My living space is sparse, barely furnished. I'm a bachelor by divine mandate, so I barely need furniture to begin with, and I try to minimize any risk no matter how outlandish it may seem. The fewer bits and baubles I own, the less likely it is that I'll give my haunting something to strangle me with, literally or metaphorically.

I glance back to the coin on the floor. It still lies where I left it a few days ago, heads facing up. A constant reminder that it was real. Likewise, I haven't refreshed the page or let my computer sleep, even after screenshotting the entire guide - just in case.

I let out a shaky breath, turning back to stare aimlessly at "Big Stack."

It feels so strange to finally have tangible, property-value-destroying proof that I'm dealing with a ghost, or maybe lots and lots of ghosts. Big Stack is like a monument to my strange life. No more ambiguous "problem" to worry about every night, just a strong suspicion of vengeful spirits. What a relief!

Not that this was by any means the best-case-scenario. Ghosts are pretty low on the believability stack, even with the requisite evidence. No one will or should believe me, and my paranoid brain is saving me from contacting someone who might actually. If ghosts are real, and I tell an exorcist I'm haunted - wouldn't it be my luck to get the genuine article, only to get whisked away to the Vatican and flayed alive for "demon worship," or something else equally outlandish? The blog didn't sound too optimistic on my chances of getting cured either. My "dynamo" landed on tails consistently and the coin was flung back up so quickly and violently. Ah, I digress.

As far as the layout of my flat goes... I slapped down my office space, a cheap rectangle desk with an even cheaper reclining office chair practically designed to ruin my back, in the space intended to be a living room. That little office square bleeds into a dinette with a wee table, two chairs, and a modest kitchen. Further into the flat, there are two bedrooms off of a hall, one totally unused, and the other mostly unused, with tatami mats spread across the floor and the futon I use for my bedding offset by a set of truly ancient cabinets and some old wood wardrobes I got from a Goodwill. To cap it off, a small closet, and one surprisingly large bathroom. It's not much of a place - at least as far as the States goes. I think Mr. G would kill me if he knew I even thought that this was "small" - but it's mine, and I'm proud I can afford it, at least for now.

My bedding and mats constitute some of the few true luxury products I own. I do get very nostalgic for my time overseas, sans the family death murder strangulation parts, and sleeping on a "normal" bed gives me the creeps. I don't like having lots of blind spots, so sleeping on top of a big human-sized one is anxiety inducing. I have better reasons than most to fear a monster (or a home intruder) hiding under my bed. The smell is as perfectly neutral as I can make it - not "clean"-scented spray but rather an authentic clean space. I'm pretty sensitive to smells in general, probably as a byproduct of getting stuck laying in bed for so long without any way to block my nose.

In summary, mixed-culture decor, no sense of interior design, and limited taste. I can't even call my home minimalist, I just have no clue how to decorate. In this case however, my negligence has paid off. Most people try to fill a space - in my case, all that frugality and emptiness means that I have lots of room to put... whatever I want. Including and especially my big-ass ghost science projects! It's not like I'll have visitors over to complain about it any time soon.

Enter center stage Big Stack, my first proper device. For my next iteration of the geist dynamo I decided to get a bit crafty, clearly cutting corners means an angry ghost will brain me with a coin flip. I put in a special order for a five-by-five-by-two foot polycarbonate enclosure from some electronics design company. The case came in first, but I asked for a special order - a thick semitransparent lid on the side facing me with an inset airtight hatch that can only open from the outside. With any luck it should enable me to safely toss in the coin and lock it back tight.

The lid is the last part I need to arrive to finish the design, and what I'm still waiting on - set to arrive any minute now - as I stare at the rest of my handiwork.

The "stack" part of the "Big Stack" refers to my new staircase to nowhere. I made it out of random shit I found on foreign package sites of dubious authenticity. The end result is a steep, nearly five-foot-tall behemoth of a stepladder made out of stainless steel and rubberized car door ramps. Surprisingly sturdy, for what it's worth. The steps consistently catch coins near the lip as they plummet, at least according to my tests with paste-free coins so far. I also bought a little shop stepladder to set outside the dynamo, so I can more easily chuck the paper seals above the contraption. The final product is twenty whole steps, which I can only hope is enough to produce lots of magic heat or whatever it's supposed to be.

