The Hum of the Third Floor

It was the summer of 2016 when I signed up for a technical writing workshop held in a rented wing of an old technical college in Iloilo City. The building, a relic from the 1970s, had been retrofitted with modern classrooms, but the corridors still smelled of chalk dust and rust. Our training room was on the third floor, and every day, as I climbed the stairs, I felt a peculiar weight settle on my shoulders, like the air itself was pressing down on me. I dismissed it as the humidity and the drone of the air conditioning units.

For the first two weeks, we trained from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, so the building was busy with other students and staff. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that as I walked past the empty classrooms, something was watching me from behind the frosted glass panels. A few times, I caught a flicker of motion at the edge of my vision, but when I turned, there was nothing. I mentioned it to my colleague, Marta, who laughed and said I was just tired from our late-night gigs. She was probably right.

Then our schedule shifted to night sessions. Our first night class started at eight PM, and the building felt different. The fluorescent lights hummed louder, and the silence between classes was thick enough to slice. We had a one-hour break at midnight, and I had brought my roommate’s acoustic guitar because we had a gig the next day. I thought it might lighten the mood.

During the break, a few classmates and I gathered in an unused lounge on the fourth floor, which we had claimed as our unofficial hangout. We ordered takeout and spread the food on a low table. To pass the time, I tuned the guitar and played a few chords. ‘What should we play?’ I asked. ‘Something everyone knows,’ Marta said. So I started the opening riff of ‘I’ll Be’ by Edwin McCain. The melody filled the room, and we all began to sing along, our voices harmonizing in the dim light. It felt good, like a slice of normalcy in an otherwise strange place.

But then, as we reached the chorus, I noticed something odd. The room’s temperature dropped, and my breath began to fog. I looked around. Everyone was singing, lost in the music, but at the far end of the lounge, near the window that faced the empty parking lot, I saw a figure. It was a woman in a white dress, standing perfectly still, her face obscured. I blinked, and she was gone. I stopped playing, my hands shaking. ‘Did you see that?’ I whispered. The others looked at me, confused. ‘See what?’ Marta asked. I described her, but no one else had seen anything. ‘Maybe you’re just tired,’ Marta said again, but her voice had a slight tremor.

After the break, we went back to our classroom. The incident unsettled me, but I tried to focus. The instructor, a strict man named Mr. Sarmiento, was reviewing the proper format for technical documents. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept glancing toward the windows, expecting to see the woman again. Around two AM, we took another short break. I decided to go to the restroom at the end of the hall. The corridor was empty, the lights buzzing. As I passed the closed door of Room 305, I heard a faint hum, like a single note sung by a woman. I froze. The hum was coming from inside the locked room. I pressed my ear to the door. The hum grew clearer, and I realized it was the melody of ‘I’ll Be,’ but played slowly, almost like a lament.

I backed away, my heart pounding. I ran back to the classroom and told my classmates what I had heard. Some laughed nervously, but Marta grabbed my arm. ‘There’s something wrong with this building,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I heard it too, last week. From the same room.’ We decided to unravel this mystery. We found a janitor, an old man who had worked there for decades. He refused to go near the third floor at night. When we pressed him, he told us that in the 1980s, a music teacher had died in that room. She was known for singing that exact song in the hallways. They say she still sings when she’s lonely, and if you sing along with her, she’ll never let you stop.

That sent chills down my spine. I had played that song in the lounge, and we had all sung along. The woman I saw was likely her. I wanted to leave, but the workshop had a strict attendance policy. The next night, I returned, my guitar left at home. The break came, and we sat in the lounge, silent. Then, from the hallway, we heard the humming. It grew louder, and the door began to rattle. We held our breaths. The door swung open, and standing there was the woman in white. Her face was a void, but I could feel her gaze. She walked slowly toward me, and her lips moved, forming the words ‘You sang with me.’ I wanted to run, but my legs were frozen. She reached out a translucent hand, and I felt a cold grip on my shoulder. Then, everything went dark.

I woke up on the floor of the lounge, drenched in sweat. My classmates were kneeling around me, their faces pale. ‘You passed out,’ Marta said. ‘We carried you here.’ But that’s not what happened. The last thing I remembered was being in the doorway. Later, I learned that we had been unconscious for nearly an hour, and that our watches had all stopped at the exact moment I touched the woman. The workshop ended a week later, but I never returned to that building. Even now, when I hear that song playing on the radio, I feel a chill, and sometimes, I swear I can hear a faint hum underneath the melody, as if she’s still waiting for me to sing along once more.