by Maureen Wood
“What’s over there?” Ron asked.
Amy spoke up, “If you follow the wall to the right there’s a staircase, but it’s boarded off.”
Ron and Leo, our photographer, scurried over to where I had seen the spirit disappear. Leo raised the camera, clicking wildly. “Damn it, it won’t let me take a picture,” he cried.
Within seconds the charge in the air dissipated, a sign to me that the spirit had left. At the same moment, Leo said, “Would you look at that, now it’s working again.”
“I’d say we’re done here,” Ron said. “Let’s get back to base camp.”
As we weaved our way through the kitchen, everybody was excitedly talking about what had just transpired. Everyone, that is, except for Jenny and Katie, who walked arm in arm with petrified looks on their faces.
We hung around the base camp trying to decide our next move, when Ron turned to Amy and asked, “Is there an upstairs to this place?”
No sooner had he gotten the words out of his mouth, when the base camp monitor went to static. Gay, who was sitting by the monitors, cried, “Ron, look at this.”
Flippantly he dismissed her remark. “That’s nothing. It’s just some kind of natural interference.” Just then, the screen returned to normal. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure that the “static” was natural at all.
Once again, Ron asked, “Can we see the upstairs?”
As if on cue, the static returned.
Just like I thought. This was no “natural interference,” more like, “para-natural.”
As we opened the door to the second story, I could sense a spirit lingering at the top of the stairs peering down at us. In a zigzag motion, we ascended the dilapidated stairs, stepping over bottles, bags, brooms, and various cleaning supplies. If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, we gingerly stepped over missing floorboards, careful not to plunge through to the room beneath us. The spirit retreated as we drew closer.
Ron made his way to the front room with the rest of us behind him. It was extremely tight quarters. He turned to me and waved his silent meter, saying, “I’m not getting very much here.”
“Go to the right, Ron,” I told him, becoming somewhat frustrated. “No, my right.”
Turning, he went deeper into the room until he reached a window that overlooked the parking lot. As he did, his meter went off. “Oh yeah,” he said triumphantly. “Lucy, I’m home.” A reference to the I Love Lucy show. Sometimes he’s such a nut, I thought.
When I entered the room, the atmosphere was much lighter, an indication to me that the spirit was much younger. Intuitively, I knew it was a little girl. I could barely contain my smile. This was so much more pleasant than the “hanged man,” as Ron referred to him. “It’s a woman, a young woman.”
I paused for a second. “Jenny, her name is Jenny,” I said, repeating what I heard psychically.
“What does she want?” Ron asked.
I chuckled, “She just wants to be with us.”
“You mean like hanging with us?” Ron continued.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice mirroring her emotions.
“That’s cool; does she like us?” Ron asked.
My emotions felt bubbly, light, euphoric even. “Yes, look how fast my pendulum is going. She likes you.” Go figure. “It’s not the negative one,” I said to Ron, trying to explain what I was feeling. ”I don’t have the same pain, which is a good thing,” I added.
“Are you happy?” Ron asked of the little girl spirit.
Yes, answered the pendulum
“Are you happy we are here?”
The answer, a resounding yes.
“You just want attention, don’t you?” Ron asked, teasing the spirit.
Eric asked, “Are you part of the Underground Railroad?”
A strong yes.
“Are you white?” Ron inquired.
The pendulum swung counterclockwise, indicating a yes.
“I thought so,” Ron stated, straining his voice to be heard above the beep, beep, beep of his EMF meter.
“Did you help with the Underground Railroad?” I said, asking a question of my own.
Yes, the pendulum responded, but I already knew the answer.
Seemingly out of nowhere a rush of cold air blanketed the room.
The rapid fire of Ron’s EMF meter was suddenly transformed to a slow, rhythmic beep.
Beep—beep—beep.
A familiar pain invaded my chest.
The energy was dark, heavy, almost touchable, like mist rolling over a cold gravestone.