I'm still not super convinced on the whole "channeling energy into squiggles" premise myself. When I read a bit further ahead in the blog, the author insists it's critical for the next steps though.

If your dynamo is active more that once a week and operates mostly uninterrupted, you have obtained sufficient resources from which to cultivate and harness the dislodged energy externally on normal human timescales. This presents you with a unique opportunity! By leveraging waste from entities consigned to other planes, even weak ones, craft corresponds poorly to the conventional understandings of power and cultivation from an internalist's point of view, nor does it require the exotic power-enriched materials of other, finer arts. So as a mundane water-wheel harnesses the force of a river without having to be strong enough to create a river of its own, you tap into far deeper flows than you may fathom.

Every art seeks to ascertain the Truth, but few aside from the craft dare tamper with True Knowledge itself. New readers will not understand well the source of that reluctance, but at least know this: your life will undergo a transformation no less harrowing than when mankind embraced fire for the first time, so poorly understood and perilous as it was. That's great!

Place your paper and seal atop the dynamo. Low quality seals and loci will fail over time due to excess force, and must be replaced manually, but do not throw away the waste, as it may be reused in various ways. As tempting as it may seem at first glance, avoid printing or artificially generating the seal itself: while this would create an extremely accurate seal, the intrinsic truth of the character is reduced by the distance from your intent, and most of the efficiency is lost.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Next, prepare an appropriate outlet. Metal is an appropriate first conduit for yin, most likely to retain energy long-term, and is often safe to the touch. Generally avoid gold or wrought iron, otherwise any metal that does not magnetize easily is a good candidate. A flexible medium has added benefits for future craft.

(｡•̀ᴗ-)

Once you have selected your first outlet, place it atop the paper seal in the center of the character and start the harvesting process.

If you used metal, the medium will begin to physically vibrate as the energy nears overload. Most other materials will tend to char or burn, though sufficiently pure liquids may metallicize (which may yet be repurposed) or transmogrify to ginkgo pulp (totally inert, wasted media). Total overload will cause the medium to detonate, releasing the karmic power as both heat and energy. There is no easy method to tell when a medium nears overloading. Hone your intuition and go slow. Unless you are old and risk imminent death. Ah, that shouldn't be a problem for most readers... ☆～(ゝ。∂)

My eyes glazed over a bit when I first read through most of the gibberish, but I did get the two main points down: this is a dangerous process, and you are creating a conduit for something dangerous and poorly understood to become even more dangerous and confusing. I guessed as much when the coin went flying straight at my face, but that analogy to discovering fire does put this elusive "craft" in perspective. Like electricity or flame, it's potent stuff, and you can't be too cautious with it. Which is why I did in fact order an orange hardhat, Bob the Builder style, and some nicely built safety goggles.

A consequence of the energetic system working too well is spontaneous paperclip detonation? With my luck? Bet your ass I'm gonna wear protection! Even if I look kind of silly with it on.

As far as the medium, I did go with paperclips in the end. I made three chains of twenty paperclips each, leaving them piled on my counter. There's really no point deviating from an expert's recommendations in a subject that you know nothing about, even if that expert seems like they may be seem highly untrustworthy, and/or a teenage girl.

Burrr-ing, a trill from behind startles me. It takes me a second to realize it was just my doorbell.

I got lost in thought - the final piece is already here!

I walk to my door and peer through the peephole. Sure enough, it's a crew of two, here to me bring my enclosure. The two men hold the giant plastic box from either side - standing outside my door awkwardly. It's not that heavy, probably forty or fifty pounds empty, but it is quite large after all. I wait, staring through the peephole... Naturally, my instructions to do a contactless delivery were lost. No surprise.

I'm tempted to screech at them to leave it at my doorstep and go through the doorway, but the smoother this exchange goes, the better. If it gets taken away for they complain that's more scrutiny or more delay.

I cautiously open the door a tad, waving the men in silently.

The first one squints at me suspiciously, and I recall I'm still wearing the hardhat and safety glasses. That's not... too weird, is it?

"You Jimmy?" He asks gruffly.

