The best way I’ve found to watch a ghost-hunting show when you’re a psychic medium is to make a game out of it. Every single show I’ve watched, from the big-budget shows that used to be all over television to the dinky little YouTubers who think that they’re able to catch a ghost while keeping to their dollar store budget, bring out these little trinkets and gadgets that are supposed to help them see ghosts. There are the small things, like the flashlights that are almost certainly broken, but if you untwist them in just the right way, they will sometimes flash at random when you ask a question. And then there are the more expensive ones, like the spirit box and the ovilus. Whenever they bring out something random, you take a shot. Or, if you’re already too wasted, I would recommend taking a shot of water - all of the fun, and none of the blurring the lines between life and death by drinking poison.
Because that’s what really happens, you know. When you’re younger, you hear adults cause liquor poison and you roll your eyes because as a kid, you think that if an adult doesn’t want you to have something, they’ll just call it poison to get rid of you. And yeah, sometimes I’ve found that to be true. But the first time I got too drunk and the ghosts started flocking to me because I was one step closer to the underworld, I was so freaked out that I stopped drinking for nearly four years. I took it up again eventually, though. You can’t have a hobby of watching randos on the internet screaming about a light thump that is definitely not a ghost without a little something to loosen you up. Plus, sometimes if I drink just enough, it makes the ghosts on the screen easier to see.
I first started seeing ghosts when I was about two years old, or at least that’s what my mom says. Every year around Christmas, my mom retells the story about her darling daughter, Andromeda (I know, don’t hate me, my mom chose that name) came up to her and asked about the old man sitting by the Christmas tree. Of course, she freaked out and ran into the living room, but there was no one there. When she asked me to describe the man, I tried my best, but come on - I was a two year old, and you’re lucky if a two year old can even identify a person correctly, much less describe them. But my mom apparently heard enough of a description to run to the family photo album and find a picture of her deceased grandfather, and my young self identified him.
And it was actually him, I found out in my older years. He doesn’t come around very much anymore, but he still comes to visit on Christmas Eve. Last year he was pretty weak, though - it wouldn’t surprise me very much if he faded from this plane soon enough.
And some spirits do just that, which is why we don’t have a ton of late 2000s “It’s Britney Bitch” ghosts running around anymore. There used to be plenty - trying to navigate high school while running into one of those on occasion was a real trick, especially since the ones I ran into most were the ones I had gone to school with. But I just went back to that school not too long ago for a reunion, and while there are still plenty of ghosts around there, the ones that I knew when I attended that school have all moved on.
That’s not to say that everyone becomes a ghost, mind you. Plenty of people die and then just move on, maybe stopping by once or twice, or maybe not stopping by at all. Ultimately, it can be really challenging when it’s somebody that I was hoping to see and they don’t show up again, but I get it. From what I’ve heard, the afterlife is crazy enough without having to worry about the feelings of someone on the other side.
When I say that I see ghosts, I don’t mean that I see what they see on ghost-hunting shows, by the way. It’s not all shadows and tricks of the light. They look just like you and I, which can be a little complicated if they are someone newly dead. When they’ve been dead a long time, sometimes their appearance can be a bit….weird. It’s like as time goes on, they don’t remember how people are supposed to look, or maybe it’s just their idea of themselves that gets a little twisted. Either way, when someone has been dead for a while, their facial features can be in a little bit too weird of a spot, or they can be missing them altogether. Sometimes people look a bit like they’re melted. And sometimes they can appear like shadow men, so I guess the ghost-hunting shows got at least one thing right. I assume it’s a pure guess from them, though.
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And sometimes people don’t want to be ghosts forever, and they need someone to help them move on from this world. That’s probably the hardest part of being a medium, in fact - as soon as a spirit realizes that you can see them, some of them will cling to you like crazy until you can solve whatever issue they have. Sometimes they need someone to guide them in how to cross over. Sometimes they need you to talk to someone else or finish a goal of theirs - whatever’s keeping them tied to this plane. And sometimes, it’s just been long enough since they’ve been able to talk to someone that the minute they see someone who can interact with them, they get a little obsessed.
One time, when I was in middle school, I had what I lovingly referred to as a ghost stalker for close to six months. It was an elderly woman who just wanted to talk, and she followed me around, all day, every day telling me about her life. I almost failed classes that year, and despite my mom believing that my gift was real, she hardly believed that that was the reason I was flunking my first semester of middle school. But eventually, the old woman got bored of me, because there were only so many things that she could talk to me about, and it’s not like I had a lot going on in my life that an old woman would be interested in either. So one day, I woke up and she was just gone. I don’t know if she finally found her way into the light so to speak, or if she just found someone else to follow around. Either way, I haven’t seen her sense.
That was about the time I started dressing like the goth kids in school, too. I wasn’t friends with them (or really anyone else in my school - it’s hard to make friends when you have to continually break off the conversations with them to chat with someone they can’t see), but I found that it made it easier for people to deal with the idea that I was constantly working with the dead. That tradition has stuck with me through all these years, and I swear that’s part of the reason I get some of the contract work I get. The police department or a private eye see a woman dressed all in black with a history of being able to quickly find the information they need, and they stop asking questions fast.
All that to explain why I was sipping a large mixed drink in my room in the dead of night, finally taking off my eye makeup while a YouTube video of some idiots trying to find a ghost using dowsing rods played shone from my laptop screen. The rods kept crossing at random as a grizzled-looking man watched from the side of the screen - slightly warped from time, but given the era that he was supposed to be in, not terrible. He wasn’t answering their questions, but he did at least seem to be entertained by them making a fool of themselves. I feel like that’s a pretty common feeling among ghosts when they run across these sorts of people.
“Did you see that?” screamed one of the men on the screen. Liam, I think? They’re a popular YouTube duo, Luke and Liam of GhostHunters180, but I’ve never been able to tell them apart. Granted, I’ve never really tried. “Grady, do you want us to leave?”
The drowsing rods crossed again as the grizzled man - I’m assuming Grady - chuckled. Both boys gasped and started talking about how they had to get out of there because they were clearly making the spirit mad. Then it flipped to another room - what must have been their designated safe room.
“Another aspect of the Peters Building is the winding staircase, that -” Something bright popped over Luke’s shoulder as he talked. I paused the video quickly, trying to get a better view of whatever it was, then scrolled down to the comments. Clearly, it must not have been a living person, because neither Luke nor the comments seemed to react. Whatever it was, it was short - the top of their head was just barely peeking over Luke’s shoulder. I went forward, frame by frame, watching the small object’s movements. Then, the face of a small girl popped out from behind him. I hit play, and Luke started explaining more aspects of the building that I didn’t care about.
The small girl looked at him and him only. That’s not that unusual for a spirit that’s trapped in a building when seeing someone new - but while I wasn’t particularly listening to the history of the building, I had heard enough to know that a small child in relatively new clothing would be an odd ghost to inhabit it. Then, the small girl turned to Luke and said, “Luke? I’m scared. Let’s go.”
Luke didn’t look that way, but his head moved just slightly in that direction, as though he had heard a noise that he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Well, shit, I thought. Either way, I was going to have to investigate it.