“He’s back,” I said, fighting my way through a wave of nausea.
Ron’s beaming smile was gone.
“Go away,” he commanded. “We don’t want you here. We want to talk to Jenny.” The lightness in his voice of moments ago was now replaced with a newfound gravity.
Ignoring Ron’s command, the energy only thickened. “No,” I said.
Doubling over in pain, I clutched my legs for support. “He doesn’t want us to talk to anybody but him. He’s the dominant one,” I said in a low tone, a sound that was grating, even to my own ears.
“I don’t want to talk to him, let’s stop,” Ron said, trying to wrestle control of the situation from the vile spirit.
“Yes, it works for me, but you know he can follow us,” I added.
“Not outside,” Ron said with a smug look on his face.
I felt the hanged man’s anger. Being the obvious bully that he was, he did not like Ron. After all, he thought he was in charge.
As we made our way back to base camp, I could still feel the pull of his energy. He was not used to being dismissed, so he continued to dog us. Tapping my shoulder, ignoring my obvious rush to leave, Brian asked, “Why can’t he go outside?”
“It’s difficult to say,” I replied, stepping over a missing floorboard. “But it seems that some spirits are tied to a specific house or property. Almost like they are stuck there.” Still making my way down the stairs, I glanced over my shoulder and said, “For instance, this restaurant is comprised of two houses joined together. On one side, I don’t feel any spiritual activity whatsoever, while the other side is overly active.” Still feeling the hanged man’s noose gripping my body, I said, “Sorry, Brian, I have to go. Ron, I’m going outside for some air.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” he replied.
“Nah, I’ll be okay,” I said as I sped to the door.
* * *
I watched Maureen as she exited the building.
“Ron,” Eric turned to me. “You know, when the second spirit came in, I was looking through my camera and noticed a light appear at the top right of the view finder. I don’t know what it was, but it might have been something.”
“That’s cool; you probably picked up on him,” I said.
I was interrupted when I heard Amy yell from the other room, “Ron, I just thought of something else.”
Eric and I rushed to Room #1, where we saw Amy, hands on her hips, standing by the fireplace, in front of the stained-glass window. “I have two stories for you. First, you see the window I am standing in front of? Well, it was a regular window at one time, but customers began to complain when they would see the image of a woman in it instead of their own reflections, which really freaked them out. So the owner replaced it with this stained glass, which has no reflection.”
“Wow,” I interjected, although my mind was drifting to Maureen and how she was doing. “And what’s the second story?”
“Well, sometimes I would hear noises upstairs almost like footsteps, so I would open the door and peek my head in the stairway, and to my surprise I would see…like, little white clouds moving across the room. I tried to debunk them, but couldn’t. That really scared me.”
“Wait a minute,” Bob said.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The camera keeps going in and out of focus. There’s something by the fireplace, near the bookshelf.”
I went over to investigate. P
ushing the books aside, I found a secret shelf. On it was an old book hidden from view. I pulled it out, and to everyone’s amazement, there in bold print on the cover was the number 666. No one could tell us where the book came from. Is this a message from the hanged man? Or just another attempt to intimidate us? I was betting on the latter of my thoughts. Was it evil? Possibly. More often than not, our experience has shown that when we’re confronted with “evil” spirits, they usually use the “666,” the mark of the Devil according to Biblical references, as an attempt to intimidate.
I turned at the sound of footsteps on hardwood and saw Maureen standing in the doorway. By the look of exhaustion on her face I knew it was time to wrap it up.
On the way home, my thoughts turned to next week’s investigation with WNDS. I really wanted to scare the crap out of Brian this time. After all, it was taking place on All Hallows Eve. Hmmm. Where could I go? Aha! I’ve got it: a cemetery. What could be scarier than that…?
