The story

I was looking at her as if I had seen the ghost myself. My mouth was dry. I wanted to speak but I was unable to form words and sentences even in my mind. The information that I received from her shocked me to my core and made me almost dysfunctional. But by far I have only learned that the office was haunted, I still did not know the entire story.

"What.. Is this.. Really?" I spoke in broken words. I really felt embarrassed with my articulation. I thought to myself what would she think of me. She would wonder what kind of people are hired who cannot even form coherent sentences. I was completely shaken by everything that she had said. I wanted to ask her "are you pranking me" but I held back the question not to sound too rude or casual to her.

"I know it is a lot to process. This office is haunted and I am not joking. I have experienced myself. Before anybody could tell you the fabricated story let me tell you myself", she paused before telling me the most terrifying story that I had ever heard.

She took a deep breath and narrated, " it was just like today. A normal working day at the office. I was working on a new policy that we needed to implement on an urgent basis. The framework had been created but it needed my approval. I was sitting at my desk and working. I was completely into my work that I did not even realize when it was 7 o'clock. Around that time I looked around to see that the assistant from the clinical research team was the only person on the floor besides me. Well it did not bother me at all. In next few minutes everything changed. I was smelling something as if something had burnt. I looked around to see if there was any smoke or any fire hazard. I noticed that the other person had also felt something unusual because even he was looking around. While sitting at my desk I screamed and asked him if he could smell a burnt odor. He told me that he too had been experiencing the same. But both of us were unable to figure out where that smell came from. We had been sitting at our own desks waiting for the fire alarms to go off. But nothing like that happened. What happened next still scares me". She paused and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

She continued, "while sitting at my own desk I saw an apparition covered in flames running from one end of the passage to the other. I could not believe what I had been seeing in front of my own eyes. It happened within a fraction of a second that I could not even process what had been happening. I looked at the other person and asked him if he saw it too. From the look on his face I knew he had seen it too".

I was at the loss of words. I could not understand what should I ask her next. After listening to her story my heart was racing. One way I still wanted to believe that this was a prank. But looking at the horror on her face I knew it wasn't.