Whisperers

My high school French class (with several other schools) made its annual trip to France over spring break and I was overjoyed that I would finally get to go to Paris. It was one of those extra cheap 7 day packages so the accommodations were in the oldest section of the city and this particular hotel had a cornerstone dated 1825. The hallways were very dimly lit and had a creepy kind of feel like someone was watching you all the time so all of us would hurry in or out of our rooms and never linger in the hallways. The entire tour had rooms all together, and we took up most of the rooms in the hotel. At about 9pm each night you could hear people whispering in french, usually a man and a woman, but sometimes a woman and children speaking very distinctly from the hallway or from the rooms on either side (these rooms had only female students). My roommate and I would open the door to see who was there and the hall would be empty. At 6am each morning I would be awakened by a woman saying "Levez, ma petite" (get up, my darling) seemingly right in my ear. Again, no one was ever there and my roommate would still be snoring away. Since she spoke french with an incredibly lousy accent I knew it wasn't her. No one else ever got a ghostly wake up call. I wasn't freaked out as I thought the whole thing was rather cool, and would narrate my day each evening as I wrote in my journal. Things started getting stranger. Usually very late at night, the voices would discuss other students on the tour by name (some of the comments were rather derogatory) and would occasionally call my name as if to get my attention. The day we left, I was followed throughout the hotel, up and down the stairs, to breakfast, even to the bathroom! With whispers of "stay, please stay, you know you want to stay". The voices didn't let up until I got on the bus to leave. My teacher told us on the flight home that that particular hotel used to be series of private flats before WWII. I think some of the residents are still there and lonely for company!