BLACK CATS, BAD ODORS & THINGS THAT SPEAK SPANISH IN THE NIGHT

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On August 8, 1997, a great friend of mine gave me as a birthday gift ‘HAUNTED PLACES: The National Directory’ by Dennis William Hauck. This book is essentially an encyclopedia which includes brief descriptions of various places where unearthly phenomena is reported to have occurred. However, the reader won’t find mentioned in this book what must surely be one of the strangest, most “haunted” sites in America: the building in Phoenix, Arizona, where I have been employed since March of 1998. I call the building “The Grave.”

I have no intention of making the specific whereabouts of this building known as I’m sure the attention would be unappreciated by the building management company and the business that currently occupies the 4-story structure. But I will share with you some of the paranormal activity that has been reported over the last 11 years at The Grave:
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[Full moon over "The Grave"; October 3, 2009.]
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EARLY WEIRDNESS
Due to the nature of my job, I am in the building in the evenings and sometimes entirely alone. When I first got hired there, I heard a story about a man who previously worked in my position but had to quit because he eventually decided that he was not comfortable being at the site alone at night. I recall one night not long after I got hired, when a female employee hurried by me. I said something like, “Well, you sure seem to be in a rush to get somewhere.” But she was in no joking mood. She replied, “I was supposed to be alone on the third floor, only I WASN’T alone! I’m never working in this building by myself at night ever again!” And she didn’t. I would have asked her to elaborate, but - WHOOSH! – she was out the door before I could.

One of the oddities that I experienced firsthand occurred very early in my employment. The building has an atrium area in the lobby from which one can look up to the walkways on the upper three floors and through the skylight in the roof. Occasionally, I would hear what seemed to be footsteps on the walkways of the third floor, despite the fact that I knew for certain I was the only person in the building. One weekend day, I kept hearing what sounded like doors opening and closing, and the sound of walking was so pronounced that I took the elevator up to the third floor, but the moment I arrived, the walking stopped. I remained there for about five minutes before riding the elevator back down. But the moment I got back to the first floor lobby, the walking started again. I returned to the third floor and again it immediately stopped.

There were times when I was alone in the lobby of the building and suddenly I would hear a “Ding!” and I would turn around to see one of the elevator’s doors open up revealing no one inside. I mentioned this one day to a repairman who had come to address some unrelated issue with one of the elevator cars. He gave me a very stange look and told me that what I had described to him was “impossible.” He explained that the way the elevator system is designed, a car cannot go to a floor and open its doors unless it has been called by someone pressing an elevator button. So, what I had seen happen with my own eyes numerous times was declared “impossible”, and yet . . .
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[The Grave elevators: Sometimes the doors open but nobody's home.]
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Gradually, I heard a few stories from other employees of the third floor who would say that working after hours they could sometimes hear what sounded like the shuffling of papers on the desk and the clicking of a computer keyboard in the cubicle next to theirs, but in checking to see who else was doing night work, they would find the adjacent cubicle empty. This was a rather common story. (It wasn’t until sometime much later that I would hear of similar stories from employees on the other floors as well.)

Because of my firm belief in the existence of demons and some government conspiracy scenarios, etc., people might be inclined to think that I jump to conclusions and invest belief in things prior to a thorough investigation. But the fact of the matter is that jumping to conclusions is antithetical to my nature; quite the opposite is the truth: I am very analytical and prone to practicing deep reasoning before arriving at conclusions. For me, theories are just that: theories - and nothing more. I’ll consider various theories but not make concrete claims until I am positive that the evidence supports them.

For these reasons, I was not yet anywhere near convinced that there was any authentic spiritual activity occurring in this building that I call The Grave. In fact, I was inclined to make jokes about this “stuffs.” Anytime something was misplaced or unexplained, I would jestingly blame it on “our ghost.” I still thought it was possible that there was some rational explanation for everything. The building contains a lot of electronic equipment, and I speculated that this might play a part in things.

However, I inititially felt that if there really was indeed some sort of strange phenomena happening in the building, it was probably located primarily on the third floor. I did wonder if it was possible that the spirit of a deceased former employee with an unhappy home life was revisting the job site where he or she had been more comfortable. Even now, I’m not fully convinced that this type of “ghost” really exists anywhere, but it was a theory to consider for the time being.

As time went on, I would come to realize that much of what occurs in this building definitely has no rational explanation, and whatever is in this structure can be found throughout it and even on its exterior grounds.

