This all began as a project for school. I was going to create a history of my town by recording interviews with older residents.

I did a couple of these to start off with – speaking to a former teacher at my school and a retired hotel doorman.

The teacher was Mrs Turner, a widow for a decade and in her seventy-fifth year. She spoke a lot about the way the education system was a lot better in her time and some of her pupils who’d gone on to great things.

The doorman’s name was Mr Watkins and he was eighty-nine. He made the hotel sound like a glamorous place and he told me some really interesting stories about the people who used to stay there. He also said how he was sad when he had to retire because of his age, and even sadder when the hotel finally closed its doors for the last time twenty years ago.

The interviews were great, but I decided they needed something extra to make them more attention grabbing.

So, I found music from way back that was copyright free and was going to add recordings of ambient sounds from the streets and the buildings that the interviewees were talking about. I’d mix it all up into a package. It was going to be awesome.

Then something happened which threw everything off track and I ended up submitting a completely different project.

You see, I heard strange sounds in the background of one of the ambient recordings. Sounds which eventually led me to some pretty dark places.

That was a few years ago. I’m at university now but I’ve kept the original file and I’ve decided, after a lot of thought, to share what’s on it here.

The sound file was recorded in the lobby of the hotel Mr Watkins had worked in. The hotel was derelict by then and empty apart from some broken furniture, and piles of litter and leaves that must have drifted in.

I had sneaked in by forcing a gap in the boarded-up doorway and was pretty sure I wasn’t meant to be in there. I was feeling very nervous.

That’s why the first thing on the recording is the sound of my breathing.

It’s loud, as I come close to hyperventilating.

Then I can be heard saying to myself, “Relax, dude.”

I take another deep, slow breath. I remember thinking how this would help calm me down and how it worked.

The next sound is the building creaking. It was late November and there was a storm outside. I was pretty windswept myself and I guessed the fabric of the old place was struggling in the gales.

And then there’s the first of the strange sounds.

It’s like the wind had got inside the building and was moving through the litter and the leaves.

The second strange sound is longer. The third is drawn out even more.

Both, again, make me think of the wind. Of a restless, eerie force.

Then there’s my footsteps as I leave the hotel.

The recording ends here.

I listened to the recording for the first time in my bedroom back at home and felt a coldness pass through me.

I’d heard the noises when I was there, on my own, standing in the lobby, but they hadn’t really stood out to me at the time.

But listening to the recording, they chilled me to the bone.

I was gripped.

I listened to the recording repeatedly, long into the night, and about four am, I finally heard this:

The first sound is actually a voice saying: Please.

It’s a girl’s voice.

The second sound is her saying: Please, help me.

The third sound is her again. She is saying*: I just want my Millie, please*.

The more I listened to the recording, the more I became convinced this was what had been captured.

I didn’t sleep at all that night and the next day at school I couldn’t focus on any of the lessons. Partly because I was exhausted, but more because all I could think about was the voice on the recording.

What was it? I wondered as my mind raced. How was it possible? I had been completely on my own in the derelict lobby.

It was a mystery to me and one I was determined to get to the bottom of. I decided the best place to start would be by going back to see the doorman, Mr Watkins, and asking him if the words on the recording meant anything to him.

He lived in a care home for the elderly and was looking even frailer than when I had interviewed him. He shook my hand in an old-fashioned way and smiled at me and invited me to take a seat.

I settled into the armchair opposite him and told him what had happened.

Then I asked him, “Was there a Millie at the hotel?” Perhaps she was on the staff or a regular guest?”

And when I did this, everything changed. The smile disappeared off his face and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. Then he started shouting for one of the carers, started saying how I was bothering him, and they needed to make me leave.

I was hustled out of there double quick.

I don’t mind telling you I was pretty upset by this whole experience and confused. I’d clearly upset him, and I wished I knew how I could make things better.

The possibility of solving the mystery of the recording also felt to have diminished.

With all this playing on mind, school days kept coming around, and weekends that dragged, and I started to wish I’d never been to the hotel.

In fact, I decided, a couple of weeks after seeing the doorman for the second time, I was going to delete the file and forget about the whole lousy experience.

And then the letter came.

The address was hand-written and inside there was a brief note wrapped around another piece of paper.

The note said that, sadly, Mr Watkins had passed away in his sleep and that before he died, he had requested that the enclosed letter be passed onto me.

My hands were shaking as I unfolded the letter.

This is what it said:

I’ve carried a secret around with me for a long time now. It’s something I am ashamed of and that has made me hate myself through many a long, sleepless night.

I thought this would never change and I’d take my secret to the grave – but then you came along. I enjoyed meeting you the first time and I was happy to talk about the old times at the hotel. The good times.

Then when you came to see me again, the things you said, it was like someone had taken a knife and cut me open to reveal the secret I had buried inside me.

You see, the name Millie does mean something to me. It was the name of a doll that was owned by a young woman who I knew more than sixty years ago.

