The Mystery Begins

It started with a rumour. A harmless, nearly laughable story shared by the staff at the old downtown hotel. A room that no one ever really seemed to book, yet everyone knew about it. Room 503.

It was just another suite, no different from any other in the hotel, except for the strange, unspoken rule that accompanied it: No photographs.

The policy was simple. As soon as a guest entered Room 503, the management reminded them with a quiet, almost apologetic smile: “We kindly ask that you refrain from taking any photos in this room.” No reason was given. No further explanation offered.

Guests were rarely bothered by it—after all, who would think twice about something so trivial? But there were always whispers among the hotel employees, ones who worked the front desk, cleaned the rooms, or brought room service up. They all knew the truth.

Room 503 had a peculiar effect on photographs. The ones taken inside that room, whether on an old Polaroid or the latest smartphone, always came out… wrong. The images would either turn out blurry, filled with static, or, in some cases, disappear entirely.

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The First Incident

It was an early Thursday morning when the first incident happened, reported by none other than Sarah, a long-time housekeeper. She had been cleaning the room for years, going about her job with her usual efficiency. But this time, something was different.

Sarah had entered the room to find a young couple, on their honeymoon, taking photos of themselves by the window. Everything seemed normal. In fact, the couple seemed excited, happily posing by the iconic skyline visible from the window.

It wasn’t until she was tidying the bathroom that she heard the couple’s voices, their frustration growing louder. They called her into the room.

“I don’t understand,” the man said, waving his phone in the air. “We’ve taken dozens of pictures. Look at this!”

She looked at the screen. The photos of the couple, smiling in the same spot, were gone. The gallery was empty.

“Maybe it’s just your phone,” Sarah suggested, feeling a bit embarrassed, unsure of how to handle the situation.

“No,” the woman replied, now visibly distressed. “It was working just a minute ago. And now everything’s gone—all the photos. Even the ones we took yesterday.”

Sarah felt her stomach turn. She had heard the stories before, of course, but she’d never experienced anything like this firsthand.

The couple left soon after, their honeymoon memories reduced to nothing. Sarah finished her work, but the weight of that moment lingered.

The Stories of the Staff

As the days turned into weeks, more strange incidents began to occur. Each one seemed to mirror the last. Guests would check in, take photos in Room 503, and—without fail—those photos would disappear. Sometimes it was as though they’d never been taken at all. At other times, the images appeared twisted, warped, or fragmented in ways that defied explanation.

But the staff, as odd as it seemed, weren’t surprised anymore. They had their own theories, but none of them dared to share them aloud—except to each other, in hushed tones after the night shift ended.

“The room’s haunted,” one of the night desk clerks, Mark, said one evening, the words hanging heavy between the clinking of keys and the dull hum of the overhead lights. “I think it’s cursed. People come in there, and something happens to their memories. The photos don’t just vanish, you know. It’s like they’ve never existed in the first place.”

Linda, the long-time hotel manager, wasn’t so willing to entertain such ideas. “It’s nothing more than a technical glitch,” she insisted. “Bad wiring, faulty electronics. That’s all.”

But even she couldn’t explain why the problem never occurred in any other room. Why only Room 503? And why did the issue only happen when the guests were in the room, never before, and never after?

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The Truth Nobody Wanted to Know

One evening, during a particularly slow shift, Sarah found herself alone in the hotel lobby, staring at the photograph of the building on the wall. The image had been taken by a previous guest. In it, the hotel appeared as it always did—a looming structure, its old-world charm unmistakable. She noticed the room number 503 in the top corner of the photo.

Curious, she walked toward the back office, where Linda was sorting through paperwork. Sarah had grown bold over the weeks, her curiosity pushing her to ask the questions she had long been too afraid to voice.

“Linda,” she began, her voice tentative, “what happened in Room 503? Why is it always the same? Why do the photos keep vanishing?”

Linda stopped what she was doing and looked up at her, a flicker of something she hadn’t seen before passing through her eyes. For the first time, Linda’s gaze wasn’t just cold professionalism—it was something else. Guilt, perhaps. Or fear.

“You really want to know?” Linda’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “Room 503… It used to be a storage closet. Long before the renovation, it was a forgotten space. But one day, an old photographer checked in. Took pictures of the room. And… something happened. He claimed he saw things. Things he couldn’t explain. But his photos? They were blank. Completely erased.”

“Why? What happened to him?” Sarah asked, her voice trembling slightly.

Linda’s lips pressed together in silence. “He disappeared. Vanished without a trace. No one ever saw him again.”

Sarah felt a chill creep over her skin. She had thought the stories were just that—stories. But this… this was real. There was something about Room 503, something that turned memories into nothingness.

“The staff don’t talk about it,” Linda continued, her tone growing colder. “But some things in this world aren’t meant to be remembered. And that room… it makes sure no one does.”

Conclusion: A Lesson in Forgetting

Sarah never spoke about it to anyone else. She never could shake the feeling of unease that followed her whenever she had to clean Room 503. The room’s strange, haunting presence lingered long after the guests checked out, and it seemed like nothing in that room was meant to last. Not the photographs. Not the memories. Not even the people.

Sometimes, when Sarah passed by the room’s door, she thought she could hear whispers from within, the faint echo of voices that had been erased. And when she looked at the photos of her own life, she wondered if those moments, too, were destined to fade.

But there was one thing she knew for sure: There were some places you should never step into, and some things you should never try to capture.