Maddison Winchester: Journal 8 {Supernatural} (Editing)

7 Moth into Flame: Part 3

At this point, I had spent the whole morning and some of the afternoon out on the town doing research and interviews. All of this left me back at basically square one. I returned to the motel and did some deeper digging. It turned out that the only Quincy with ties to the Grand Payson was the owner's young son.

I looked into the missing-persons cases that were recently opened in the town and found out that most people were from out of town and were just passing through or were runaways.

Pretty much every person who had a missing person case filed on them reached their destinations safely or were found to not be legitimate missing-persons.

The only thing that seemed to stay consistent was that the hotel closed in 1989. Other than that, everything was super inconsistent or disproven.

After a few hours, I decided that it was time to check out the hotel to see if there was anything there, any EMF or other anomaly.

I packed a bag and drove the fifteen minutes out to the hotel. I pulled into the road that drove a few hundred feet from the main road. The Grand Payson looked like it would have been beautiful when it was fully operational, but now walls were being overgrown with moss and vines, and windows were smashed out. There was even some graffiti on the exterior walls.

I pulled up near the front door and parked the car. I grabbed my flashlight and EMF, turning them on before getting out of the car. I walked up to what was the front door of the hotel. A large Do Not Enter sign was nailed to the partially open door.

I cautiously opened the door and made my way inside. I was instantly met by the smell of musty earth. I continued on for a few minutes, but my EMF meter showed no signs of spirit activity.

I walked through most of the halls and even went into a few rooms. Everything was relatively empty except for some trash and things that had been blown in from outside. No EMF. No sulfur. Nothing.

I walked back to the car and gave Nate a call.

It rang a few times before he picked up. "Hey."

"Looks like you were right," I said.

"No case?" he asked.

I sighed. "Nope. Not unless you believe there's a creature out there that is part ghost and part alien and also doesn't actually exist but sometimes does."

He laughed. "I don't even know what that means. How'd you come to that conclusion?"

"Interviewing townspeople, literally every story was different, nothing lined up. I just checked out the hotel to be sure, but there was nothing. No EMF, no sulfur, no sign of literally anything sinister other than just looking like an old abandoned creepy hotel," I said.

"So, when are you coming back?" Nate asked.

"About to head back to my motel room and grab my stuff," I said.

"Okay. Well, drive safe. I'll see you in the morning," he said.

I nodded. "See ya then."

I put my phone away and pulled out of the driveway for the hotel. I quietly drove back to town and thought about all of the weird stories and interactions I had throughout the day. I knew a lot of towns had these same sort of superstitions. It was strange to me that it almost seemed like people wished for these things to be real... if they all only knew the truth, maybe they wouldn't think their lives were so boring.

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It took me a few minutes to pack my bag and check out from the motel.