BAD ODORS
There have been a number of instances of nasty odors being located in certain areas of the building, unexplainably occurring and unexplainably leaving. Here are just a few notable examples:

One Saturday, I was alone in the building when I noticed a very pronounced odor of an electrical fire in a small space on one of the fourth floor walkways in the atrium area. The smell was overpowering but it seemed to be contained in a spot maybe two feet wide. As soon as I took a step or two away from the odor, it could no longer be detected. But I was certain that we had an electrical fire somewhere, so I began a search under the nearest desks expecting to find a short in some wiring. But I couldn’t find any problem anwhere, and yet that powerful odor persisted. I very nearly alerted the fire department but at the last moment I decided to just let the fire alarms do what they’re paid to do, and so I waited. And I waited. I was certain that a fire alarm was going to go off at any second, so I waited some more, but it never happened. I’m sure glad I decided not to contact the fire department, because after they rolled code three and arrived at The Grave, I would have looked pretty idiotic trying to explain why there was no smoke, no fire, and no scent of fire. For you see, after about 45 minutes, that overwhelming odor of an electrical fire was gone and didn’t return.

Late in the morning one day, an unpleasant odor took over the entire first floor lobby. I wasn’t there, but a coworker later told me that it smelled exactly as if one was standing in the middle of an onion field. He said no one could determine where it came from, including the building engineer. It seemed to permeate the first floor lobby but didn’t spread to any other areas, and after about an hour, it left as mysteriously as it had arrived.

One time, I went to the second floor Employee Dining Room to get some filtered water and the moment I walked into the room I almost gagged. There was an absolutely horrible odor in there that I can’t really describe other than to say that it smelled, I guess, the way I would imagine cooking extremely rancid meat might smell. I got my water and got out quick. But while I was in there, I noticed through the glass doors that lead to the little outdoor patio that a trio of employees were sharing a pizza. I thought to myself: What in the hell did they have put on that pizza? Less than an hour later, I encountered one of those three employees elsewhere and I asked him, “What did you guys have on that pizza? That dining room smelled terrible.” The guy told me, “That wasn’t our pizza. We were planning to eat in the dining room, but when we got there, that awful smell drove us out to the patio. I don’t know what that was.” A little while later, I returned to the room to find no trace of any unusual odor.

One night, a few employees and I were talking about some of the building’s strangeness and one woman told me that there is one large supply closet on the fourth floor and sometimes they can smell a strong flowery scent in one spot. It can’t always be detected, but when it is, it’s rather potent but in a very limited area of about one foot square. She said that if one takes but a single step off of that spot, the scent can’t be smelled. Interestingly, since most people think of the aroma of flowers to be a nice, positive thing, this is the only story of weirdness associated with The Grave that could be categorized as “Good” or positive; to my knowledge, every other unexplained phenomenon experienced in that building has been of a negative or neutral classification.

DISEMBODIED VOICES

One day I arrived at work only to have a new employee ask me if there was “something strange” about the building. I knowingly smiled and asked him, “Why?” And he proceeded to tell me how earlier that day, despite being the only human being in the building, he had heard the sound of running footsteps and a little girl laughing on one of the third floor walkways. This person in question was a good, very conservative, highly educated, genuinely religious, spiritually-minded man. There is no way he could have been lying to me. NO WAY!

Over the years, I have spoken to several members of the sets of Hispanic nighttime cleaning crews that have been employed at The Grave, and all of them have related strange stories to me. All of them have believed the building is haunted, and some of the women have been afraid to work without a coworker beside them. I knew one girl was very frightened due to a variety of things she had experienced on the second floor. For one thing, after dusting a cabinet, she and her coworker found eyeglasses sitting on it - eyeglasses that had not been there a minute or two earlier, even though there was no one else on that floor but them. Then one night this same girl was cleaning a restroom, again on the second floor, when she heard someone laughing and what sounded like a man speaking Spanish. At first she thought her coworker was playing a joke on her, but in searching for her teammate, she found her occupied on the other side of the suite and knowing nothing about any laughter or Spanish speaking man. They found no one else in that suite. This girl quit the job shortly thereafter.

There’s a whole new cleaning crew in the building nowadays, and one of the girls is particularly afraid of the second floor. Like the girl years before her, she insists on having a teammate with her while working in The Grave.

There is only one thing the least bit odd about The Grave from a physical standpoint: rather than being built in the usual fashion as a square or rectangle, the building was constructed at a weird angle at one corner. It’s kind of pinched, causing two of its sides to form a rather sharp, unusual point. I don’t know why it was designed this way but I suppose the architechts were just trying to give the building its own unique identity. We may have gotten more than they bargained for; they may have actually given the building its own unique personalities!