RESULTS OF THE INVESTIGATION
Tortilla Flats lived up to its reputation and provided us with another gripping episode for WNDS News. We made contact with several spirits, including slaves and a young girl whose family aided the fugitive slaves. However, the strongest, most dominant spirit was the “hanged man,” whose name is thought to be Zechariah. And although we could find no historical record of him, the restaurant staff confirmed that a man did hang himself in Room #1.
episode five
THE CRYPT KEEPER
CASE FILE: 6231963
OLD HILL CEMETERY
Location: Newburyport, Massachusetts.
History: Established in 1729, the oldest cemetery in Newburyport. The resting place of sea captains and revolutionary soldiers.
Reported Paranormal Activity: Ghostly images and alleged possessions.
Clients: The viewers of WNDS News.
Investigators: Ron (lead investigator), Maureen (trance medium), Pete (Ron’s friend).
Press: Brian Bates (reporter WNDS), Tom (Brian’s cameraman), Beth (Brian’s intern).
It was Halloween and the final night of the four-part WDNS series, and I was glad it was almost over. After all, we had spent the past month together exploring some of New England’s most haunted places, and the original curiosity, which they had first shown, had now been replaced with a weird sense of camaraderie.
The frozen ground crunched beneath our feet as Maureen and I stumbled between the broken gravestones of Old Hill Cemetery in Newburyport, Massachusetts. It was cold, but I didn’t need a thermometer to tell me that. The stinging of my nose spoke volumes.
The faint flicker of dancing lights radiating in the distance slowly morphed into the flashlights and camera of the WNDS News crew. We had reached our destination. It was Brian, Tom, and a young woman, an intern whom I had never seen before. Judging from the beaming smiles on their cherry-red faces, they were glad to see us as well.
“Hi Ron, give me a minute, I just have to tape the opening to the show,” said Brian.
We stood back a few feet to give them some room. With a signal from Tom, Brian walked out of the darkness, into the light of the camcorder, and began. “You know, cemeteries during the day can be eerie enough, never mind at night. So what better place to be on All Hallows Eve, the spookiest night of the year, than at a cemetery, one of the oldest and most haunted along the coast. In the historic seacoast town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, a town filled with stories of horror and hauntings, including those from the grave.”
Barely waiting for him to finish, I blurted out, “Hey guys, you ready to go?” Not waiting for a reply, I said, “Good, let’s rock.”
With Maureen at my side, we slowly slipped back into the darkness, with Brian and the crew trying to keep up. As we walked amongst the headstones, Maureen turned toward me, and before she could speak, I knew what she was going to say.
“So what’s the plan?” No, I wasn’t psychic. She always says that.
“I’m looking for a special grave. One with holes in the ground where you can see the bones and skull. You know, the one where I got slimed.”
“You got slimed?” Brian exclaimed as he darted up to my side. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a recorder. “Tell me more.”
“You never heard about that? Hmm, I must be slipping.” With the click of Brian’s recorder, I continued. “We were supposed to go on an investigation to a deserted island, but it got cancelled. In fact, that was to be Maureen’s first investigation with the group. Since we already had the cameras loaded with infrared film, we decided to use it in another investigation. After all, infrared film, which is heat sensitive, doesn’t last very long. So, Brian the Monk brought me here instead. He said this was a good place to use up the film. He showed me the photo that he took here, of a head coming out of the ground.”
“Do you have a copy of it?” Brian asked.
“No. But you can find it in Bob Cahill’s book, Haunted Happenings.”
“So, where did you get slimed?”
“Somewhere there’s a grave here…” I said, scanning the desolate parade of tombstones. “You can see the skeletal remains of the person buried there by peering through a hole in the eroding ground.” I chose my next words carefully, not knowing how a rational person would react to what I was about to say. “So when I was here with Brian, I stuck my camera in the hole to snap a couple of pictures, when all of sudden my arm from my wrist to my elbow was covered with a thick, black, oozy gook that burned terribly. There was nothing above or below me, it just appeared out of nowhere.” As I retold the story, the horror of the moment resurfaced to my consciousness. My heart began to thud wildly in my chest. “I—I just freaked.”
