Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (9 page)

“My name is Lyssa Frye. I’m not here to harm you or get you in trouble. I just want to talk.”

Mike whispered to her, “I think we should check inside these cells.”

“Okay.”

They went into the closest one. The roof was lower than the hall, and Lyssa had to duck a little to fit in. It was very uncomfortable, and after only a few minutes her back began to ache.

She and Mike studied the walls. There were carvings everywhere. At the back of the cell, Lyssa sat down on the ground. She didn’t want the sounds of her moving to mess up her audio recordings. Mike sat a second later and focused the camera on the entrance.

“Is there anybody here with us?” she called out.

She waited for a response.

“Lyssa… do you hear that?”

Lyssa closed her eyes to concentrate. She breathed slowly, feeling her lungs expand and contract. Then she heard it. A faint scuffle.

“Footsteps.”

“I thought so, too,” Mike whispered.

“It’s coming from the hall. Let’s check it out.”

They got up and walked out of the cell.

“Whoever is here, please walk toward us,” she called out.

They stood their ground, waiting to see what would happen. Lyssa’s muscles were so tense she felt as if they would snap. Her fingers tingled. The footsteps were coming closer. And they were faster!

Closer, closer… coming right at her. Then they stopped.

“We’d like to communicate with you,” Lyssa said loudly. “Can you make that noise again?”

Every second that passed was like a year. Lyssa knew there was a spirit present; she could feel it. Whoever it was stood only an arm’s length away. Lyssa strained her neck forward, hoping to hear another footstep.

But what she heard instead made her jump back in shock.

It was clear as could be.

“NO!”

For an instant Lyssa couldn’t focus on anything. She was too stunned. Lyssa rewound the audio recorder and played it back, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining it. She heard herself say, “Can you make that noise again?” A few seconds of whooshing noises from the recorder followed. Then she heard it again.

Someone with a deep voice growling, saying,
“NO!”

Mike was amazed. He kept staring at the recorder in disbelief.

“Lyssa, we can’t stop now!” he said at last.

She nodded. Lyssa fast-forwarded to where she left off and began recording again.

“Who am I speaking with? Tell me your name.”

Silence.

“How long have you been here?”

No answer. She continued to ask questions. After a while, it became clear that whoever responded to them before was not willing to talk anymore.

“Lyssa, I think we got more than enough for one night. Let’s pack it in and go over this in the morning.”

On the way out she took one more look at the Citadel. When she had walked in just a little while ago, she saw only an empty room. But now she had the awful feeling that there
were
prisoners in Alcatraz.

And they would be prisoners forever.

The next day in their hotel room, Jen and Lyssa were going over the evidence. Jen had her eyes fixed on a monitor, watching each corner for anything that went unnoticed the night before. Lyssa had headphones on and listened to the audio evidence. She wanted to go straight to the part she recorded in the Citadel, but she knew she had to listen to the whole recording first. A few times she thought she had caught EVPs, which are sounds made by spirits that can only be heard on an electronic recording. But when she played them for Jen, she always found a logical explanation for them.

Finally Lyssa reached the Citadel section. With the audio
equipment she had, Lyssa was able to clean up the recording. After replaying the growling
“NO!”
she had to take off her headphones. It was like a ghost speaking right into her ears. It made her feel uneasy.

“What did you find?” Jen asked.

“It’s a VP.”

“I think you mean an EVP. Finding a VP means you actually heard the sound at the time of the recording.”

“I did hear it. Mike heard it, too; he can back me up. But last night we agreed not to tell anyone until I was able to clean up the audio. We didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Here, have a listen.”

Jen put on the headphones. Suddenly her face lit up.

“That’s awesome! That might be the best evidence we’ve gotten yet.”

She handed back the headphones to Lyssa. Lyssa continued to listen to the recording but stopped after only a few more seconds. She thought she found something. There was a soft sound in the background. She rewound the tape and listened again. There was something unnatural about the sound. It wasn’t just normal background noise. Lyssa thought maybe she had caught an EVP. She rewound the tape and listened three more times. Then she said, “Jen, I think I just heard something better…”

Jen put the headphones back on. Lyssa stared at Jen, waiting for her to react.

Jen gasped and covered her mouth.

“Lyssa, we have to get everyone in here now!”

This time the boat ride to Alcatraz seemed much quicker to Lyssa. She was too excited to notice that a light rain was falling or that her stomach was rumbling because she hadn’t eaten anything that morning.

They met Frank at exactly the same spot as last time. He took them quickly up the road and back through the main entrance. Frank led the team into an office, and everyone sat around a desk.

“Hi, Frank. We’ve got some interesting news for you,” Jason said.

“Oh, really?”

