Spell to Talk to a Hotel Ghost

You are nineteen times more likely to kill yourself in a hotel than anywhere else. You are away from your supports. It does not feel real. You don't want to mess up the new shag carpeting in your rumpus room. Suicide in a hotel borders on caring for the people in your life if you do not consider those who find your body "people." (Some who work in hotels, who present the shape of human beings, are not. This is not your concern for this working.)

That is not the end of the unnatural deaths. People do things in hotels that they would do nowhere else: drugs, unwise sex with dangerous strangers, what have you.

The statistics on how many people are murdered in hotels are spotty. Like Disneyland employs semantic deceit to claim a person who died there didn't, hoteliers are generous in clarifying where someone was definitely not murdered on the grounds.

All hotels are haunted within a year of their founding. The tourist brochures do not make a big deal of it unless the specters are photogenic. You have the clout to market this infestation if you run a two-hundred-year-old inn. If you are the newest branch of a chain, it is better that you have the police quietly deal with the bodies, give the cleaning staff a small bonus, and move on with your day. Why fixate on this death? There will always be another one up the pike.

A hotel isn't going to bother hiring an exorcist. It's not a necessary expense, and it is a pain to explain to your accountants come tax time. If the accountants have dealt with hotels long enough, they may have a trick or two, but the government does not want to know about your ghosts. No matter the precedent of Stambovsky v. Ackley, one cannot claim them as permanent residents.

The ghosts, by and large, are not much for noisy haunting. Most stay in their rooms, aside from the occasional unfortunate coincidence where a family member might visit or someone who looks enough like them. The anniversary of deaths can be dicey. Professional establishments keep a calendar of these and will not rent that room on that date. That is unless one insists it can be no other room. The hotels understand why one might make this request and will not make a fuss. They will charge more, but you may avoid this if you don't say why. Explaining your morbid intentions requires that they deny you. It would be your funeral, even if it were someone else's only recently.

If another guest is about to die similarly, the ghosts may make an effort to stop it. Occultists are divided on whether this is some form of caring or just that there is enough spectral crowding already. They've died, and they would prefer to be left alone.

Their preferences need not be your concern.

When it comes to suicides, there are telltale signs for which the front desk staff is trained to look-the person with very little luggage demanding a room on the highest floor they can find. The person ordering room service of nothing but alcohol, then putting out the Do Not Disturb, which staff follows until the end of the stay or the odor of decay becomes too pungent.

The hotels tend to charge the card on file for the cleanup. The deceased isn't in any position to argue, and the credit card companies know this is for the best. The survivors, if they exist, rarely make a stink. They wouldn't want to scrape their loved one's brains from the floral wallpaper. Better to leave that to a disinterested professional.

The cheaper motels don't usually bother cleaning properly. If your mattress had a pad on it, there is a good chance the blood of at least one person is underneath, to say nothing of other bodily fluids. The margins are so thin, and it isn't as though they will replace everything or that the people paid with a card. You can't charge any more cash than they have given you upfront. Your trucker motel skimps.

When you want to speak with the dead of the hotel, this is to your benefit.

The most expedient way to contact the dead is to find out where and when someone killed themselves, by what method, and do the same. If you did your research and they are feeling active, they will stop you. If you did not, someone might be along to summon you and figure out where you went wrong. It is an iterative process, one of edits and revisions. Eventually, someone will get it right.

If you do not wish to attempt suicide, other, more involved methods exist.

For the rite to work, you must pay for your room with cash. When they ask at the front desk, you must give them a false name. Forge what documents you need to convince them. Shave your head and wear a wig. Believe you are this person. The ghost will know your true name, but you must never speak it aloud. You know this, but the dead are crafty. They have had more time to think of ways to trick you than you have in contacting them.

Find an envelope left by the housekeeper. Take out whatever cash you have in your wallet. If you have none, leave the hotel, find an ATM where no one will observe you, and take out several hundred dollars. Leave all this in the envelope. The staff deserves this tithe.

Pull the shower curtain off the rod in the bathroom, taking pains not to tear it, and put this in the bedroom. This is your workspace. It will provide you with no supernatural advantage, but it will make cleanup easier on the staff should you die.

If the hotel supplies a robe -- most budget establishments will not -- you are obligated to wear it through the working, bare underneath. Ancient mages knew the power of robes, of assuming clothing one would not wear in mundane spaces.

Take the phone off the hook until the dial tone stops. You will hear a voice telling you to put the receiver back, but you must not listen to it, even when it begins to plead, then scream, then whisper what people think of you. These are lies, or you must tell yourself they are, seductive though they may be.

Go to the air conditioner/heater. You must turn the heater to high, then put it on its coldest setting. If you turn the air conditioner to its hottest setting, you may not live to regret it.

Look at the placard in the hotel, beside the television. Look for a station that is not listed, one between the numbers of two stations that are. Turn the tv to this and put it on mute but turn your back to it. What you will see there will do you no good.

You must close the curtains, something you know, and you must ignore the scratching behind them. Try not to look toward them. If you do and you see the fingers and the fluid, know that it is not blood. You would wish it were if you did know its actual composition.

Set the alarm for the minute you intend to begin your ritual but face the clock to the wall. The alarm will not go off when you set it to. This means the ghost is present and wishes to wake in their own time.

The ghost will not want to speak to you. Accept this going in. As you would when roused from a needed nap, they will despise you and are no longer bound to social niceties.

You must know your questions before you begin. Write them on the pad of paper provided to you on the desk. Use the pen, though the letterhead will no longer be for the hotel. If there is no pen, you must use your fluids. The spirit may answer any questions you have not written down in advance, but these answers will become the wallpaper of your nightmares from that day forward.

The dead will tell you secrets you can explain to no one else, words that are toxic and will eat away at you. They have seen hundred on vacations, honeymoons, affairs that will end a marriage, the first night of a divorce. They know the best and worst of the human experience more than you will on this side of the veil.

When you are ready to end the working, or the ghost has made clear your questions have become too irritating to bear, open the Gideon Bible you will find in the nightstand. That is why the hotels provide them. It will no longer contain the Word of God but instead an infernal banishing. Read only that page aloud. Do not indulge the temptation to glance at other pages. Each is written for you, memories you thought you lost, and the details of your death. You are not meant to have these things, and they serve as bait to keep you.

You will lose hours to this, and you must never try to find them. Check-out is at eleven. The continental breakfast will be the most delicious you have ever tasted if you survive the night, but the bagels will be stale.