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"It would’ve been better around Halloween, don’t you think?"

"Yeah, well The Read House wasn’t having problems back around Halloween You’ve said it before yourself--the dead don’t give a shit about the calendar or the clock"

"They certainly don’t seeot the Lady in White’s panties in a bunch"

"It would be nice if you could shed soot all day Which is why I said three o’clock, and not three thirty"

"Knock it off, Nick I’m practically there already If you’re really pressed for tiht to pick another day to do this There aren’t any guarantees, and it et here soon I’ up on him

He was an impatient bastard, but I tried to keep inHe’d moved here from up north--from a Midwestern NBC affiliate to our local Tennessee one There were ruhty conduct had proa, but it was hard to prove and I didn’t really care, so I hadn’t asked

I first o, when Old Green Eyes had wandered off froa battlefield Nick was both a help and a hindrance down there in Georgia, but in the end he worked out to be more useful than useless, so I chatted with him when I saw him around town

This wasn’t to say ere friends or anything

I’d agreed to meet him that afternoon because he wanted some unofficial assistance with a story Mostly I was curious, partly I was bored, and partly I wanted to be distracted fro

Besides, it was the Lady in White Granted, that’s not the host, but this one was almost as fahoul

To tell the truth, I’d very much doubted that she existed at all--at least until recently Stories about theto local lore, she wandered the second and third floors of the historic hotel, crying piteously and vanishing spookily There were thousands like her, woven into the history of old buildings across the globe Often she’s a spurned bride, a , or a scorned lover Usually she’s upset about acontrived to lure in curious travelers

But then I saw it happening, the sa that always happens when a nervous ru First the housekeeping staff refused to clean a certain roo, then an entire floor

Soon the repair people began refusing to fix the strange daht fixture here, a curtain rod there A busted marble-top vanity A hole in the wall It didn’t ot fixed, anyway: other acts of vandalis, the people ere paying to rent the rooht, without pausing to seek a refund So fully dressed They left without looking back

Though it would seem that at least one traveler hadhis leave He wasn’t a superstitious inativeawful in that rooht they should speak with a priest

Instead, the hotelvisitors to stay in room 236

But the awfulness spread--fro And then to the media

To Nick

I parked down at the end of the block, across the street from the Read House hotel It’s a ten-story brick affair, built in the 1920s to replace an earlier structure that burned Part of this one burned too, years ago, but it’s been rebuilt and joined by a parking garage But I didn’t have any cash on e, so I fed the meter rather than keep my car close

Inside, the hotel is made of mirrors and brass, with shiny s are high and the carpets are patterned with a baroque kind of lushness that wouldn’t look right anyplace at all except in the corridors of a fancy old hotel

In short, a ghost was all it needed to becoe southern hospitality

I’da camera crew, and I was pleased to see he’d behaved hiation--an atte to ith Nick wanted a naure to hang this ghost story on, so he’d have soe

Ion one of the big pseudo-Victorian couches A bright chandelier loohtness