There has never been a death in the building that I or anyone else I’ve ever spoken with is aware of. And I don’t think The Grave is haunted in the classic sense of “spirits of dead people” roaming around. It may be that there is really only one entity in this building, an entity who engages in shapeshifting and gender/nationality-bending. But I kind of doubt it. I suspect that we really are dealing with multiple entities. A female lawyer once told me that she never felt totally comfortable in this building, that it just didn’t “feel right.” I asked her, “Do you mean like in a feng shui kind of way?” And she replied, “Well, yeah, maybe.”

This led me to consider the possibility that perhaps the way the building has been constructed with a strange point at one end, it has (for some incomprehensible reason) caused the building to become a sort of portal for spiritual beings to enter our dimension by. I’m not saying I believe this, I’m merely throwing it out there as pure speculation; a broad theory to at least be taken into consideration. I also think that demonology is a concept that can’t be tossed away out-of-hand. Regardless, I believe that the classic ghost concept (“I see dead people”) is the least likely explanation for what happens in this building.
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[The Point of The Grave: Gateway to strange stuffs?]
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THE BLACK CAT & OTHER SPECTRES
Years ago, a young woman from the nighttime cleaning crew at that time (not either of the girls mentioned previously) told me that one night while vacuuming the carpet in a small conference room, she suddenly sensed that she was being watched. Turning, she saw the dark silhouette of a man outside the window. Now, considering the fact that this conference room is located on the fourth floor, that’s a pretty neat levitation trick the man was performing.

I knew an employee named “Sally” who worked in that suite which included this particular conference room. Sally often worked alone up there at night and she told me that she was always hearing strange noises like that of other people working: papers being shuffled, computer keyboards being operated. It freaked her out, but she needed to get her work done, so when the noises started, she would just crank up the volume on her desk radio. (Ha! That’s the same way I fix disturbing sounds emanating from the engine of my pickup truck.)

Oddly, however, about a year after the cleaning crew member’s experience with “the man in the window”, Sally told me that one night she went into that same conference room to get something and she too experienced the man levitating in the window. She was not really surprised when I informed her that a cleaning person had previously seen the same thing in that same window, but that was the last straw for Sally. She decided she was no longer comfortable enough to be up there alone at night, and she began coming in on the weekends during daylight hours. It should be noted that the conference room where “the man in the window” has appeared is located at the top of the building, right in the pinched corner where The Grave comes to an unusual, exaggerated point. Could this window at the point be the gateway into our world?
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[4th floor conference room: Home of "the man in the window."]
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Let’s ride the elevator (if you dare) back down to the second floor. A little earlier this year, I was told by a male member of the cleaning crew that one Sunday morning, a coworker of his was doing some cleaning in a second floor suite when he saw a black cat go running across the floor in front of him. He reported it to his supervisor, but no one later found a black cat anywhere on the second floor or elsewhere in the building. There are only two ways a cat could get into that suite on the second floor, and THE EASIEST way would be if it waited at the exterior stairwell door until a person decided to exit. Darting past the person who is leaving, the cat would enter the stairwell inside the building, then it would have to go up two flights of stairs and wait at the landing outside the second floor stairwell door until a human being opened THAT door also. And then running past the person exiting, the cat would finally be in the suite. Trust me, there was no “real” black cat on the second floor, but apparently there was something doing a pretty impressive impersonation of a black cat in that second floor suite that Sunday.

Alone in the building one Saturday night, about 9:00 P.M., circa 2002, I stepped outside The Grave to throw out a box of doughnuts that someone had left on a table in a kitchenette area. Immediately, I noticed something in my peripheral vision that caused me to turn and look. There was a man of medium build, about 5’11” or 6’ tall, in his mid to late 40s, wearing a white shirt and dark trousers and smoking a cigarette. He had just taken a drag on the cig so the end of it lit up cherry-red and that’s what had caught my attention. The man was just standing there on the lawn, gazing into one of the office windows on the first floor. We made eye contact but neither of us spoke. It wasn’t unusual to find people strolling around the premises, but I was surprised to see him so close to the building.

I decided that after I threw the box of doughnuts into the trash dumpster, if he had not given any indication that he was in the process of moving on, I would go speak to him and find out what he was doing here. I kept my eyes on him nearly the entire way to the dumpster as he just slowly meandered along the building, casually smoking his cigarette and directing his gaze toward the windows of the building in an absent-minded sort of way. When I got to within about 10 steps of the dumpster, I took my eyes off him for the first time. I tossed the box in and turned around and . . . the man was gone. Even if he had been the fastest man on Earth and he had known the exact moment I would take my eyes off him and he began running at that very moment, he still couldn’t have totally disappeared from my field of vision that quickly. His disappearance was “impossible.” That is the day when I stopped joking about “our ghost” in the building and realized that there truly are spiritual manifestations taking place at The Grave.

