I feel like an idiot but I’ve just ran away in fright.

Upper floor of my hotel is being renovated: it’s utterly empty, all the rooms lining the hallway with no doors, various crap on the floor. Basically like something from a horror game.

Each night I’ve been going up there to put the washer on. It’s not sooo bad because there’s these moody hanging lights the workers have put up. But tonight they’re not working.

So… I get a big ass flashlight from downstairs and start making my way along the desolate hallway full of nightblack doorways. Half way up, a bang sound comes down the hallway. I can’t tell the distance. I freeze, then turn tail and run the heck out of there, my flashlight’s cone making mad arc’s across the walls.

I’m in the office now, panting. Now, I KNOW it has to be something just naturally falling over, or one of the guests downstairs somehow smacking their ceiling or something like that. I don’t believe in ghosts and I recognise that the chances of a homicidal killer deciding to hide upstairs is essentially nil. But *nothing* is going to make me go up there in the dark on my own. Not after that noise.

I know it’s unreasonable. I know it’s cowardly. But it’s such a primeval instinct, such a hardwired, caveman predator response I really just can’t do it.

I’ll wait till there’s daylight. Even just a bit. But I’m as fascinated by my fright as I am embarrassed by my cowardice.