“Charnel House History: The Nine Story Hotel
1920-1929: The Nine Story Hotel first opened its doors in 1920 as a grand edifice of prosperity and growth built by a newly minted tycoon whose identity is lost to us. Ushering in the roaring twenties after the Great War, along with the decadence and corruption coming. However, it fast became known for less grand goings on in the rooms and hallways of the newly built hotel. Guests reported noises and phantoms, apparitions and objects moving on their own. It was the tail end of the Spiritualist movement, nonetheless the hotel's dark reputation peaked when what was reportedly several but estimated to be scores of guests vanished without a trace over the decade. Rumored economic hardship for the owner and and lingering fears from the guests who had disappeared led to its closure following the Great Depression in 1929.
1941-1955: Renovated and reopened during the tumult of World War II, the Nine Story Hotel served as a transient refuge for soldiers and displaced citizens. The renovation of the original hotel was sloppy and quick to wear, crumbling and fading as countless refugees, guests, soldiers, and immigrants passed through staying for days months, and in several instances, years at a time. Shortly after reopening new rumors circulated of rooms where the war's horrors replayed nightly. The intensity of the phenomenon reached a zenith in 1955, when the entire north wing was found abandoned overnight. Hundreds of rooms left empty and in disarray, personal effects strewn across the halls of every floor. Staff working in the wing likewise had seemed to vanish. Guest and employee records were spotty at best during this period. Few possible witnesses of the incident have been found. The hotel closed again under pressure from the city Council, and amidst a Federal investigation which was dropped for no discernable reason as soon as the hotel was shut down and boarded up.
1962-1968: An owner of unknown providence attempted a groovy revival of the Nine Story Hotel in the early 1960s, modern and historical restorations to mix the original Grandeur of the hotel with an update for the times were still underway when the first guests arrived in late January of 1962. This period saw the hotel become the site of a notorious and still unsolved group murder suicide, the accusations of several cults operating within the hotel, rumors of guests disappearing from their rooms, and between 1965 and 1967 no less than five drug labs being raided on the premises, further destroying its reputation. All of these combined with numerous reports of strange and haunting activity in the previously deserted wing, which had become a magnet for hippies, junkies, new spiritualists, and the aforementioned cultists led to a swift decline. By the end of 1968 the hotel was little more than a crumbling flophouse. The finale leading to this closure came when the seventh floor was raided by city police as a violent black revolutionary enclave during the civil rights era, and shortly after when a man, later identified as a prominent LSD cook and founding member of the Tiger’s Golden Dawn Aquarians (a religious organization operating inside the hotel accused of being yet another cult about which little is currently known aside from their prodigious consumption of in house cooked LSD as sacrament, of which no sample was recovered after this incident) shot three staff members dead with a revolver, and self immolated in the hotel lobby.
1978-present: The Nine Story Hotel reopened for the final time in 1978 under new and undisclosed management. Despite extensive renovations and rebranding efforts, the long shadow of its sordid history has never completely faded. Staff and guests alike whisper of rooms that remain perpetually cold, the lift that stops on the ninth floor even if no button is pressed, and screams from the bowels of the hotel at all hours of day or night. Management maintains a discreet stance, attributing anything strange or suspicious to mere coincidence, bad luck, and urban legend tarnishing a beautiful historic hotel. This stance is held in spite of a small trove of surviving records found and available to the author of this document. More recently the hotel has been rumored to be open, closed, haunted, a criminal organization, a place to go where no one will find you, and at the far end of the spectrum of conspiracy, literally purgatory, but nevertheless has gone largely unnoticed in any significant way since reopening in 1978.”
Relevant text highlighted in bright green.
Pinch closes the book as he finishes his lunch. It’s obvious this is some sort of vanity publishing endeavor. He wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and tosses it in the bin before writing the author’s name on a pink sticky note and slapping it on the cover of the book. Arthur takes a step back towards the green door from his personal office back to his sanctum and the lobby beyond, but turns back, picks up the marker, and underlines the name on the sticky note three times.
“So many pathetic little people in this world,” he says and looks up at the gold plate on the wall, the house rules scratched in it giant crow claw deep, rabid, sloppy. The lines of each letter carved into the soft gold hundreds of times. How these pathetic little people with their slander never seem to get what they deserve.
At least, not outside the walls of Arthur’s beloved hotel.
This Week at The Nine Story Hotel
Monday
feeds everyone’s head with a short with the recently introduced and mysterious White RabbitTuesday
takes Griffin on a trip to make a deal with Edith, the Bookworm, a mysterious quantity at the hotel in her own right.Wednesday
CJ Stockton continues stories of a young Althea Parker, as she makes new friends in the hotel, that are even her age.Thursday
has the madwoman behind the hotel in the van, full of secrets, getting more and more caught up in something she only understands part ofAnd Saturday
Finishes Pink Nightmares in the most gruesome and beautiful way possible, in a voice singular to her.
Love it. Thank you.