An old Chelsea babysitter writes:
Though I never lived at the Chelsea Hotel myself, I used to babysit for a young couple who lived there back in the early nineties. They were not artists. The man was an engineer and the woman owned a small business and I’m not sure why they chose the Chelsea. Perhaps because they liked to 
enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle (they had an active social life) or maybe they wanted to be thought of as artistic or daring. Or maybe just because it was cheap. That’s the only thing I can think of. I was a teenager at the time, and since they were gone all the time I babysat for them nearly every day one summer, and they went out a lot at night too.
Their little boy was six or seven years old. They were very protective of the child, and tried to keep him away from the dubious characters that roamed the halls of the Chelsea, and they were always complaining to Stanley about somebody doing something immoral. In fact, that’s probably why they hired me, because I came from outside the hotel.
Now, what I’m going to say is the God’s honest truth, though the couple won’t admit it and they called me a liar to my face, but one night they had gone out to a cocktail party and they came home really late with another couple and they were all talking and joking around out in the stairwell. I wanted to leave and I was waiting to get paid. The cocktail party was in the hotel I think, or at least there was some sort of party on one of the lower floors. All I know is it was really loud. They lived on the tenth floor.
The boy, for obvious reasons I don’t want to say his name, came out in his pajamas. When we noticed him we all said, what are you doing out here, go back to bed, but he wouldn’t. Instead he went to the railing of the stairs and looked up at the skylight. He just kept looking up and finally he said, “Mommy, who is that man up there?” His parents just laughed and said, “Oh, what are you talking about?” But instead of dropping it, the boy became increasingly excited, pointing and screaming: “Mommy, why is that man up there?!” “There’s nobody up there honey,” his mother said. “That man! That gray man up there!” “There’s nobody up there,” his father said sternly. “Get back to bed.”
Then the boy got quiet. He kept staring at the skylight, but he was quiet. I probably should have taken him to bed, but it was late and I really wanted to get paid and go home. “He’s just tired,” the parents said to their friends, who said their goodbyes and got on the elevator and went down. But while we were distracted watching them leave the boy had somehow managed to climb up on the railing and stand there, I don’t know how he did it, balanced on the top rail.
Luckily, they saw him. “Oh my God!” they said. “What are you doing?!” the mother said, and the father grabbed him back down from there before he could jump or fall. The boy started shaking and shivering all over as they both held him, almost having an epileptic fit, and he peed in his pants. The parents were drunk and had been smoking pot I think, but that really sobered them up quick. I didn’t even get my money that night but I guess after that I forgot about it and really just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.
Like I said, they say I’m a liar about this. But what they can’t deny is that their son changed after this incident. I can’t prove anything but I personally think he was possessed by some kind of spirit that night. He was a really sweet kid before but after that he was either like a zombie or else he would go into a violent rage. They told me to keep sharp objects locked up and not to let him out of my sight and not to go anywhere. They were keeping him locked in his room at night because he would try to sneak out and one time he turned on all the burners on the gas stove and almost killed them all. When you took him out him out you had to hold onto him because he would go for the railing, not rushing for it but like pulled to it in a trance. And he was strong too. A couple of times he 
got away from me and tried to climb up onto the railing, whether to jump or what I don’t know, but I was able to pull him back down and get him into the elevator thank God. I don’t know if he was trying to get to the man or to throw himself over but it was clear that if he kept doing it he would fall eventually. Darkness was bad, but an overcast day was the worst. He tore his room all up when he went into his violent rages and he graffitied all over the walls in crayons in gibberish or an unknown language.
After a few days of this I wanted to quit but the parents begged me to stay and said they couldn’t get anyone else. These days they would probably say the child had ADD, and they got a doctor and medicated the child and it kept him quiet but he still couldn’t be left alone or he would go out into the hallway and head for the railing. I lasted about two weeks, it was not worth the money even though they agreed to pay me double.
Now I’ve done some research on this issue since then and this type of possession is never straightforward. (Though I was a babysitter then I went on to get a college education and studied psychology and parapsychology.) The boy was smart and he knew what was happening to him in a way though understandably he would often become confused and I think this was the source of his violent rages. Sometimes he thought that adults were trying to lead him to the railing or even to throw him over. He would scream and run away and hide in his room. I guess in these instances he was not possessed and maybe he even thought the adults were the Gray Man. When he was like this then you couldn’t get him out the door for anything.
