User blog:Scotface/The Unfortunate Night Porter

As mentioned in my last post, I struggle to cope with unusual occurences within my life. I'm far too paranoid for my own good and I let my imagination run wild at the most inconvenient moments. Working the night shift in a hotel feeds this fear, unfortunately. I've yet to grow truly comfortable with the job. Well, that's not right, I love the job most of the time but being alone in a hotel with wide, dark corridors and a self-resetting elevator can be tricky at times when you're a self-confessed wuss who believes in 'spirits' and 'ghouls' and all the rest of that nonsense.

On the ground floor is a large laundry room where the housekeepers keep bedding and supplies for their work in the morning. The laundry room has one of our emergency fire doors inside and it's always locked. The housekeepers actually smoke outside the fire door and they've tied a thick rope around the top hinge and fastened it tightly to a wall fixture. This stops the door from swinging open the whole way and setting the alarm off when it's unlocked.

Every night, at the start of my shift, I check the laundry rooms on each floor, finishing with the ground floor room. I need to use the master key to open it up, it's locked from the outside, and after flicking on the light, I make sure the fire door is locked and the rope is tied tightly to the fixture.

One night I was sitting doing what I do best at 2am on shift - absolutely nothing - when the fire door alarm sounded. This isn't totally unusual for us, guests often walk through fire doors that are at the end of the corridors, but it was strange for the time of night. I put the code in to shut it off and went to investigate but all the doors at the end of the corridors were firmly closed. I checked the laundry room last, just to be sure, despite being fairly certain that this couldn't have been opened as it has no latch on the outside and you need a key to access it from in here.

Sure enough it was lying wide open, with the rope untied and the inside latch taken off. Just swinging on it's hinges. But I had checked it that night and I had the only key that provided access clipped to my belt.

So...how did this happen, exactly?