“What do you mean you freaked?” Brian asked.
At Brian’s question I could feel the anger building in my voice. “Well, what would you do, Brian? One minute I’m taking a picture, and the next minute I’m scraping thick, black, foul-smelling, nauseating crud off my arm. How do you think I felt? I was totally repulsed. Meanwhile, Brian the Monk is standing there, laughing at me. And telling me that I’d been slimed, thinking it was the best thing he’d seen since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“What was it? Did you get a sample?” Brian asked.
“Yes, tell me, Mr. Scientist,” Maureen said, gesturing with air quotes. “Did you take a sample?”
Glancing at Maureen, I couldn’t help but notice her smug smile. I just wanted to smack her. Since she had already heard the story before, she knew that the answer was no. “Well, Brian, I consider myself a man of science. After all, I did graduate with a 4.0 in Environmental Science. But, on that day and at that time, it was all for naught. I guess we never know how we’ll react until we face our darkest fears. I was so repulsed by it that I was consumed with the need to remove it as quickly as possible. A decision I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Brian’s voice suddenly escalated with excitement. “So do think you can find this grave?”
Hesitantly, I replied, “I’m not sure. It’s been awhile. But I have an idea. Why don’t you find it?” I turned toward Maureen, still irritated with her “sample” remark. “You’ve got the dowsing rods, smart ass.”
* * *
DOWSING RODS (DIVINING RODS)
L-shaped brass rods. The handles are approximately four inches long with copper sleeves that allow the rods to swing freely while being held.The rods will point in the direction that an object or place is located. Once the area or object is found, they will either cross over each other or uncross, depending upon the particular user’s energy field.
* * *
“Fine,” I grumbled at Ron. Grudgingly, I removed my gloves and pulled my dowsing rods from my back pocket. “What are we looking for?”
“You know, the grave with the hole in the ground.”
“Okay.” I positioned the rods in my hand, closed my eyes and made the request: “Show us where the hole in the ground is.” Both the rods spun, pointing the way
. Following the direction of the rods I took a step, then plummeted to the ground, my right leg disappearing into a gopher hole. I guess I had found what I’d asked for.
The sound of laughter reinforced my embarrassment. I was now the subject of unwanted attention, being asked to lead the team, only to fall on my face, literally. With one leg swallowed up to my knee, I was unable to stand. Finally, once the laughter subsided and they realized my predicament, both Brian and Ron reached down and pulled me out of my snare.
Doing my best to hide my mortification and regaining my balance, I quipped, “Okay, guys, I guess we’ll have to be more specific.”
Carefully rethinking my words, I once again repositioned the rods to dowse. This time I focused my intentions and phrased my request appropriately. “Where is the location of the grave?” I paused. “The one where Ron got slimed.” I felt both rods begin to vibrate slightly, as they slowly turned in unison, changing direction to the left of where we stood.
Following the rods, we began our search. We snaked our way through the ill-kept cemetery, past the crumbling stones, avoiding the gopher holes. I opened my mind to reach out to any spirits that may be around us. Although I was finding it difficult to concentrate in the bitter cold, I began to feel a low-level energy prickling across my skin, so low it was almost indistinguishable from the numbness I was feeling. But it was there. “Ron, I’m picking up on some energy. But, it feels more like residual energy than anything else.”
As we continued to follow the dowsing rods, Brian asked, “Residual energy, what’s that?”
“There are different types of energies. Residual energy, or a residual haunting, is like an imprint in time, or memories if you will. An echo of the past. Much like videotape, the event is replayed over and over again, with no intelligent spirit, ghost, or other entity involved. Whereas an intelligent energy or haunting is when a spirit, ghost, or other entity interacts with the living.”
“Here it is. I found the grave!” Ron yelled.
“Excuse me…you found it?” I asked, unable to squelch the humor in my voice.