The Ghost Chronicles (19 page)

“Is there anyone else here?” Ron interjected.

“Something’s happening! I can’t see you guys anymore. The monitor’s all snow. Something’s interfering with the infrared camera.” Sabrina’s concerned voice echoed over the walkie-talkie.

That’s when the first strike of energy hit.

Suddenly feeling like a Mack truck had hit me, I stumbled. Before I was able to regain my posture, it struck again. The energy burned a trail of pain and numbness, traveling through my pendulum, up my arm, and into my chest. My heart about to explode, I doubled over in pain. As if I were in a tunnel, my mind became a blur; I could barely hear the muffled sound of the EMF meter and the snapping of Leo’s camera.

I struggled to regain my body. Eyes closed, I became intent on expelling the dark entity.

Drawing on the aura of my emotions, my will strengthening, my consciousness clearing, I mentally pushed back. The entity, no longer able to maintain its grip, lessened its hold and retreated into the void. I silently said a prayer of thanks when the vicelike grip on my heart lessened. That grip was a feeling I recognized. It was demonic.

* * *

Stunned by what had just transpired, I reached out and grabbed Maureen’s arm to help steady her. “What the hell was that?” I asked, straining to be heard over the sound of the EMF meter.

“Are you up to asking a couple more questions?” I felt awful asking, but the communication had been so strong, I hated to end things.

“Not really,” she mumbled.

Maureen’s friend Bety, eager to help, drew her pendulum out of her jacket pocket. “What questions do you want to ask?”

With that, the EMF stopped dead.

“Hmm. What’s up with that?” I asked.

“He’s gone,” Maureen said.

I turned to Evon and Deborah, who were standing in the doorway, and asked, “Are you girls all right?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Deborah said hesitantly. Then looking at Evon to see her reaction to what had just transpired, she said, “Sometimes when we are here at night, working late, we’ve been so creeped out that we’ve quickly gathered all of our belongings and fled the building.”

“Wow. What was it that ‘creeped’ you out, do you have any idea?”

“I don’t want to speak for everyone here,” Evon said, “but it feels like ‘something’ is watching us, and not in a good way.” Evon looked at Deborah for approval, then looked at me. “Do you know what it is?”

I thought for a moment on how to answer Evon’s delicate question. The quiver in their voices told me they may not be ready to listen to the answer I was about to give. I decided to deal with it later. “Let’s finish the investigation and see what we come up with.” Ready to move on, I turned to Maureen. “Are you okay? Can you continue?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Good, let’s check out the first floor.”

A few moments later, as we passed through the foyer, Maureen stopped in her tracks. “It’s the little boy. He’s back.”

With my meter in hand I scanned the area. “There are no readings. I think he’s gone.”

“No. Get down lower to the ground, Ron. I think he’s playing a game with you.” This time I knelt down and lowered the meter until it was a foot above the oak flooring. The flashing red light indicated he was there.

“Oh my God. I just saw him.” Maureen pointed to a spot directly in front of where I held my meter. “He’s there, kneeling down in front of you.” Her voice thick with excitement, she said, “He has dark curly hair. Marcus. His name is Marcus.”

After a few moments of playing what appeared to be a game of supernatural tag, I asked, “Does anybody have any questions for Marcus?”

“Yeah, I do,” Bety said without missing a beat. Pendulum in hand, she asked, “Did you die here?”

Yes, came the reply.

I looked from Maureen to Bety, and was amazed to see that both their pendulums were swinging in unison.

My meter went dead.

“Ron, I think he wants us to follow him. Try over there,” Maureen said, nodding in the direction of the door.

As I drew closer to the door, the readings on the meter got stronger and stronger. “Where does this door lead to?”

“Oh,” Deborah said in a sheepish voice. “I forgot to tell you about the basement.”

“What about the basement?” I asked.

“One day we came in,” Evon said, opening the door to the cellar, “and there, on the top step, was a large dead black bird. A raven, I think.”

“Ooh, do you know how it got there?” I asked.

“Haven’t a clue, but it scared the bejeezus out of us.”

Descending the stairs, I used the meter as a beacon in the darkness, following Marcus’s lead with each blink of red light. Through narrow twisting corridors, with only the glow of my EMF meter and a small flashlight, we continued to follow Marcus through the dark, damp recesses of the cellar. We found a closet that no one even knew existed, a darkened area by a fuel oil tank, and a hole in the wall that led to nowhere.

