The Haunting of Westbane

Chapter Four - Edwards House Investigation

Elijah

Ghost hunting looks sexy on TV only because someone has spent hours editing and splicing together all the interesting clips. The real thing is very tedious, especially when it seems like the location isn’t very active. This one, so far, looked like it was going to be difficult to spice up. Saying that though, with the initial tour done, we still had to complete the actual investigation of the property.

It took hours to set up for the night and then we all did our own hair and make-up. Anthony, Jeremy and I just added a little liner around our eyes so that we didn’t look like aliens in the night vision shots. Harley, on the other hand, went all out. By the time she had finished primping in the Edward’s driveway, she looked like a naughty version of the girl next door. It took annoyingly long for her to put said face on, but, I had to give to her. The end result was hot.

The four of us entered the house and stood around in the kitchen. “This house is too small,” I stated. “Let's go in one team at a time, otherwise we will be hearing each other move around too much. I'll go first with Tony. Jeremy, if you and Harley want to go around the outside while you are waiting, get some footage of the exterior of the house, check out the yard, anything that looks like it has creepy potential.” I made sure that Harley went with Jeremy on purpose. It was a cowardly move, but I didn’t feel like being alone in the dark with my ex-girlfriend. That just sounded like a bad, bad idea.

“So... when I’m on camera, should I bring up the stuff that Mayah said in the basement?” Harley asked, “Jeremy showed me the first footage.” I could see she was fighting to keep a straight face.

“Um...” I really wanted to dismiss what happened in the basement, but this was the s.hit I had to work with to make my uncle happy. “You could use it as a basis for questions. ‘Did you die in this house?’, ‘Did any children die in this house?’, ‘How did you die?’, ‘What do you want with Peter?’” I felt myself frowning, “But try to avoid leading with any kind of story that we haven’t confirmed to be historically accurate yet.”

She nodded, and Tony and I went into the house.

We started in the kitchen and began rolling film on each other. Each of us had a small handheld camera, along with other toys and gadgets. I set the Ovilus on the kitchen counter and started talking to the small, square device... talking to myself, or talking to spirits, whichever way you want to look at it. The device, like a digital ouija board, had unique sensors that measured all sorts of things like vibration, temperature, magnetic fields, and air pressure. The readings would be compared to a database of words that a ghost could tap into, allowing it to select what it wanted to say from the nigh-on endless selection of phrases available. As soon as it had picked a choice of words, they would come out of the speaker and be displayed on screen too. “Hello? Is anyone here with us tonight? My name is Eli...this is my friend Tony. We just want to communicate with you.” We stood in the dark, with only the screens of our devices for illumination. I had a flashlight tucked into my belt, but I kept it off until I really needed it.

I paused for a long minute. The house was silent. So silent I could hear myself breathing. For the sake of the viewing audience, Anthony said, “This box on the counter can help you communicate with us.” After another prolonged silence, I decided to move on, turning my camera on Anthony, who was sweeping the room with the EMF detector. It also remained quiet, with only a slight blip when he moved over the coffee maker and the microwave.

We moved into the small dining room. “Would you like to try something else, maybe?” I asked out loud, setting another one of my toys down on the round wooden table. We call it the Static Box, because mostly, that’s what you hear as it scans quickly through radio frequencies. I tried again. “Is there a spirit here with us tonight? Can you talk to us? We aren’t here to hurt you; we just want to understand what’s happening.”

The box hissed with noisy static, interrupted by slight blips as actual radio stations tuned in and out in rapid succession. It wasn’t the radio stations we were interested in, but the white noise between them.

“Burning.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked across the table to see if Anthony had heard the same word I did. He nodded with excitement and trained his camera on the box. He asked the next question. “We heard this house burned down. Did you die in the fire?”

Another long minute of nothing but static stretched out. I was about to give up on the Static Box when a few more words tumbled out of it in broken fits.

“I want…”

“...the girl…”

“Bring back…”

The voices of spirits that came out of the device were difficult to decipher as human. Not only in this case, it always sounded like they spoke each syllable with a different disembodied voice.

“Ass…”

“...holes…”

Anthony couldn’t help laughing, “Did that thing just say a.ssholes? What the hell!?”

