Before I delve into the bulk of this story, here’s some brief context:
This past weekend, I had a friend’s wedding. The ceremony and reception took place at a quaint little club in Asbury Park, NJ. It was a good time, of course. The only thing about Asbury Park is, it’s a very crowded shore town with limited parking and overnighting. So, in an attempt to give his guests a place to stay after the festivities, my friend booked a hotel block at an ancient-looking building near the boardwalk called The Berkeley Hotel. At some point in the recent past, the hotel went through major renovations to bring it into the present. These days, the place is known for being a bit rundown, but still very modern. With its chic bar and rules like allowing pets, it’s become a hub for young partiers spending long nights clubbing in Asbury Park. Though, despite the modernization, a dark secret lurks within this hotel. This very secret is what I had the displeasure of discovering the night of the wedding.
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It all began when we arrived back at the hotel after the wedding reception ended. It was about 10PM, and my friend had a cool little afterparty scheduled in the hotel bar. My fiancé and I went up to our room to freshen up, hydrate, and prepare to hang out at the party for a while. Randomly, it occurred to me that we had only been using the elevators to travel between the ground floor and fifth floor where our room was located. The elevators were heavily trafficked and very slow, and the more we used them, the more impatient I got. I began flirting with the idea of looking for a stairwell, which I hadn’t seen yet for some reason. We had to be at the party though, so I ignored this thought for the time. Fast forward a bit, and as we were at the afterparty, my fiancé got a little chilly. Being a gentleman, I offered to go back to our room to retrieve a coat for her. She obliged.
Not wanting to miss too much of the party, I briskly walked to the elevators and scoffed at the large mass of people looking to go up. Luckily, the doors promptly opened and we squeezed in like sardines in a can. That crowd was the final straw for me, and I decided I would look for a stairwell to travel back down. I quickly entered our hotel room, grabbed a jacket and exited, prepared to find some stairs. Oddly, my look didn’t take long. About ten feet away from the entrance to our room, was an unmarked door. This made no sense to me. This mystery door was not there before. (Before anyone thinks it, no I was not drunk and I have great perception, so there was no way I’d miss an entire door). It was simply wallpaper before. But at the time, since the door looked like your characteristic stairwell door, I brushed off the unease and opened it up.
Sure enough, I found an ordinary set of stairs going up and down. Coat in hand, I bounded downward. All noise aside from my footsteps abruptly faded as I descended. After several seconds of this, I hit the landing for ‘Floor 4’, and continued down another flight as expected. This was the point in this situation where all reason and logic ended. I reached the next floor, which I obviously presumed to be the third. Surveying the landing, I expected a Floor 3 door and another flight of stairs. What I got was a completely dead end to my right and a shady, unmarked door directly ahead of me. I looked around carefully. The dead end was a small hallway packed with what appeared to be janitor supplies, but there really was no descent to ‘Floor 2’ in sight. The stairs simply ended on what should be ‘Floor 3’. Why did this building have a stairwell that descended down to a stop at the third floor? Getting a bit freaked out, I decided to not spend time speculating and just enter the unmarked door. Then I could look for the elevator.
On the other side of the door was what appeared to be an ordinary hotel hallway at first. The rooms were indeed marked with threes, so I knew I was on the third floor for sure. The thing is, I soon noticed a couple things were off. For one, the layout was slightly different than the floors above. It honestly looked like the hallway itself didn’t fit the shape of the building I was in. Second, the lights were off for a huge portion of the hallway, which was eerie. Combine this with an absolutely dead silence and lack of any people. And finally, there was the feeling. I wouldn’t call myself a believer of the paranormal and like to think I always have a good handle on my anxiety. As such, I don’t tend to get ‘weird feelings’ as they say. But standing in that hallway was like nothing I have ever experienced. The atmosphere felt surreal, and I had this nagging sense that I shouldn’t be there. Creeping myself out again, I reminded myself to just go down the hall and look for the elevator. I’d just take the crowded but easy way as usual.
As I walked in the direction the elevator should have been in, I quickly noticed this wasn’t going to happen. There was no sign of an elevator or even a shaft where one could have been. All I could find was just hotel rooms and empty walls. But how? It almost felt like I was in a completely different building than the Berkeley Hotel. Not wanting to lose my cool any more, my next plan was to keep going and look for another stairwell that led down to the next floor. Well, roughly about 150 feet from where I entered this bizarre hallway, it finally happened. I reached yet another dead end and to my left was a stairwell. The thing was, this was an open set of stairs with no door concealing them. And the wall past the stairs (right before the dead end) was cut off midway with a railing, allowing me to peek over into a loft of sorts, about half a floor down. Again, this geometry made no sense. Why did the unmarked, dimly lit third floor of a hotel have such random floor plans?
