I sat quietly reading in the middle of the room. The sound meter on my vest buzzed. Something well above the ambient noise of the house had just been detected but I hadn’t heard anything. I closed my book and set it down. “Hello, is anyone there?“ I said to the room. I waited. After several minutes I picked my book up again. There had been several almost events like this through out the night. I was beginning to doubt the claims of the house owners.
The sound meter buzzed again. Before I could close my book it buzzed again. I pulled out a high def voice recorder and started it. “Hello, is anyone there?” I said again. “What is your name?“ I paused for a minute. “What do you want?” I paused again.
The single lamp in the room flickered. I waited a couple more minutes and shut off the recorder. Jane would listen and analysis it later. I was here strictly for observation. I went back to reading.
A door opened and closed somewhere in the house. It sounded like it was on the second floor with me. I stood up and pulled out my hand held camera and turned it on in night vision mode. We had mounted a few cameras in the house in known hotspots but my hand held camera was meant to cover anything I encountered. I turned off the lamp blacking out the room. I did a quick sweep of the master bedroom that I had been sitting in before walking to the door.
The lights in the hallway were off like in the rest of the house. Darkness helps to facilitate encounters. We weren’t really sure why. Maybe the light firms the world around us making it harder for them to act on it. Maybe they’re afraid to been seen. Maybe it’s just our minds playing tricks on us. I made my way into the hallway using the camera’s view screen to check the floor, walls, and ceiling.
There were four doors in the upstairs hallway. One led to the master bedroom where I had just been. The next door was the upstairs bathroom. I opened the door and scanned the inside with the camera. No obvious apparitions but Jane would frame by frame the video later. To reach the third door I had to pass the top of the stairs. I hugged the wall and kept it in view as I passed by. Lauren had taken a tumble down some stairs during an observation night a few months ago. Maybe she just hadn’t been watching where she was stepping. Maybe she had felt something push her.
The second door was the hall closet. Nothing inside except towels, sheets, and blankets. Nothing fell out on me and no cats jumped out at me. I pointed the camera back down the hallway for a couple of minutes. I turned back to the last door, the door to the second bedroom. It’s always the second bedroom or the attic or basement or any room that doesn’t get too much use. Never the master bedroom or the living room or the kitchen cause otherwise you would just move out.
Slowly I walked to the door. A couple feet from it, I felt a pinch on my upper arm. I pulled up my sleeve and turned the camera to look at my arm. In the gray washed out image I could see a dark spot that was oozing downward. I touched it and felt wetness. Fucking ghost had made me bleed. I felt a second pinch on the opposite shoulder. Okay, observation time was over; it was now time to evacuate. I pulled the maglite from my belt and turned it on. The blinding white light bounced off the pale yellow walls dispelling some of the darkness in the hallway. I turned around and walked to the stairs flicking on the hall light as I passed it. A softer white light completely filled the hallway now.
The stairs were no longer dark but they descended down into darkness. I shown my flashlight down at the front door. Just down the stairs and out the door that’s all I had to do. One hand firmly on the banister the other firmly griping the maglite, I started walking down. Slowly and carefully I stepped down each tread checking it for anything that might trip me. All four doors opened and closed together upstairs. It was escalating fast. I turned to look back one last time and my foot slipped. The flashlight fell from my hand as I reached to catch myself. I only slipped a few treads down. My flashlight lay at the bottom of the stairs broken no longer casting light.
Now more than halfway down the stairs, my eyes had adjusted to the light trickling down from the upstairs hall light. I continued down the stairs now using both hands to steady myself. Once on the bottom landing I reached out and flicked on the downstairs hall light. It shown with the same soft white as the upstairs light before it flicked and went out. Along with the upstairs light.
I was in darkness again but the door was just ahead. I grabbed the doorknob, turned it and pulled on the door. It didn’t open. The deadbolts had been thrown. On observation nights we didn’t lock the font door. The last thing we wanted was to be trapped in the dark trying to open locks we weren’t familiar with. One of the team was always outside watching the house for back up and as security. Hopefully Rosa had seen the lights go on and off and was coming to check on me.
But just in case, I pulled my camera back out to look at the locks. Two deadbolts, one that could be locked from inside or outside and one that could only be locked from inside. Thankfully neither were the kind that needed a key on the inside. I reached for the first deadbolt and something shoved me into the door. I recovered and pushed off the door. This was getting way out of hand. The owners hadn’t said it was this bad, just doors opening and sounds in other rooms.
The door knob rattled. “Hey Linda, are you all right?“
“I don’t know. It’s gone tits up in here. I just got shoved and I got pricked upstairs,” I called through the door. I felt for the locks in the dark and twisted them blindly. They clunked open and the door opened. Rosa started to lean in shining her flashlight around. I pushed her back and pulled the door shut behind me. “Woah, you don’t want to go in there.“ I walked her back to the van.
“Ahh, come on. Let me have a look around the first floor at least.” Rosa hadn’t been with us long and hadn’t been part of an observation team yet.
“Nope this one is too hot,” I pulled up my sleeve showing her the pinched bleeding spot on my arm.
“Holy fuck, the ghost did that?” she said before grabbing a camera and taking pictures for documentation.
“Yeah and another on this shoulder,” I pointed and turned so she could take pictures.
“There blood on your shirt but no hole.” She pulled my shirt away from the wound. I hissed as the fabric pulled free. “Looks like the other cut.“ She took more pictures and helped me treat and dress the wounds.
“So what now?” Rose asked.
“We watch the house till morning, turn over our recordings and photos to Jane, and tell the owners to find a priest.”
“We’re not going to do an investigation?”
In over two hundred cases, we had documented a dozen possible hauntings. Only twice before had we had only encountered something this violent. Both times had ended with an injured team member. After Lauren’s fall, Jamie had put a new policy into effect. No fucking around with demons.
“We’re ghost hunters not exorcists,” I said.
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