Kris had already opened the door to the girls' room and was standing in the middle of it, looking around with wide eyes. Ashley walked in behind her and let out a whistle.
"Damn," she said. "This is a large room."
"It's the one where the spirit lived when she was still alive. Ilse Hoffman, the daughter of the man who built this whole hotel," Colby explained.
"Great," Ashley stated. "Ilse, please don't make me have nightmares, yeah?" A smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth as she saw Colby grin at her.
The colors were lighter than in the hallway, where the carpet was of a suffocating red. Inside the room, most parts of the furniture were brown or gray, but the logo of the hotel was still held in the same red. It worked surprisingly well, especially with the white walls. Two couches were standing in the middle of the room, facing each other. In the wall on the left, there was a chimney, and next to it a door. Ashley assumed that it opened to the boy's room, which was right next to hers and Kris'.
There was even a rocking chair in one corner.
"Look, a rocking chair," she said and pointed at it. Sam grinned and nodded, knowing what they were going to do later.
She turned to the right, where she could see two beds standing a few feet apart from each other through an archway. The wall was constructed to separate the living room and the bedroom from each other while still being open.
"No cuddling today," Kris sighed, and Ashley laughed. They put their bags on the beds – Ashley taking the one closer to the window, Kris occupying the one next to the bathroom door. Walking through the door, Ashley's eyes widened again. One corner of the bathroom was filled with a gigantic bathtub, and the colors were held in dark tones of blue and green.
"I once said that I hate hotels because they all look the same," Ashley stated as Colby walked in, now holding the camera. He and Sam had left to bring their stuff into their room. "I take that back. Holy shit, someone did not care about using too much color here. I like that."
The boys' room was almost the same as the girls', as it was right to the left of their door. Ashley had been right about the door inside the room leading to a room mirroring hers and Kris'. But instead of two separate beds, there was only one, standing in the middle of the sleeping compartment.
"Why is it always like this?" Colby asked, throwing his bag to the ground.
"What, you don't like sleeping next to Sam?" Ashley asked, looking out of their window. The hotel was a long, narrow building, and they seemed to have gotten two rooms right below the roof. In both rooms, the roof was a little slanted toward the windows. Additionally, their rooms were right above the lobby and the main entrance of the hotel, their view being the only street to the hotel and a dark forest across from it.
"He snores," Colby replied.
"I do not!" Ashley heard Sam's answer from the bathroom. She laughed, rolling her eyes.
Colby turned off the camera and Kris and Ashley returned to their room to get ready for the evening because the boys were going to film the information part now. Ashley counted on them telling her and Kris later what exactly they had to expect.
It was dark outside already, and Ashley took a moment to look out of the window.
"Does this feel like a haunted place to you?" she asked Kris, who was taking her toothbrush out of her bag.
"Why are you asking me?" She wasn't saying it in an unfriendly way, more genuinely curious.
"You're an empath, so I kind of thought..." Ashley's voice faded as she was not sure how to end the sentence.
"I don't really feel stuff like that. I'm pretty sure Celina could tell you... you know Celinaspookyboo?"
"Of course I do. Why isn't she here by the way?"
"The boys invited her, but she got sick this morning, so she couldn't come," she explained, sighing slightly.
"Oh, that's sad. I had hoped to meet her, I hope she gets better soon. She seems nice," Ashley answered, still looking out of the window. Someone was walking down the white stairs in front of the hotel, and she was absentmindedly staring at them.
"She really is." Kris seemed to have finished packing out her stuff and walked up to Ashley. "Hey, what are you staring at?"
"Nothing, just..." she wanted to raise her hand to point at the person, but they were gone already. Strangely, she hadn't seen them walking away. "Nothing."
"Do you think the boys are done with recording the info part?" Kris asked and glanced at the door.
"No idea. We should probably wait for them to get us instead of just interrupting them."
Mere seconds later, someone knocked at the door, and as Kris opened it, they both stood there, holding up the camera.
"You girls ready to go investigating this place?" Sam asked, still wearing his backpack. Ashley assumed that that was where they had all their stuff for the investigation. She nodded, grinning excitedly, and grabbed her jacket before leaving the room. Before they locked the door, Kris made sure that all the lights were turned off.
As they were walking down the stairs again, Sam explained to the girls who the spirit here supposedly was, just like Ashley had hoped.
"So, this guy, Ernst Hoffman, came here in 1921 from Germany. He was a super-rich dude because he owned several hotels there, and decided to build another one here – this time, only for the richest of the rich, the elite, you know? That's why it's so small compared to other hotels. Six stories with five rooms on each. For the elite.
"It took five years until they were finished enough that guests could stay here. They weren't completely done building yet, but Hoffman decided to get his daughter, Ilse Hoffman, who had lived in Germany all this time, here. Now, she was 24 years old at that time and didn't like being ripped from her life.
"It is rumored that she was in love with some pianist back in Germany, who also loved her back. We couldn't find out if that part is true or who this pianist was, but we know that Ilse would get up every few nights and wander around the hotel, not being able to sleep due to her broken heart. Often, she would also start playing the piano in the middle of the night, which of course disturbed the guests. Her father decided to lock her into her room at night, because she wouldn't stop doing that, no matter how hard he tried to convince her.
"But one night, she was gone. Without leaving a message. They searched for her for three days and found nothing. In the night three days after her disappearance, when her father was restlessly walking around the hotel, he heard the piano playing. Thinking that she'd turned up again, he ran to the ballroom, but as soon as he entered, the sound stopped. There was no one in the room.
"He couldn't stand living in here anymore and moved away. He died six years after his daughter had disappeared, in 1933, due to a heart attack."
None of them had as much as breathed while Sam had been talking. Silence filled the hallway, their steps swallowed by the thick carpet. Ashley raised her eyebrows.
"That's an impressive story," she finally said, to break the silence.
"So, I'm guessing this ghost haunts mainly men? And boys?" Kris asked hopefully. "Because, you know, her father had forced her away from her boyfriend?"
Colby gave her a crooked smile. "Nope. Mostly women have reported to have felt Ilse's presence or someone caressing their hair and stuff like that."
"Aw, man. Why do all the ghosts hate women?" Kris whined. "Like, seriously, why is there none that would haunt only the men?"
"Dunno," Sam shrugged. "Ask the ghost."
At that moment, they arrived in front of a tall door, and Colby turned the camera on again.
"This is the ballroom," he explained and pressed down the door handle. "And we have it all for us for the rest of the night." With that, he shoved the doors open to present the highest room Ashley had ever seen. A gigantic chandelier was hanging from the middle of the ceiling, and the windows on the other side of the room were covered with the same heavy curtains as in the lobby.
With a fascinated sparkle in her eyes, Ashley stepped into the room. The marble floor glistened in the light of the flashlights and threw weird shadows onto the walls. Colby was turning in a circle, trying to capture every corner in the room, but the light of the camera didn't even reach the far corners.
"This is like in a castle," Ashley whisper-shouted to Kris who was walking up to her. Sam closed the doors behind the group and looked around in fascination.
"I'd seen pictures of this while doing research but seeing it in real life is so much more impressive," he said, sliding his backpack off his shoulders.
"Kris, come dance with me!" Ashley grabbed herhand and her waist and started spinning her around in circles before she coulddo anything.