Night Shift

I’ve seen a lot in my tenure as night porter at a grimy hotel with a reputation for paranormal activity. So when the new manager, an emaciated man with sallow skin and a timorous voice, starts making a fuss about Halloween falling on a full moon this year, I slide my headphones over my ears and pretend to pay attention while he goes on frightening the doe-eyed day shifters.

He hasn’t figured out that Halloween is just business as usual.

Still, he’s right in predicting more traffic for our establishment. Such a night calls for my favorite Halloween tracks. The younger people around here make fun of me because I still make playlists on cassette tapes. It’s true that I have favored my Sony Walkman for personal use since 1980. But mark my words: cassettes will be the new records, CDs the new cassettes, etc, etc. I’ve watched this snake of innovation and nostalgia eat its own tail time and time again. I’m simply too wise, or weary, to try and keep up anymore.

So I stick to what I know. For your convenience, however, I convinced a younger coworker to transform my finest mixtape into a Spotify playlist. Having met Luddites in the flesh, I’m here to assure you that I am NOT of that ilk— what a boon this brave new digital world is for people like me!

Anyway, I was saying earlier that every night is more or less Halloween for those who work the night shift. The first track on my playlist reflects this idea but is, I admit, a bit on the nose:

The next three tracks are horror movie classics. I’m something of an aficionado, you see. Even before I started this work, I understood that terror has a distinct sound.

On track two, you’ll hear Bernard Hermann elicit it with a full orchestra:

On track three, you’ll hear John Carpenter plunk it out with simple piano notes:

On track four, Henry Mancini will make it inexplicably sexy:

But I'm waxing a bit too nostalgic, and my shift has only just begun, so the rest of my playlist will need to speak for itself.

With the first track underway, I hop on the service elevator and punch the button for thirteen. Most people in my line of work avoid this floor on principle. Low-hanging fruit, they say. The horror genre is to blame, they say.

True on both accounts, I'm afraid. But things have changed. Horror has changed. When the elevator opens with a ding, I spot a gaggle of ghost hunters just ahead. They are all longing for some specter to amble around the corner, wail, and scratch its nails down the hallways. I'll give them as much, though I know that's not really what they are after. They want to prove the sensible side to themselves wrong, to find miracles and magic rather than smoke and mirrors.

We ghosts are too proud to admit it, but we yearn for such things too. I mean, I'm not saying I long for the days of witch hunts and satanic panics, but enlightenment rationalism really was bad for business. I want to feel real, is all.

But here I am getting profound and nostalgic when I swore off both in the 90s.

The point is, I was alive for a long time, but I've been dead much longer. I'm here to tell you that not much has changed except music and horror. I hope my playlist will give you some small sense of that. At the very least, I hope you turn the lights low, turn the music up, and let these artists, these veritable "children of the night" pull you into the dark. It's nice here.