It seemed evident that we were being guided for a reason. But why? Were these hiding places Marcus had used when he was alive or, worse, what he thought he needed now that he was in spirit? A shiver ran through me at that thought.

We left the cellar and headed back up the stairs. As we climbed the stairs, we felt a rush of cold air, which seemed to pass right through us. Collectively we knew that we were not alone.

It was time to regroup. We gathered together to discuss what we had observed and what actions could be taken. I pulled a pack of matches out of my shirt pocket and lit the candelabra to set the mood, then placed my EMF meter on the conference table.

“Ron, what are you doing?” Deborah asked.

“Just an experiment. I’m hoping that if a spirit enters the room, we’ll get a reaction from either the EMF meter or the lit candles. You never know; it could happen.” I smiled.

Deborah waited until the last of us had taken a seat to begin speaking again. “I didn’t want to mention this before, but you know, when I did the research on the building I was saddened to hear of a tragic accident in the parking lot that took the life of a little boy.” The flames of the candles danced and lengthened as she continued. “I believe he was brought into this house, where he later died.”

Was his name Marcus? Was it the same little boy we’d communicated with earlier in the evening? I wanted to find out more, so I decided to make one more sweep. One by one we walked upstairs in silence, almost reluctantly. Our tight-knit group gathered in the hallway, huddling in the glow of my flashlight. The plaque over the door caught my attention; momentarily I flashed the light in its general direction. The sign read, “Shalom,” but instinct told me what we were about to encounter would be anything but peaceful. Raising my laser thermometer, I began to take readings.

* * *

I stood there hugging my arms while Ron fiddled with the temperature gauge. That’s when I felt it, waves of the same familiar yet uncomfortable energy roiling over my skin, causing the hair at the base of my neck to prickle. A swift-flowing, cool breeze swirled around our legs. One look at the wide-eyed stares of our hosts, and I knew they’d felt it too.

I looked past the others at Ron. “He’s back,” I said, signaling with a nod, then took my place by his side.

“Wanna make communication?” Ron said, his EMF meter blaring.

Reluctantly I pulled out my pendulum. It was him. I knew it. The same heaviness weighed on my shoulders. An onslaught of emotions welled within me, and feelings of hatred and loathing that were not my own filled me to the core. “Are you the same entity from before?” A resounding yes. After tossing back and forth question after question, a pattern began to unfold, and with it a feeling of uneasiness. There was something different, disturbing, about this entity. Ron sensed it as well and asked, “Do we know you? Have we met you before?”

The pendulum swung wildly: yes!

“Have you ever lived?” Ron continued.

We turned slightly to read the digital readout on the thermometer: 66.6 degrees. Evidently the entity was going for shock factor. I wasn’t surprised.

“Not to worry,” Ron piped in. “We’ve seen that before. Van Helsing fears nothing!”

Pleeeassse
. I asked the question again. “Have you ever lived before?”

No. Once again the pendulum swung wide, then just as quickly as the communication had begun, it ended.

The thickness in the air that felt touchable a moment ago had begun to recede. Breathing a sigh of relief, I said, “He’s leaving.”

Truth be told, I’d asked the question twice in hope that I’d receive a different answer. But in my heart, I knew the truth. Whoever “it” was had never existed in human form. There are those in the paranormal and spiritual community that refer to this type of energy as “demonic.” I, on the other hand, try to think of it as “negative energy.” Am I deluding myself? Quite possibly. Just like when you break a pill that is too big to swallow, sometimes you do what you have to do to get by.

I reached out my hand in a gesture of comfort to my sister and found myself wondering if Ron was thinking the same thing that I was. Namely,
How the heck are we going to break the news to our hosts?
Never in my wildest dreams had I expected to encounter the darkness that we had tonight. Nevertheless, there are some things of this world that are not easily explained. This was one of them.

Once we all got back downstairs we presented the preliminary results of our investigation. We offered our hosts holy water with which to bless themselves and the premises, as a form of
temporary protection, along with our recommendation to bring a man of the cloth in to assist in removing the entity plaguing their workspace. It’s not a recommendation we offer lightly.

