The Woman in the Elevator

The familiar chime rang out, reverberating off the cement block walls as the elevator doors slid open. In the months we’d been living in the building we’d only shared the elevator with anyone else a handful of times; this evening there was a woman on the lift already. She didn’t acknowledge our presence as we got on the elevator with her, she just stood there in the corner, expressionless. As I reached in front of her to press the button to take us down to the ground floor, I noticed that the buttons for the 5th and 6th floors were illuminated as though they had already been pressed, so was the button for the basement. Odd considering we’d pressed the “down” call button for the lift - typically the elevator would have gone all the way up before stopping to get us on the way back down.

The doors slid closed, and the elevator cables began to creak and groan as they pulled us upwards. The elevator stopped on the 5th floor and, with a chime, the silence filling the space was broken as the doors opened. There was no one there waiting to get on, and the woman in the corner made no move to exit the elevator. I looked over my shoulder at Matt; we shared a look of mild confusion but didn’t think much of it - perhaps the woman had accidentally pressed the buttons for both the upper floors, a simple mistake. After a moment, the doors closed again and we were hoisted the rest of the way up to the 6th floor.

Another chime and the doors slid open. Again, no one was there. Again, the woman made no move to exit the elevator. Nervous laughter escaped from my lungs as I glanced over at the woman. She remained expressionless, her eyes almost lifeless. She was elderly and wore a long winter coat, a fur hat, and boots - clean and fashionable, but dated. She looked dull; there was no lustre to her hair or skin. She hadn’t moved an inch since we stepped onto the elevator two floors ago; she didn’t shift her weight from one foot to the other, she didn’t adjust her grip on the bag she was carrying, and she didn’t make a sound.

I didn’t want to spend another second on the lift with this strange woman; I wanted to exit the elevator right there on the 6th floor and take the stairs back down. I looked at Matt, and I could tell he was on the same page, but before we could make our move the doors closed again.

The elevator began its descent, the cables creaking as we were lowered towards the ground. The display above the elevator doors flashed the numbers for each floor as we passed them.

5, 4, 3, 2…

When we finally reached the ground floor, the elevator shuddered as it came to a stop. There was a long pause before that familiar chime finally rang out and the doors opened. We got off the elevator as fast as we could, not taking the time to look back at the woman in the corner. She did not exit the elevator with us; we could only assume she took the lift the rest of the way down to the basement. We hurried out of the building and across the snow-covered parking lot to our car. We sat there in the car for a while, watching the doors for the woman to leave the building, but she never did.

We had never seen her before that day, and we have never seen her again; these days, we usually opt to take the stairs.