"Haha," I half-mumble, "yeah." I try not to visibly cringe at the awkwardness, both that of my poor anxiety-laden communication skills and my strange get-up. The scent of sweat and Pine-Sol is a bit distracting, too, to make matters worse.

Thankfully he doesn't seem to care enough about my strange outfit or behavior to ask anything more. I open the door all the way and wave them in more urgently, and the gruff one takes the lead. The other man's eyes go a little wide - just now seeing me - but he doesn't seem inclined to say anything. They shuffle it into my office-living room and I point at the back, mumbling that they should set it "over there" in the vague direction of my very strange looking home-built stepladder in a case.

Shit, I'm going to get some social media horror story about me, aren't I?

Against all odds, the two men seem remarkably professional about the whole thing. In short order they have the heavy lid set down and aligned with the case. The gruff one passes me a sheet of paper to sign and date, and then they're off in a hurry. I exhale a sigh of relief, going to close the wide-open door as they leave, only then noticing that one of my neighbors - an older gentleman who lives across the road from me, currently doing up his lawn - is staring right at me. Right at me, and straight into my flat. In fact, he's probably been there the whole time, and he just saw me get a huge weird industrial-style box in my home, right next to my weird DIY project of unknown purposes, while I wear an engineer-like hardhat and safety glasses combo.

Shit, he's gonna think it's a meth lab. A federal investigation into my weird self-flipping coin trick, now that'd be wonderful.

I smile woodenly and wave at my neighbor, then very gently, carefully, slam the door. Stalking across the room I throw myself into the process of putting together the geist dynamo to calm my mind.

It doesn't take that long at all to assemble - the lid is built to be detachable and I sized out the model for the stack just right. Once the lid is on I smile contentedly at my handiwork.

I gather my courage, snagging a seal and a chain of paperclips, and hop up the stepladder beside Big Stack. I gently stack the first paperclip chain atop the seal on the dynamo's lid, and reach over to pop open the hatch on the front of the new enclosure. Mercifully, it opens easily, emanating a gentle hiss as the air balances slightly between the room and the container. I probably should have checked to make sure the hatch worked as intended before the crew left, but whatever.

The only thing left now is to start the thing up.

With trembling hands, I approach the coin - still laying on heads, days later. I poke at it tentatively and eventually grab it... Nothing happens, of course. I rub the coin gently in my grip. It's cold to the touch, one side still a little sticky from sweetened red bean paste.

I walk over to Big Stack and set it gently inside. I leave the coin on the top step heads-side up, slamming the hatch shut. The coin slides, before falling to the second step. Tails.

I watch almost mesmerized as, step after step, the coin lands on tails over and over again, defying any conception of realistic probability. That's when I notice it - the twenty-clip-long loop atop the seal is already vibrating ever so slightly, so gently. It's hard to believe but squinting at the chain I'm confident I'm not seeing things. This dumb contraption is really working!

My excitement builds. I step back off the stepladder, waiting for the coin to hit the bottom, bracing for what comes next.

The coin lands at the bottom. Not heads, on not tails. No, instead, it lands perfectly on its edge, with the heads-side of the coin facing me. Which is... lucky? I have no idea what a coin on its edge means luck-wise actually.

I step back, going to check my computer, but I stop and twist around when I see movement out of the corner of my eye. Alarmed, I duck reflexively, only to realize that the face of the coin seems to have turned to match me. I walked a good four feet to the side, but the heads is still facing dead-on in my direction. Eerie.

Experimentally, I try walking across the room toward the other wall. A moment later, as I watch, the coin starts to pivot, ending with the head facing exactly in my direction. I dash back and forth but the heading follows me effortlessly like a compass to magnetic north and I'm left feeling silly. The paperclip loop atop Big Stack is more visibly vibrating now, jittering atop the seal. It doesn't seem like it's about to burst yet - not that I know what that would look like, I mean, but there's no sign of metallicization or lighting-on-fire or whatever either.

I walk back to my computer, a pit forming in my stomach. I try to ignore the coin out of the corner of my eye as it turns gently while I walk, the head spinning to follow me.

Okay, what the hell is going on now? Only one way to find out, I guess.