Reads more like a police report.



A New Hampshire Ghost Story


by Hector Remarkable


So you wanna hear a New Hampshire ghost story? I don't tell mine much, because people think it's crazy. They simply don't believe me. They say it's off the wall. And that was the name of the place - Off The Wall Racquet and Health Club. But it's totally true. I once had the job of being the third shift cleaner there, and in my opinion, it has a poltergeist.


It's called something else now, over on the Albany Street Extension back when the original Malt House Exchange Restaurant was still there on the other side of Portsmouth. It was so long ago, 1984, I think. The Malt House moved downtown to Ceres St. at some point I think, but I can't imagine if it still exists. The plaza and neighborhood itself has changed greatly I believe - the mills now renovated and gentrified - but it's still probably a health club. It was quite large I thought, at least to clean. It certainly did take nearly all night to clean all the mirrors in the exercise rooms, clean the hot tubs, the tanning beds, the courts, the showers, etc. Mostly, it was lots of bathrooms. Hard work, but what the heck, I was all alone, the pay was decent for the day, and it was on a bus line right back home. Every morning I enjoyed Portsmouth, N.H. at dawn as I got out of work and walked to the now non-existent Mr. Donut for my morning coffee. "I love you, Pam - Julio", the overpass graffiti read as I walked on to the Caravan bus stop back to UNH. Yes, I remember everything. I remember how everything started to get weird.


I mean, I could have attributed it to fatigue, as advised, but I was quite used to and adept at the third shift. I still took classes, but I got plenty of sleep. I was healthy, and relatively happy. But then things started happening at night, at work.


First, subtle things, like the music I played overhead while I was working. It would change volume while I was working in another part of the building. The volume control was at the front desk, the building was locked, I was the only one there, and yet the volume kept occasionally changing, usually turning the music down. Once, I was blasting Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (it was 1984), while cleaning downstairs, and all of a sudden the volume turned right down all the way. I sort of freaked at that point, as much as you can all by yourself at 3 a.m., anyway. I ran so fast upstairs to the front desk where the music controls were, but when I got there I was simply facing the reality of a sound system that had been turned down, somehow.


And somehow, unexplained things kept happening. Things that could not have happened because I was totally alone in a locked building in the middle of the night. Totally alone, yet not alone. I don't know why, but I have theorized that a "ghost" of some sort, perhaps someone who dropped dead of a heart attack on the racquetball court or something, clearly haunts the place. It got to the point where I was actually quite scared. I mean, I just stopped playing music altogether, and yet during the literal hours I had to spend cleaning wall after wall of ceiling to floor mirrors, I could swear I saw shadows leaping behind me in the background of the mirrors, and I would race the cleaning as fast and as frightened as I could be.


And then the vacuum cord. You see at first, I just...did the vacuuming. It went rather routine. But as time went on, I seemingly could not continue the vacuuming in one session no matter where in the building I was. The moment I took my eye off it, the plug pulled out of the wall. Just came out of the wall. After a while it was like being taunted. I just wanted to finish the vacuuming. And the plug just kept coming out of the socket. And I would walk all the way back to the socket and plug it in again. And then walk all the way back to the vacuum cleaner. And the plug would come out again. And I had plenty of cord. Plenty of cord. And it just kept happening.


The final thing that got me though - got me to leave the job, since I just flaked out on the boss, what was I going to say? - was one night cleaning the final bathrooms, the ones in the lobby at the bottom of the stairs by the main doors. I always saved them for last since the main supply closet was down there and I could then just clean the lobby floor and leave, lock up and go on merrily to Mr. Donut.


So, it was two stalls, right? I cleaned the first, right on my knees I was, doing a fine job on these toilets - yes I did - and then I replaced the nearly empty roll of toilet paper with a fresh new one. I admired my handiwork for a moment, as they certainly did need cleaning, and then moved on to the one to the left. It was no better, but ready for a waiting public when I was done with it, with another new roll of toilet tissue and all.


And I gave one last glance back to the other toilet stall on the right, I don't know why, just double-checking, just still admiring a job well done, but God. Damn. That's when I lost it. That's when I became the babbling man at the Mr. Donut that morning who just wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, about why he had to quit his job. I had to settle at last for the Caravan driver. He thought I was nuts. Because when I looked at that toilet stall, the one I had just cleaned minutes before the one I had just cleaned, right next to it, all alone, in the lobby, of the building, that was locked, where the weird stuff all happened, well... simple enough, it was covered in torn toilet paper pieces.


Somehow, whilst I was cleaning the second stall, the first, previously immaculate john was now covered, floor and bowl with small, torn pieces of toilet paper, from the goddamn fresh roll I had just put in there. Totally covered. And I was totally alone. I was freaked and pissed at the same time. I quickly gathered up the many loose pieces of toilet tissue with my hands into a ball and left in a big hurry.


I tossed the tissue by the side of the road and scurried away, never to return to the Off the Wall Racquet and Health Club on Albany Street Extension in Portsmouth, N.H., which as I said is no doubt called something else now. But I'll bet the ghost is still there.



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