Found a Literal Ghost Haunting the Copy Machine

It was 4 AM on a that day at the hotel, and the lobby was dead silent. Working the night shift usually has a rhythm to it, a quiet kind of peace that I typically enjoy. But tonight, that peace felt heavy, almost suffocating. The air was thick with the scent of floor wax and stale coffee. I was sitting at the front desk, staring at a stack of registration forms that needed to be copied for the morning rush. My eyes felt like they were filled with sand, and my brain was begging for a nap, but I had a job to do. I grabbed the forms and walked into the small, cramped back office. This room always feels a little colder than the rest of the hotel, and tonight, the chill seemed to be biting deeper than usual. In the corner sat our office copier, an ancient beast of a machine that had been fighting me for months. It was a bulky, beige relic from the nineties that hissed and groaned whenever it actually managed to print a sheet. I walked over, pressed the power button, and waited for it to warm up. I fed the first sheet into the tray, but before it could even pull the paper in, the machine let out a pathetic grinding noise. A bright red error message blinked on the tiny screen: 'Paper Jam.' I let out a heavy sigh, my patience already wearing thin. I opened the front panel, cleared the crumpled paper, and tried again. The machine spat the page out, wrinkled and torn. I tried a third time, and again, the same error flashed. I was getting legitimately annoyed, feeling the frustration rising in my chest. I stared at the copier and muttered, 'Come on, just do your job. I just want to go home.' I gave the side of the machine a firm tap, hoping to jostle it into submission, but it just let out a high-pitched whine. That was when things started to go wrong. The overhead fluorescent lights, which usually hummed with a steady buzz, began to flicker violently. They buzzed like angry bees, oscillating between blinding white and dim gray. I froze, my hand still resting on the cold plastic of the copier. I thought it was just a power surge, but then the room grew even colder. The temperature dropped so fast I could see my own breath misting in the air in front of me. I turned around to leave the office, thinking I should check the breakers, but my feet wouldn't move. Standing right there, no more than three feet from the copier, was a figure. It wasn't a person, not a solid one anyway. It was a hazy, see-through silhouette of a man dressed in an old-fashioned, dark suit. He looked like he belonged in a black-and-white photograph. He wasn't aggressive; he just looked tired. His hand was hovering near the copier tray, and his expression was one of deep, agonizing frustration. He was staring at the machine with the exact same look I had been wearing moments before. I stood there, rooted to the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurt. I tried to speak, to call out to him, but my throat felt like it had been filled with cotton. The ghost didn't seem to notice me at all. He just let out a long, silent huff of annoyance and gestured toward the copier. The air around him shimmered like heat rising off hot pavement. I felt a chill run down my spine that made my skin crawl, a coldness that felt like it was soaking into my very bones. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped. The lights stopped flickering and stayed on. The ghost simply drifted apart, his hazy outline thinning out like smoke in a breeze until he was completely gone. The office was suddenly quiet again, save for the low hum of the refrigerator in the breakroom. I stood there for a long minute, trembling, just trying to process what had just happened. My hands were shaking so hard I had to grip the desk to steady myself. Then, I remembered something. Mr. Abernathy was a name that had been whispered around the staff breakroom for years. The old-timers said he had been the manager of this hotel back in the eighties. The story went that he was a perfectionist, someone who took his work far too seriously. He reportedly died right here in the back office, having a massive heart attack while struggling with a paper jam, screaming at the machine to print the final reports for an audit. I had always laughed at those stories, thinking they were just campfire tales designed to scare the new hires. Now, standing in the silence of that office, I wasn't so sure anymore. I looked over at the copier, my heart still racing. With a tentative finger, I pressed the start button again. To my shock, the machine hummed to life without a single complaint. It pulled the paper through smoothly and printed every single form without a stutter. It sounded like a brand-new machine. It was as if it had been waiting for the ghost to approve the process. I didn't wait around for another glitch. I snatched up my finished papers and almost ran out of the office, slamming the door behind me. I finished the rest of my shift at the front desk, but I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder. Every shadow in the lobby seemed to take on a new shape, and every creak of the hotel floorboards made me jump. I barely managed to keep my focus on the guest check-ins. When the morning shift manager finally arrived to relieve me, I didn't say a word about what I had seen. I knew they’d just tell me I was exhausted or that the lack of sleep was playing tricks on my mind. But I know what I saw. I know how cold the air felt, and I know that man in the suit looked just as annoyed as I was. Now, I have a strict rule. I finish every single scrap of paperwork before the sun goes down. I don't set foot in that back office after midnight, no matter what. Some people say it was just a hallucination, a trick of the light caused by a tired mind. I try to tell myself that, too, but I still get goosebumps every time I walk past the office door. Sometimes, when the lobby is quiet, I can still hear the faint, muffled sound of a copier printing, even when I know the machine is turned off. Working the night shift has always been about dealing with the strange and the unexpected, but this? This changed everything for me. It’s a lot more interesting now, but I think I’d prefer a little bit of boredom over another encounter with Mr. Abernathy and his stubborn copier.