I was off from work the next two days, but when I returned to the job site at 3 PM on Tuesday, as I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed “Bill”, a coworker of mine, standing next to a temporary construction fence South of the building, very near where the man had disappeared from my view three nights earlier. Bill was wearing a perplexed look. I thought that a bit odd to see him in that spot, but I parked and went into the building to begin filling out my initial paperwork. Finally, Bill entered the building and walked up to me and (although I know this is a hackneyed expression, it’s still the best description) he looked white as a sheet, as if he had seen a ghost. Bill said to me, “I just saw the strangest thing.” I was sure I already knew what he was going to say and I very nearly finished the thought for him but decided to let him tell his story . . .

Bill told me that he was in the parking lot when he saw a guy not far behind him crossing from the building toward a parking area. Bill waved at the man who waved back to Bill. But after taking just two steps, it dawned on Bill that he hadn’t recognized the man as an employee and wondered who he was. He immediately looked back but the man had disappeared. No way! Bill briskly walked back to where the man had been just seconds earlier but he found no evidence of him. He even looked between every single one of the cars parked against the fence in that area, but the man had vanished. It was almost as if the guy had picked up from where he left off with me three days earlier, took a few more steps toward the South and then pulled his disappearing act again for my coworker. Strangely, however, the description that Bill gave me of the man did not totally match my own. Although the guy was Caucasian in both incidents, the man Bill saw was evidently a bit shorter than the one I witnessed, and although both were wearing white shirts, the man Bill saw had some sort of printing on his shirt, as if it were a T-shirt, whereas the shirt my “ghost” was wearing was a bit more formal than that. I had a vague sense that this man had appeared and disappeared in front of Bill as a way of letting me know that I had not imagined what I had experienced that previous Saturday night. But, of course, I already knew that: I saw what I saw.

Late one night in 2006, I was in the lobby with my back toward Suite 180 and I was engaged in conversation with a woman who was part of the nighttime cleaning crew at that point. I don’t recall what we were talking about, but we were not discussing anything related to the haunting of the building. Then suddenly a queer expression came across her face and she pointed to Suite 180 behind me and asked, “Should there be someone in there right now?” I looked back and saw nothing but an empty office in the suite. “No,” I told her, “We are the only people in the building.” She said she had just seen a man cross through the illuminated office and exit into another section of the suite.

Suite 180 was relatively small and had been unoccupied for some time. During the daytime hours construction was being done to refurbish it. Inside the office where she had seen this man was a ladder and some buckets of paint and a drop cloth. This woman told me that a man dressed in overalls, like a building maintenance engineer or carpenter had just walked underneath the ladder and exited the office. I immediately entered the suite and searched every room and closet in Suite 180 but (un)naturally I found no one there. Only someone who had security clearance and who walked right past me could have entered into Suite 180, and I assure you, no one with security clearance had entered the building and walked by me that night. It was another disappearing man story. But the weirdest one was yet to come.
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[Suite 180: Site of late night ghostly construction work.]
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On the night of January 27, 2007, a woman named “Elaine” was alone in the building and in the first floor lobby. Evidently the natives were restless and making a lot of noise because in her daily report to Richard, her supervisor, she entered this comment between the hours of 4 and 5 AM:

This building is haunted, and if I have to baby-sit ghosts, I want a raise.
The jocularity was long gone by the time of her next entry:

Richard, I am requesting a meeting with you ASAP. About 5:10 AM, I saw a man walk around the table. I said “Hello” and he kept walking down the hallway. I yelled “Hello!” but he ignored me. I blinked and he disappeared.

P.S. – I am requesting a transfer; I can’t stay here and die of a heart attack. Maybe you can give someone at TSC [*TSC is another company site] my shift and I can trade with them. Thanks,
Elaine
I saw Elaine a couple of nights later and got the full story. She was faking nothing; this woman was absolutely terrified. She had returned to work carrying a copy of The Holy Bible and wearing a massive crucifix around her neck. She told me that a man of medium build and wearing overalls, looking like a building maintenance worker, just suddenly seemed to be in the lobby with her. He walked right in front of her with both of his arms outstretched in front of him. Elaine knew that she had been alone in the building for many hours prior to this, so his sudden presence was very shocking to her. The mystery man then took a turn and headed down the first floor’s East hallway. She called out to him several times but he never acknowledged her in any way. Elaine said that although the man’s legs were moving as if he were walking, he actually appeared to be covering too much ground, as if he were actually gliding just above the carpet. Then, when he was just over a third of the way down the East hallway, he simply vanished right before her eyes. He was there one second and then gone in that same second.

