“
Well,
shit-t-t-t
….I guess we ain’t gonna get no P.I.E. from Dog the Bounty Hunter tonight after all, huh?”
Justin laughed, his taunt pointed more at my employer’s fondness for silly acronyms that represent…well, corporate silliness. P.I.E. stands for ‘Performance, Image, Exposure’, and is what Senior Leadership uses to evaluate an employee’s promote-ability. Yep, there’s another word from corporate America that isn’t really a word, and it’s used to support a subjective concept to evaluate talent. Not to mention talking about how good or bad ‘pie’ is can get a dude in a lot of trouble when referring to the females I work with.
After a dexterous hand shake with Justin, I took my place next to my wife, sharing a warm kiss scented by the Zinfandel she sipped on. I nodded to the rest of the gang with Angie and Jackie across from me and Tony and Tom huddled at the table’s other end, apparently looking over the photos from last night’s investigation.
“
I’ve decided to try the smothered chop steak that Fi likes so much,” Justin announced, nodding toward Fiona.
“
Good choice!” she beamed. “We’ve already ordered, and I think you said you wanted the usual, too, when you called me from the highway.”
“
Yeah, I did.”
Just as big a fan of the Chophouse specialty my wife prefers, I wasn’t sure she’d heard me right. Garbled conversation for the most part, despite my Bluetooth connection on the bike, made me think I’d have to reorder once I arrived. That saves some valuable time …we should get out to the Carnton Plantation just before it starts to get dark.
“
So, Tom…Fiona told me earlier that you guys captured some pretty cool stuff last night.”
He looked up at me and then motioned for Tony to be silent. I guess he’s still smarting from last night’s upstage.
“
Maybe,” he said. “Another dryer-hose image showed up in a photograph taken near the back door at Johnny and Brenda’s place.”
“
What about the image of the face in the kitchen window?” asked Jackie, her tone a little indignant. “Fiona showed us the facial features, like a prominent nose and strong brow, remember?”
I assumed they must be talking about Johnny’s spirit possibly hanging around the murder scene. Hell, it’s still his and Brenda’s house, until their next-of-kin figures out what to do with the place. That is, once the police finally remove the yellow tape from the home’s entrances. The ‘dryer-hose’ reference of Tom’s is investigator lingo for spirit evidence in light forms, strongly resembling the hose on the back of a standard clothes dryer. Just goes to show how non-scientific our field is. It’s not like someone can go to college and get a degree in paranormal investigation techniques. At least not yet.
“
It might not be anything we can prove,” offered Tony, when Tom merely shrugged his shoulders and went back to view the pictures under a magnifier he brought with him. “Remember the faces we’ve seen before that turned out to be just weird light reflections?”
“
Yes,” she sighed, looking over at Angie, before the two women looked over at Fiona.
“
He’s right,” Fiona conceded. “But, why not let Jimmy take a look at the pictures anyway? Who knows…he might see something else we’ve missed.”
True. It’s sort of
my
forte. Other than Fiona’s keen eye, I’ve found more faint anomalies than anyone else in the group.
Tom handed the pack to Tony and he gave it to Angie, who passed it on to Fiona. Why Angie didn’t just give it directly to me…well whatever. Fiona handed the pictures to me, and asked Tom to lend me his magnifier. Just then our food arrived.
While everyone was being served their dinner entrees, I scanned through the pictures. I readily believed the dryer-hose shots were legitimate evidence of something paranormal. Especially one photograph, where the image bore reddish and yellow hues along its edges. It was solid in its consistency too. That’s something we look for.
As for the image in the window…damn, it really did look like a face. But I sincerely hoped it wasn’t. It looked an awful lot like Johnny...
his
face, full of anguish and acute sorrow.
I shuddered.
For the first time ever, the smothered chop steak didn’t quite hit the spot. I couldn’t quit thinking about the photo and how Johnny and Brenda looked when I last saw them…weeping bullet wounds and intense terror, while the blood-halo around Candi’s surprised expression spread across the kitchen floor.