“Really. Let’s jump right in.”

Mark and Jen explained their experiences in the medical ward, retelling how the door closed on its own and how the phantom smell of soap floated up from the empty bathtub. Frank seemed taken aback.

“Wow! That’s really creepy stuff. Prisoners who had to go into surgery were scrubbed clean first in that tub.”

“We didn’t see any prisoners,” Mark said. “But I think that’s a real possibility of paranormal activity with the evidence we
did find. There just aren’t any other logical explanations for what happened.”

Then Jason and Grant talked about their investigation of cell fourteen on D Block. They explained how gases from a sewer line might have made people feel dizzy or even imagine they saw things.

“But,” Grant said, “we still couldn’t find a reason for the EMF spike, which is strange.”

“This is all very impressive,” Frank said.

“Well, we haven’t shown you everything yet. Lyssa, why don’t you tell Frank what happened to you and Mike?” Grant said.

“Sure. Mike and I investigated the Citadel. Very shortly after we went down there, we started to hear footsteps. They were coming straight for us. It sounded just like a regular person walking up to us. We were able to catch it on tape.”

She hit the play button. Frank nodded.

“I definitely hear that!”

Lyssa stopped the player.

“Then the footsteps stopped. I asked if the spirit could make the sound again. And we got an answer.”

Lyssa started the recorder again. Right after the
“NO!”
came snarling out of the speakers, Frank sat straight up.

“That’s the same voice!” Frank said. “I could swear that’s the voice I heard.”

“That’s pretty amazing, but that’s not all. At this point, I felt pretty sure we were in the presence of a spirit. So I asked a normal question. I asked what the person’s name was. Listen closely.”

Lyssa played the recording. She heard her own voice say, “Tell me your name.” Then there was a murmuring, faint sound.

“It almost sounds like a message…” Frank said.

“Let me play it for you again. I’ll turn up the volume.”

She hit play. This time the sound came through loudly. A breathy voice said:

“Harry… Brunette. Three. Seven. Four.”

Frank looked stunned. Lyssa rewound the tape and played it again.

“We looked up the prisoners’ list. Prisoner number 374 was named Harry Walter Brunette.”

A quiet fell over the room. Eventually Grant broke the silence.

“Then we did some more research. Harry Brunette was a bank robber and a kidnapper. He was even declared a public enemy by the FBI. When the police finally found him in New York City in 1936, there was a long shoot-out at his apartment. Eventually he was captured and brought here. With all this evidence, I have no problem saying Alcatraz is a haunted site.”

Frank seemed upset.

“What’s wrong?” Lyssa asked.

“I always sort of felt in my gut this place was haunted. But now with all this proof… well… is there anything to be worried about?”

“The inmates may have been dangerous when they were alive,” Jason said. “But now, you have nothing to be afraid of. Seriously. From all we’ve seen, it seems they’re just trying to communicate. These ghosts won’t harm you.”

Frank let out a relieved sigh.

“Good. Thank you. I really appreciate you coming all the way out here. I’ll take you back down to the boat.”

As the steel door slammed behind her, Lyssa smiled. She was glad to have found such hard evidence. And even happier to be escaping from Alcatraz.

R
on and Dave Sandstrom crouched in a corner of their living room. It was the middle of the night. The boys knew they should be in bed, but there was something weird going on in the Sandstrom house.

Thirteen-year-old Ron was determined to find out what. Dave, who was only ten, insisted on tagging along. Because his older brother claimed he had seen a ghost.

Ron wasn’t sure that he believed it, even though he saw it with his own eyes. But Dave was totally into ghosts. He was always reading anything he could about TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society. He wanted to be just like its founders, Jason and Grant.

If the weirdness in the Sandstrom house really
was
a ghost, Dave was sure he could help.

The two boys waited for hours. First they waited for their parents to go to bed. Then they waited for them to fall asleep. Finally it was time. They snuck out of bed, grabbed the flashlights they always took camping, and tiptoed into the living room. There they crouched down behind the couch. Their goal was to get close to the fireplace… but not
too
close.

The fireplace was where Ron had seen
him.
The ghost.

“Did you really see something?” Dave asked now. He was trying to sound calm, but his voice trembled. He wasn’t sure if it was from fear or excitement. Waiting for something to happen was a lot harder than he thought. Before tonight, Dave never realized that just
waiting
could freak a person out.

“I told you,” Ron replied. “I saw a man wearing these weird old-fashioned clothes. Mom said she saw him, too. Only over by the front door.”

Dave shuddered. “What about Dad?”

“I don’t think Dad’s seen anything,” Ron said. “But he’s the one who said we should start writing stuff down.” He glanced down at Dave. “What’s that thing those guys always say?”