Courtesy | Emily Jones
Few people can say they’ve had ghosts as coworkers, but the building my brother Trevor and I worked in this summer was crawling with paranormal activity.
Previously a meat packing plant, the five-and-a-half-story building in Salina, Kansas now operates as a locksmith shop. In their apartment above the shop, Sarah and Perry George, my boss and her husband, collect antiques, like old hospital equipment and dolls from an abandoned psych ward.
Walking into my second summer in the intimidating building, I knew what kind of chores I was getting myself into. Our tasks ranged from painting old feed tanks and cleaning up the welding shop to creating a locksmith museum. On top of the dim lighting and a lack of air conditioning, an unwelcome feeling frequented the job.
The third floor shook most employees straight to the core.
I always felt I was being watched up there, so I understood why my boss said it was haunted.
Long ago, a fire left the third floor constantly smelling like something was burning. Years later, a man had a heart attack and died on that same floor. Apparently, the man was unkind and didn’t like people very much, so it’s no surprise that his ghost doesn’t have a welcoming nature either.
My brother and I spent most of our summer on the third floor. On one of the days I was working on organizing, cleaning, and rearranging the floor to make it into the locksmith museum, I noticed a door creeping open.
I was alone.
With nobody else on the floor and no air conditioning or windows, I had no clue how that was happening without the involvement of a ghost. After watching it open at least four inches, I grew uncomfortable being alone up there and left. I didn’t tell anyone about the incident until a few days later, when my brother experienced something too.
“I want to leave,” he said as soon as I picked up the phone.
He was alone on the third floor, messing with an ancient typewriter, when a box behind him moved on its own. He looked around the room to find nothing else moving and nobody else around.
Without hesitation, he said, “Nope,” and leapt into the freight elevator labeled “DANGEROUS,” desperate to get back to the ground level. Our boss simply laughed about his fearful encounter.
“Don’t worry,” she told my brother in a delightful tone. “Nobody has been hurt … yet.”
Sarah and Perry had planned on making the third floor into their apartment, until a horrible feeling of being unwanted there settled over them.
“I was painting one evening when I just felt uncomfortable,” Sarah said. “Then I told Perry that I wasn’t going to live up there.” The two only dry-walled one room before deciding to quit on that floor altogether.
The ghosts on the ground floor, however, are much more easy-going than those on the third floor. The first floor has two different docking bays, a welding shop, and a safe showroom in addition to the locksmith shop. According to Larry, one of the welders, ghosts turn on unplugged power tools in the weld shop and flip lights on and off.
The first floor’s ghostly jokesters constantly play pranks on Larry. He’s seen a lot of unfathomable things in the building. He once watched an entire extension cord unravel by itself and move across the floor.
“Usually, nothing happens before six o’clock,” Larry told me while playing a video of a white orb dancing around the third floor.
Sometimes, after hours of paperwork, I’d look down to find that my double-knotted shoelaces had inexplicably become untied. The first time it happened I thought nothing of it, but then the incidents continued. Not only was it eerie — it was also annoying because I constantly had to retie my shoes.
Those moments were the only personal interactions I had with the comedic phantoms, but I plan on returning during winter break. I will certainly be on the lookout for ghostly phenomena, especially in the gloomy darkness.
Seeing moving shadows in the dimly lit areas of the first floor didn’t frighten me too much this summer. My brother, though, eventually stopped looking in reflections throughout the building. He was too afraid he might catch a glimpse of spirits lurking there.