I chuckled as well, but felt the hairs on my arms starting to stand on end nevertheless. “Who’s an a.sshole?” I asked the box, unable to keep myself from poking fun at this surly spirit. It seemed like it was done communicating with us though. I kept asking random questions, just trying to elicit some kind of response. But we spent another 15 minutes listening to empty static before we switched it off and continued through the house. It wasn’t much, but at least we got something more than Mayah rambling on in the basement, like some kind of second-rate freakshow act.

“What do you think about this house that was built here? The builder did a really nice job, don’t you think?” I asked the spirit. I was really running out of questions to ask. Placing the Ovilus on top of a built-in cabinet in the living room, I swept my flashlight over the hand-carved details. “Did you used to live here?” Anthony lowered himself down onto the couch and switched over to the thermal camera.

“You got anything?”

“Nope.” He panned over toward the stairwell. “Oh, hold on... check out the stairs.” He lowered his voice to a hushed tone.

I never really understand why people start to whisper on a ghost hunt. Did they think the ghosts wouldn’t hear them? Or maybe they thought they’d scare the dead away if they talked too loudly? Either way, I moved beside him and watched the thermal camera over his shoulder. It showed images in a scale of colors based on temperature. With black being ice-cold, white being the hottest temperature the camera could register, and the rainbow spectrum in between. The staircase was mostly portrayed in cool colors, with the coldest spot being at the window on the bottom landing. The square window faced out into the driveway, and I could make out the lights where the others were congregating around the van. “I don’t see anything?” I said, scanning the screen.

“There, about halfway up, there’s a cold spot.” He focused the camera on the spot. According to the digital display, there was a mass of cold air about two degrees cooler than the rest of the room. We have a theory in ghost hunting, that when an entity wanted to manifest itself, it would draw energy from the surrounding environment, causing the air temperature to drop in its immediate vicinity.

“Is that you on the stairs?” I called hopefully. I almost jumped out of my skin when the Ovilus broke its silence and spit out a word.

“Baby.”

“Oh my god, ‘baby’?” Anthony sputtered. That was a rookie mistake. When you get evidence, you want to stay quiet, so that you can hear whatever is coming next. I put my finger to my mouth to cue him to stay silent.

“Are you looking for your baby? Or maybe you are looking for Peter? He’s not here tonight.”

“Fire.”

“Hurt.”

“Tired.”

Were those just random words? Or did they have meaning if you strung them together? I felt a thrill along my spine. “Were you hurt in the fire? Why are you bothering this family? Why do you keep taking their stuff?”

My heartbeat was hammering in my chest, but the words had stopped again. We waited for a long time, but nothing more came through. The cold spot on the stairs dissipated, and nothing registered on the EMF detector. We trudged up the stairs, feeling my nerves twang with every creaking step. But for all the excitement and anticipation... nothing else happened. We spent time in the boy’s room, the parent's room, and eventually went down into the basement. We asked questions, and we tried out different devices but got nothing else.

Zip.

I had really thought that this would be the space where we might get something. It had neither proved nor disproved Mayah’s play in the basement. So, we tapped out and let Jeremy and Harley go in. Maybe they would have more luck. We filled them in on what little action we had recorded and then went out to get some coffee out of the thermoses we had prepared.

Mayah was camped out in the front seat of Brendan’s Honda, with the seat tipped back and her bare feet propped up on the dashboard. She had the hood of her sweater pulled down so low over her eyes that I couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. Judging by the slight part in her full lips, I guessed asleep. I huffed a little bit as I passed her and went to join Brendan in the back of the van. What kind of psychic sleeps through the whole investigation?

Around 4:00 am we wrapped up.

“Did you get anything good?” I asked Jeremy.

He shrugged his big shoulders. “I don’t know. Some noises, maybe. Bumps in the night. Nothing too exciting. Will have to play back the audio to see if it was really worth it.” I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. This house was a dud. No lights turning off and on, no opening doors or slamming cupboards, none of the team being scratched or bruised, no unexplained footsteps. No audible voices. Just those disparate words on the two devices.

I had been in the game long enough not to get excited about inconsequential evidence. I was never one for reaching. It had to be real, solid, or I just wasn’t interested.

Without personal, measurable, recorded experience, what we had captured didn’t count for much. I highly doubted there would be enough interesting footage to even put together an episode for my YouTube channel, never mind the kind of pilot my uncle was after.

But then again, you never knew what would come out in the footage.

Yet, as we packed away, I found myself seriously rethinking my decision to bring Mayah on board. What had I expected? Well, perhaps I had been reaching.