The Spinning Ghost of Loom Street

In 1993, I worked the night shift at the Beaumont Cotton Mill, a decrepit brick behemoth on Loom Street in Providence, Rhode Island. The mill had been cranking out fabric for over a century, and the air inside was thick with lint and the oily smell of old machinery. My post was on the fourth floor, tending a row of spinning frames that whirred and clacked in a hypnotic rhythm. My brother, Danny, worked on the third floor, on the looms, and sometimes I’d take a break to chat with him.

One chilly October night, the machines were acting up, and the foreman was in a foul mood. I needed a breather, so I decided to visit Danny. I pushed open the heavy steel door to the stairwell and stepped onto the landing. The stairs were a spiral of worn granite, each step hollowed by decades of footfalls. I descended to the third floor, found Danny, and we talked for a few minutes about his upcoming fishing trip.

As I turned to leave, I said, ‘Well, better get back before the old man has a fit.’ I pulled the door shut behind me, and the sound of it slamming echoed up the shaft. And then, I heard it: a soft scuff, then a slide, then another scuff, coming from below. The distinctive drag-and-step of someone climbing the stairs. I froze, my hand still on the cold metal. The steps grew louder, closer, and I thought of Tony, a joker from the second floor who loved to sneak up on people. I grinned, ready to catch him in the act.

I stood there, waiting for him to round the corner, but the sound seemed to hover just below, never quite arriving. The footsteps would reach a point, then pause, then start again, as if the climber was always one turn away. My grin faded. I called out, ‘Tony? That you?’ No answer. The footsteps continued, unhurried, relentless. A chill ran down my spine as I realized there was no panting, no muttered curses, just that steady scuff-slide, scuff-slide.

I decided to go down and meet this mysterious climber. I took a step down, and the sound immediately retreated a step. I stopped, and it stopped. I took another step, and it moved down again. My heart began to pound. I took the next flight to the second floor, and as I rounded the landing, the footsteps sounded just around the next corner, as if they were keeping a precise distance. I waited, counting the seconds, but nothing came.

Then, a voice from above, Danny’s voice, muffled by the door: ‘Hey, you okay out there?’ I didn’t want to seem foolish, so I shouted back, ‘Yeah, just thought I heard someone.’ I took a deep breath and started back up, determined not to let this get to me. But as I climbed, the footsteps followed behind me, always two or three steps lower, never overtaking me.

I reached the fourth-floor door, my hand trembling on the latch. The footsteps had stopped. I could feel a cold presence right behind me, as if something was standing on the step just below. I didn’t turn around. I slammed through the door and into the bright noise of the spinning frames, my heart racing. I told myself it was just acoustics, the old building playing tricks.

For the rest of the night, I avoided the stairwell. I used the freight elevator, even though it was slow and creaky. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed me. As I worked, I kept glancing at the door to the stairs, expecting to see a figure silhouetted in the small window.

The next night, I had to pass through the stairwell to get to the maintenance office. I told myself it would be different in the day, but it was still dark outside. I opened the door, and there it was again: the scuff-slide of footsteps, but this time coming down from above. And then I heard something else: a soft, rhythmic creak, like a spinning wheel turning. And a faint voice, a woman’s, humming a lullaby I didn’t recognize.

My blood ran cold. I remembered the old story that Danny had told me: a woman named Clara who worked the spinning frames in the 1920s, who fell into the machinery and died. They said her ghost remained, forever tending her machine. I had never believed it, but now, standing in that stairwell, I was not so sure.

The creaking grew louder, and the humming turned into a distorted whisper that seemed to come from all around me: ‘You’ll never leave, you’ll never leave, you’ll spin with me.’ I bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and I didn’t stop until I was back on my floor, gasping for breath.

I tried to warn Danny, but he just laughed, saying, ‘It’s just the wind in the old pipes.’ I wanted to believe him. But the next week, Danny quit, and he told me he’d heard the same thing, but worse: a voice that called his name from the looms, a shadow moving between the frames.

I couldn’t stand it much longer either. One night, as I was packing up my things, I heard the footsteps again, and this time they were walking right outside the main door of my floor. The door was ajar, and a cold draft flowed in. I looked through the gap, and I saw a woman in a long, old-fashioned dress, her hair tied back in a bun, standing at the top of the stairs. She was facing away from me, but her shoulders were hunched, and she was rocking back and forth as if standing at a spinning frame. She began to hum.

I felt a sudden pull, a strong desire to walk toward her, to join her in that rhythm. I fought it, grabbing the doorframe. My fingers were white. Then she slowly started to turn her head, and I saw in the dim light that her face was a hollow, empty socket, like a mannequin’s. Her humming stopped. She whispered, ‘Join me.’

I screamed and threw the door shut. I ran to the fire escape and climbed down the rusted ladder, not caring that it was three floors. I landed in the alley, shaking, and I didn’t stop running until I reached my car. I drove home, leaving the mill behind forever.

A year later, I heard that the Beaumont Mill had been closed and repurposed into luxury apartments. They renovated the old stairwell, but the workers claimed to hear strange scuffling sounds coming from the walls, and a woman’s humming in the middle of the night. They tried to scrub the stains from the floor, but they always came back. The building was eventually demolished, but I knew that wouldn’t stop her. She is bound to the spinning, to the endless turning of the Great Wheel.

To this day, sometimes I hear that scuff-slide on the stairs in my own house, and I know she has followed me. And one night, I know I will open my door, and she will be standing there, waiting, and I will have no choice but to follow and become another spirit in the eternal spin.