by JL Bryan
“Just a couple centuries’ worth of junk,” I said. “This attic is an ideal ghost habitat, lots of hiding places, lots of old stuff that had emotional significance to somebody.”
“Where should we set up the cameras?”
I considered it. The room was enormous, running the full width and length of the house below, all the walls still deep in shadow even when the dinky overhead light bulbs were lit.
“Point them in different directions, try to cover as much area as you can,” I told Stacey. “Definitely get the stairs in the shot. We might catch something coming or going.”
Stacey began setting up the tripods. I let her handle the work, since she has a bachelor’s in film, and her job title is tech manager. My job title is lead investigator, so it was my job to stand around and lead, I guess.
I closed my eyes, trying to get a sense of the room. It was unsettling, but not cold and scary like the craft room. There might have been something there. I don’t go by feelings, though, so I brought out my Mel Meter, a device that measures both temperature and electromagnetic energy.
While Stacey prepared and tested the cameras, I did another slow lap around the attic, ducking under timbers and weaving through furniture. The EMF readings spiked a few times for no obvious reason—no electrical outlets or anything like that. They were strong, five to six milligaus, indicating an active presence.
The attic wasn’t particularly cold, but it wasn’t as roasting hot as it should have been, considering it was July in Georgia. It was actually a pretty pleasant temperature, like the presence was just there to help cool the house.
“Are you feeling anything weird up here?” Stacey asked when I returned. She’d finished the cameras.
“I got a few energy spikes,” I said. “The temperature is lower than you’d expect.”
“But it doesn’t feel creepy,” she said. “I felt like something was watching me, but it was almost benign, like a house pet. I didn’t see anything.”
“If there’s anything up here, the worst it’s done is throw a box of Christmas ornaments down the steps,” I said.
“I thought that was the poltergeist,” Stacey said.
“Or it might have been the poltergeist. There’s too much going on here. Come on, let’s get moving. Maybe you can dazzle Juniper with your charm and personality. I really want her to do those psychic tests with Calvin.”
Chapter Six
Stacey knocked on the door with the skull and bones warning us away. There was no answer, so she knocked a little louder.
“What?” screamed an angry banshee voice. The door flung open, and Juniper stood there scowling, ready to snap. Then she saw her mother wasn’t present, and she relaxed a little. “Oh. Yeah. You’re the vampire slayers or whatever.”
“That’s us,” I said, my voice barely audible over the blasting music behind her. “We just wanted to ask you about--”
“Go away!” Juniper screamed, and I recoiled, a little startled.
She was looking past me. Her little brother Crane had silently opened the door behind us and leaned out to watch.
“But I want to know what you’re doing!” Crane shouted back.
“Leave us alone!” she shouted.
“Hey, buddy, we can talk later if you like.” Stacey patted Crane’s shoulder. “We’re just going to talk about boring girl stuff with your sister.”
“You’re gonna talk about the ghosts,” Crane replied with a pout. Well, the kid was right.
“Stop being such a buttbone!” Juniper said, and he stuck out his tongue at her. She sighed and turned to me. “You want to talk in my room? He’s being a total nozzle today.”
“What’s a nozzle?” Crane asked.
“You are,” Juniper informed him.
“Yeah, let’s check out your room, Juniper!” Stacey said, nudging her way inside.
Crane continued staring at us until Juniper closed the door behind her.
“Sorry, that’s so embarrassing.” Juniper sat on the bed and gestured to a small armchair strewn with dirty laundry and old candy wrappers.
“Go ahead, Stacey.” I gestured for her to sit on the laundry chair, suppressing a grin. Stacey, trapped by a sense of manners and hospitality, reluctantly took her seat, perching herself on the front edge of the cushion.
“Can you turn that music down a little? It’s kind of hard to talk,” Stacey said. That was Stacey, relating to Juniper and connecting to her on her own level.
