“Alright everyone,” Mrs. Applewhite said as she opened the door and stepped into the room from the hall outside. “Turn off the TV, put away the games, its reading time.” The children groaned in disappointment but did as they were told.
Mrs. Applewhite taught at Hawthorne, a private school and was allowed to take certain seventh grade students, those with exceptional grades, on an annual field trip to the art museum and other educational sites in Virginia. This year Hawthorne paid for the small group of travelers to stay at the Cresswell Bed and Breakfast Inn in Norfolk.The eight children, Anne, Mary, Julie, Tammy, Milton, David, Jason and George all hung out in the boy’s room watching movies and playing games. Mrs. Applewhite even ordered pizza for everyone. Although Mrs. Applewhite allowed the children much time for rest, she was stern when it came to her job as an educator, making sure the students spent a portion of time everyday involved in reading.She walked in the room carrying a small stack of books and passed them out. They were all copies of a book of short stories called Chilling True Tales. Tammy opened her copy. “I don’t want to read this kind of book, not at night,” she complained. “This book was the only one I could get multiple copies of on short notice,” Mrs. Applewhite said.“Don’t be a sissy,” David said with a snicker. “Halloween is this month anyway,” Julie said. “It’ll be spooky!”“We don’t have to read the whole thing do we?” Milton groaned?“I wouldn’t put you guys through that. The book contains multiple stories, so each of you just read one.” Mrs. Applewhite said.Jason opened the small mini-novel sized book and flipped through its pages. The stories were short, maybe fifteen to twenty pages each. Not too bad, he thought. George, Jason’s best friend, wasn’t much of a reader. “Can’t we read these tomorrow? George asked.“Sorry Georgie, I want them read tonight. It shouldn’t take you too long. Afterward we’ll discuss what each of you read.” George frowned. Mary scanned the table of contents then raised her hand. “I want to read The Bakerville Ghost! “Can I read Haunted Forest?” Anne asked.“Sure, that will be fine,” Mrs.Applewhite said. “Each of you, choose a story that interests you most.”The girls chose their stories rather quickly. Julie chose a story called Ghost Train, and Tammy decided on one entitled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery. The boys took a little more time to pick theirs but Milton chose Bigfoot, David picked Cemetery Sightings, George settled on the The Witch of Calcutta.Jason was undecided until he ran across a story called Laundry Chute. What was so scary about that? The name seemed kind of funny so he chose that one. These were supposed to be true stories but Jason wasn’t so sure. He never believed in that kind of stuff and thought books were written like that just to scare people.“Okay guys,” Mrs. Applewhite said, “I’ll be back in about forty-five minutes. That should be enough time for all of you to finish.” That said, Mrs. Applewhite closed the door and walked down the hall to her room. She would be back soon, so the room went quite as each person flipped through the pages of the book. Jason sat on the floor, his back against his bed and read. Laundry Chute was about a small Bed and Breakfast, much like the one he and his school mates were in, that had a haunted laundry chute on the third floor. Page 78 read:“Does something evil lurk in the laundry chute at the Cresswell Bed and Breakfast on Petersburg Road in Norfolk Virginia? Some say it is so. The haunted laundry hamper is a small 1x 1.5 foot hole with a door the same size. It’s located on the wall of the third floor of the Inn. There are two more chutes on the first and second floors directly underneath the one on the third. But the alleged horrifying events are only said to take place on the top floor.As the story goes, a little girl named Penelope Spindleman, age twelve, was playing a game of Ring Around the Roseys with other girls her age on the third floor of the bed and breakfast. One particular girl in the bunch, Vivian, was aware of the fact that Penelope stole her boyfriend the day earlier. When the part of the nursery rhyme came to ‘we all fall down’, the gang of girls together swept Penelope off of her feet and dropped her down the laundry chute three floors down into the basement. The drop inadvertently proved fatal and Penelope broke her neck when she hit the bottom.Today, as some claim, if one should open the door to the laundry chute in the middle of the night, insert his arm down as far as possible and recite the Ring Around the Roseys nursery rhyme, a malevolent unseen force who some say is Penelope, will grab hold of the arm and pull him down into the basement once the rhyme if finished. Many people who have stayed at the Cresswell Inn testify that this is has been happening since 1887.After Jason read the story and wondered, something like that couldn’t be true could it? No, impossible, it was too far fetched. But what if the Cresswell Inn in the book was the same in which he and friends were situated? The book said it was located in Norfolk, Virginia. They were in Norfolk Virgina. The street location in the book was called Petersburg Road. Jason leapt up from his spot on the floor, onto his bed and looked out the window after moving the curtains. He couldn’t see the street sign on the corner from where the room was.Jason sat on his bed and watched everyone reading the book. Mary, Tammy, and Julie were on the floor, their pages wide open and Anne sat against the TV stand. Milton and David each sat up in their beds. Jason called to George who was lying on the floor on his side. “Hey George, you finished yet?”“Nope, this story is kind of boring.”“What’s it about?”“Some witch, supposedly she put curses on people.”Jason came off of the bed and sat next to George on the floor. “The book says that these stories are true. Do you think they are?”“I don’t know. Probably not.”Mary looked up from her book. “They could be. My friend’s mom says she seen a ghost. It was the spirit of her dead uncle.”“They’re not true. None of this stuff is. It’s all just for fun.” Milton said.“I don’t know how any of this can be fun, I don’t like scary stories,” Tammy said.“It’s just fiction. This stuff can’t happen, just close the book and it’s done.” David said.“Be quiet. I’m not done reading yet,” Julie interrupted.Everybody went back to reading except Jason. He was finished and kept thinking about the Cresswell Bed and Breakfast in Norfolk, Virgina. “I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be back,” Jason said as he got up, walked to the door, opened it and stepped into the long hall. He had to know if it was the same homestead in the book so he decided to take a hike up to the third floor.
