Ghost Hunters Draft 1

        "Okay, I think we're about ready to start this thing. Angles, you got the cameras in place?" I called across the room to our camera man.

        "Oh yeah. Not a single corner of this house will be off-screen tonight, Jeremy." Elian answered in his light Hispanic accent.

        "And that's why we call you Angles. Nice job." I smiled, "Ted, Angelina, get 'em online and keep the computers up." Reaching into a bag by my feet, I picked five digital voice recorders out and passed them around.

        From the beginning, this case seemed uninteresting. I run a group of five paranormal investigators – ghost hunters, for those who dislike big words. We always run into cases from people infected with the paranoia inherent in living in a large, empty house, and this case certainly felt like one of those. The house was relatively large at two stories with at least five rooms on each, but the more important detail was that the woman lived alone. Of course, that always at least doubled the paranoid thoughts every time something creaked in the house.

        I couldn't tell her that, though. Our site advertised that we investigated any request. We didn't get many, either, but it worked out since we only worked weekends. This client was the next on the list for this weekend, and I sent Jersey over to talk to her on Friday afternoon. Jersey's our group's customer service, in a way. She's good with people – at least, a whole lot better with people than I usually am. She came back to report the story later that night; it seemed pretty routine.

        The lady's husband died in the house about five years ago. Presumably, old age did it, as the lady looked a little shrunken with age, with a face filled with the kind of wrinkles associated with frequent smiling. Jersey reported her to look about eighty. Her husband likely looked around the same age when he went, either white-gray hair or nothing on top of his head. Shortly after it happened, the lady – she identified herself as Erica – started hearing various sounds throughout the house. Jersey mentioned creaking floorboards at all hours of the night, and whispering sounds at random times of the day as the top occurrences. Ted made a joking crack about dementia at the time, and his mother, Angelina, had scolded him lightly for it while the others and I laughed. Although, I admit that the joke seemed to ring slightly true to me.

        Either way, our promise brought us to the house for an investigation, and our set-up had just finished. Similar to all the popular ghost hunting shows, we set up cameras and explore houses with voice recorders, looking for strange happenings and voices, unheard at the time, left on our recorders. Less similar to them, we always left the lights up. I never understood why the shows always killed the lights just to add to the atmosphere in the shows. For one, it makes things harder to see when reviewing the night on camera. Mainly, though, it directly contradicts the theory that spirits draw energy from their environments. If that theory is so widely believed, then why turn off so many potential sources? Expecting very little, we started our initial walk through the house.

        "Ted, Angelina, take the upstairs. Elian, Jersey and I will make our way through the upstairs. After a bit of that, we'll switch. Sound good?" We had our system down to a science. Ted and Angela worked too well together to ever split them apart in their investigation. Jersey, Elian and I knew each other well enough to play off of our individual techniques perfectly.

        "Oh, sure, I just love being stuck with Mom all the time." Ted muttered, grinning as Angelina gave his arm a jab with her elbow.

        "Sounds pretty routine to me, boss." Elian smiled, playing with his recorder, flipping it around in his palm. Jersey remained turned away, chatting with the house's owner.

        "No, I'm sorry, we usually ask the client to stay out of the way of our methods so we can ensure efficiency in the search."

        "But miss, you don't understand. It only happens around me." The old lady's voice reminded me of trees rustling in a light gust of wind, quiet with the kind of hoarse that many older people seem to begin permanently talking in once they push past sixty.

        "I know, you mentioned that when we talked yesterday. Don't worry, though, the cameras will miss absolutely nothing, no matter where you are tonight. If anything happens, we'll catch it on video, I assure you." Jersey's voice contrasted Alice's impressively, a soft breeze uninhibited by anything. Still, her assurances did nothing to help the worries engraved all over the old ladies face.

        "I can't even come with the two going downstairs?" She pressed, and I looked at Angelina.

        "Nah, we wouldn't mind." She told me.

        "Alright then. Jersey, we'll let her go with Ted and Angie just this once." Angelina glared at the shortened use of her name, but decided now wouldn't be the best time to protest. Jersey turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow. I nodded, and she turned back to Alice.

        "Well, okay then, I guess just this once, you can go with them." Alice smiled, those particular wrinkles deepening, showing their frequent use.

        "Thank you, young man."

                                        - - -

        Who ever said that a lit room couldn't be creepy? The lady's lights cast a pale yellow in every room, some changing to an equally disturbing pallid white. Every bit of furniture resulted in a shadow, dark like the shadows in an oil painting. Even worse, our own shadows have taken on the same tone, and the glare of the lights seems to highlight every imperfection on the skin. I have to wonder why the lady lives in a place like this.

