. It has a hundred rentable
rooms in four long hallways, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool,
an exercise room, two ballrooms, two kitchens on either end of
the building, several large meeting rooms where meetings,
weddings, and conventions are held, a casino, a restaurant and a
lounge that have both been closed since I've worked there.
A large parking lot for guests is on the east
side, a range of hills sits adjacent to the property on the west
side. The 100 hallway is on the first floor connected to
the Main Lobby. The 200 hallway is below this and could be
called the basement. The 300 and 400 hallways make the
structure's L shape. These hallways are so long, that
a person can get lost walking in a straight line before he
reaches the end of it. Three large chandeliers light up the
Main Lobby, the hallways are carpeted with a quiet, burgundy
color. There is a certain elegance about the place, that is
actually a facade for an underlying seediness, that is not
immediately noticeable to the casual observer.
When Charlie informed me the hotel was haunted, I
was not really surprised. I had already determined the entire
Flathead Valley was haunted, for one reason or another.
When I asked him why he thought the place was haunted, he replied:
"Everybody that works here can tell you about the
experiences they've had."
"What have you witnessed Charlie?"
His eyes started watering as he told me about the
time he was taking a reservation on the phone. Behind the
Front Desk is a large mirror that covers the entire wall.
The console phone unit that accepts incoming calls sits in the
corner behind the desk. Early one evening after it had
gotten dark outside, the phone rang and Charlie started taking
down the information for a reservation. In the middle of
doing this, a black shadow came through the mirror out of the
wall and passed by his shoulder. The shadow passed by so
close, he could've reached out and touched it.
I found this to be an interesting comment because
the same thing had already happened to me, when I was alone doing
the same thing, taking a reservation on the phone. I hadn't
thought much about this when it happened to me. At the time,
I was too busy concentrating on taking down the information I was
being given.
"What else can you tell me about this place,
Charlie?"
"There's lots of nights you can hear people
walking around upstairs in the restaurant." This was
another curious comment because as previously stated, the
restaurant has been closed since I've worked there. There's
no way to enter the restaurant except to pass by the Front Desk,
and through the course of this last winter, on most nights, you
can count the number of inhouse guests on one hand.
A couple of weeks after talking with Charlie, I
met Monica. It was during my trial an error period and I
was having trouble figuring out the complexities of checking
guests out on the computer. There were three couples
waiting to checkout and growing impatient with my computer
incompetence. Monica walked down the stairway from the
restaurant and saw my perplexity.
She came behind the desk and looked at the
waiting guests. "Hi, my name's Monica. Can I
help you?" She checked out two couples while I
struggled with one. When the lobby was empty, I turned to
her. "Hi, Monica. Thanks for your help. My
name's Jack, I'm still new at this." After showing me
what I was doing wrong, she said: "Don't worry about
it. You'll get it. It's easy. I normally work the
banquets that are held here."
She hesitated a few seconds then looked at me.
"So, Jack. Have you met "Frank", yet?"
"Who's Frank?"
"Frank's a ghost, Jack. He's kind of
tall and dark complected. He might be an Indian. He
wears an old, dirty, beatup looking hat, and a scruffy, wornout
coat. He reminds me of a homeless transient you see walking
down the road. I've seen Frank walking through the
restaurant some nights."
Dee Dee was a young girl that worked on the
Housekeeping staff. I met her one afternoon, and she told
me why she didn't like cleaning rooms in the 300 hallway.
"One day I was cleaning rooms after everyone had checked out.
I'd just finished doing 316. I opened the door to leave the
room when something behind me literally shoved me out of the room!
It freaked me right out because I knew the room was empty!
You can talk to Connie if you don't believe me."
Connie was the Overlook Hotel's Head Housekeeper.
She'd worked in this capacity for three years by the time I got
there. When I talked to Connie, she told me she didn't like
the 300 or the 400 hallways. She wasn't too specific just
why this was the case, but Connie told me about the older lady
who had a heart attack and died in the elevator, and about the
older gentleman, who had a seizure and died coming down the
stairs next to the elevator. The elevator is on the south
side of the hotel, adjacent to the
300 and 400 hallways.
