JAN'S TALES
Room 11
In September of this year (2004), I had to make an unexpected trip to Louisiana,
Missouri for a family emergency. Louisiana is a quaint little town of about
4,000 residents, on the edge of the Mississippi River and 80 miles north of St.
Louis. Most of the houses that were built back in the 1800’s are still being
lived in, kept up or restored. The streets are lined with the old graceful
mansions of yesteryear and there are very few modern structures that mar this
gracious presentation. It has a very quiet and peaceful atmosphere, and many of
the people are direct descendants of the original settlers. On a spookier note,
it is also the reputed area for hundreds of Bigfoot sightings that the people
have nick named, ‘ MoMo’, or the Missouri Monster. Being from St. Louis myself,
growing up as a child, I was very familiar with the MoMo legend. Do not fret
though, this is not another story about a mysterious hairy, wild animal, it’s
going to be about an unearthly meeting with a ghostly apparition, something I’ve
heard that this town is known for. Being as old and historical as Louisiana is,
I wouldn’t doubt that there are numerous haunted places, but this story takes
place in a more modern facility, one that was probably built in the 20th
century.
Before we left for our trip I surfed the Internet for a moderately priced motel
in the area and choose one of several that met our budget. It was a modest older
business, locally owned and operated and was comfortable enough to serve our
needs for this particular trip. There were two family members along with myself
that pitched in to rent one room with two beds. We had the pleasure of receiving
a room equipped with a microwave, a small refrigerator, cable TV and a hot water
heater that never seemed to run out. Hey, almost all the comforts of home for a
small price. Any way, getting to sleep later that night was another matter, for
myself alone, as I’m as attached to my own bed as I am to my feet; a strange bed
was not going to lure me to rest. My other two roommates found sleep very
quickly and reverberated their blissfulness with a duet of soft baritone
snoring. After tossing and turning for several hours, and stacking some duffle
bags up under my head for additional pillow height, I finally felt I could doze
off from pure exhaustion. Taking one more drink of water from a bottle on the
nightstand, and turning my portable fan on high, I then tried to cuddle as much
as I could under the thin bedspread and shut my eyes. The sound of someone
shuffling their feet along the carpet around the front of the bed caught my
ears, and continued around until it stopped by the nightstand. I had never heard
anyone getting up, but just brushed it off and thought it was my cousin in the
other bed.
An agitated whisper of a fast paced voice erupted the silence and my eyes flew
open. There was a man sitting on the floor beside my side of the bed looking at
me right in my face as I lay there on my side facing him. Although the room was
dark, an outside street light from behind the building shone in the cracks of
the curtains and illuminated the backside of this stranger, making him appear to
be more of a silhouette. His face wasn’t more then two foot from my own and his
whole body jerked around imitating a ghostly character from a horror movie; like
the stop and go movements of the black haired girl in ‘The Ring’. At first I
tried to convince myself that this was a dream, nothing more, and that somehow I
had finally fell asleep. The mans voice and ranting was almost comical, all his
words seem to bleed into one another with no pausing or resting and his
complaining was childlike in its tone. Only bits and pieces came out to be
understandable but I will try and decipher some of his conversation for you to
read.
(Now, keep in mind that this was all spoken in a continual speedy pace, with no
breaths taken in between sentences, and his voice was like an excited child
trying to whisper to a sibling that he just saw Santa Claus on the rooftop. The
breaks in between the statements are for when I really couldn’t understand what
he was saying as sometimes it was like listening to a Chip Monks record on high
speed, and other times it was like listening to Robin Williams doing one of his
comedy acts back when he first got famous; a continuous brigade of intoxicating
words that put your brain into a frenzy as it tried to keep up with the flow and
purpose of the oral onslaught being rapidly spoken almost as if in a foreign
language.) (*Note: Robin Williams is the GREATEST, there was no criticism
intended when I feebly tried to describe his trademark enthusiasm on stage.)
The following is a short transcript of what I could make out and remember:
“I’ve been so lonely…I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to go…it
happened so fast so terrible so bloody…I saw the light your light your bright
light and got excited and knew I could finally talk to someone…I miss my family
I miss my grandma I miss my job I miss my car…everything has changed…the
seventies I loved the seventies and now they’re gone gone gone it’s not the
same…people have changed…I don’t like it don’t like it at all the seventies were
better…I had a car…I saw your light and I came…I’ve been here so long without
someone to talk to…I can’t leave but I can leave but I can’t leave…I miss coffee
and cigarettes…I smelled your cigarettes I saw your light… I remember JFK,
Nixon, Carter… drugs, lots of drugs…I can’t leave but I can leave but I can’t
leave”
This went on and on, sometimes he repeated himself over and over, and sometimes
I could only make out one or two words out of the seemingly locomotion of his
speech, still being spit out only in hoarse murmurs,
“butter…grapes…Chevy…milk…hitchhike…black sedan… man in black suit…briefcase…”
Most of it was senseless, and it was really beginning to get on my nerves after
a few minutes of this. I actually rose up on my right elbow and told him to
please ‘shut up’ in a soft but deliberate undertone, not wanting him to wake up
the other two in the room (Or so I believed that he could, as who could not hear
this vigorous besiegement of expression). One side of my brain was telling me
this was still a dream, the other side was telling me this was a very annoying
spirit.
