The Headless Specter

From:  Anonymous
Story type: Ghost
Location: ohio
Source: Form Submission

The event of which I'm writing takes place in a small town located along the Ohio River in southeastern Ohio, a supply company which i had been employed for two years. Our company consisted of several old buildings, the one in particular housed three floors connected by an old wooden stairway and an old pull-down gate style elevator. Stories circulated that long ago a past employee fell down the elevator shaft to his death and was decapitated in the process. Like many ghost stories many scoffed at the i dea that this one building was haunted. Many of the employees I worked with including myself kind of got a laugh at the expense of one of our fellow workers, I'll call this person... Mark, who had claimed to have seen the dark specter. One day Mark went up to the top floor to get an item for a customer. The building was unusually quiet, the top floor is completely open but is divided off by rows of tall wooden shelves accessible by a main walkway down the center of the floor. While he was getting a part o ff one of the bottom shelves he heard footsteps almost running down the main aisle, Mark looked up to see a shadowy figure walk by in a black floor length coat that appeared to be missing its head. Shaken, Mark got up quickly to leave heading toward the main aisle he saw the apparition vanish into the elevator shaft. To this day Mark will not venture to the top floor of the old building alone.

My story begins on a hot Indian summer day in the Fall of 1995. I had a customer that needed an item that we stored in the haunted old building, I preceded to the basement floor, near the elevator shaft I was getting the parts needed when out of my peripheral vision I noticed someone a dark shadowy figure walk by, going toward the back of the room. Having retrieved the parts I stood up and noticed that I didn't hear the elevator move or hear anyone tread up the rickety stairs. I looked down the main ai sle and called out "is there anyone in here?", but there was no response. The hairs on the back of my neck began to rise as my pulse quickened. Then the thought flooded my mind of what had happened to Mark, and as if in spite of myself I grinned realizing what had transpired, not only had I saw Mark's ghost, but also what day it was... Halloween! I told several people I worked with of the occurrence and I'm sure many of them thought I was just trying to get them into the spirit of Halloween, but a few oth ers including Mark know that I am another believer of the headless specter.