For the first month of my employment, I worked
the morning shift learning the checkout procedure, the afternoon
shift learning the checkin procedure, and the night shift
learning the night audit routine. Within that first month,
everyone that had worked at the hotel prior to me, quit their
jobs for better employment or higher wages elsewhere. In
four weeks time I went from being the new hire, to the employee
who had been there the longest. Guess it was time for a
change.
I became the permanent night auditor.
Serena was hired to work the afternoon shifts, and to fill in for
me as the night auditress on the two nights a week that I have
off. When Serena asked me if there were ghosts here, and
was the place haunted, I told her: "You have nothing
to worry about. They might try to scare you, but they can't
harm you. Don't let 'em scare you."
One night in the middle of October, I walked
outside on the landing and lit a cigarette. It was around 2:30
in the morning. Winter was approaching and the nights were
getting colder. I smoked the cigarette and listened to the
coyotes howling in the hills behind the hotel. I don't know,
maybe they were wolves. It was the damndest cacophony I've
ever heard. Their howling sounded cold and lonely.
They sounded hungry too. I think they were calling to the
neighborhood dogs to come on up into the hills and play with them
awhile. "Come on up and join us for supper."
Part of the night auditor's job is to lock up the
indoor pool area, check and make sure that certain doors are
locked, and to generally keep an eye out for "anything out
of the ordinary." This requires one to walk through that
empty restaurant at night. Some nights the restaurant feels quiet
and calm. Some nights when I walk through, there's enough
static electricity running up and down my spine, that you could
run a Lionel train set with it. On these nights the hair on
the back of my neck stands straight up.
Most nights, I look around at the empty tables
and chairs, and could be convinced that there's someone sitting
in every chair watching me as I pass through. On two
separate occaisons, I've gone up to silence in the room. Later
that same night, I've had to go back up and turn the muzak off.
The muzak comes from speakers in the ceiling. It's not
controlled by a timer, you need to physically turn the switch on
or off. Both nights this happened, I turned the switch off
between four and five o' clock in the morning.
Then there's the night in November when I got
incredibly drowsy. I couldn't keep my eyes open, no matter
how much coffee that I'd already drank. I sat down in a
chair in the main lobby to rest my eyes for a minute. I
soon became aware of the three voices that were talking behind me.
They were women's voices. They were angry with me, and they
were talking about me. In my mind's ear, I couldn't really
distinguish the words they were actually saying, but I could tell
they were angry, and they were talking about me.
A skeptic would say here that I fell asleep and
was simply dreaming. Maybe so, I don't need an argument.
I was only in the chair a few minutes. When I reopened my
eyes, I felt refreshed again. I walked over and looked down
the empty 100 hallway. There were no belligerant ladies
standing there.
One night I walked through the double doors of
the Main Lobby to start my shift. Serena was behind the
desk waiting for me to get there and take over for her.
When she looked up and saw me, she said: "Oh, Jack!
I'm glad you're here. I've gotta tell you what happened to
me the other night, when I went up into the kitchen to start
bringing down the Continental Breakfast!
By now, I was used to this. These things
happen all the time at the Overlook. Serena is as sharp as
a tack. She's not subject to trifles like some people I
could name. I smiled at her and asked: "What
happened?"
"I went up into the kitchen the other night
to start making coffee. I hadn't taken ten steps inside,
when behind me, something in the storage rooms crashed. It
startled me so bad, I twirled right around, and came back down
and stayed behind the desk here for awhile."
"What exactly did it sound like?"
She thought for a minute, then replied:
"It was like a loud, metallic, bang. It was real close
too. It really gave me the jitters."
"Now that you're here, let's go upstairs and
see if we can figure out what it was."
I thought about what she'd said on our way up the
stairs. As you enter the kitchen through the two swinging
doors, the kitchen is to your left. The two small storage
rooms are off to your right. I'd been in these two rooms
enough to know there isn't a lot of metal in there. Both
rooms have shelves where lots of canned goods for the restaurant
are stored. There's boxes of napkins, garbage sacks, and
those kinds of things there also.
Serena and I walked back into these rooms and
looked around. Everything was in order. No metal cans had
been knocked off the shelves or fallen on the floor.