(You must understand that I receive ‘nightly visitors’ quite often; most
of them are a bit lost, curious or confused and yes sometimes lonely. Whether
they are recently departed souls or wandering around, I try and give them my
full attention and help them on their journey. Some say it is a gift, some say a
curse, some say I’m foolish, but I don’t believe any of that, to me it’s a way
to help the Creators children get back to where they belong. It had taken me
years to fully understand the purpose of these visitations and what to do about
them, but as the old saying goes, ‘If you can’t beat them join them’. I couldn’t
make them stop, so with divine guidance and prayer I learned how to help them.
You have to learn to bloom where you are planted and develop the skills you were
naturally given to do His will.)
There are a few spirits that I’ve come across that cannot be helped, or rather
they refuse to listen or except the aide for their discomfort. Others are just
repetitious video type holograms, just portions of souls, like remnants or
particles of the actual being, left behind or discarded to repeat certain habits
or patterns from their previous lives; these are difficult if not impossible to
communicate or interact with. This man sitting before me on this particular
night seemed to be one of them as he shifted from position to another-knees up,
knees down, legs crossed, uncrossed, rocking back and forth in the fashion of an
unbalanced clothes washer spinning with a heavy lump on the side, and then he
rose up on his knees and got closer to my face as he bent over the edge of the
bed, still spewing in his own muttered jargon. ‘A ghost on Crack. Wonderful’, I
thought, trying to be amusing with this whole situation.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I whispered back, not getting a word
in edgewise of course, as he never slowed tongue or tune. Again and again I
tried to question and reason with him with no results on his part. The close
proximity of his face was giving me a headache from the spasms of movements it
was making. I turned my body on to my back, resting on two elbows and told him,
in so many words, to either let God or myself help him or leave me alone.
He froze. Silence. His dark hair stuck up in all directions like wild spikes,
but it was from disarrangement; not from a purposely-styled hairdo with gel or
hair mouse. His face was thin and he had a large bony nose, his Adams apple even
stuck out more then I’ve seen on men, this I seen as he turned his head slowly
to his right as if pondering to leave. He might have been in the mid 20’s of age
but no more then 30. His eyes were dark as his hair was, the color I’m not
really sure on both, as it wasn’t that reflective in the room.
Again I spoke to him, very slowly but he didn’t respond he only sat there
staring at me. I rolled over to my left side intending to ignore him and get
some rest.
“He killed me…I was murdered…cut up into little pieces and thrown away.”
His voice cut through the air like an arrow whistling towards a target. My
recently closed eyes flew open once more, and I waited to hear something more,
not moving, just waiting for that whining whispering whimper. Nothing. For a few
moments I lay there and listened in the dark, for movement, for breathing, for
his voice. I began to relax as I realized it had been all a dream. Just a
hallucination of a sleepy mind. Sighing with relief I closed my eyes once more.
Something pushed into my back making me jerk forward from the hit, like two
hands whacking me to get my attention. I flipped over to the right with a look
of pure annoyance but he was gone, and all I heard floating on the air where
these words, ‘…look in the sink…look in the tub…look at the cut marks…’
After easing out from under the covers I walked around the bed and over to the
bathroom door and stood there. The bathroom light was on and the door only stood
a few inches open letting out a sharp blade of light that bathed my bare feet in
a harsh whiteness. I stood there for the longest time, not really wanting to go
in, not really sure I wanted to see what else the visitor might have to show me
in there. ‘…It happened so fast so terrible so bloody…’ Was I going to see a
vision of a cut up body in the tub with some parts of him lying in the sink? Was
there going to be a murderous art display of blood splatters everywhere? Was his
head going to be propped up on the toilet seat still trying to move its mouth to
utter one last word? Maybe the murderers name?
I wasn’t ready for this and refused to go in for a few moments. In fact, I
turned around and found my pack of cigarettes and lighter on one side of the
room by fumbling around in the dark, then found a cup and a tea bag on top of
the microwave from the help of the shaft of light still illuminating from the
bathroom. I used the water from the bottle on my nightstand (still not brave
enough to go to the sink in the other room) to fill the cup and make some hot
tea. It seemed like forever before the bell ring on the microwave to signal my
tea was done; I had just been standing there staring at the door that held back
the bulk of the light, turning my lighter over and over and over in my hands
with nervousness.