Juniper gave an overblown sigh, grabbed a thin black wafer of a remote, and turned down the stereo.
“What’s going on?” Juniper asked, dropping to sit on her bed again. “Did you find any ghosts yet?”
“We’ll be watching for them all night,” Stacey said. “Do they freak you out?”
“I guess.” Juniper shrugged. “Stuff’s always bugging me. If it’s not the ghost, it’s my brother--”
Her stereo turned itself up to ear-punching maximum volume, rattling the room with the screeching voice of an angst-filled boy-band singer. Juniper shouted and pointed the remote at her small, sleek stereo, but the volume didn’t drop. She shook her head and crossed the room to turn it off manually. When that didn’t work, she yanked the plug from the wall, and the stereo finally fell silent.
“You see what I mean?” She dropped the stereo plug to the floor like a comedian ending her act. “This is my life.”
“Juniper, do you know what a poltergeist is?” Stacey asked.
“Yeah. My parents told me you think I have one. But I already knew what they were. Do you think I made the poltergeist? You think it’s all my fault?” Juniper looked at me, as if she didn’t quite trust Stacey as an authority on the subject. It’s the glasses, I think. They sometimes make people think I’m smarter than I am.
“I don’t think it’s your fault,” I said. “Nobody creates a poltergeist on purpose. Why would you? They hang around harassing you, breaking your stuff, feeding on your energy. Who would want that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and looked at the floor. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It just feels like I did it.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “How can I stop it?”
“First, we’re not even sure it’s definitely a poltergeist,” I said. “Maybe we’ll learn more tonight. One way you can help us would be to take a test to evaluate any latent psychic powers you might have.”
“My parents told me. What kind of tests?”
“Just some standard things—Zener cards, hidden objects, maybe a PK test.”
“Is that like with needles?” Juniper asked. “Like taking blood?”
“Huh? No,” I said. “It tests whether you can move objects with your mind.”
“Weird. I don’t know.” She shrugged.
I approached her bookshelf, where I’d noticed a few volumes about Wicca and Tarot cards tucked among the vampire romances and horror comics. Some of them were books I’d read as a teenager, Llewellyn Press books on spell-casting and divination, and some of them were darker, their black covers adorned with lurid pentagrams. It looked like Juniper was going through the same kind of phase. I think it’s perfectly natural to be obsessed with the occult for a while after you see a nineteenth-century ghost burn down your house and murder your parents—or anytime you have ghosts infesting in your house, I suppose. Juniper was trying to cope with restless spirits and a troublesome poltergeist.
“This was one of my favorites as a kid,” I said, pulling out a book called Earth Magic and Your Kitchen. “I tried to cast a spell on my algebra teacher.”
“Did it work?” Juniper asked, leaning toward me with sudden interest.
“I don’t know. I wanted him to stop picking on me in class. He ended up having a heart attack. He didn’t die, but he was gone the rest of the year. I stopped messing with it after that. Do you ever try to do the things in these books, Juniper? Or do you just read them?”
“Just read,” she said quickly. “I mean, who�
��s going to sit around and do that stuff with me?” Juniper looked between Stacey and me. “How do you get to be a ghost hunter, anyway?”
“You have to go to college,” I told her, since I figured her parents wouldn’t mind that answer. “So, what do you say? Will you do the test?”
“Can I help with your ghost hunting stuff, too?” she asked.
“Definitely!” Stacey said, hopping to her feet. “We’d like to set up some gear to monitor your room. Can you help us carry it from the van?” Clever Stacey, roping the girl into doing some free labor.
“What kind of stuff?” Juniper asked her.
“Special cameras and microphones to help us find the ghosts.”
“Oh, yeah.” Juniper slid off her bed. “Whatever I can do.”
“Does that mean you’ll do the tests, too?” I asked.
“If they say I’m psychic, does that mean I made the poltergeist?” she asked.
“It means it’s possible,” I said. “But you have to understand it’s not your fault, either way.”