Against one wall was an empty bread rack with metal trays for
holding loaves of bread. I rattled this and looked at
Serena who shook her head. Nope, that wasn't it.
On our way back out of the kitchen, I noticed
that someone had left an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall
by the entrance. Serena was a few steps ahead of me, she
looked back around as I reached for the ladder. I pulled
the ladder away from the wall and slammed it hard back in place.
It made a loud, metallic bang against the wall. I watched
the color drain out of Serena's face. "Oh, God, Jack!
That was it!" Later that same night after Serena had
left, I went back up to the kitchen to make coffee and to start
getting things ready for the morning's Continental Breakfast.
Something compelled me to look up at the empty room and I spoke
aloud in the stillness:
"Stop scaring Serena. The place is big
enough for all of us. We can all get along here, if you let
us."
Right before Thanksgiving, we checked Hank into
room 310. Hank was a traveling salesman who was selling
magazine subscriptions. He got a corporate rate and stayed
with us until the end of the year. One night he called down
when Serena was working, and asked her if she'd make a call to
the folks in the room above him, and ask them to keep the noise
down. He was trying to sleep and needed to be on the road
early in the morning. There was no one that night at all in the
400's.
The next night Jack was back on. Hank
called again and asked me who was running the vacuum in the
hallways. At 3:00 O' Clock in the morning, nobody runs the
vacuum anywhere. I met Hank in the hallway and took him
upstairs to convince him that no one was there, that everything
was quiet and as it should be.
I checked in an out-of-state couple once around
Midnight. They were from Pennslyvania as I remember.
I put them in a downstairs room in the 200's. A few minutes after
they had left the front desk, the guy came back upstairs and went
outside without looking at me. He came back in carrying two
suitcases. On his way past the desk, he stopped and set the
luggage down then looked at me.
When I looked up from my work, he asked:
"What's the name of that Jack Nicholson movie?"
I already knew which one he meant. "You
must mean, As Good As It Gets."This movie was currently
playing in the local theaters.
"Not that one. The one a few years
back where Jack is working in that hotel."
"Oh, That one is called The Shining."
"That's the one. This place reminds us
of that hotel."
"Why exactly do you say that?"
"I dunno. It must be the long hallways
with the red carpets. That, and these chandeliers, and that
big staircase." I gave him a big reassuring smile as
he picked up his luggage and went back down to his room.
Right before the Christmas and New Years holiday,
our area had a cold snap. For two or three weeks the tempreture
ouside was sub-zero. It wasn't much warmer inside the Main
Lobby. I got in the habit of walking around the corner into the
100 hallway, and kneeling down against the wall with my back to
the heater vent to warm up by. On one of these occasions, I
noticed the six faces that are ingrained into the oak wall by the
staircase leading down to the 200 hallway.
These faces are textured right into the oak-grained
paneling. Three of these faces are large and real
noticeable. They're positioned right next to each other and
they don't look happy. Dark rings are marked around hollow-looking
eyes. The closer one looks, they begin to see the outline
of three other faces, within the outline of the larger faces
beginning just below the nose and ending at the chin.
Within the left side figure is a much smaller
face of a man. He has longish hair and a goatee.
There's a devious type of smile on his face that reminds me of
the look Ted Bundy probably gave to the girls, that he used to
take up into the canyons in Utah and left there, dead.
Each of these faces in the wall generates an
image of different personalities. The largest of these
faces shows an insolent, angry women. The others look more sad
and forlorn. Once again, a skeptic might say these images
are just a trick of the grain and the texturing. You can
find this same type of paneling scattered throughout the interior
of the whole building, but these faces are only found in one spot.
What these faces are doing there is beyond me. Maybe if Rod
Serling was still alive, he could tell you.
On a night in January, a lady named Cherie
checked into room 401. This room is actually a suite with a
King-sized bed, an in-room sauna, and an outside deck. It's
the most expensive room in the hotel. I came in that night
to start another shift to find Serena on the phone with Cherie.
While Cherie's was still on the phone, Serena
whispers to me: "This lady's in 401. She's
crying and really terrified."
"What's been going on?" I ask.
"She tells me she's been seeing shadows
walking around outside on the deck, and there's been several loud
bangs just outside her window by the bed."
