A woman was driving back to her home in California from Washington to California. It was late evening and snowhad begun to fall before she finally reached the little Oregon town where she planed tospend the night. Tired and ready for a hot meal and a goodnight’s sleep, she stopped at the first place she came upon. It was an old hotel on the main street. The lobby had a musty odor. The seedy clerk behind the desk signed herin. Her room was on the third floor -Room 310.
An elderly bellhop helped herwith her luggage. As soon as the door was opened, a blast of hot air struck the woman full in the face. With the hot air came something else, something she could not define but that filled her with dread. It was heavy and depressing, she explained, “with the strong scent of theevil.“ She felt as if she was about to faint. All she said was, “It’s awfully hot.”
This is a genuine photo of the haunted hotel room in question. Room 310.
The bellhop tinkered with the radiator knobs. Then he opened the window and left. The room began to cool off, but the feeling of despair and dread grew stronger. It centered on the open square of black window space. The terror seemed to speak in her mind. She thought she could sense a voice whispering to her. Compelling her to do something terrible. “Go to the window,” it said. “Throw yourself out!”
She couldn’t seem to resist the urge to jump out the window to what she knew would be certain death. She clawed at the bedsheets, trying to restrain herself from walking towards the open window. Terrified, the woman eventually summoned the strength and crawled out of the room. She rushed down to the lobby and shouted to the staff that she couldn’t stay another minute.
She explained, “I was sure that if I stayed the night, I’d be dead by morning.” She was prepared to sacrifice the money she’d already paid just to leave, but when she went, the clerk never asked what was wrong or if she wished to try another room. He returned the full cash amount to her.
She checked into another hotel and had planned to be on her way early the next morning. Instead she decided to stay over a day and look into the history of the old hotel to see if she could discover the reason for her terrifying experience there. She visited the local library to makea few inquiries. An elderly librarian satbehind the desk. “I’m just wondering,” the woman said tentatively. “Did anything shocking ever happen in the old hotel?” The librarian looked at her strangely. “How did you come upon that bit of history?”she asked. “It took the hotel a long time to squash the story.” The librarian went on to tell what had happened.
One evening back in 1948 a couple checked into the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Smith. The next morning hotel employees found the youngwoman’s body lying on the sidewalk outside the hotel beneath Room 310. The man who had registered as her husband had disappeared. “At first it was ruled suicide,” the librarian concluded. “But thenthey pried open her fist and found itclutched a handful of dark curly hair, not her own. So they made a search for the murderer. But he was never found . . . “By the way,” the librarian suddenly added,”isn’t that a coincidence! It all happened on November 5th, forty years ago yesterday. “
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