Most people who have never been ghost hunting don’t tend to believe me when I tell them the truth - for the most part, ghost hunting is really boring. A vast majority of it is sitting around, waiting for something to appear to you. And that’s for people like me who can see the ghosts. For someone who can’t, I have to imagine that it would be even more boring.
At least Luke and Liam came up with some activities for us. They had us walk into a room and answer some questions with those stupid low-quality flashlights (I thought about telling them that that wasn’t accurate, but I decided that if we got rid of everything that wasn’t accurate, it would be an even longer night), then we did some sessions with the spirit box, which is literally just a broken radio. If you listen to white noise for long enough, you’re bound to start hearing words, but at least they tried a method where one of them was blindfolded and listening to the box in headphones while the other answered questions. It was still gibberish, but at least it was more interesting gibberish.
After several hours of random other experiments, we were finally on to the last experiment of the night - they decided that the ghosts might be more active for them if they stayed in the most haunted rooms by themselves. Luke had just started a ten minute solo investigation in the basement. Caitlin stayed right at the door to the basement, ready to run down if Luke got too scared or, even worse, if one of the cameras died. When they were both set up, though, Luke suggested that we go back to the area where we originally talked about the history of the building. It wasn’t too far, he said, and there were chairs, and then we could actually chat without risking the investigation, all of which sounded great to me. Especially chairs - I wasn’t used to being on my feet for so many hours at a time, and I hadn’t considered that when I brought shoes with, so instead of Vans or something more comfortable for long periods of standing, I only brought my heeled platform boots on the trip. If I ended up “testing well with the audience” and joining them on more ghost hunting trips (which, honestly, after this one, seemed like a relatively fun way to make a paycheck, so I was significantly more interested in it than I was at the beginning. Even if it involved doing a bunch of shit that made literally no sense), I would definitely have to invest in better shoes.
Liam folded out both of the chairs and gestured to me to sit in one while he collapsed in the other. “Usually, I’m not this tired at the end of a hunt,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head. His dark hair flopped down in front of his face so I couldn’t see his expression, but I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “I don’t think staying up most of last night helped that much, and there’s only so much energy drinks can do.”
“Sorry for keeping you up talking to that old dude,” I said, relaxing into my chair. It was just a standard metal folding chair, but to me, it felt like heaven.
“I assume you weren’t able to miraculously help him after we left?”
I shrugged. “I’d feel bad, but I gave him a time limit for talking to me before I went to sleep, and I stayed up long past that time limit, and he still didn’t talk. At that point, it’s kind of on him.”
Liam sat up to look at me, running his hand through his hair to flop it back into its original position. “Approximately how many people have you managed to help cross to the other side?”
“Approximately?” I shrugged, giving myself an extra second to calculate. “That’s a bit hard, because I don’t really know if I helped anyone cross over while I was in like elementary school, but as far as I can remember, probably a couple hundred?”
“A couple hundred?” he let out a low, impressed whistle.
“It’s only like ten a year,” I argued.
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“Which is like ten a year more than the rest of us,” he responded. “You’ve helped a lot of people, and you’ve been through a lot of these experiences, I have to imagine,” he said, gesturing around the the dilapidated room around him. I nodded. “Then in that case, do you care to explain why you freaked out so much about earlier?”
I winced. “I was kind of hoping you’d forgotten about that.”
He cocked his head. “Why would I forget it? It’s not very often that someone turns as pale as a ghost right in front of me, all because she saw a little bit of paint. You were acting like someone who had never even been through a fake haunted house, rather than someone who works with ghosts for a living.”
I sighed. “It’s going to sound kind of crazy,” I started.
“This whole thing sounds crazy,” he interrupted. “How many people can say they’ve sat in a deteriorating building in the middle of the night as a job.”
“Fair point,” I conceded. “It’s not so much about there having been graffiti - I've been to places with way more graffiti in them. But you remember that dream I mentioned having this morning?”
He nodded and leaned toward me. His gaze was penetrating as he stared at me, as though I was the only thing in this crumbling building. “Your creepy dream that had something to do with ghosts, yes.”
“That’s the one. Well, in that dream, the ghost or whatever it was kept saying two things - he’s mine, and leave him alone. So, to walk into a building the day after that and see one of those things written on the walls… it just kind of shook me, is all.”
Liam nodded slowly, as if he was processing what I was saying. “And you don’t have this kind of dream often, then? Because to be honest, when you told me that you had a dream with ghosts in it, I was like ‘well no shit, this girl talks to ghosts on a daily basis, of course she’s going to have dreams about ghosts.’”
“Oh, I definitely do. Or, at least I think I do - ghosts look a lot different to me than they do to you, so it’s hard to tell.”
“Different how?”
I shook my head, searching for a good way to explain. “They don’t look like white fog, and most of the time they don’t look like shadows. They just look like humans, sometimes with just a little something wrong if they’d been dead for long enough.”
Liam sat for a moment in silence and then I saw my words fully click for him. “And that’s why you thought Carl was a person at first?” he asked.
I nodded, excited that he understood. “Exactly. So normally, if I’m dreaming about ghosts, they might have a weird outfit or something, but otherwise, they look just like anybody else. But in this dream, I couldn’t even see them. It was just darkness, and some unknown entity creeping up on me. And then it grabbed me on my shoulder.” I reflexively grabbed the same shoulder that had been injured in my dream. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it almost felt like it was sore.
Liam’s eyes flashed. “It hurt you? I always thought that it might be able to do little things, but I’ve always thought that those stories of people getting seriously injured by ghosts were bullshit.”
“They are,” I agreed. “That was probably the thing that freaked me out the most. I’ve dealt with a lot of ghosts, and while I’ve seen some angry ones, I’ve never seen one that was actually violent.”
He nodded slowly. “Do you think dousing yourself in holy water might help? We always bring some in our packs, just in case.”
It wouldn’t, of course. Holy water affected ghosts just like it did humans - at worst, it made them damp. But I couldn’t help but feel a warmth in my heart because of his attempts to help. “It couldn’t hurt,” I said with a smile.
He grabbed his pack from the ground and started the rifle through it, but we both jumped at the sound of shuffled footsteps from just outside of the room.
“Nothing,” Luke said as he walked in, closely followed by Caitlin. “Anything over here?”
“Andi’s got a ghost in her ass,” Liam said, passing me the vial of holy water he’d found.
“Oh shit, get your ass on camera,” Luke joked, his mood instantly lifted.
“Weird place to store a ghost, I would say,” Caitlin said, clapping me on the shoulder - the same shoulder where the ghost had grabbed. I don’t think it was just my imagination - it still stung, at least a little.
“No weirder than Luke keeping one as a girlfriend,” Liam said with a grin.
“Hey, I can’t help it if all the dead ladies love this guy,” he said, pointing to himself. “Now come on - Nancy’s at the gate waiting for us to lock up, and there’s a cozy bed at the hotel that’s calling my name.”
“Please promise me that you won’t call us all into your room for a ghost again tonight,” Caitlin said, grabbing one of the bag as the guys grabbed the others.
“I didn’t try to call you into the room in the first place!” I insisted. “But honestly, I’ll be glad if there’s not a ghost waiting for me tonight. Maybe the hotel would be fine with me switching rooms?”