My colleague’s cousin works at a financial firm in Shanghai’s Lujiazui area. Last autumn, she stayed late until past 10 PM and was about to leave the office building. The building has over 30 floors, and the elevator normally only goes down to B2 garage.
She stepped in and pressed 1. Just as the doors were about to close, a woman in a dark-green cheongsam with an old-fashioned bun squeezed in sideways. The woman didn’t press any button – she just stood quietly in the corner, holding an embroidered pouch.
The cousin found it odd and gave her a second look – the woman wore embroidered cloth shoes, the soles caked with wet mud, as if she’d just walked from the waterside. When the elevator reached the first floor and the doors opened, the cousin was about to step out, but the woman suddenly reached over and pressed the button for B4.
The cousin was stunned – everyone knew the building only had B1 and B2. Where did B4 come from? Just as she was about to speak, the woman turned her head. Her pale face showed no expression, and she said only: “I’m here.”
Frightened, the cousin dashed out of the elevator and looked back – the doors slowly closed, and the floor indicator changed from “1” to “-1”, then “-2”, then skipped “-3” and landed on “-4”, where it stopped.
She ran to the security desk and asked for the CCTV footage. On the monitor, the elevator went down from 1, stopped briefly at B2, then the screen flickered to show “B4” – the doors opened, and the car was empty. But strangely, a puddle of water and a trail of wet footprints appeared on the floor, leading all the way to the door.
The next day, the building’s maintenance team inspected and discovered a sealed old space at the very bottom of the elevator shaft. On the concrete wall, faintly carved characters read “Air Raid Shelter, 1943.” And that woman in the cheongsam – someone later found her in an old photo in the archives: she was the bank’s first female clerk during the Republic of China era. It’s said that during an air raid, she went down to rescue the ledgers and never came back out.
Since that night, the cousin has never dared to ride that elevator alone again.