Paranormal Solved
Grace Fleming
Copyright © 2019 by Grace Fleming
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Three Sheets Publishing
Savannah, Georgia
For my siblings, because we all grew up with those ghosts.
Contents
The Voice of Baal
1. Scholars
2. Observation and Participation
3. Interdisciplinary Studies
4. Operations Research
5. Unexpected Findings
6. Data Fabrication
7. Paradigm Shift
8. Peer Review
9. Literature Review
10. Meeting of Minds
11. Field Research
12. Species
13. Families and Subfamilies
14. Questions and Observations
15. Methodological Weakness
16. Consulting the Expert
17. Two Cosmoi
18. Duplication and Replication
19. Improved Procedure
20. Bad Experiments
21. Anecdotal Evidence
22. Physical Evidence
23. Logic
24. Observational Evidence
25. The Search
26. Knowledge
27. Revelation
28. Finding Truth
29. Colleagues
30. Research Notation
31. Contrasting Conclusions
32. The Final Say
33. The Convention Speakers
About the Author
Also by Grace Fleming
The Voice of Baal
"Why did you not kill the human?" The voice of Baal came to her from every direction. It seemed to seep from the flames of the fire.
The beast's black eyes looked down in shame. They appeared to glow red, as they reflected the dance of the fires that blazed around her.
"Did you not enjoy the flesh of the other one?"
"I did," she replied. She could not answer the question. She did not know why she did not kill. She had brought great shame to her tribe.
"Gaze upon me." The beast knew that the face of Baal had manifested in the fire, but she would not look. She could not. She did not deserve to look at the face of the king.
"Why can you not look upon me?"
"I do not know," the beast replied. She felt the coolness of a tear on her face, which was now burning hot from the flickering inferno. The tear seemed to draw a loathsome howl from Baal. Oddly, she was not afraid. She would surely be banished, but Gehenna would be a respite compared to the time on earth.
1
Scholars
"What is up with women's eyebrows lately?" professor Jerry Price asked, as he lazily gazed into the steamy swirl that hovered over his hotel coffee cup. Being the senior member of this group, he felt it was his duty to introduce a little humor. It was the third day of the research conference, and Jerry wasn't sure he could make it to the end without ripping off a big snore in the middle of somebody's presentation. "I had to tell my wife she drew hers on too high." The two men across the table just stared back at him with sleepy eyes, until Josh White, the youngest of the three academics, gave in.
"Really? What did she say?"
Jerry rubbed at his grey speckled mustache, as if deep in thought for a moment. "She looked surprised," he said.
Jerry threw his head back and let out a laugh that might have been a little too loud for the other attendees in the conference center breakfast room, but he just couldn't believe the kid had fallen for the old joke. He was rewarded by the fact that Josh was giggling back at him, his face bright red and still puffy from the early morning hangover.
"You are such a moron," the third man at the table said, as his brooding, dark eyes darted apologetically around the room. David Blystone was the most serious of the three, and if Jerry could be honest, the man could use a helping hand when it came to pulling the big stick out of his ass.
"Let's give him a break," Josh said. "I mean, I think that's the first time I've cracked a smile all week. Yesterday I sat for an hour and a half learning how to build a decision tree."
"It's a research conference," David said. "It's not supposed to be titivating." He stirred at his own cup of black tea for a second before speaking again. "But you're right. This conference is basically as boring as shit."
"Thank god," Jerry said, feeling relieved to know that the others were nearly as miserable as he was. He could be just as serious as anybody else when it came to researching and writing, but this conference was verging on torture. "Three days is just too much for such a dry topic. I know all I ever wanted to know about qualitative and quantitative methodologies. I say we ditch this place and go exploring a little. I'd like to see some historic stuff while I'm here. I hear there's an old oyster shucking museum."
David stared blankly back at Jerry, while Josh held an imaginary gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Obviously, his friends didn't understand the rich cultural significance of such a place. But then, they were scientists.
"Can we think of something else, before I pluck out my eyelashes for amusement?" David said.
Jerry scrunched his face in response, but neither of his friends noticed. They both seemed to be staring past Jerry's shoulder, gazing wide-eyed at something going on in the large lobby outside the breakfast room. He twisted his body around and glanced out the wide open doors, but he didn't see anything.
"Did you see what just walked by?" Josh laughed and jumped to his feet. He was looking around the room and pointing into the lobby. David was laughing, as were a few other people in the room.
Jerry hated being on the outside of a good laugh. He scanned the big hallway, but he was coming up empty. Just the usual bustle of people mulling around with name badges hanging from their lanyards. "What was it?" he said. But as the words left his lips, he spotted the apparent source of his friends' amusement. On the far corner of the grand lobby, a woman was waiting for her turn on the busy elevator. She was struggling to balance a large sign with the words GHOSTS AND SHADOW PEOPLE printed in red letters. Below the words, there was a large arrow pointing to the right.