***
The Carnton Plantation is probably Middle Tennessee’s biggest Civil War tourist attraction. One of its esteemed owners, Carrie McGavock, played a gallant role in the historic Battle of Franklin. Credited with offering her home up as a military hospital, she later took it upon herself to recover hundreds of individual soldiers who were buried in mass trenches on her property. Successful in identifying many of these fallen heroes of the Confederacy, they are interred within the graveyard she created for them, sectioned by the southern regiments they represented going into the battle.
This brings us to our nefarious ambitions tonight.
Well, maybe that’s a bit strong. More accurately…we are gathered in the graveyard afterhours. After dark. After the Plantation tourist center has closed up and the Carnton’s employees have gone home for the day.
We’re trespassing. Violators of Franklin’s penal code.
But I like to think of us as violators with a noble cause. Ambitious seekers of paranormal truths and century-old secrets only revealed in the dead of night.
Our plan tonight is this: First, sneak into the graveyard. Then, after spending an hour or so exploring and gathering evidence in video, audio, and from our own sensory perceptions—both physical and extrasensory, we will move on to exploring the grounds surrounding the house.
The first phase can merit a stern warning, if we’re caught. But the second phase of tonight’s agenda is actually the one that could get us arrested by Franklin’s finest, and our asses thrown in jail for the entire weekend. Yeah, that’s made me think twice on more than one occasion when we’ve done this before. But when Fiona runs an investigation, everyone better get used to the fact she likes living on the edge. Even more than her rock n’ roll husband does.
So, we are here. Seven figures clad in dark clothing, carrying cameras, voice recorders, EMF detectors, and flashlights.
After traveling in two SUVs—Tom’s and Jackie’s—we parked a quarter of a mile from the graveyard. Sprawling mansions border what’s left of the battlefield and plantation.
“
Man, did ya’ll feel the temperature drop just now?” whispered Justin, shortly after we crept inside the wrought-iron gate that marks the graveyard’s main entrance. “Last I checked it was still your typical humid July night back there in the parking lot.”
He pointed back to the small parking lot that separated the graveyard from the entrance road that leads to the plantation house.
“
Yeah, I’d say it’s a noticeable drop,” I agreed.
I looked over at Tom and Tony, and they nodded while testing the settings for the infrared camera and a new digital EVP recorder Tony picked up this morning before work, using the proceeds from his latest bonus check from our employer. Mine has been set aside for the kids, and Fiona and I plan to spend some of that cash tomorrow afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese’s and a matinee movie.
“
It could just be the fact we stepped under a few tall trees that have prevented the sun’s rays from warming the ground, as well as the very air around us,” offered Angie from behind me.
She and Jackie flanked Fiona, who now giggled.
“
Or it could be that even the spirits quiver before your powerful presence and fearsome strength, Muscle Mutt!”
Just teasing, of course, but even in darkness I could’ve sworn she glowered at me, as a warm tingling sensation suddenly traveled up my spine.
“
So, are you suggesting the restless souls of the Confederacy now tremble before the ladies in our little group, Cracker Jack-asshole?”
Ooh, always a bad thing when the uncomplimentary nickname gains a hyphenated add-on.
“
Just kidding, Angie,” I told her, peering over my shoulder to offer her a smile, and a tender wink to my wife. I’m not sure that either gesture was witnessed, given the twilight’s steady decline into deeper darkness. “By the way, did any of you sense something unusual last night at Johnny and Brenda’s place?”
“
There were a few cold spots,” said Tony, who looked over at Tom, as if waiting on a nod to confirm this.
Tom glanced up from his camera’s video playback screen and offered a slight nod to Tony, while we all waited for him to continue. I couldn’t help but wonder what had transpired since dinner to make surly Tom so amenable.
