I got a job at a haunted house to be the person in charge of checking the entire house after closing to make sure no one had stayed inside overnight, as people had done in the past. It turns out that I was the previous night guard.

I knew it was going to be a weird job, but hey, it paid double overtime and I was an avid horror fan, so I knew I could handle it. I took the job, despite the warnings from former employees that the house was possessed by spirits. I was to enter the house after closing, go in to a predetermined easy to see location of the house (the door down a hallway in the middle of the estate), and continue on from there throughout the house, making sure every door was locked and that no one was left behind. I had keys to the doors, and no one else did, so if someone had been hiding in the house, they were unlikely to get out easily. It was a simple job; I was to check every room, and make sure there weren’t any squatters. The only problem was, I had no idea where to start, as they didn’t give me a full floor-plan of the house, just a printed map of the main hallways with a few rooms marked. <br><br>I didn’t really need a map, though, as I had been to the house multiple times before I took the job. It was a very popular attraction in the area, and had been converted from a family home to a commercial haunted house when the owners had gone bankrupt in the early 1900’s. I wasn’t sure why my bosses were concerned about people staying overnight at the house, as I had never heard any rumors about people staying behind at the house. I figured that it was probably just random people talking online about possibly staying there, and that most of the time the owners were just blowing it out of proportion and didn’t need to be worried about it at all. <br><br><br>I was quickly proven wrong, however, as when I did a preliminary check of the house, I found a piece of paper on the ground of one of the rooms that had a name and an email address on it. I figured that this was probably the most likely culprit of the rumors that had been going around about people staying there overnight, and opened my laptop so I could email him. I saw that the email address was very recent. And that was when it hit me, that something was wrong. <br><br>His name was what caught my attention. It was my name. Now, I’m not a particularly common name, and I know of only one other person who shares my name in the area. But this was my email address. When I opened my email, I saw that there was a message from that person recently. <br><br><br>The message was to my old boss, and it was his notice that he was quitting the job. He had been working in that house for over a year, and had no complaints. No one knows why he had quit, and all I have to show for it is a cryptic email that he sent in to work that read, “I’m not staying any longer in this godforsaken place.”<br><br><br>It’s clear that something happened to him, and I’m not sure if I should continue in the job. I’m certain I don’t want to, but I feel like something is drawing me in and telling me to stay. That it’s important for me to stay. I don’t know what’s going to happen if I do, or even if I don’t. But I know one thing, I’m not going to be leaving that house anytime soon.