Juniper nodded.
A few minutes later, her mother looked surprised to see the girl carrying equipment in with us.
“You aren’t getting in the way, are you?” Toolie asked.
“No, Mom, I’m not.”
“She’s a big help, ma’am,” Stacey said, flashing a smile. Toolie just gave us a worried look, like she didn’t want her daughter to get too chummy with the weirdo ghost investigators. She frowned as we went upstairs together. I wondered if she was thinking about her daughter’s apparent interest in witchcraft.
We set up a pair of video cameras and a microphone in Juniper’s room. I doubted we would get anything on the microphone—poltergeists are creatures of action, not words—but I didn’t stop Stacey from setting it up, since Juniper seemed so interested in our process.
“Have y’all ever really seen a ghost on these things?” Juniper asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stacey said. “Sometimes they’re just cold spots or little orbs, but sometimes you get an image so clear it makes you jump out of your socks.”
“Would tomorrow afternoon work for the testing?” I asked Juniper.
“Whatever, I’m not busy,” she said, looking between the cameras. “Should I try to make the poltergeist do something?”
“Are you able to do that?” I asked, surprised by the idea.
“Uh, I don’t know. Can I? I mean, it’s my poltergeist. It should listen to me.”
“They typically don’t,” I said. “But...honestly, trying won’t hurt anything.” I couldn’t say whether I was humoring the girl or genuinely curious whether it might work.
“Okay. Um...” Juniper stood at the foot of the bed, took a deep breath, and pointed at her laundry chair. “Poltergeist...attack!”
All three of us watched the chair. Not a single dirty sock or spiky black belt stirred.
“Maybe I need a better target.” Juniper grabbed a stuffed animal from the floor and tossed it into the chair. It looked like a zombie rabbit, about two feet high, bright green, with yellow button eyes and lots of visible Frankenstein’s-monster stitching.
“Hey, that’s pretty cool,” Stacey said. “A zombie bunny.”
“There’s a bunch of different Zombie Zoo animals,” Juniper said. “I really want the kangaroo. It has a zipper pouch with a zombie joey inside. So ugly and cute.” She balled her fists on her hips and stared at the stuffed rabbit, her jaw clenched.
I couldn’t help sharing an amused smile with Stacey. The girl was dedicated.
“Okay, poltergeist!” Juniper stabbed all ten fingers in the air toward the zombie bunny as if trying to cast a spell. “Go, poltergeist! Sic him!”
Stacey and I couldn’t help bursting into laughter at the words “Sic him!” and, after a second, Juniper laughed with us.
“What on Earth is happening in here?” Toolie walked into the room, frowning even more as she looked at the three of us laughing at the apparently hilarious stuffed bunny rabbit.
“I was trying to get my poltergeist to attack,” Juniper said.
“Oh, my word.” Toolie gave me a questioning look.
“Don’t worry, Mom, it didn’t do anything,” Juniper rushed to say. “Maybe I just need to tell it to bug me, and it’ll leave me alone.”
“I think it’s getting to be bedtime, Juniper,” Toolie said, but she was still looking at me.
“Nine o’ clock? On a Friday?” Juniper asked.
“We’ll get out of the way,” I said. “Juniper, if you could do us a big favor, just go about your night as you normally would.”
“Okay.” Juniper nodded as we left.
“Listen,” Toolie said in the hall, after closing her daughter’s door. “We’ve had some trouble with her getting into, well, black magic and occult nonsense. We do not want to encourage her. I hope you understand.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Paulding,” I said. “We’re only trying to understand the problem. What kind of trouble did you have?”
“We found her up here with a friend one night,” Toolie said. “They were doing Tarot cards. By candlelight.” She shook her head. “It was troubling.”
“We’ll be sure to avoid anything like that,” I said as we walked toward the stairs. “The psychic tests we’re doing tomorrow were developed by parapsychology departments at major universities.” I didn’t mention that most of said parapsychology departments had since been closed down.
