013 Thirteen

[brigid]

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Like many large, old cities Chicago is full of high rise buildings with marble entryways and dimly lit brass-grilled elevators. These buildings, when labeling the floors, skip 13. This is a desperate attempt to avoid the bad luck associated with the number thirteen.

It is rumored that if one stops an elevator between the 12th and 14th floor in certain buildings, the elevator will open its creaking doors to reveal a still and dusty 13th floor: one that is perhaps abandoned, perhaps the site of a great and terrible crime, perhaps inhabited by ghosts or demons or the trapped souls of dead office workers.

These rumors are false.

There is nothing magical or ominous about the thirteenth floor of any building, at least in Chicago.

It is the elevator shafts that one must watch out for.

(Happy Friday the 13th, everyone.)

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