Although they were extremely grateful to have verification that the disturbances were not merely conjured by their minds, they decided to discuss the events of the evening amongst themselves and get back to us.

A week or so later I received a call from my sister. “Maureen, it’s Evon. How are you doing?” She paused. “We received the pictures you sent us from the investigation, and, oh my God, they’re freakin’ scary.”

She must have been referring to the photograph that was taken during our first encounter with the “negative energy.”

“Yeah. Are you talking about the one with a skull-like image over my face? I know what you mean. It didn’t make me feel too cozy either.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, Evon. Don’t worry.” I waited for a moment, almost afraid to ask. “How’s Deborah doing? Does she want us to come back in?”

“Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I think we’re going to wait a while for things to quiet down.” She continued. “We had a meeting and decided it’s time for us to find a new location. Besides, the space is small and we’re looking to expand.”

I had my doubts about their reasons for leaving, but kept them to myself. “So, now what?”

“Well, we were wondering, when we move, do you think you can help us out? You know, so nothing follows us.”

“We’ll see what we can do. You know, it would probably be a good idea if we came back to do a cleansing of sorts.”

There was something in her voice that told me I wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “Actually, Deborah felt embarrassed; she didn’t want me to say anything. But the other night, right after the investigation she started to feel sick: migraine, nausea, and vomiting.” She hesitated. “I told her it was a coincidence, but what do you think?”

The investigation had taken a toll on me as well: I had felt exhausted, lightheaded, and the area around my heart had felt sore and swollen, overworked, and stretched, like an old wornout dishrag. Not knowing what else to say, I said, “Evon, please tell Deborah I’m sorry.” I had a thought. “When I offered the use of the holy water I’d brought, do you remember if she used it?”

Evon was silent for a moment, as if contemplating what I had just asked. “No. She didn’t.” Her voice barely above a whisper, she added, “I know because I used it, then offered it to her, but she opted against it.”

That explained it. At least to me. I would never force my beliefs on another, but Ron, myself, and the other members of the NEGP have run into similar “negative energy” situations and have no doubt that holy water is one of many choices of strong protection. I also believe it’s the faith and belief in its power that make it so. I chose my words carefully. “Evon, please send my best to Deborah, and give us a call when you’re ready to take action. We’ll help you as best we can.”

* * *

Months later, while waiting in an airport terminal, ready to board a plane on our way to meet our agent, Deidre, for the first time, Ron and I received an urgent phone call.

“Maureen, can you hear me? I’m sorry to bother you; is this a bad time?” Evon yelled. “My phone’s cutting in and out. Crap,”
Evon said, her words quick and loud, like she feared her cell phone connection was about to drop.

Covering my other ear with my free hand, I struggled to hear over luggage wheels scraping on linoleum and the whirring of conveyor belts. “I’ve got a few minutes. What’s up? Are you okay?”

“Well, yeah. Sort of.” She hesitated. “We’re moving to the new building today…Our team is here, and we were hoping you could guide us through a prayer. You know, to make sure nothing unwanted follows us.”

I motioned to Ron to help me move our luggage to a more private, quiet part of the airport. Not an easy task. “All right, do you have the St. Michael prayer card I gave you?”

“Yes. But what do we do with it?”

Not comfortable with just whipping off a quick fix, I said, “Evon, Ron and I are just about to board a plane. Maybe it’s best that we meet up with you guys when we get back.”

“Maureen, please. Just tell me what I can do. Everyone’s anxious, and like I said, we’re picking up the last of the boxes.”

Still uneasy, but realizing their predicament, I said, “Does everyone there feel comfortable creating a prayer circle?”

Her voice grew distant, as if she was holding her cell phone away from her ear. However, I heard enough of their conversation to realize they were all in agreement. “Okay, now, I want you to say the Lord’s Prayer, followed by the prayer on the back of the St. Michael card I gave you.” I waited for a moment, listening for any questions. When I didn’t hear any objections, I continued, “Next, state that although you wish no harm on any beings residing there, you wish only for them to find the light, and that they can not, will not, do not, have permission to follow any one of you while you’re leaving the building.” I really didn’t
believe Evon and her co-workers would be followed; however, these situations are extremely delicate. And intent and belief in what can occur is at times a contributing factor of the end result. Doing my best to hide the concern in my voice, I then asked, “Does what I’m saying make any sense?”