I used to work at an airport as a janitor and, luckily, I can’t tell you too many insane stories. We had some weirdos like the homeless people that often used the airport for shelter (I wouldn’t bother them) and the people who had been driven insane by being unable to sleep on red-eye flights. We also had your usual Karens and male Karens (whatever you call them) that would scream, assault people, and bust up everything.
But there was only one time when someone succeeded in killing someone. Well, a lot of people succeeded in killing someone.
So there was this guy that walked off the airplane and into the airport and immediately drew everyone’s attention because there were, like, fifteen rolling suitcases following him. No, he wasn’t pulling these suitcases as far as I could tell. The only actual baggage he was actively moving was this bag that he carried in his right hand. The others were just somehow following him in a triangle-like shape, the kind of pattern you’d see a flight of geese follow.
I remember that people smiled at first when they saw this bizarre sight. Some of them even took out their phones and began filming. They probably thought the whole thing was a prank of some sort. Maybe they assumed the guy was using some weird remote control to get all the suitcases to follow him. As soon as they noticed the suitcases passing through poles, chairs, and people, however, their smiles fell.
It was clear that there was something else at work here. But what? I felt too curious about the whole situation and decided to follow closely behind the man.
As I walked, I heard some people muttering their guesses to each other. I also would read the comments of people who saw the blog posts, photos, videos, drawings, etc., later. Most everyone was making similar guesses.
“Did all the people on his flight die and their ghosts are following him?”
“Are those the bags of people that he killed on flights?”
“How the hell did he get on the flight with all of those?”
“Does this guy have some weird curse where a bunch of ghost bags follows him?”
“Those bags must contain all of his sins! They’re the devil’s suitcases.”
“Those have to be holograms.”
“Did he make, like, ghost copies of all of the other passengers’ bags somehow?”
“Do you die if they pass through you?”
I heard different versions of the last one a lot. If that idea was in just about everyone’s mind, it was no wonder why they were running and even leaping to get out of the way of the bags as they came rolling down the halls. They often did so with shrieks and gasps.
Many others that were watching the scene from afar were performing all kinds of religious and supernatural rituals. They said prayers, crossed themselves, and so on.
Still, some others tried to look brave. They rushed forward and ran their hands, legs, and sometimes their whole bodies through the suitcases. From what I heard later, nothing happened to them. They even seemed to look gleeful after they passed through the suitcases.
However, they would later claim that they felt a certain chill, warmth, or tingling in whatever touched the suitcases. None of them could agree on the true feeling that it caused. To me, those claims were about as believable as those who claimed that they saw the ground catch fire where the suitcases rolled or heard mutters coming from the inside of the suitcases.
I don’t know how the people who truly believed the suitcases were possessed even heard those voices or saw those flames. Most of them were trembling or standing frozen with fear twenty feet away from them and their “owner”.
That is, they were until a single unlucky incident somehow brought out the beasts in them. While the man was traveling through the baggage claim, he passed by a very old woman who needed a walker to move. She obviously couldn’t get out of the way of the suitcases in time so a few of them passed right through her. Likely due to fright, the old woman had a heart attack right there and fell over.
That was enough for many of them. A mob of them rushed forward with shouts and screams and surrounded the man. They began beating him with anything they could use. Some used their fists and legs, others used their baggage and airport equipment, and two even grabbed poles from the queue lines and began battering him with them.
I was too shocked to move or speak. Luckily I couldn’t see the violence behind the crowd. Still, I could hear the man shouting and pleading for his life while his bones crunched and flesh squelched. A swarm of security officers managed to pull the mob apart, but by then it was too late.
As the security officers pulled the murder participants away, I wanted to just turn around and get back to work. But I knew that I would likely be the one who had to clean up the mess later.
I don’t want to describe what I saw on the floor. However, I will mention something interesting about those murderers. When they left the scene, each of them was trailed by a single ghostly suitcase.