Serena tells Cherie that Jack, the Nightman, just
came on shift. She descibes to Cherie my handsome features
and tells her I'll be right up to escort her down to the Main
Lobby. On my way up to 401, I think about what I've just
heard. The only access up to the deck outside 401, would be
with a grappeling hook connected to a rock climber's rope.
Outside the window by the bed in that room is a small ledge that
runs down the length of the building. A small rodent might
find this ledge traversible, but a man or child would fall forty
feet to the ground if they tried to get on it.
I knocked on the door at 401. Inside, I
hear a frightened woman's voice. "Who is it? Who's
there?"
"It's me, Jack. I'll escort you down
to the Main Lobby if you wish." After looking through the
peephole in the door and seeing my calm, reassuring smile, Cherie
unlocks the door and lets me in. I took a casual look
around and saw nothing out of place. "Grab your stuff,
let's go down to the lobby."
On our way down, Cherie tells me she's never had
an experience like this before. She doesn't believe in
ghosts. She chattered a lot to cover her fear and took time
to dry her eyes. I left Cherie with Serena in the lobby who
continued to calm Cherie down. I went back to 401 and took
a closer look around. Of course I found nothing "out
of the ordinary", but that's not to overlook the fact that
Cherie's terror was real. So were her tears of fear. I
grabbed Cherie's overnight bag off the table in the room and
returned it to her in the lobby.
At the beginning of February I'm walking through the indoor pool
area locking the place up. I'm a bit distracted that night,
my mind is pondering deep subjects, like why I'm still in debt
after working at the Overlook for six months. It was
because I wasn't concentrating on the things around me, that I
didn't really take notice of the lady that politely coughed
behind me. She wanted me to take notice of her Presence, so
twenty minutes later when I'm walking into the Casino to light a
cigarette, she coughed again. This time I took notice.
I turned and looked behind me and spoke to an empty room.
"Come on in. I hope you don't mind
cigarette smoke. Would you like one? Let's sit down over
here and visit if you like."
Serena will soon be leaving us. She
actually has a life, and has now determined to get on with this.
I wish her and her family the best of all possible futures.
Two weeks ago on her last night shift, she was busy behind the
front desk taking reports. It was late evening or early
morning depending upon one's perspective of things.
She heard a rattling at the front door to the
Main Lobby, and saw the glass doors quickly open and shut several
times, seemingly of it's own agency. She noticed a pair of empty
work boots standing just inside the doorway, but thought nothing
of this until much later when she was less busy. When she
told me about this incident, I asked her: "Didn't
seeing that pair of boots inside the doorway freak you out?"
"Not really. Like I say, I was busy,
and didn't think much about it until later. That didn't get
to me half as bad as that incident with the ladder up in the
kitchen - maybe Frank knows I'm leaving and came in to say
goodbye."
"Either that, or he knows I'm in need of a
new pair of shoes, and brought them by thinking I was working
that night."
She smiled at this comment saying: "Jack,
you're a real Christmas nut basket."
It has not been my intention with this article to
try and convince anyone that ghosts are real, or that haunted
houses, (or hotels,) exist. I'm merely relating the things
that have happened this last winter where I work. The one thing I'm
sure of is that we live in an uncertain world. In an
uncertain world, there are no absolutes.
Faith and Love are powerful forces. Faith
and Love may not always conquer over Fear and Hate, but Faith and
Love are how I keep my sense of humor in an uncertain, changing
world. If you ever find yourself in the Flathead Valley, drop by
the Overlook Hotel. Depending on my disposition at the time,
I'll consider telling you the things that happened this last
winter that I didn't mention here. When you come in, ask
for Jack. If they tell you at the front desk that Jack used
to work here but doesn't anymore, walk over to the stairwell that
leads downtairs and look at the faces on the wall. You'll know
which one is mine. I'll be the one that winks back at you.
I get asked the same question by strangers all
the time. "When is checkout time?"
When asked this I always tell them the same reply.
"Relax, we are programmed to receive. You can
checkout any time you like, but you can never leave."
I usually get a quizzical look from folks when I
tell them this. I guess they've never heard that Eagles
song.
Jack Torrance
March 3, 1999