As this thought crossed my mind, I noticed a small shelf under the stairs in the loft. Stacked upon it were books. Even from where I was about ten feet up, I could see the text on the covers of these books was unfamiliar to say the least. I’m no poly-linguist, but I’m decently acquainted with how most languages are written. And I knew the characters covering those books didn’t belong to any language currently in use. It almost looked like Hebrew, but it was written too sharply and lacked any sort of penmanship. At this point, the dead silence was broken by a faint whisper. It was sustained and sounded like someone exhaling and speaking tongues at the same time. To make matters worse, I couldn’t determine exactly where the whisper was coming from.
Thoroughly startled, my mind was screaming at me to bail, but I then spotted a brightly lit hallway jutting off from the loft below me in an awkward direction. So, against my better judgment, I entered the loft and hastily approached the hallway. At the end, was a door identical to the stairwell door I first found on the fifth floor. It even was marked ‘Stairs to 2nd Floor’. My fears were somewhat alleviated but quickly replaced by confusion. Nonetheless, I had wasted enough time here and wanted to get back to the party. So I yanked the door open, entered the seemingly normal stairwell, and closed the door securely behind me. With that, the whispering stopped.
Looking back, I really wish I had just turned around when I saw those books and heard that sound. The third floor should have been enough of a red flag to me with all of its irregularities, but hey, my pride got the best of me. The stairwell again ended in a dead end just one flight down. A door lay before me marked simply with “II” (written in Roman Numerals). The fact that it switched from written English to Roman numerals was a bit unnerving but not much compared to what I’d already seen. I entered through the door into a completely dark hotel hallway. When I say completely dark, I mean I couldn’t even see my hands at first. The only visible light came from the room numbers, which somehow glowed with a faint lime-green hue. The unsettling feeling I had on the third floor was amplified tenfold, and my ears almost seemed to buzz with static. I really, really felt like I wasn’t supposed to be in that hallway. Finally, my common sense kicked in and I decided I’d had enough. But when I turned around to open the door I just used, it was gone. All that remained was an empty wall. Panicking, I ran to the left again hoping there would be an elevator shaft. Nothing. The buzzing feeling in my ears began to grow louder and the temperature abruptly dropped to near freezing, as I hurried through the dark hall.
After running for what felt like thirty seconds or so, I saw a hotel room with an open door. The door was cracked ever so slightly, but it was the first one I could actually enter. The buzzing in my ears was still going, and the temperature was so cold, I could see my breath. But for some reason beyond me, I decided to take a peek inside that room. I approached the door and widened it ever so little, just to look in. At the end of the room was a large set of windows typical for the Berkeley. But outside, was a twilit sky that didn’t seem to be of Earth. A large moon, unfamiliar to the one I grew up looking at, sat squarely in the sky, flooding the room with an almost orange light. Whatever was outside, wasn’t Asbury Park.
Suddenly, my awe was broken by a shadowy mass floating into view. Appearing from the far corner of the room, behind one of the twin beds, it settled right in front of the two windows. It was far away from me (right next to the windows) but I could tell this thing was huge. Probably seven feet tall at least. It looked like a human figure, but appeared to be made entirely of shadow. At that point I think I heard it say something. I use the word think, because I’m not sure if the sound was coming through my ears or from within my mind. Just like the buzzing. Regardless, the creature seemed to be speaking an unknown language in a deep, inhuman tone. Then, as I was standing there, peering into that cursed hotel room, I suddenly got this guttural feeling that the shadow had seen me. Sure enough, a second or so later it rushed towards the door. Towards me.
Metaphorically pissing my pants, I careened down the hallway from whence I came, never looking back. The world around me almost felt like it was vibrating, as the buzzing disoriented me beyond belief. Only sheer adrenaline was keeping me going. Eventually I hit a dead end, but through my well adjusted eyes I could see a door. A stairwell door. Without hesitation, I flung it open and took one last look behind me. Ten feet or so away was the shadowy mass. It seemed to be staring me down, silently. As I looked on, the phrase “Don’t come back, you don’t belong in this place” pierced my mind in a deep, hollow tone. With that I slammed the door and ascended the stairs, as there was no way down. The stairs were longer than any previous ones, but ended with the fifth floor. Which just so happened to be the very floor I started on. I exited the stairwell door and somehow, was exactly where I had entered, right near my hotel room. “What the actual hell did I just experience?” I said out loud, to the amusement of some nearby drunks. I turned to them, “Listen, do yourselves a favor and stay the hell away from that door I just came through”. With that, I went to the elevator and decided that patience really was a virtue. As I entered the elevator alone, preparing to finally go back to the party, I noticed one thing. There were no second or third floor buttons in the elevator.
It just skipped from 1 to 4.