Before I begin— yes, I know that everything I’m about to say sounds farfetched. I would have said the same thing before I started looking into the Yancy View Hotel. Please just bear with me and keep an open mind as you read through this site. As humans, we tend to think that we know everything there is to know about the world. That the universe is one long list of equations discovered by guys in lab coats that has been solved ages ago. Without sounding like a crazed conspiracy theorist, that line of thinking for me burned away along with man trapped in room 513 of the Yancy View Hotel.
On May 13th, 2017, at 2:00 am, a fire started in room 513 of the Yancy View Hotel. The fire destroyed most of the items in the room before burning down the door and spreading out into the hallway. hotel security was able to prevent the further spread of the fire before it reached any other rooms. Once the proper authorities arrived, an investigation was conducted and thankfully, no lives were lost, and no property was damaged aside from the contents of room 513. No human remains were found in the room and the hotel confirmed that no resident was checked into the room that night. The only thing that was out of place in the room was a charred laptop that the hotel staff confirmed was not a standard piece of furnishing for the room, but they didn’t know how it got there. Their best guess was that the guest that was previously in the room must have accidentally been left behind. After a thorough investigation, it was determined that the fire was caused by faulty wiring and no charges were filled against any party involved.
As for the laptop, the police brought it to the repair shop that I work at to see if the hard drive can be salvaged. We tried what we could, but the drive was beyond saving. My boss asked if they wanted the hard drive back as evidence; but since the investigation was almost closed at this point and the hard drive was nothing more than a useless brick, the police told us that we might as well just throw it away. And that’s what happened, we discarded the hard drive and moved on with our lives. At least that’s what should have happened. And yet almost ten years later there I was, sat in front of a half melted hard drive that I found covered in dust behind a storage shelf in our backroom. So much time had passed, that I had almost forgotten completely about it. But just looking at the drive brought back all the memories of being a high school freshman newly hired at my local computer repair shop, and promptly freaking out when the police arrived. Part of me wanted to just toss it and move on with my day; after all, if it didn’t work ten years ago, it wasn’t going to work now. But I had this nagging itch in the back of my mind that told me to check the drive. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to just check the drive before throwing it out, that was our standard procedure here after all. I plugged it in to the computer near our front desk, expecting it to not even register on the device. To my surprise though, I received a popup saying that the hard drive was connected. Checking it I found nothing on it except for several text files, all dated 1:45 am May 13th 2017, fifteen minutes before the fire started.
I was at a crossroads here. On the one hand, these text files were most likely linked to the fire, and they would be worth adding to the case file for it. On the other hand, those files were probably just as dusty as the drive. The odds that the police would even care about these were slim to none, and to be frank— my curiosity was pretty much driving me at this point. I decided to check the first doc, just to see what it had to say. And then I read the next one, and then the one after that. Before I knew it, I had read through the entire drive. Now I’m glad that I didn’t turn it in right away. Had I brought this drive in as evidence for a ten-year-old closed case, the contents of it would have probably gotten me laughed out of the station.
The contents of the drive are nonsensical and bizarre to say the least. Over the course of these documents, it describes the day-to-day life of a man trapped in room 513 for a time ranging anywhere from weeks to months on end. It’s hard to determine the time frame since the file dates are all at the exact same time. Once again, I found myself lost on what to do. Taking this to the authorities is out of the question, at least until I could find anything to validify what I’ve read. No one I could tell this to would have believed me— hell, I didn’t even know if I fully believed it at the time. The thing that messes with me is that there is a logical explanation for this. It could very well just be a creative writing project of someone who stayed in room 513 and forgot their laptop there. The date and time of the files could have just been a symptom of the drive being burned and then left to rot for ten years. But I could feel that there was something more going on. Like when someone is gaslighting you into thinking that everything is alright, I knew that something unexplainable happened in room 513— though for the life of me I couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was paranoia, maybe it was my desire for something to spice up my monotonous life. Regardless, I knew that couldn’t let this sleeping dog lie, not yet.
What this website is intended to do is to provide the transcriptions of the burnt files of room 513, as well as any future discoveries I make as part of my investigation on the Yancy View Hotel. If you have any questions, I plan on adding a comment section here on the website. I cannot promise that I’ll respond to every comment or look into every lead, but I’ll do the best I can. I recommend starting with the burnt files as I've come to call them and then moving on to my investigations. I will also add citations and notes throughout the files if I feel that its relevant.
Take care as you read:
-T.S