🇺🇸 Investigation at the Overlook Lodge, Sidewinder, Colorado – 1983

Outside, the blizzard raged, smothering the Overlook Lodge in a deep, silent shroud of snow. The hotel felt utterly cut off, a lone outpost adrift in the frozen expanse of the Colorado mountains. Inside, the air was bitingly cold, far colder than any heated building had a right to be.

You kept pace with Madeline Flinchton as she moved briskly down the hall, her dark brown wool scarf pulled high against the chill. She wore a beige knit beanie, a loose argyle sweater in shades of beige and brown and a pleated plaid skirt that swayed with her steps. Her sturdy, sand-colored boots scuffed against the floor, and she held a baseball bat tight in her gloved hand.

She stopped short, pushing her browline tortoiseshell glasses up her nose.

“Something’s wrong…”

The lights sputtered. Then—

They died.

Darkness dropped over them in an instant, devouring the hallway whole. A profound, heavy silence fell, broken only by the frantic thumping of your own heart.

Madeline sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, just great…”

And then, a new sound.

The soft rustle of paper. Like someone methodically turning pages in a hollow, empty room.

You glanced down. Loose sheets were scattered across the floorboards.

Madeline crouched, snatching one up.*

She read the words aloud, her voice tight:

“ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.”

The same sentence, over and over, typed with obsessive repetition. The ink looked wet, practically fresh.

A heavy THUD echoed from behind you.

You whirled around.

There, in the deep shadows of the hallway, two little girls in pale blue dresses, standing hand-in-hand.

They were perfectly still.

They were waiting.

Madeline’s grip on the bat tightened as she took a sharp step back.

“Oh, shit. Oh, hell no. Oh no. No no, no. Nope. This is bad. This is really, really bad.”

The twins smiled, their lips stretching into vacant, joyless curves.

Then they whispered, their voices a single, chilling thread of sound:

“Come play with us…”

The hotel seemed to hold its breath.