The Elevator (1)

I used to live in Boston, near Roxbury and Mission Hill, in a dorm called Baker Hall. The summer before I moved into that dorm, I was hired to be on the work crew that would be repainting Baker Hall for the next year. Baker Hall is a 5 story brick building, with a fire door separating one wing of the dorm from the lobby, elevator, and other wing.

One day, the crew I were painting doorways on the 5th floor, and I ended up painting the fire door that separated the men's wing from the elevator/lobby area and women's wing of the dorm. As I sat and painted the bottom of the door frame, the elevator started up. There were only 6 people who could be in the building (including myself) and 5 of them (still me included) were inside already. I kept painting..... and as I painted I felt the left side of my face go ice cold, and a hot pressure turning my head towards the elevator and hallway on my right. The elevator doors opened, and no one got out - but I heard footsteps. workboots.....heavy, men's workboots. The pressure on my face increased, and I found myself tracking the footsteps down the hall, even though I couldn't see a thing. As soon as the elevator doors closed, the pressure on my face switched sides, and i felt hands on my shoulders urging me to run. The rest of the work crew was at the far end of the hall on the men's side, and I bolted down that hallway as fast as i could with the pressure on my shoulders and face the whole way - like there was someone protecting my back from whatever it was that had walked down the other hallway.

This was not the first, nor the last, time that i felt the protective presence, or the first time that I had ran into the malevolent force from the 5th floor - but it certainly was the scareiest. I will always remember that day with fear and awe. My friends on the work crew believed me - I later found out that the girl who had taken over for me to finish painting the fire door felt the ghost come back down the hallway and watch her working.

I have had many more experiences with this and the other spirits in Baker Hall, as well as other spirits in other places, and so have my friends - we don't know why the ghosts are there in Baker, or how they got there, but they certainly affected me and my friends very much......but that's another story, for another time.