Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown (27 page)

1. Now that you have everything assembled, what should you do?

a) Record the time and nature of the events

b) Start snapping pictures

c) Turn off all the lights in the house

d) Start asking the ghost questions

Tom decides it’s too scary to go back down to the basement just yet. He wants to stay in the kitchen. So you set your walkie-talkies to the same frequency, and then you head back downstairs.

2. The light switch is not working, so you turn on the flashlight. The next thing you do is…

a) Set up the tape recorder

b) Check to make sure the bulb is not burned out

c) Call Tom down and start a séance

d) Turn off the TV

After changing the light bulb, you take a look around the basement. The light switch now works perfectly, so you know it wasn’t an electrical problem. Still you feel a little strange. There’s something weird in the air. And what about the moaning sound? You think of all the places it could have come from—maybe the water heater or the window. You listen carefully for a similar sound, or a gust of wind, but there’s nothing. So you decide the next thing to do is to try to collect an EVP. You turn the lights back off and set up the tape recorder. Luckily you have an external microphone attachment, so you don’t have to worry about the internal noises of the recorder.

3. You say the date, time, and place into the recorder. What’s the next thing you say?

a) Why did you burn out the light bulb?

b) Ghost, show me another sign by moving the couch.

c) When did you die, and how did it happen?

d) Who are you?

You ask questions for about ten minutes. Although you haven’t heard any responses, you still feel something is present. Finally you say, “Show me a sign.” And right then you hear that moan again. This is pretty freaky, but you keep a cool head. The moan seems to be coming from the far wall. As you walk toward it, you get an unexpected chill in one spot. You think it might be a cold spot, so you use the walkie-talkie to ask Tom to bring the thermometer downstairs. After some convincing, he finally says OK.

When you take the temperature, you do find a drop in the reading in one spot. You measure nearby areas, and the temperature is much warmer. Tom snaps a few pictures to examine later and continues walking toward the wall to investigate the sounds.

The moaning gets even louder. You also notice some other faint noises mixed in with it. Then Tom notices an air conditioning vent. You realize that it goes straight up to the living room, and then you remember there’s a creaky door that leads to that room.

4. You set the recorder right next to the vent. What happens now is up to you. What do you do?

a) Wait to collect EVPs

b) Go up to the living room and experiment with the door to see if you can reproduce the noise

c) Take the temperature of the vent

d) Take a picture of the vent

Following some experimentation, the noise stops, and both you and Tom agree that it’s
possible
that the moaning was the sound of a creaking door coming through the vent. But you can’t be sure. You think it’s a good idea to take some more audio recordings and pictures of the basement. Tom then investigates the area around the cold spot more carefully. He looks for drafts or anything else that might explain the temperature difference. The temperature has gone back to normal, so Tom can’t find an answer. He definitely thinks the air conditioning vent has nothing to do with this particular phenomenon. It’s October, so the air conditioner definitely isn’t on. And if it were leaking cold air into the room, he would still feel it.

Tom feels as though all you’ve collected so far is a handful of questions. He wants more evidence, and you agree. Quickly you grab your camping compass from your backpack and walk slowly around the basement. You make sure there is nothing metal or magnetic around. First, you move along the walls, then you near the cold spot, and finally you check the middle of the room.

5. What will the compass tell you?

a) The compass will point directly to the ghost

b) The compass will point south instead of north, showing that a ghost is present

c) The compass will spin around, indicating that a spirit may be changing the electromagnetic field

d) The compass will point to the nearest graveyard

Nothing happens to the compass. No matter where you walk, it always points north. A little let down, you hand it over to Tom. He places the compass on a shelf on a wooden cabinet. The compass immediately starts spinning crazily back and forth. He calls you over to look.

“I don’t like this. Look at the needle move!” he says. “What if it’s a mean ghost?”

“Relax,” you say. You move the compass left, then right. As you move it, the needle moves in the opposite direction, toward the spot where it was spinning around. You point out to Tom that there’s an electrical outlet underneath the cabinet.

“It’s only electricity,” you say. “No ghosts in the walls here. This isn’t evidence, the compass is just reacting to the wires. I think we’ve done just about all we can here. What should we do now?”

Tom suggests interviewing your parents. Maybe they’ve experienced something similar that might help the investigation, or they might have an idea about why the light went out. You round everybody up and reconvene at the central command center. You ask questions about the building of the house, and you ask if there was ever any trouble with the wiring. Nothing comes to anyone’s mind. Tom asks about the moaning sound. No one has an answer.

Your dad brushes it off, saying your minds were playing tricks on you. But your mom seems a little less eager to dismiss what happened. She
mentions a chest of old clothes that was in the basement when they moved into the house, years ago. The clothes have been down there ever since. For some reason she just never got rid of them.

You think maybe the spirit could be attached to the clothes—that maybe when the spirit was alive, the clothes belonged to it. You and Tom go back down and check out the chest. It’s pretty close to where the cold spot was. You take a picture of the chest, which is pushed into a closet where your family’s winter coats hang. Tom makes one last attempt to get an EVP.

“Spirit, if those clothes belonged to you, please say something now.”

A few seconds later, Tom turns off the microphone. You both decide that you’ve collected enough evidence and that it’s time to draw the investigation to a close. It’s near midnight, and you need to be getting some sleep to go over the data in the morning.

When you wake up, you decide to first listen to the audio for EVPs. You listen carefully with headphones, but you don’t hear any suspicious noises, just the regular sounds of the basement… until you get to the part where Tom asks his last question. Right after Tom asks about the clothes, there’s a faint sound, sort of like the moan you heard the night before. You turn the volume all the way up and listen again. It sounds like a voice saying “my jacket.” You play the recording for Tom and ask him what he hears.

“It sounds like someone saying… something… ‘jacket,’ right?”

Since you both agree, this seems like pretty strong evidence. Now you look at the pictures. Tom looks at the picture of the chest he took right before he asked the spirit the question.

“Look at that,” he says, pointing to the middle of the picture. “Do you
see
that?”