Josh pushed his empty chair into place at the round table. "I have to follow that woman," he said. "I gotta see what that's about."
Jerry watched as Josh jogged across the lobby, making his way to the far side just in time to board the elevator with the sign-bearing woman. He envied the kid's youthful enthusiasm. Jerry could tell he was struggling to keep a straight face as he attempted to engage the woman in conversation.
"Well, it wouldn't be Savannah if we didn't see something weird," David sighed, as he sipped at his tea. He'd apparently recovered from his brief lapse into cheerfulness.
"Exactly!" Jerry said. "We can't spend three whole days in this city and not enjoy any of its oddness. It would be a crime. We've got to find a way to ditch this conference and catch a tour or something, while the dean is busy with her meetings."
"I dunno," David said. "Maybe we could find some trendy cafe and hang out. Maybe find some hot moms."
That was David in a nutshell, Jerry thought. He was a pretty simple guy. Basically, there were two extreme sides to the guy's personality: nerdiness and lechery. Jerry found David's skirt chasing to be a bore, but only because he, himself, had never found any other woman attractive since he'd met his current wife. But then, David had never achieved a serious relationship, either. He was handsome enough, with his dark hair and near-black eyes; he was just as bori
ng as a slug race most of the time. Jerry realized that he might need to sneak off on his own if he really wanted to enjoy himself at all in Savannah, and he was hatching a plan when he noticed that Josh was strutting back across the lobby toward them with a beaming grin.
"You guys won't believe this," he said as he approached the table. "Guess what's taking place on the second floor?"
"Some kind of costume thing?" David said. "Lots of people get into those."
"A paranormal convention," Josh said, sounding like he'd just discovered a new continent.
Jerry looked at David to observe his reaction, and he was relieved to see that the man was also baffled. "What the hell are they doing up there?" Jerry asked. "Like, a giant séance?"
"Nope. It's not just ghost stuff." Josh was sitting on the edge of his chair, chattering like an excited child. "There's all these rooms with signs in front of them. Apparently, they have lectures, like we do at our conference. Only their topics are things like ghosts, Bigfoot, and aliens. It's aweso—" Josh's last word was interrupted by his own abrupt laugh. "You guys need to go check it out."
To Jerry's surprise, David's face had softened into a smile. "Seriously?" he said.
"And you should get a look at the Bigfoot presenter," Josh said. "That woman is unbelievable."
"You mean in a good way?" David asked. Apparently, the kid knew exactly how to pique the interest of the dark-eyed biologist.
"I mean in an underwear model kind of way," Josh answered. He fashioned his hands into cup shapes and hovered them over his chest.
"That's it, I'm in," David said, as he jumped to his feet. "You coming?" David and Josh stared down at Jerry.
The thought of a museum really did appeal to Jerry. But he could always slip out later, when he became bored. "I'm right behind you," he said.
2
Observation and Participation
Jerry huddled in a metal chair in the third row of a near-empty room, bent down with his phone pressed to his ear to avoid the off chance that anyone in the hallway would hear him. One other man sat alone near the back of the room, appearing to be absorbed in some booklet. Like Jerry, the man was waiting for the next lecture to begin. It was scheduled to start in fifteen minutes.
"I feel like I’m in a crazy factory," he whispered to his wife on the other end of the phone. "They all walk around here looking very serious, like it's a real conference. I swear, some people will believe anything!"
"Jerry," Vivian Price said on the other end of the line, her voice not sounding at all as amused as Jerry had hoped. "You can’t get into trouble at the university for this, could you? I mean, what would the dean say? Does she know what you’re up to? She used a lot of her budget money to foot the bill for this little trip."
"Not yet," Jerry said. "But I’m not alone. Josh and David are doing it too."
"Are you serious? I can't believe David would go along with this. You and Josh, yes. But not David."
"I don't think we have to worry about David," Jerry said. "He got his first choice of sessions. You know that really hot chick who stars in that Bigfoot show?"
"You mean Sasquatch Encounters? Laura London is there?" Vivian sounded impressed. It wasn't that either of them actually watched a Bigfoot show, themselves. But their son did, and Jerry and Vivian just happened to catch a few scenes now and then.
"She's here, alright. You should see everyone following her around."
"Wait, what is your session about?" Vivian asked.
Jerry paused for a moment. He had a feeling that Vivian wouldn't approve of his selected topic, but something about it made Jerry curious. "The title is "Demons and Cryptids," Jerry said. "It sounded sexy."
"You are kidding me!" Vivian's voice was no longer the gentle, soothing tone he was used to. "That sounds horrifying!" The words sounded through his phone just as a few audience members entered the room. "Jerry, honey, I don't have a good feeling about this."