“
I thought for sure we’d leave there with all kinds of evidence,” Tony continued, pausing to adjust his UK baseball cap. “But nothing showed up other than in the still shots, unless we count the two EMF spikes we noted near the backdoor. No video, no EVPs, and—“
“
Nothing that anyone could sense,” Jackie interrupted, looking over at Fiona.
Unless we’re counting Candi’s dream visitation to my wife later last night. Sometimes Fiona shares that kind of thing with others in the group…sometimes not. I assumed from Jackie’s response and the crickets in the background that followed, no one knew about it. Maybe she felt this was the best way to protect our friends, or perhaps she thought it was just a dream after all, with no other importance. I could buy that, if not for several corpses being prepared for burial during the next few days.
She had some other reason—one that I determined to learn later, when alone with her in private
“
Let’s stay focused on why we’re here, everyone,” urged Fiona, a perfect opportunity to change the subject when a pair of headlights appeared briefly in the parking lot.
We all ducked down behind the nearest tombstones, and remained there until the small sedan turned around and left. Probably someone lost in the area. It’s easy to do if unfamiliar with Franklin’s urban layout.
“
Tom and Tony, you guys go ahead, and the rest of us will spread out as we follow along.”
She motioned for Justin and me to travel among the markers on the left side of the path that bisected the graveyard. Jackie and Angie joined her on the right side. Luckily we had a little moonlight to work with, so no need for the flashlights just yet. But no way to avoid the camera flashes. The only thing we could do to avoid detection was not overdo it…just a few snapshots every five minutes or so, and rely on Tom’s infrared ahead of us. At least the neighborhood houses sat farther away the deeper we moved into the graveyard.
“
How many times have ya’ll come here in the past?”
A reasonable question from Angie, whose earlier sarcastic tone had softened. Only her second trip to this locale, the first had been a brief run through the markers closest to the parking lot, since a wicked downpour ensued shortly thereafter. It was frigging cold, too, since that happened last November on the anniversary eve of the Battle of Franklin.
“
Dozens of times, literally,” said Fiona. “I came here with a family friend when I was a little girl. Her grandmother was hugely responsible for the restoration of the main house, and there’s a plaque with her name on it in the tourist center.”
“
So, when did you first see the nanny ghost?” asked Justin, from across the way.
“
I was six at the time. The house was being repaired after a bad tornado came through here,” my wife explained. “I stood in the dining room and I saw her…she wore a turban and smiled at me. But I could see the table through her…. I later saw her picture, and it’s the same one on display in the tourist center.”
“
The McGavock’s nanny?” Jackie confirmed.
“
Yes.”
“
So that’s
the
ghost for this place, huh?”
I could almost picture Angie’s wry smile, her cynicism on its way back.
“
Actually, there are a number of spirits here—and many have been caught on camera,” I said. “There’s a little girl ghost, whose image made national news some years back, and Fiona and others talk about a General who walks between the house and graveyard—sometimes in broad daylight.”
“
Really?”
Well, at least Angie sounded curious. Honest interest in her tone, like she hadn’t known much about the Carnton’s history. Thought she knew…Fiona is so well-versed in the paranormal and historical facts surrounding Franklin, it seems unlikely she never mentioned anything beyond the nanny ghost to her before now.
“
Yes, that one has a lot of eyewitnesses,” Fiona confirmed. “And, we’ve got a photograph of a Confederate officer standing next to one of the taller markers, which I caught on film when Jimmy and Jackie came out here with me a few summers ago.”
“
I thought at first it might be a tree,” I added, glancing at Justin before continuing. He nodded, thoughtful. At least I didn’t have to prove any of this shit to him. “But after Jackie paid to have it enlarged to an eight by ten, you can see the coat edges and a row of brass buttons that go all the way up to the neckline. But there’s no head and no shoes.”
“
So, it’s not the dude that chased Jackie and Fiona out of here last August?” asked Justin, snickering playfully. Lord knows what that scene looked like in his head.