You've probably heard about a thousand different versions of the story by now, and you've probably raised a few eyebrows skeptically, and you've questioned whether or not any of them are true. I won't bother trying to convince you otherwise, nobody
is convinced until they play the game. I certainly wasn't growing up. See, my parents managed a hotel where throughout the years we heard hundreds, if not thousands, of kids using the elevators to play the supposedly haunted ritual In case you don't know, According to the legend, if they pressed a certain number sequence in the elevator and also made sure no one interrupted them, there was a chance they could have an other worldly encounter. All I wound up
being for my father was an electrical headache. Since the hotel was old. A lot of times the elevator was shut down due to the kids mashing the buttons and constantly tromping in and out. It was even one time group of them got stuck and he had to call the fire department to get them out. What are they hoping to find? I asked him. People like the thrill of the Unknown lindsay they want to chase after a dream, even when
that dream could be a nightmare to others. He'd say the description fit my little brother Will to a t. Anytime he didn't have his nose stuck in a book, he was roaming the halls of the hotel pretending to fight off monsters. For him, things like the elevator game weren't just fun, though, it was serious business, especially after his encounter with the tourist. I call the man we met by that name simply because I never found out what
the proper pronunciation of his real name was. All I remember distinctly about him is that he was tall, with Oriental descent, and he appeared to be around the same age as my father. The tourist arrived during a particularly slow season for us, with the majority of the time Dad was trying to catch up in invoices and be furbished rooms, so he would let Will and I
run the front counter. He brought with him only one item, a briefcase with the initials w R, which my brother found interesting because they matched his own. Are you a spy? Is that a bomb? Are you here to kill us? Well, asked, bombarding the man with questions, what brings you this way? I asked, not wanting the man to grow irritated and take his business elsewhere. We needed the money after all, Thank you
kindly. I'm I'm of request for only one room singular for myself to finish when I started many years ago, the tourists said, as he patted the briefcase softly. How many nights are you planning to stay? I asked, typing in the information he provided, as many as it takes to finish the game. It was his response that made my brother's ears perk up. Game Are you here for a competition or something? Well? Asked? This made
the tourists smile, and he pat the briefcase again. This a set of hidden secret rules inside their elevator game, very important, the only way to win, took a long time to find, and now I can finish, he remarked. Wow, so you want to find a ghost? I could tell will with eating up every word the man said, But I had already written him off as a bit of a loony. Good luck, I told him, passing him a room key to a suite on the tenth floor and
watching him move to the elevator. He was also walking with a slight limp. Once he was gone. Will started to pester me with questions about the ritual, how was it played, why did so many people try it? Was it real? It got to the point that I decided to get him out of my hair by attempting the game myself. If I show you that it doesn't work, will you stop bothering me? I asked him with a
deep sigh. He nodded eagerly. I rolled my eyes, and, after checking to make sure Dad didn't have anything else for us to do, shoot him over towards the elevator. Once inside, for a minute, he just stared at the buttons, and I sighed, do you even know the rules? Yeah? I think we start on the second floor, he muttered as he reached out to press it. I snatched his hand away and rolled my eyes. It's the fourth floor. Then we go down to the second The
elevator's doors closed, and we began to ride up. When they open on the fourth floor, I waited a minute for them to close. Then press the second button, then six, then two, then ten, then five, then one. When it's right, I asked him. He giggled excitedly and nervously and did a instructed It took a grand total of fifteen minutes or so to complete the ritual. Every time the elevator would slowly creak its way up or down the shaft, I held my breath, expecting some kind of
maintenance failure to occur. Instead, the most exciting thing was that it went to the tenth floor on its own, and Will clutched my leg thinking that we would find a ghost. But the hallways were empty. See, I told you this came as a waste of time, I said, as I reach for the button to go back down. Wait, please, wait, hold the elevator. All of us look towards the closing doors to see the tourist running down the hall towards us. Instinctively, I pressed the whole button,
but it didn't work. Instead, they closed and we began to descend to the bottom floor. I think maybe we should go back up for him. We'll last. I remember the man's face more than anything. You've seem distressed, panicked, fearful. It was unnerving. When I thought about it. I didn't like the idea of having to see him again, so so I told him dismissively that he would just have to catch the next elevator. Can we play again? He asked nervously. It's late, but we have
to do homework. That says an excuse. In reality, I was hoping that he would either forget about it it would be too scared to try again. But I underestimated my brother, especially after what happened with the tourist. It was Dad that made the discovery. A few days later, when it was a little pastime for our guest to check out. He was attempting to run the credit card information the tourists had given us, only to find out
it wasn't working. Damn cheepskates. I remember Dad muttering as he ordered us to go up to the tourist room and demand an explanation. When we got there, the room to his door was already slightly ajar. I remember pushing it open and thinking that something smelled strange. Will and I took a step into the darkened room, flicking on the lights, and came face to face
with a scene out of a horror movie. There was blood everywhere. Trails of had stained the carpet in the walls, where it seemed that the man had been using his bare nails to scratch in a sequence of numbers over and
over again. In the center of the room was the tourist himself, his left hand cut off, his eyes wide with the same expression of panic and fear we had seen when he was dashing for the elevator door, and on the floor next to him, right before he died, he scrawled out a most peculiar, bloody message, one that still haunts me to this day. Find me change it will. Became visibly sick as he covered his mouth and
went to the toilet to throw up. And I called downstairs to tell Dad what had happened is I waited for Dad to arrive, curiosity got the best of me, and I stepped over the tourist to peer at the note that he left. It looked like he had been written by the hand that was cut off hastily, and jagged letters covering the paper. There were lots of journals nearby in a small hand mirror, even a whistle like the kind that you use at a tournament. This is what the note said to whomever finds
