11/22/2022
I used to work at a large law firm, downtown in one of the US’s biggest cities. I enjoyed my job assisting some of the city’s best lawyers in high-profile cases. It paid the bills and then some, and it made me feel like I was genuinely doing something with my life.
One of the small drawbacks was that I had to stay a bit later in the evening, usually until around 6 or 6:30. It was a lot of work, after all, but I didn’t mind it.
We shared our high-rise with a bank that opened earlier in the morning and closed before I left. We also shared the parking garage underneath with them. As a result, I ended up parking further away from the entrance to the building in the morning, and walking a ways through the empty garage back to my car in the evening. For my first year on the job, it wasn’t an issue.
Until one Monday night.
“Alright, if we’re done, I should probably be home for dinner,” I told my boss Jack.
“Sounds good, man. I’ve got a couple things to wrap up, but you’re good to go.” See you tomorrow.”
“Have a good night,” I said.
I checked my watch. 5:57. Earlier than normal these days. The holidays were always busy. Tim, a colleague, joked that everyone wanted lawsuit money for Christmas.
I thought about the chicken dumpling pie we were having for dinner. One of my favorites. The elevator’s descent slowed, the bell dinged, the door opened, revealing the expansive, poorly lit, gray parking garage.
I was never the kind to be creeped out by “liminal spaces”, as they’re called, and the garage never scared me before. But that night changed that.
A few seconds in, I felt the hairs on my neck rise slowly. Involuntarily, my pace increased to a speedwalk. I had an overwhelming sense of being watched. I didn’t know what was happening, who was there, why I felt so on edge.
I usually parked one level below the bottom of the elevator, meaning I had to make two blind left turns as I walked down the ramp. I used to joke to myself about there being something waiting around those corners. Wasn’t such a joke now.
Moving faster still, I looked over my shoulder, more than half-expecting somebody to be there. Nothing.
Heart pounding out of my chest, I reached my car, got in, slammed the door and locked it. I left the garage and drove away like nothing happened. And, in a sense, that was accurate; nothing actually happened that night. But that didn’t make me any less nervous to go back there the next day.
I tried to act normal so as to not spook my wife. Part of me wondered if I was in my own head, or if someone slipped something in my water.
I didn’t sleep much Monday night. Tuesday morning, everything felt normal in the garage, and I really started to question what caused that unsettled feeling. But as the clock ticked towards the end of the day, I became very anxious. By 5:00 my head was spinning. I couldn’t focus on work at all.
I excused myself to the bathroom. Splashed water on my face, took some deep breaths. Tried to tell myself I was making it all up.
When I came back, apparently my stress was showing. “You good?” asked Jack.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just, you know, a lot to do.” I didn’t want my boss to think I was crazy.
“Don’t let it get to you. It’s not life or death.”
I sure hoped it wasn’t.
6:00 came. My stomach was in knots, I couldn’t think straight. As I walked down the hallway towards the elevator I began to feel a strong sense of deja vu. How? Doesn’t deja vu happen when you feel like you’ve been somewhere before, but you haven’t? I’d done this walk hundreds of times.
I hit the ‘P’ button, the elevator doors calmly closed. I watched the needle on the dial above the doors move slowly counterclockwise, counting down the floors. 35, 34, 33. You know that feeling where you’re having a nightmare, but you’re awake enough to know at the back of your mind that it’s just a dream? That’s how I was feeling, except it was the far worse opposite: it felt like a nightmare, but I knew I was wide awake.
19, 18, 17. I was now transfixed on the needle.
12, 11, 10. The overhead lights dimmed.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The overhead lights shut all the way off. The backlighting behind the dial turned red. The elevator reached parking, the lowest level, and stopped with a thud.
The doors opened. The garage looked normal, except for one thing: there were usually a few cars left at this time, now there were none whatsoever.
I started to run. Turned left, empty. Left again, empty.
Wait. Empty? My car should have been there. Did I park in a different spot than normal? Definitely not, I specifically remembered pulling into spot #287, the same one as always, that morning.
I looked at the spot numbers painted on the concrete. What the hell? They were way different. Numbers in this section were always in the upper 200s. Now they were in the 900s. There weren’t even close to 900 spots in the entire garage.
I stopped. The vehicle exit to Peachtree St. was above me, past the bottom of the elevator. If my car was gone, continuing to move downwards would do nothing for me. I turned around and sprinted back up the ramp. After three right turns, the exit should have been there. It wasn’t. Just another gray wall.
Now audibly panicking, I ran back down to the elevator, stepped in, and mashed the button that closes the doors. They wouldn’t close. “Help! What is this place? Where am I?” I cried out, to no response.
Maybe the doors wouldn’t close until I pressed a floor. I looked for 35, where my office was. There was no button for floor 35. Instead, all the buttons led to floors with impossibly high numbers. 981, 982, 983. There was a negative sign in front of each number. Floor -981. Sounded like a nice place.
I had no options but to see where the elevator would take me. The doors closed. The lights were still off, the dial still red.
I stood in that elevator, terrified, starting to give up. Considering I was descending 981 floors, the ride was surprisingly very short.
The typical high-pitched ding! rang out as the elevator slowed to a stop. The lights slowly came back on. The backlighting on the dial changed from red to its usual yellowish-white. The doors opened.
Straight ahead was a long desk with four people behind it. I recognized them. On the wall it read JP MORGAN CHASE. To the left was a fancy lobby area, to the right were glass revolving doors that led out to the street.
This was no floor -981. It was floor 1. Of my law firm’s building. JP Morgan was the bank we shared it with.
I walked towards the doors. “Have a nice evening,” said one of the women behind the desk. “You too,” I nodded.
I checked my watch. 6:02. Less than two minutes had elapsed since I left my office. That couldn’t be right.
The air outside was unseasonably cold, cold enough that I could see the water vapor from my breath. I walked around the building to the parking garage entrance. It looked normal.
Gail, the parking attendant, was in the booth at the entrance as usual. “Cold one, isn’t it?” she quipped in her usual loud but friendly tone.
“Yeah, it is cold,” I responded, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Hey, have you noticed anything weird here over the last couple hours?”
“Well, there was a loose chicken walking down the street, kid you not. No idea how the bugger got there. People were videotaping with their phones and all that.”
I faked a laugh. “What a mystery,” I said. “You have a nice night, now. Don’t freeze.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
I walked back to the front of the building and called an Uber.
I quit my job the next day. Going back to that place was not an option. I never saw my car again. Told my wife I traded it in for a newer model which would be at the dealership in a few days, and bought that new model to cover it up. I never told anybody about that night, partly because I knew no one would believe me, and partly because I had no idea where I would start to explain that.
Four years later, and I thankfully haven’t experienced anything like what I went through that Tuesday night. I avoid parking garages like the plague. I don’t use elevators unless I’m with a large group of people, and even then they make me anxious.
With each passing day, the fear fades, but the memory does not. Maybe one day I’ll find out what really happened and what caused it. Or maybe I won’t.