Elaine told me that being alone at night in the building thereafter was making her a nervous wreck, and when three or four days passed and Richard either couldn’t or wouldn’t transfer her to a different site, Elaine quit her job.
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[Haunted Hallway: Site of Elaine's vanishing man.]
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The woman who is currently doing the same job in the building that Elaine once did has also encountered spectres when (supposedly) alone in The Grave at night: “Jane” is more spiritual-minded and apparently has some strong beliefs that save her from becoming fearful. But Jane has told me that on three or more occasions, at about 4 AM, she has had the sense that someone was watching her. Looking up to the fourth floor from the lobby, she has seen a Caucasian or possibly Hispanic man with short dark hair, probably in his mid 20s, standing between one of the fourth floor pillars and the fourth floor elevators. The man just stands up there, overlooking the lobby, and he watches Jane down below. She tells me that on a couple of occasions she has waved to “The Watcher” and he has waved back.
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["The Watcher's Perch": A Jane's-eye view of the 4th floor from The Grave lobby.]
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I share Jane’s confidence when alone at night in The Grave (although I wouldn’t be waving to a spectre if I were her; that could be misconstrued as an invitation). I have known for a long time that Jesus Christ (Yeshua) is always with me; He is able and willing to protect my sorry butt. Jesus is my Good Shepherd. Why, I couldn’t say, but looking back at my life, there are clear indications that Jesus has taken an interest in me. But there is nothing special about me; I’m just another bloke getting kicked around by life, so I can’t fully explain my relationship with The Son Of God and Savior Of The World, but my relationship with Jesus is real. In fact, so real that I call it a “REaLATIONSHIP.” I am certain that I’m safe in The Grave at night because I’m never alone with the spectres – Jesus is there too, and He’s got my back. However, Jesus makes Himself available to everyone who turns to Him. A REaLATIONSHIP with The Good Shepherd can be enjoyed by anyone who answers His knock, and He knocks on the door of every person's mind every day.

While I do not fear the appearance of a spectre at The Grave, my only concern has been that one might appear too suddenly. I really don’t want to be walking in the building late some night and turn a corner to find myself instantly nose-to-nose with an unearthly entity. Some heart attacks are better than others, and that would be one of the worst!

GRAVE ANALYSIS

I wonder if the thought that has occurred to me has also occurred to you: Remember the story of the black cat darting in front of a cleaning crew dude and the story of the mystery man walking under a ladder in Suite 180? Isn’t it odd that walking under a ladder and having a black cat cross your path are cliché superstitions that are supposedly omens of bad luck?

And how about the nonsensical laughter from unseen little girls and unseen Hispanic men? Isn’t nonsensical laughter a staple of Horror films? And zombies and other monsters walking around with their arms outstretched in front of them - isn’t that just goofy, cartoonish stuffs straight out of bad, low-budget horror shows like “Dawn Of The Dead”, “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and dozens of others?

Whether whatever is in The Grave is multiple entities or one entity that changes form, I think “they” or “it” must be aware of our superstitions and our cultural images and like using them to play games with the human targets. I would find it difficult to believe that it is mere coincidence that the spectres have managed to illustrate our bad luck omens and horror movie clichés.

While the nature of whatever inhabits or visits The Grave is certainly “bad” in that it seems to be deliberately attempting to annoy and scare people (and has succeeded to the point that a few people have left their jobs as a result of it), I’m not yet convinced that it rises to the level of evil or wickedness. It should be pointed out that there is no report of any person ever being physically hurt by any of these spectres, which may be an indication that they are unwilling or unable to actually cause that sort of harm. In fact, there is no history of a spectre even making direct or indirect physical contact with a human being at The Grave.

At this point, I am inclined to think of the entity or entities at The Grave as being more mischievous than evil, although I’m not ruling out the possibility of the latter. But up to the present, it or they seem to have been engaged in activity designed only to startle and amaze. I have to wonder if this is all much ado about nothing; a naughty spirit’s attempt to get some attention.

I’m also left wondering if the two UFOs I saw flying side-by-side over a portion of the The Grave’s parking lot at 4:30 PM on March 26, 1999, is also somehow related to the activity that occurs inside the building. But that, my friends, is a Blog Bit for another Halloween.

This has been my TRUE
Halloween Blog Bit for YOU.
I’ll bet it sticks in your mind like GLUE
And that it’s more than you wish you KNEW.
I hope you rate it ‘Fine Wine’, or at the very least ‘YOO-HOO.’

And now I bid you ADIEU
With a very scary BOO!Toodle-OO.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Doggtor of Field Studies, Edgar Allan Poe U.
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