Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (11 page)

Joyce Sandstrom gave a quick laugh. “I wouldn’t call myself
sure
about
anything
at the moment. But the boys and I compared notes. Everything matches up. We
think
it’s the same man.”

“Have you seen him anywhere else in the house?” Grant asked.

Mrs. Sandstrom shook her head. “No. Just near the front door and over by the fireplace. Nothing upstairs at all.”

“Okay,” Jason said. He shut the file folder with a snap and stood up. “Thanks for giving us such a great head start. We’ll take it from here. Come on. Let’s get set up.”

“Are you getting any readings?” Lyssa whispered later that night.

She and Grant stood in the entrance to the living room. The room was very dark. This made the ceiling feel even lower.

The only lights in the room came from Lyssa’s flashlight and the two red lights along the top of Grant’s EMF meter.

“Nothing yet,” Grant whispered. “Let’s head into the living room. I want to check out the fireplace.”

“Right behind you,” Lyssa replied.

She followed Grant into the room. Jason and Mike were covering the hallway near the front door. Mark and Jen were in the Command Center in the back of the house, keeping an eye on both locations.

Grant held the EMF meter out in front of him. As he walked, he moved it slowly up and down and from side to side. The detector had a line of red lights across the top. At the moment, just the first two lights glowed.

The lights are probably on because of the TV set and DVD player,
Lyssa thought. She knew the EMF detector reacted to an increase in the electromagnetic field, which could be caused by electronic devices.

Lyssa carried a voice recorder in addition to the flashlight. The team also had put voice recorders and video cameras in the room.

“This is Grant and Lyssa. We’re in the living room,” Grant said in a low voice into the recorder.

He went over to the fireplace. Lyssa walked around the edge of the room. Then she went over to the couch. She stopped behind it. She stood right where the boys had been the night they saw the man. Whoever he was.

“I’m going to try to make contact,” Lyssa said.

“Go ahead.” Grant nodded.

Lyssa cleared her throat. No matter how many times she did it, this moment always gave her a thrill—the moment she tried to talk to a ghost.

“Hello?” Lyssa called in a firm, clear voice. “My name is Lyssa Frye. The person with me is Grant Wilson. If there’s someone here with us, can you give us a sign?”

She paused.
Slow down, Lyssa,
she reminded herself.
Remember to take it slow.

Lyssa knelt where Ron and Dave had. She set the flashlight on the floor.

“If there’s somebody here, can you try to move this flashlight? Just give it a push. It will roll.” Lyssa stood up and stepped back toward the window. “Can you make it roll toward me?” She waited, her eyes on the flashlight. It didn’t move. “Anything?” she asked Grant in a low voice.

Grant scanned the fireplace area with the EMF detector. “No,” he answered. “Nothing.”

“There are two boys who live in this house,” Lyssa continued.
“Ron and Dave. Maybe you have seen them. The boys think you are sad. They want to find out why. They want to help you. Can you tell us what you need?”

“Whoa,” Grant whispered. “Big energy spike. I think you’re reaching him!”

A chill ran down Lyssa’s back. The room was definitely colder.

“Oh, yeah,” Grant said. “And we’ve got six lights now.”

Grant stepped away from the fireplace, toward the center of the room. He held the EMF detector out in front of him. He was trying to see where the surge in energy was coming from.

Lyssa knelt to pick up the flashlight.

The second she touched it—the flashlight went out!

Lyssa gasped and straightened up. Was this the ghost’s sign Lyssa had asked for earlier? Was the man about to appear?

“Lyssa,” Grant whispered. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

She froze.

Step, drag. Step, drag. Step.

Step, drag. Step, drag. Step.

“Footsteps,” Lyssa choked out. She fought back her fear. “Like someone limping. Dragging one leg. Where is it coming from? Can you tell?”

The room felt so cold now, goose bumps tingled up and down her arms.

“From the entrance to the room,” Grant said. “Just like in the boys’ drawing.”

Step, drag. Step, drag. Step.

“That means he’s probably heading for the fireplace!” Lyssa cried. “Better move, Grant! Get out of the way!”

Lyssa darted toward Grant. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward her, behind the couch. Away from the fireplace.

Step, drag. Step, drag. Step.

The scraping footsteps kept coming.

Lyssa whacked the flashlight against the palm of one hand, desperately trying to get it to come back on.

“I just wish we could see something,” she said.

Step, drag. Step, drag.

Then silence.

“They’ve stopped,” she breathed. “The footsteps have stopped.”

“At the corner of the fireplace,” Grant whispered. “Right where they did before.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well, we were trying to reach out to him,” Grant said. “I’d say we got a pretty big response, so let’s keep it up. How about if I try?”

“Go for it,” Lyssa said.

“Hello, my name is Grant,” Grant said in a low, firm voice. “We heard your footsteps just now. It sounds as if you’re having trouble walking. Are you injured?”