“So she agreed to do them? And she offered to help you with your work?” Toolie shook her head. “Miracles, miracles.”
Downstairs, we prepared the living room in a way we hoped might draw the ghost’s attention. Stacey and I set out a game of Monopoly for four players, and we arranged the Candy Land game with the little plastic children at random points on the board, as if a game were already in play.
At the phonograph machine, we carefully slipped a record of a song called “Cheyenne” by somebody named Billy Murray out of its stiff yellow sleeve. We placed it on the turntable in case the ghost felt like cranking it up again.
I walked with Stacey to our van outside, which is our mobile nerve center for all the cameras, microphones, motion detectors, and other gear we spread throughout the haunted houses we investigate. The rear of the cargo van has a couple of narrow, extremely uncomfortable drop-down bunks, plus racks and bins to hold our equipment. An array of small, built-in monitors enables our tech manager—that’s Stacey—to sit and watch activity all over the house at once.
As the lead investigator, I would go back inside and watch for ghosts in person. Sometimes they don’t show up on camera, but are very clear to living eyes.
“All ready?” Stacey asked me while we strapped on the little headsets that would keep us in voice contact all night. I don’t really like wearing the headsets, because they remind me of some nightmarish orthodontic gear I wore as a teenager.
“Yep,” I said. “I’m not too worried about this house yet. As long as Mr. Creep stays upstairs in the crafts room.”
“Yeah, that was the worst place in the house,” Stacey agreed.
“I think there are different ghosts that play with the games,” I said.
“Noah and Luke?”
“If I see them, I’ll ask.” I double-checked my toolbox for all the gear I might need, then started inside.
“Testing,” Stacey said over my headset as I approached the back door of the house.
“Copy,” I replied. Because we talk like that sometimes.
The Pauldings had gone to bed. I sat down in a comfortable overstuffed chair in a corner of the living room, right behind the thermal and night vision cameras so I could watch their display screens. My job was to stay quiet, observe, and hope for a ghost or two to pass by during the night. I would make a few rounds with my Mel Meter to pass the time, looking for unusual energy or temperature patterns. In case nothing happened, I’d brought a paperback of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, because I’d been meaning to read that one for a while.
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I didn’t get to read much, though, because a few things did happen, and they weren’t altogether pleasant.
Chapter Seven
Sometimes when I do overnight observations, I bring an inflatable mattress or sleeping bag to kind of camp out in the house. This is usually because I’m in some creepy basement or some long-neglected room where the ghost has taken up residence.
The Paulding house was already so jammed full of antique furniture accumulated over the generations, though, that it seemed absurd to bring in one more item. I was perfectly happy to take the corner chair in the living room, which was so big that I could comfortably sit cross-legged in it.
I made a few rounds of the first and second floor, noting EMF spikes right around the door to Juniper’s room. Maybe it was the poltergeist or another spirit, but it wasn’t doing much to make itself known so far.
The electromagnetic readings spiked again when I peeked into the crafts room with the unused sewing machine and overflowing closets. The room was cold and filled me with dread, but I didn’t see anything happening in there.
The action really started at about one in the morning. I was back in the living room, and I heard a thud somewhere far above.
“Did you hear that?” Stacey asked over my headset.
“I heard something go bump in the night,” I replied. “Did you see anything?”
“The attic. A cardboard box toppled off a stack of boxes and landed on the floor. Saw it on night vision. It was right next to that old rocking horse.”
“Anything else happening up there?” I asked.
“I think I saw...wait, let me back up the video...yep. A little orb sailed through the box right as it fell. Just a tiny circle, like the size of a penny. Nothing else...wait. Now there’s something on thermal. It’s a cluster of little cold spots, blue spots. Not really a cloud, just a jumble. It’s moving toward the attic stairs.” Stacey gasped a little. “I think I picked up something on audio.”
“What did you hear?”