The Holloway Haunting: Year Three

By the third Halloween, the Holloway Insurance building had become infamous in PearWood. Everyone in town had heard the stories by now: the AB Clean crews who went in and never came out, the way the building somehow stayed spotless without a soul inside.

Most people brushed it off as an urban legend. But the city couldn’t ignore it forever. After all, Holloway was still an occupied office, still licensed and insured, and still under municipal oversight. When the second crew vanished, the building was flagged for inspection.

That’s how Daniel Graves ended up with the file on his desk.

Graves had worked as a city inspector for nearly twenty years. He was thorough, methodical, not one to buy into rumors. And yet—though he never said it out loud—he wasn’t entirely closed off to the unexplained. He’d seen too many things in old buildings that made no sense: elevators that worked without power, hallways colder than freezers, graffiti that reappeared after being scrubbed away.

So, when the Holloway assignment landed in his lap, he didn’t protest. He only glanced once at the case notes—two crews missing, last entry dated Halloween night, building reported “immaculate”—and grabbed his clipboard.

He arrived just after dusk, parking across the street. The Holloway building rose up against the sky, its windows dark, its edges blurred by autumn fog. It had the hollow look of something abandoned, yet Graves knew employees still worked here by day.

Inside, the air was unnaturally cold, sharp with that ammonia tang. He clicked on his flashlight, the beam cutting through the lobby. The place practically gleamed. Not a speck of dust, not a fingerprint on the glass.

Graves crouched by the floor, running a gloved hand across the marble. Smooth. Too smooth. “No one’s cleaned this in a year, huh?” he muttered to himself.

He began his walkthrough, noting details in his ledger. Fire exits: functional. Windows: sealed. Structural integrity: solid. Everything read as compliant. And yet, as he moved from room to room, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the building was following him. His footsteps echoed back a beat too late, as though someone else was keeping pace behind him.

In the breakroom, he found a stack of clipboards. AB Clean checklists. Each one completed, signed at the bottom in the same jagged handwriting.

“Cleaned by the Forgotten.”

He swallowed hard and wrote: Evidence of vandalism. Possible hoax. Further review required.

On the second floor, the lights flickered overhead. His flashlight caught movement in the lobby mirror below. Three figures stood in the reflection, uniforms crisp, mops in hand.

When Graves leaned over the railing to look down, the lobby was empty.

He took a steadying breath. “You’re seeing what you expect to see,” he told himself. “Stories stick to your brain. That’s all.”

But when he continued the inspection, his notes grew more disjointed. Excessive chemical odor. Noise of vacuums operating without power. Possible electrical malfunction. The words blurred on the page as the building seemed to hum around him, a low vibration he felt in his teeth.

In the basement, the air turned damp. His flashlight beam wavered across rows of file cabinets. Something dripped steadily in the dark, though there were no pipes above. He followed the sound to a mop bucket. It was half full, the water rippling though nothing touched it.

He leaned closer. The surface stilled. Then, from beneath, a pale hand pressed against the water’s underside, stretching the liquid like glass. Graves stumbled back, his clipboard clattering to the floor. When he looked again, the bucket was empty.

He should have left then. Any sane man would have. But his job was to finish the walkthrough, and something—whether duty, pride, or something else entirely—kept him moving.

The final stop was the conference room. It was spotless, the table polished to a mirror shine.

And there, waiting at its center, was a single clipboard. His clipboard. The same one he’d dropped in the basement, now lying neatly on the table, his own notes filled in with handwriting that wasn’t his.

At the bottom was a line he hadn’t written:

“Inspection complete. Join us.”

Graves’s hands shook as he lifted it. His reflection stared back from the glossy surface of the table. But it wasn’t quite right. The man in the reflection was older, hollow-eyed, uniformed not as an inspector, but as a janitor.

Behind him stood five figures in AB Clean gear—Marcus, Elena, Darius, Naomi, Isaiah. All pale. All silent.

The lights cut out.

And when they flickered back on, the conference room was empty.

The next morning, the building manager unlocked Holloway’s doors. Everything was immaculate. The inspection file sat neatly on the front desk, signed and stamped.

The signature at the bottom was shaky, jagged.

“Inspected by the Forgotten.”

No one ever saw Daniel Graves again.

But sometimes, late at night, workers passing the Holloway building swear they see six figures in the lobby mirror. All in uniform. All cleaning.

One of them wears a city inspector’s badge.