This is the second floor office wing of the science building where I work. You may notice how well kept-up it is, the floors clean and shiny — our custodians do an excellent job. But notice the line of ceiling lights marching off into the distance, with their bright reflections in the shiny floor, one aligned with each office door…except one. One office sits in a pool of relative darkness. One where the lights don’t shine, where the resident lurks in perpetual gloom.
Can you guess who dwells there, in room 2390? Who has crouched there in the room haunted by gloaming murk for years?
No surprise, it’s me.
What’s really weird: there’s no missing reflection for that light!
.
.
Okay, I know… but it gave you a little chill up the spine, didn’t it?
Eldritch cork board and everything!
PZ@OP, I adore that phrase “Haunted by Gloaming Murk” and I’ve adopted it as my very own. I hope you don’t mind too much?
DonDueed@2,
I was wondering about that too! It must just be the angle of the picture and that reflection area is behind where the picture is framed?
The only thing ominous about that lit hallway is that it is lit. And that it’s straight without obstacles, obvious trapdoors, or strange footprints in the non-existent dust leading into the walls. There aren’t even any floorboards to creak.
Clearly a trap for the unwary…
Though it does look like things could drop out of the ceiling. And that it continues on and on, forever and ever, with a mirage for the never-getting-closer “end”…
PZ
You should replace the bulb before the custodians get to it.
I suggest a black light and some psychedelic posters for your door.
It’s not dark, it’s brightly lit in the mantra ray spectrum.
You need to get some art students to hot glue tentacles to the door frame and put an “Eye of Sauron” one the door to make it more homey.
Argh, “on” not “one”.
No, no, the Eye of Sauron should be on the photographed-dark light, which blinks on, fiery red, and moves its glare about, searching, searching, …
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
>
> n
Ha! You want a real ominous hallway? Consider this one!!!! It was 1/3 of a mile long, running the length of the Friern Barnet Psychiatric Hospital in north London. The hospital closed in 1993, and the building was converted into apartments, so the hallway no longer exists. I visited a friend who was a patient there during the 1980s, and walked along this corridor. Not, I thought at the time, an architectural feature well-suited to a therapeutic environment.
KG, I did think PZ’s photo looked like a hospital corridor and scrolled down here to post a remark to that effect.
Ominous indeed.
But let me guess! The floors are still reflecting the lights in the ceiling — THAT ARE NO LONGER THERE!!! <weird theramin music starts to play>
The weirdest hallway I ever saw was deep in the basement of the University of Washington medical building. It was a square spiral. You went around and around a couple of times, there were no doors or features along the way, and then in the center was a large square room with racks of shelving, and on the shelves were stacks of boxes, a little larger in width and depth than a shoebox. I found that strange room while I was wandering around on my lunch hour (I worked there and had keys to some of the more obscure parts of the building.)
It was a bone room. Each box contained a complete disarticulated skeleton. There were hundreds of them. They had codes scrawled on the boxes, but no other identifying information or explanations. I have no idea what it was for — first thought was that maybe it had something to do with all the cadavers used in the med school, but usually those remains were cremated.
It was the creepiest room ever. But once I found it, that became my favorite place to eat lunch.
Beware – behind that door lurks a man who wields… a cyberpistol!!
Behind door 2390 is one of Darwin’s biggest fans.
Sometimes, if you walk that hall, you will meet two creepy girls who say “come play with us…forever and ever….forever and ever…..”
If you look at PZ’s work, and it turns out to be “ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES PZ A DULL BOY” repeated over and over, it is time to call security. REDRAM! REDRAM!
@KG #13
I see your psychiatric hospital and raise you a nazi holiday resort ;)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/56/5d/db/565ddb9aed930b3897a6448da797cac3.jpg
Prora always creeps me out.
Cheers,
nastes
PS: I hope that link works, otherwise google Prora hallway
nastes@21,
Yikes!
During the time PZ brought an easel to his office, his co-workers were sometimes disturbed by a horrendous smell that seemed to emanate from his place. Also, strange, unsettling noises would be heard.
The problems finally passed, but there is still a lingering smell of sulfur.
I believe the smell is chloroform.
The animal facility on the seventh floor of the UW Hospital was pretty creepy. A long grey windowless hall, with strange hoots and bleatings just audible behind each door.
My brother and I always believed that behind the final door was a stewardess, who would one day open it and say “Room for one more, honey.”
@20
Marder??
As Mark Twain once said
drksky #26
“Marder” is a perfectly cromulent word.
What did you do to the people who change the light bulbs ?
Off topic ,i am in the middle of a on line tussle with a wingnut ,we have lost sight of the original subject .
He keeps referring to Humans as biomass ,is that a real thing ?.
Plus he thinks milo whateverhisnameispus is not a neo nazi .
Any well honed arguments would be welcome ,or should i just tell him to go p*** up a rope .
Does the section of the building near that light sag slightly, no matter what is done? Maybe PZ’s parking space is sinking (I know, he’s said he can walk to work) as well.
Pfft. Insufficient multi-dimensional shadowy tentacular dread. You’ve got a long way to go to match 13th Century cathedral catacombs lit only by corpselight.
Marder is German for a small pugnaceous mustelid, but I f*cked up the spelling of what Jack Nicholson was doing.
You know how in horror movies, the light strips on the ceiling do that flickering thing? For a few days at my work, the hallway leading to the office where I work had all the lights on the ceiling break down . . . .except for one strip, which did the horror movie flickering thing. Creepy as hell.
birgerjohansson #32
I googled “marder mustelid” and found that they are, in Germany, eating the hoses in car engines.
Go Eco Warriors!
@21 Vee hav vays of making you enjoy yourselves .