While fixing the tea with a packet of sugar, I finally felt
comfortable enough to be able to enter the small tiled room. With a cup of tea
in one hand, cigarette pack and lighter in the other, and a solitary one unlit
between my lips, I nudged the door open with my right foot and walked in. The
light on the white tiles was almost blinding as I tried for a few moments to get
my eyesight adjusted to the harshness. There was no blood, no flesh, no evidence
of a murder; just a very clean, small lavatory stocked with fresh, fluffy white
towels, a complimentary bar of soap and a spare roll of toilet paper. A pale
greenish colored shower curtain hid the tub as it stretched across a metal
supporting rod. For a moment I imagined throwing back the plastic coated fabric
and finding something or someone in there but immediately dismissed that theory
to an over active as well as an exhausted mind. I did however, after sitting
down the tea on the sink edge, jerk back the curtain and slid it to one side to
inspect the stall. Nothing but cleanliness and emptiness was in there.
I lit the crushed filtered cigarette that had been bit by my teeth for the past
few minutes, sat down on the commode and closed the door so the smoke wouldn’t
go into the bedroom part. After lifting my cup of tea off the sink edge I saw
them. Long notches and gashes made through the porcelain of the sink, along the
right edge of the receptacle. There were a diverse amount of them; some of them
crisscrossing into one another, made so deep that the porcelain of the basin had
been cut out and you could see the dark metal that made up the shape beneath the
protective white coating. They were thin slashes, as if made by an extremely
sharp device, like a strong bladed knife. Cuts that were embedded as evidence of
something being chopped or sliced up, and the sink had been the make- shift
supporter for the object being severed into pieces. The marks just didn’t mar
the top flat surface of the sink, but slightly continued in a downward stroke
along the inside curve of the edge, pointing towards the drain.
“He killed me…I was murdered…cut up into little pieces...” These words once more
were softly spoken inside my mind, followed by, ‘…look in the sink…look in the
tub…look at the cut marks…’
I turned to look at the tub and found myself having to bend down on my knees to
examine the surface. My hands ran across the entire length of the ice-cold edge.
Most of the exterior was slick, smooth, and even except for a few indents of
slash marks. Just a few mind you, not as noticeable or as deep as the infinite
amount on the sink. My hand found its way to the bottom of the tub, moving
around in circles and side-ways strokes trying to find any marks. There were a
few there also. The marks weren’t dents or small pinpoints where porcelain chips
were missing (Where something may have fallen from a renters soapy hands and
caused damage to the surface.). I could tell they were definite cut marks. The
ones in the tub were not as deep as the ones on the sink either, they were more
like scratches; the sink gashes were made from some heavy sawing motions. ‘… Cut
up into little pieces…’
It was around three o’clock in the morning then, and I just stayed in there,
sitting on the toilet, smoking and sipping tea going over everything the spastic
specter had been trying to tell me. After a few hours, several cups of hot tea
and half a pack of cigs, I bravely decided to take a shower, a long hot one to
wash away the tension in my body.
‘…Hitchhike…black sedan… man in black suit…briefcase…’ Some of his phrases went
through my mind over and over again as I tried to paint a picture of the scene
the visitor had haphazardly tried to reveal through the clues he gave. Maybe he
had been a hitchhiker back in the ‘70’s, got picked up by a guy in a suit in a
black sedan, decided to spend the evening in this hotel and that’s when the
murder took place. No body may have known he was in town, or with the stranger
in the sedan, and he could have been miles away from home away from anyone that
might have remembered him or recognized him. And, if he had been cut up into
pieces and disposed of somewhere else, then it was quite possibly that no one
even knew a murder had taken place at all in this small town motel. The obvious
mess would have been cleaned up rather well by the renter, especially avoiding
using the complimentary white towels by using something of his own to erase the
evidence along with plenty of water from the sink and tub to wash away the
blood. It was just a simple explanation of an overnight, out of town guest,
passing through, taking back roads, enjoying the country scenery, not gathering
any attention to himself, just sort of blending in with the other passer-byers,
but this one had a dark disturbing secret that no one will ever discover.
It wasn’t long after my own shower, getting dressed and putting on makeup that
my other two family members got up and did their own bathroom time. We packed
our stuff up after eating a quick micro waved breakfast and drinking a pot of
coffee, then walked to go check out at the office. It was only after getting
situated and seat belted inside the vehicle and while it was in reverse, backing
out of the driveway that I saw something on the opposite side of the wall of our
particular room. It was sitting on the lot of an older service station, not far
from the door of ‘Room 11’. An old, rusty-green, trash dumpster sat there like a
forgotten exhumed coffin, possibly hiding the dark terrible secret that long ago
it may have been the temporary sarcophagus to an unknown hitchhiker.
‘…Cut up into little pieces and thrown away...”
(I’ll be traveling back up that way in the next month and will try and see if
the proprietor will allow me take a picture of the sink in Room 11, as well as
inside the room, without having to rent the room again and will have San add it
to this story. My future plans do not include staying in this particular
location again, but rather in one of the local historical homes, desperately in
need of repair, in which has been rumored to be haunted by the ghost of woman
who died inside there not long ago. Hopefully, that will be another encounter to
delight you with.)
-Jan Thompson.