I walked toward the big, wooden elevator in the lobby of The Eldridge hotel feeling uneasy about what to expect. I had heard all the stories: people who press the elevator button for the basement and are taken to the fifth floor—the haunted floor—instead, cameras that begin failing for no reason, pictures where you can see a man standing in the elevator even though there was no one there when the picture was taken.

But there I was, walking though the 1920s marble floor in the lobby of the hotel towards the infamous elevator. Even though I’m skeptical about ghost stories, I have to admit my heart was racing a little as I slowly stepped into the elevator and pressed the white button that would take me to the fifth floor.

At The Eldridge, supernatural occurrences are talked about the way people discuss the weather elsewhere.

“How about you? Have you met the ghost yet?” Nancy Longhurst, general manager, asks another employee.

“No, not yet. But I’ve heard stories,” the employee answers.

The employee walks away without elaborating. It seems as if every employee has either heard stories or has their own ghost story for others to hear.

The mystery surrounding the hotel stems from its somewhat violent history. It has been in Lawrence since 1855, when the New England Emigrant Aid Society built it under the name The Free State Hotel.

In 1856, the hotel was burned to the ground for the first time by sheriff Sam Jones, who raided the city with his pro-slavery troop. Colonel Shalor Eldridge rebuilt the hotel but in 1863, it was partially burned again. This time William Clarke Quantrill and his raiders were responsible. The raid killed 150 men and destroyed almost all of downtown.

Col. Eldridge reconstructed the hotel once again and changed the name to The Eldridge.

The hotel was renovated in 2004, but it still has original structures from the 1923. Helen Krische, archivist at the Watkins Museum of History, says she can understand all the ghost stories that surround The Eldridge if they used parts of the original material when they renovated the hotel.

Longhurst, the hotel’s general manager, says that many parts of the original structure—from the chandeliers to the floor—were kept form the original structure. There is even a section in room 506, which is part of the original structure, that is rumored to be a gate to hell. The section of the room is currently covered but Longhurst says they would not mind uncovering it again.

The elevator doors open on the fifth floor and, for some reason, I start thinking that as soon as I step out of the elevator something strange will happen. Instead, I’m welcomed to the fifth floor by the constant humming of the ice machine, a picture hanging on the off-white walls and a chair right in front of the elevator.

I walk up and down the dimly lit hallway with gray carpet and look for room 506. Rooms 505 and 506 seem to be far away and I feel more and more uneasy with each step.

I finally approach the door to room 506-—the room with a gate to hell.

I stand staring at it waiting for something to happen. Nothing does, but with every strange noise I hear, I get a little jumpy.

It’s rumored it is the ghost of Eldridge that haunts the place. A black and white picture of him posing with 5 little girls hangs in the lobby above a white chimney. He looks distinguished, dressed in a suit and a bearded, but his deep dark eyes seem to stare at you no matter where you move.

T.K Peterson, the head chef of the Eldridge, says he has had more than one encounter with Eldridge’s ghost. One time, it was 5:30 a.m. and he went downstairs to the locker room. As he was heading down the stairs he heard a door in the locker room open.

The door is always kept locked, but when he looked it was wide open.

“I know it sounds kind of weird, but it was a very real moment.”

On what he calls “not his proudest moment,” he ran back upstairs and turned on every light on his way up.

Peterson says he often sees things that have been moved out of place when nobody has been there or thinks he hears voices. Still, he is never sure if it is his imagination or a supernatural-event happening.

“Yes, sometimes I hear voices, but I think I might hear voices in my head all the time anyway.”

Skepticism seems to accompany the ghost stories of the Eldridge. Zach Clancy, a guest services employee who works at night, says he has never seen anything out of the ordinary happen during his shift. He says he finds humor in the fact that people request room 506 to see if something strange will happen.

I walked away from room 506 both relieved and a little disappointed nothing weird happened.

As I turned the corner to go into the hallway to get to the elevator, the humming noise from the ice machine stopped. In its place, I heard the noise of shuffling ice of someone taking ice from the machine.

I turned the corner to find the machine, hoping, wishing to find a friendly person next to ice machine who needed ice at 5 p.m. The noise stopped for a second as soon as I looked at the machine, then started again, this time not as loud.

My adventurous nature ended there and went back down the elevator and out the wooden doors a little scared and a little skeptical.

I really hope ice machines make that kind of noise all the time, even though I have never witnessed it. Regardless, my visit to the fifth floor left me a little curious. Maybe I’ll be one of the people that Clancy finds humorous and get a room there on Halloween.