She was a woman not a girl, and many folk would have said she was way too old to still be walking about clutching a doll to her. But this young woman was troubled. She was skinny as a rake and wore rags and lived on the streets near the hotel.

One winter, back in 59’, there was a particularly vicious winter. Predictions were, the night ahead would be the worst and lives would be lost. I knew this young woman’s life was in danger if she was left out on the street, so I told her she could shelter in the hotel if she wanted. I did this without telling any of the management. Their only concern was making money and attracting an even better class of guest. But I was brought up to believe in compassion. The only place I had for her was in a storage room, it was little more than a cupboard really. But she seemed happy enough to curl up in there and go to sleep with that doll of hers hugged tight.

I felt good for having helped protect this fragile creature.

And that could have been that. The night passed and she could have left and there would have been no trouble. Only one of the front desk staff, who had aspirations to be a boss, found the girl fast asleep in the storage room and yelled for the mangers.

This was just before I started my shift, and when I turned up for work I saw there was a commotion in the lobby of the hotel.

The young woman was in there.

Tears were streaming down her face and she was shouting over and over for help. For her Millie.

Somehow, she had been separated from her doll, but the managers didn’t care. They dragged her out into the street and left her sobbing and still begging for her Millie.

It broke my heart and I went searching for the doll so I could return it to her, but there was no trace of it in the storage room, and I could not ask around, because the managers were in a rage and threatening to fire whoever had let the woman into the hotel.

So, I left it.

I turned my back.

A few days later I heard the young woman’s body had been found by the side of the road. She’d been struck by a vehicle, and they’d kept on driving as if she’d had no worth.

She was buried in the city cemetery with no headstone and no service, and I could never find where she’d been laid to rest.

Could I have done more to help her when she was alive? Yes.

Should I have done more to help her? Yes.

But I did not. I was too scared of losing my job.

You’re only a kid, and a good kid it strikes me from the couple of times we’ve met, so I don’t want to pass my burden onto you, but I think you’ve a right to the truth as I know it.

As for the voice that you claim to hear on your recording, I have no explanation that can be set out in a reasoned way, but now I have calmed down and had chance to think, I wonder, perhaps there is a way that things can be set right.

If you receive this letter, and you can forgive me for the way I treated you, perhaps you could come see me again and we can talk.

The letter was signed, Yours in Hope, William Watkins.

After I had finished reading it, I put my head in my hands and I cried myself to sleep.

When I woke, I finally thought I understood what was happening.

I appreciate a lot of people might dismiss this as nonsense, and I am worried to let anyone else listen to the recording in case all they hear is the wind in a derelict building.

But I believed then, and I believe now, that I had recorded the voice of a ghost. That of the young woman.

Back then, as I sat there rubbing sleep from my eyes and wishing Mr Watkins had not died before I had chance to see him again, I also knew what I had to do next.

I threw cold water onto my face, got wrapped up in my warmest coat and went back to the hotel.

I once more slipped in through the broken, boarded-up doorway, and began to search.

I didn’t record anything this time, I just rushed from empty room to empty room. Dust was thrown up everywhere and dozens of spiders scuttled across the floor as I disturbed them.

There was a small space that looked like it could have been the storage room Mr Watkins had told me about in his letter, but it was as bare as the rest of the place.

Then, just as I was giving up hope, I saw a stack of boxes tucked away in a corner. I opened one and found scarves and gloves and umbrellas. Another box had fancy looking crockery in it, and another old glossy business and lifestyle magazines.

I figured these were all things that had been gathered up as the hotel was closing and were meant for disposal, but no one had ever got round to it.

I opened the last box, and my heart did a little leap of joy.

There was a doll in it. The paint on its face was faded and cracked in places and its dress was crumpled and dirty.

I lifted it out of the box and said, “Hey, Millie, it’s nice to meet you.”

Then I tucked the doll into my coat and left the hotel.

It was two bus rides and a long walk to get to the city cemetery. It was a run-down place. Some of the headstones were lying on the ground and there were weeds everywhere.

It was quiet – I could only see a few people over the other side of the cemetery – but I was still nervous that someone would see me and ask what I was doing.

I knelt down and with my hands scooped out earth from a patch of open ground. I took the doll out of my coat pocket and placed in the hole I had made. Then I gently covered it with the loose soil and closed my eyes.

I thought of the young woman and told her that Millie was here now and they could be together again.

I got to my feet, brushed soil from my jeans and walked slowly out of the cemetery.

I felt sad but also OK. I had done the right thing, as far as I could see, and I hoped Mr Watkins would have felt the same way.

And now there was only one more thing to do.

I returned to the hotel lobby for the final time and made a recording.

I listened to it when I was back home.

All I could hear on the recording of the lobby was silence. There was no wind, no voice. No spirits hurting.

There was peace.

It was over.

The recording continued as I left the lobby and there was a strange sound as I stepped out through the doorway.

I listened to it a few times before I realised what it was.

It was the voice of an old man, saying, Thank you.