The Haunted Office
Late one hot August night my Uncle was working in his office at his law firm on a case that was closing the next day. He was very involved in his work and didn't notice when his partner stopped by his door to say goodbye for the evening. At one point Uncle Ed thought he heard his partner speaking to a female client in an adjoining office. He got up and walked down the hallway to see what was going on but all the lights were out in the hall. He decided that they had left before he got to the office and went back to work. He asked if any of the lawyers on his floor had had clients in their offices that night. They all said they had left early and not seen any clients that evening. Uncle Ed felt this was very strange but soon forgot all about it. Another night several months later my uncle was in his office working late and heard the same pair of voices speaking in hushed tones, just soft enough that he couldn't make out what they were talking about. He walked around and again found no one in their offices. This time he checked to see if anyone had left their radio on by mistake and found not a single radio on in the building. The next day he spoke to his colleagues about the voices and almost everyone in the firm had heard a man and woman speaking urgently in hushed tones, just soft enough as to not make out what was said. A year or so after my uncle's first encounter the building was sold due to an expansion of the firm. My uncle was close friends with a man who was working for the business who bought the building and told the man to call him if the man wanted to talk about the building. The man looked confused but said he would talk to Ed if he had any questions. Several weeks after the building was moved into, my uncle's friend ran up to him on the street with an excited look in his eyes and said, "When you told me to ask you anything about the building, you were talking about the voices, weren't you?" Later my uncle learned that the part of the building I spoke about was a hardware store around 1940 and was burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, the cause of which was never quite discovered. Two bodies were found in the remains of a back storeroom. These bodies were never identified. Could the two voices have been those of a couple trapped in the back room of the hardware store?
Only they know.
Katie Lowry, Charlottesville, VA