Lyssa wrapped her fingers around Grant’s arm.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered.

“I hear it,” Grant replied.

A sigh. One long sigh of weariness and pain.

Suddenly, Lyssa realized she was crying. Huge, hot tears rolled down her cheeks. No investigation she’d ever been a part of had made her feel this way.

She was in motion almost before she realized what she was doing. She moved around the far end of the couch to the coffee table. There was a straight-backed chair on the other side of the table. Lyssa remembered it because that’s where she’d sat when she first met the Sandstrom family.

Lyssa walked to the chair and lifted it off the floor. Then she turned and carried it to the fireplace.

“Here,” she whispered. “Won’t you please sit down?”

“The flashlight went out,” Grant told the TAPS team. “And the room got icy cold.”

A hush fell over the long conference table. The team members leaned forward, eager to hear every detail. It was the next day at a nearby hotel. Time to review what had happened.

“We didn’t see anything,” Grant continued. “But there was energy all over the place.”

“As soon as I put the chair down, the energy changed,” Lyssa said. “The levels dropped back down. Not like the entity
disappeared, but like he… relaxed somehow. I wondered if maybe he lived in the house at one time. If maybe that spot by the fireplace was his favorite corner.”

“We couldn’t see him,” Grant said. “But we
knew
he sat down in the chair when Lyssa brought it over. Somehow, we could just tell. It was really pretty remarkable.”

“All the action was clearly in the living room,” Mike said. “Compared to you guys, Jay and I had a totally quiet night.”

“Maybe the recorders picked up something,” Lyssa suggested.

All eyes turned to Jen. She had her laptop all set up, ready to play back any evidence the cameras and voice recorders picked up the night before.

“I’ll cut right to the chase,” she said. “The video cams didn’t pick up a thing. Except for all you guys, of course. Not so much as a shadow.”

“Well, that’s disappointing,” Mark commented.

“Yes. That’s the bad news. But here’s the good news,” Jen said. “Listen.”

She pressed a key on the laptop and the audio began to play back. Lyssa leaned forward. She could hear what had to be Grant’s footsteps and her own. Then came Grant’s voice saying their names, setting a base reading for the audio recorders. She heard the conversation she and Grant had while investigating the room.

Then:

Step, drag. Step, drag. Step.

Lyssa jerked straight up in her chair. The footsteps had been captured on the audio recorder!

No one said a word.

And then they all heard a whispery voice from the laptop:

“My leg… so tired.”

Lyssa felt her whole body begin to tingle.

“Man, oh, man,” Jason said softly. “That’s him. The ghost! We caught it on audio!”

Grant added, “I think he just explained the scraping footsteps, Lyssa.”

“Unbelievable,” Lyssa murmured. “Do you think he was walking all that time just looking for a place to sit down? He just wanted to rest?”

In silence, the team listened to the rest of the playback. Then Jen punched off the sound.

“You know, Lyssa, for somebody who
didn’t
hear what that guy said, you did a pretty great job of coming up with just what he needed,” Jen observed.

“I just wish we knew who he was,” Lyssa replied.

“Actually,” Mark Hammond chimed in, “I might have a little information. I think there’s a pretty good chance he was a soldier during the Revolutionary War.”

“Excuse me?” Lyssa exclaimed. “How on
earth
could you figure a thing like that out?”

“It’s all in the research,” Mark answered with a smile. He
opened a folder and pulled out a map. On it, he’d drawn several yellow lines.

“A couple of the biggest battles of the Revolutionary War were fought in this area of New York. In 1776, not long after the Declaration of Independence was signed.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jen said.

“Things didn’t go so well for the colonial troops,” Mark went on. “They had to make a run for it.”

“Did any of this happen near the Sandstrom house?” Lyssa asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Mark nodded. “My research shows that the Sandstrom house was once the biggest farmhouse in the area. There wasn’t really a town. The farmhouse would have been the only building for miles around.”

“Which would have made it an ideal place to shelter wounded soldiers,” Lyssa added. She sat back. “Wow.”

“Don’t forget the drawing that Dave did,” Mark said. “It was pretty rough, but those clothes are right for the time period.”

Lyssa’s cell phone rang. She checked the number.

“That’s the Sandstroms,” she said. As chief interviewer, Lyssa often gave clients her number. She took the call.

“Hello? Oh, hi, Joyce.” Lyssa listened intently for several moments. “Yes, yes, I understand that must be disturbing. Hang on just a minute. I’ll find out.”

Lyssa covered the phone. “It’s Joyce Sandstrom,” she said in
a low voice. “She’s been hearing the footsteps going back and forth between the door and the living room all day. She sounds very upset. She’s almost crying.”

“Tell her we’re on our way,” Jason said.

“Joyce?” Lyssa said into the phone. “Hang on. We’re coming right over.”