I mention this because of what happened next. I was trying to take him out to the dentist one day. His parents were stupid for making me do this but they insisted because they wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong. I knew better by this time and I kept a tight grip on the boy and kept my body between him and the railing as I steered him toward the elevator. This time though he didn’t go into a trance like usual and try to make it to the railing. Instead as soon as we got near the railing he started screaming hysterically and struggling against me. I held on and told him to shut up as I pushed the elevator button. But he bit my hand and got free and ran back to the room and started struggling to open the door, turning the handle and pulling and pushing against it. Of course it was locked but he started screaming at me and cursing me, calling me a fucking bitch and every other name in the book, telling me to open the door and let him in or he’d kill me. Alright that’s it, we’re not going anywhere I thought, and I got the key out of my pocket and opened the door. He burst in and before I could get in he grabbed the door and slammed it on me. I got my body in the way and stuck my foot in the door so he couldn’t close it all the way but he was freakishly strong and I couldn’t push it open. He got the chain on somehow and he ran back into the apartment. I couldn’t just leave him in there because who knows what he was going to do so I tried to stick my hand in and get the chain off. When he saw that he ran at the door but I had my foot in it and though it hurt like hell he couldn’t 
close the door. Where he got the scissors I’ll never know, but the next thing I know he stabs me in the hand! I screamed and pulled my hand out and my foot too, and he slammed the door and threw the dead bolt.
So then I was standing there bleeding and I didn’t know what to do. I was bleeding profusely and I couldn’t even leave to go to the hospital because what if the kid got out and killed himself? Or killed himself in there? I tried calling for him in my confusion, begging him to open the door but of course that did no good. Finally I banged on all the neighbors doors and finally somebody opened up and gave me a rag to wrap my hand in. I told the lady to call the mother at work and she came home and tried to act like it was no big deal and I was the one who was crazy and caused the problem in the first place. I don’t think anybody believed her, but still! I was the one who was trying to help! I had to get five stitches in my hand at the hospital.
There was no way I was going back after that, and I told them they should get the child institutionalized. They didn’t appreciate that one bit but there wasn’t much they could say after the kid had just stabbed me. The man paid me, overpaid me by several times, trying to pay me off I guess, to buy my silence and it’s true I didn’t say anything to anybody for nearly a year after that and by that time they had already left the Chelsea. And New York, I think. The reason I didn’t say anything was not the money but because they made me feel like I was crazy for even mentioning it. I was just seventeen, remember.
They got another babysitter, a girl in her twenties who I knew from school, and the kid drove her crazy. She started taking drugs, maybe she had been taking them before, and eventually she had to get psychiatric help. I think she may have even spent some time in a mental hospital. The couple tried to blame her for their child’s condition, saying she was a junkie, but she had nothing to do with it since like I said the child was like that before. I feel more sorry for her than for anybody to tell you the truth. Except for maybe the child. He was supposed to start school in the fall, but they held him back and I doubt he was ever normal again.
Since then I’ve often thought of the Gray Man, wondered who he was, perhaps the ghost of someone who committed suicide by throwing himself down the stairwell. Or maybe a more elemental spirit, a sort of evil pied piper of children. When I asked the boy one time who the Gray Man was, he said he was smoke. I don’t know whether this makes any sense or not, but this was when the boy was in a good, or rational state of mind. The parents and their child disappeared into middle America and obscurity, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the Chelsea as possible. The boy would be in his early twenties now which is typically when a dormant mental illness manifests. I assume they’ve had him on medication all this time, but now that he’s an adult what if he decides to stop taking it as often happens? There was a powerful attraction working on him, that I know, pulling him toward that railing and that skylight. And so I have to ask, is this paranormal force still drawing him to the Chelsea? Will he return to the scene of his childhood and his lost innocence? And what form will his madness take in adulthood? It seems only time will tell.
Wow, this place is even scarier than I thought. Junkies and schizophrenics are one thing, but elemental spirits are more than I can handle. Almost makes me want to live in the suburbs! And this woman seems pretty authoritative too; after all, she’s studied parapsychology. Keep your doors locked tonight! (Ed Hamilton)
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