these hidden rules, Please read them carefully. Is there not the regular set of instructions associated with the ritual commonly known as the elevator game. You must enter the elevator on the first floor. This part remains the same. You must go to the sixth floor first, followed by the second, the fourth,
and the third, then return to six. You must step outside on the sixth floor with the mirror in your hand, and keep the mirror facing the elevator at all times so that you can keep it within your line of vision. Walk in a straight line until you reach the end of the hallway, Walk backwards to the elevator using the mirror, and go back inside. If the elevator door closes at any time during this part, you will have failed. Once inside the elevator, you will need to let it take you
to the second floor. Once you have made it to the second floor, you'll find yourself somewhere that you do not belong. If at any point the elevator stops on the fifth floor, remain on the elevator. There is sometimes a woman that will enter the elevator here, and she will attempt to speak with you. Do not speak back, do not acknowledge her. Use the whistle if necessary. Follow these hidden rules, and you will reach the end
of your journey. The handwriting was jagged and fast, as though the rider had been in a hurry, and at the bottom the signature when they made my heart stop, William, why was my brother's name on this note? We'll stepped out of the bathroom, his face a mixture of sickness and confusion, and I crumpled up the note and stuck it in my back pocket. What is all of that? He asked, wiping his mouth and seeing the journals lying on the bed. Take this down to our room, I ordered
him, shoving in his arms. Hurry before Dad comes, I insisted. Ever the obedient little brother, he followed my instructions, not even missing a beat. Over the next few days, Dad called the police and they swept the room for any clues as to what caused the death. Dad told me I could go down and get some food or something, But for the life of me, I felt frozen in place as the cops moved in and out of the room, carrying with them different little pieces of bloody bedding or carpet,
and evidence baggies. All the while, my mind kept flashing back to the tortoise, deranged and panicked expression from a few days ago when he had seen him rushing for the elevator. Was this my fault? Had I failed to save him? And perhaps most importantly, did his death have anything to do with the strange ritual that he was obsessed with? With these distressing thoughts
welling around my head, I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. The night after the tourists died, I poured through every single snippet of information I could find on the game, searching for any reference to the hidden rules. I found nothing. In fact, I found less than nothing. Most of the stories were clearly hoaxes, written by Internet users who wanted to get a quick scare for a few up votes. Others were very detailed, almost realistic, but
they always included some variation on the original sequence from the first website. That got me thinking though about how in those particular accounts, when a person would get the sequence wrong or do something different, something bizarre would happen. What if, I wondered, they weren't actually doing anything wrong at all, but by changing up the original rules, they were actually unlocking some hidden code. I decided if I was going to learn anything at all about that secret,
I would need to see what was inside the briefcase. Shuffling out of my inflatable bed on the right side of our room, I moved over to will and shook him gently to wake up. Says, is everything okay? He whispered. Dad was a light sleeper since we all had to share a room in the hotel. I gestured silently for him to follow me towards the door, gets the journals and follow me downstairs, I said back. He nodded
and climbed out of bed, his eyes wide with eager excitement. With the notes in his hand, we snuck down to the main lobby and I grabbed us a couple of hot chocolates from the snack bar. As we settled on the lounge, Will yawned and we placed the items carefully on the table. Then he picked up the mirror and waved it about for a few seconds. What do you suppose all this stuff is? He asked, That's what we're here to find out, I told him, as it took the rubber band
off the bundle of journals and open up the first in the set. Much to my dismay, I soon found that the notes were not taken in English, but rather Chinese. Amid those strange symbols were numbers and other doodles scribbled almost aimlessly, as though whoever had written this down had slowly lost their mind. Will was looking at the next journal, which seemed like a log of some type. There were numbers listed one through ten and different variations, Most
of them were scratched through. What is all this, my brother asked. The edge in his voice told me he was both excited and scared. I didn't want to admit that I was too. Looks like they were attempting different sequences to the elevator buttons, they said. As I skimmed through the journal. There had to be at least one hundred different ways to press the buttons, and if the scratches and scribbles and the journal were to be believed,
the tourists had tried every single combination there was. Hey, look it just stops here. Will said. As we made it to the middle of the journal. It was a combination of six two, four, three, six, eight, and it occurred to me that it was almost the same sequence that the note I found in the briefcase had. Do you think maybe this is the right way to press them, my brother asked, My stomach clenched.
I hadn't expected him to catch that so quickly. I still didn't know exactly what the numbers meant, or what had happened if a person did press them, but it was already eager to find out. He bounded from the lobby over to the elevator and pressed the button, shouting for me to join him. Will we should do this in the morning, I warned him. Are you kidding? I didn't wake up in the dead of night to look over a bunch of boring journals. Let's go on an adventure, he said,
excitedly. The doors slid open, and I desperately tried to think of another good excuse as to why we shouldn't do this. If something goes wrong, we could be stuck here all night and a dad would ten or hides. I told him angrily. I think you're just chicken, he said, jabbing me in the ribs. I sighed, and I got an the elevator, realizing I definitely didn't want him doing this alone, and then I pressed
for the sixth floor. For those of you guys that like to listen to stories, which I assume as all of you, since you're here, check out the chilling app, I keep saying, the chilling app, and you can start your free trial. Blah blah blah. Over the past couple of year, years, I think two years. Well, here's some amazing news for all of you. Chilling is currently introducing Chilling to Point Oh, which brings in a bunch of new features and a fresh new look. Most importantly,
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