Evidence Discovered After Week 7: The Room at the End of the Hall

I stumbled onto something in my exploration of the building that I haven't had time to report yet, but I think it's worth noting while I can, in case Billy the Kid shuts down my communications again.

I didn’t plan to find anything last night.

The building itself had already earned a reputation in my head: peeling paint, sagging ceilings, and the kind of silence that feels less like absence and more like waiting. I’d come expecting cold spots and maybe a few intelligent responses on the recorder. What I found instead was something deliberate.

At the far end of the third floor corridor, past the nurse’s station and a row of gutted patient rooms, there was a door I almost skipped. It was warped and swollen from years of humidity, but unlike the others, it was closed.

That alone was strange.

When I pushed it open, the smell hit first—burned wax and something metallic underneath it. The room had no furniture, no broken hospital bed frames, no debris piles. The floor in the center had been cleared.

That’s when I saw it.

A circle, about six feet across, drawn in what looked like black chalk or charcoal. The lines were retraced multiple times, as if whoever made it wanted to be absolutely sure it held. Around the perimeter were melted stubs of candles each positioned at careful intervals.

But what unsettled me most wasn’t the circle.

It was the symbols.

They weren’t random doodles or pentagrams copied from a horror movie. They were layered, interlocking shapes and sigils that had been written, erased, and rewritten.

In the very center of the circle sat a small, rusted bowl.

Inside it were ashes.

I crouched down to take photos, and that’s when I noticed something else: scratch marks on the floorboards leading away from the circle toward the wall. Not human scratches, more like something had dug in hard and pulled itself outward.

The EMF reader spiked.

The temperature dropped sharply enough that I could see my breath, even though the rest of the floor had been stale and warm.

I started recording audio, asking the usual baseline questions. I didn’t expect a response.

But the air changed.

It felt heavy, pressurized. Like the room was inhaling and refusing to exhale. There was a pressure against my ears, and for a split second I had the overwhelming sensation that I wasn’t alone inside the circle.

I was standing just outside it.

And something else was standing just inside.

I don’t remember deciding to step back, but suddenly I was at the doorway again. My hands were shaking. When I checked the playback later, I caught something under my own voice.

A low, layered sound. Not quite a growl. Not quite a whisper.

It didn’t answer my questions.

It just repeated one word.

“Open.”

I don’t know who performed the ritual there. But, it wouldn't surprise me if whoever did this was the same person who slashed my tires.

I will get to the bottom of this.