"Sshhh," he chuckled as he whispered into the phone. "You'll get me busted!"
"Are you sure you won't get caught?"
"It'll be fine," Jerry whispered through a fake smile. "You know Crystal is a cool boss." He was starting to regret calling his wife now. He'd expected her to get a good laugh out of this, but he should have known she'd worry. "And, besides," he continued. "We plan to tell her all about it tonight, over drinks."
"I just hope she doesn’t fire you all. I know she’s pretty chill, but she doesn’t always get your humor, you know."
"We'd have to do something pretty bad to get fired," Jerry laughed. We have tenure." He looked up to see two men hovering around the doorway, looking in to make sure they were about to enter the right room. "I’d better go," he said into the phone. "People are coming in."
He watched as a mix of people started to amble into the room. They all looked pretty normal, so far, although he wasn’t sure what he’d expected them to look like. He checked his conference name badge and twisted the lanyard around backward to hide the imprint, making sure that nobody could spot him as an intruder, when a tall, elderly man entered the room. He had a curly white crop of hair on his head that matched the equally white beard. The distinguished looking man nodded at several audience members as he made his way to the front of the room, toward a podium and a small raised stage.
"How are you?" the man said as he passed by Jerry. Jerry just nodded in response. He was half expecting everyone to break out in laughter and tell him this was all a joke. He’d managed to read a little bit about the speaker since he’d made the decision to crash the session. Apparently, this gentleman in the front of the room fancied himself an expert on cryptids of all sorts. Jerry wrote the words "chupacabra whisperer" on his note pad. The guys would crack up at that, later. He kept his eye on the man to see if he seemed to give off any eye signals to some secret co-conspirator in the audience, but the man just stood erect with his arms crossed in front of him and nodded as the room now filled rapidly. Someone in the back of the room rang a small bell, which signaled starting time. Once everyone settled into a seat, the man started to speak.
"As you may know by now, I am Dr. Johan Nilsson, and I am originally from Stockholm." Jerry wondered if the accent was real. People always fell for a good accent. "I’d like to start off by learning a little bit about you all," the man continued.
Jerry sunk lower into his chair. The last thing he wanted to do was introduce himself and have to come up with a lie about why he was there. He brainstormed for a fake name for several seconds before he realized he was being silly. Surely, the man didn’t actually intend for every person in the room to tell a personal story. To his relief, the man confirmed this.
"I’ll ask a few questions and you can answer if you feel comfortable," the speaker said. "I’ll just jump right in and ask the obvious one we’d all like to discuss. Has anyone in the room actually seen or had a first hand experience with any type of mysterious entity, whatever you may call them, be it gnomes, fairies, or the like?"
Jerry twisted around to see if anyone would actually speak up. A man in a red sweater sitting in the back of the room slowly lifted his hand. "I have," he said sheepishly. Everyone contorted their bodies and twisted in their metal chairs to take a look at the poor man.
"Do you feel comfortable sharing your experience with everyone?" Dr. Nilsson asked. "There’s absolutely no pressure."
"It’s fine," the man said. "There’s not much to tell."
Jerry could hardly hear the man from the distance of the long room, and he was glad to hear several audience members urging the guy to speak up. Apparently, nobody wanted to miss this.
"It happened so fast," the sweater man said, "that I have almost convinced myself that I am remembering wrong. I was walking through a dense patch of woods in Pennsylvania, where I used to live, when I turned a corner to see a little—creature, standing there. It was the weirdest thing, he had a look of shock on his face, as did I, I’m pretty sure. He just stared right at me for a minute and ran off into the woods, and t
hat was that. I didn’t see anything of him after that, but I was absolutely positive that I saw a humanoid, or whatever you want to call it, that day. And I can promise you that I had never believed anything like that existed beforehand. And, no, I wasn’t drinking."
The room filled with nervous giggles.
"What did he look like?" someone from the group asked.
The sweater man rolled his eyes upward and rubbed his chin, as if to conjure the vision in his head. "He looked like a stocky man, really, but one who only stood about two feet high. And I hesitate to say this, and it's why I never normally tell anybody...it just sounds so ridiculous..." The man paused, seemingly searching for words—or courage.
"Go on," the professor said.
"Well, I feel quite crazy divulging this bit. I’ve never told this to anyone outside this room. He was naked, for one thing." He paused again. "The creature's skin was see-through. I could see skeleton and organs. It was just horrible, really."
Several murmurs came from the audience, but Dr. Nilsson nodded knowingly. "I'm sure it was," he said in a soothing tone. "I'm sure it was."
"Well, that’s all there is to it," the man said. "I’m sorry it’s not a very exciting story, but I sure haven’t ever forgotten it." Jerry looked around the room where several mouths were hanging open. For a brief time, the room was silent.
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