        Speaking of which, having her follow us around down here is spooky for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. It might be something in her hunched posture, or the way her breathing gets heavy after a few feet. I really wish Jeremy hadn't let her come down with us.

        "Is there any presence in the house that would like to make itself known?" Mom called out to another empty room, holding a tape recorder out. The lights flickered.

        "You see that?" I asked.

        "Of course I did, Ted." She glanced around, "Was that you?"

        "Oooh, I think it was!" The old lady clapped, her voice reminding me of squeaking hinges, "This always happens right before I turn the lights out for bed."

        "Hmm. What time is that, normally?" I asked.

        "About 11:00. Why?"

        "Well, it's 11:00 now. That could very well be why it happens... Maybe it's a regular thing with the wiring." Mom said, knowing, as always, exactly what was on my mind.

        "Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense."

        "Could always be something residual, too." I mentioned as I turned from the room to check the next one. Tilting my head, I stepped inside. It was darker than the shadows thrown by the furniture inside the lit rooms.

        "Residual? What's that?" The old lady asked, stopping outside the room.

        "Well, it's when a haunting re-manifests itself at the sames times. It could be each day, or maybe each week, or each year. The flickering could always signify the start of something like that." I explained, "Hey, Mom?"

        "Yeah?" She called from the other room.

        "Why's this room dark? I though we had all the lights on."

        "I'm not sure. Try finding a light switch?"

        "I found one, but it's not wor--" The door slammed shut, encasing me in utter blackness.

                                                  - - -

        "God, miss! Get in here!" The old lady called after I heard the sound of the door slamming. She stood at the door, spindly fingers clutching at the door knob, trying to push it open. It wouldn't budge.

        "Is that the room my son went into?" I moved her aside and gave the door a shove.

        "Yes! The door's stuck! It's never done that before!" She cried, I glanced over and saw true worry in her eyes. Suddenly, it was infecting me.

        "Ted, are you alright in there?" I called, a frantic tone creeping into my voice as I still tried to force the door, "We'll get you out, don't worry!" The others ran down the steps, asking about the slamming and the noise.

                                                            - - -

        Silence filled the darkness I found myself standing in. There may have been sounds in the distance, maybe like banging or voices, but there was no way for me to tell. As I walked around, taking each step cautiously so as not to run into any furniture or walls, I suddenly had the sense I was standing in a much larger space than the room actually had. This worried me, and I could feel panic gripping at my mind.

        "You're going to want to get out of here." A deep voice muttered into my ear.

        "What? Who said that?!"

        "Away from the house in general." It continued, as if uninterrupted, "There's a lot going on here, and it doesn't take a brilliant mind to know you're in danger."

        "Danger? What kind of danger?!"

        "Oh, I'm not gonna hurt you. But the other one might. She eats the souls of mortals to remain on this plane of existence." It whispered, seeming to come from everywhere, "Get. Out." As if those words were a cue, the lights flared up, almost blinding me in the process. The door flew open, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw the entire gang, along with the old lady, staring into the room at me.

        "Ted, you alright?" Jeremy asked, stepping forward. I stumbled forward, waving my hands at him in the universal 'stop' gesture.

        "Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't step in here. I don't know if it'd happen again."

        "If what would happen again?" Jersey asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

        "L-let me see if it's on the recorder." I stammered, fumbling with the recorder's buttons with shaking fingers. The recording rewound a couple minutes with a whir and began playing back with a click. The voice on the tape was garbled, but audible through static. A moment passed in silence, Jeremy narrowing his eyes to a slit and touching his chin in contemplation.

        "We have to leave." He murmured.

        "What?! This is exactly what you were looking for, wasn't it?" Alice cried. Jeremy turned to face her.

        "It's what we were looking for, yes. But this is something significantly more than what we're prepared for. Maybe we'll come back with more equipment. A priest, even. But that's not Ted's voice for sure, and it's very clear compared to most of the sounds we get on these things. We've clearly got a haunting – we don't need more investigation to see that; and if the voice is to believed, there's something very dangerous here. We have to leave. And I suggest you get out of here, too. Go live with someone until you can get this taken care of."

        She fell silent after Jeremy spoke, and for the first time, we went about unhooking all our equipment only an hour after the investigation began. The camera in the room that closed behind me stayed in the house – none of us felt like going to grab it.

                                                                      - - -

        Mom and I spent the next day doing our real job on this team – looking over the video and listening to the recordings. Aside from the voice on my own recorder, no one else had anything but the slamming door. It was the videos that ended up looking the most fascinating.

        "Ted... Come take a look at this." Mom whispered, staring wide-eyed at the video screen. I walked over and watched for just two minutes as my heartbeat became very still.