A Ghostly Encounter

I'm a ghost hunter and have been on many ghost hunts. The old hospital described in the story had events as described in an old hospital a few miles from where I live. The evidence described is real.

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Emily Haughton got a call from Justin Regis who she went to school with. Both Justin and Emily were seniors in John Tyler High School in Tyler, Texas. Tyler was the home of the University of Texas -Tyler Campus and huge shot in the arm for the local economy. Justin was a bit of a geek, but Emily liked him anyway, after all they were cousins. Justin was the son of Aunt Julia who was her dad's sister the middle kid out of three.

After Emily answered her cell phone, her cousin excitedly said, "Hey Em! How would you like to go on a ghost hunt?"

Emily was stunned by the request. She had done a lot of crazy things while in high school, but ghost hunting wasn't one of them. She wasn't even sure she believed in ghosts. But the idea of it was downright intriguing. She asked her cousin, "Who ya'll goin' with?"

Justin said, almost smugly, "I belong to a small ghost investigation group and we're looking for new people to train as investigators and I immediately thought of you. We have one other girl, Melody Tanner who goes to the University. There are three other guys, Nick Hodgkiss, Aaron Good, and Parker Jones. Arron and Parker are at the 'U' too, Nick you might know from High School."

Emily asked, "Where are you planning to investigate."

Her cousin answered, "There's an old hospital on the north end of town they closed about 10 years ago. We just got permission to investigate there. Supposedly, it's all sorts of haunted."

Emily grinned into the speaker of her phone, "Gosh, um, sure Justin, it sounds like fun!"

Justin chuckled, "Great, I think you're going to enjoy it! I know I was thrilled to death during my first hunt, although I have to admit I was scared to death too. But, you start to realize nothing's going to hurt you and whatever ghosts are, there are a lot of them. You wouldn't believe how many places are at least mildly haunted."

Emily asked, "When?"

He replied, "Friday night at 9:00pm, just before dark. We need a little time to do baseline readings and set up our static equipment. I'll pick you up at your house at 8:30, so be ready. You might want to bring a light jacket or sweater."

Emily curious asked why, "A jacket, its April in Texas, Justin, why would I want a jacket?"

Justin gave her an answer like she should have known, "Cold spots, of course, they can get downright frigid. They don't usually last long, but when they do, it gets, um, cold."

Emily rolled her eyes, she thought, 'Gosh, what a dork!' Then she parroted back, "Okay, Friday at 8:30, bring a light jacket, got it."

Justin all but giggled into the phone, "GREAT! See you then Em."

Emily pocketed her phone after the call and started to wonder what it was going to be like. She wondered how Justin hooked up with a group of college kids too. Obviously it was through one of his 'geek' connections. Justin was a whiz with computers, so she fingered the other's had him join them because of his tech skills.

After Three more days and the auburn haired blue eyed girl was sitting on her front steps outside her house waiting for Justin to pick her up. She would have been lying if she said she wasn't excited. If all this ghost business was actually true, this was going to be a real adventure.

At 8:35, Justin rolled up in front of her house in his 2002 Dodge Van. It was an old utility vehicle that he picked up on the cheap. She walked over and climbed in the passenger seat and promptly declared, "Justin, you're late."

He blushed and said, "Sorry, I couldn't find the case with my full spectrum digital video recorder in it. It would be a sorry ass investigation without it." He put the van in gear and they headed east into town and once down town, they turned north. Soon they came to a creepy old two story building that used to be a community hospital.

Since Tyler put in the big Medical Center in down town, the old community hospital just withered and died. Aaron Good, the team leader got out a key that the building caretaker had given him and the team headed for the door. Before entering, Aaron offered a quick little prayer for protection. Then he told Emily that before going home, they needed to tell the 'spooks' that they had to stay at the location, and they were not to follow anyone home. All of the investigator's had a ghost follow them home at one time or another, they were a pain in the ass to get rid of once it happened.

With the prayer said, the group of 6 investigators went in to building to check it out and to take baseline readings. Justin, the tech guy just as Emily had guessed, told her what they were doing during the whole walk around. They had out K-2 meters and more sophisticated Electro Magnetic Field meters that gave actual readouts. They also had a temperature gauges.

Finally, Melody, a frumpy slightly overweight dark haired young woman had a digital audio recorder. She told Emily it was used to capture what was called EVPs, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, voices that appeared on the recording that weren't caused from normal voices or noises. Every time an ordinary noise happened, like Emily whispered something to Justin, Melody would 'mark' it. In the case of the whisper she announced, "Whispering", then she proceed to tell Emily in an annoyed voice, "We don't whisper. If you need to say anything, say it out loud. We don't want to confuse you're whispering with a real EVP, okay?" Emily nodded that she understood.

Then Melody, sounding friendlier added, "We carry a digital recorder with us on our walk arounds because the spooks tend to like to follow us when we first get to a location. They are interested in seeing what we're doing and who we are. Think of a person who is stuck in a place all alone most of the time, and then they get unannounced visitors. It's the same context. Some of the best EVPs we've gotten were from walk arounds.

Emily was amazed with all the gadgetry and instruments. She learned that in the initial tour that they were looking for natural EMF sources so they wouldn't be confused with paranormal events later. Justin explained that if it is a ghost was causing an EMF spike, they usually would come and go, a natural source of EMF would be steady and could be from electric lines, fans, fuse boxes, electric motors, florescent light ballasts, and dozen's of other sources. During the walk around they marked them all.

All of a sudden, Emily felt like something walked right into her, but instead of bumping up against her it felt like it went right through her, she was so startled she let out a little squeak of a scream. Then she felt her heart racing and was saying over and over again, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..."

The team stopped in their tracks and asked her what was wrong. She explained to them what happened and thankfully they all believed her. Parker, the class clown of the group chuckled and told her, "Well, Emily, you just had a close encounter of the third kind."

Aaron laughed, "Wasn't that a movie about aliens?"

Nick, the other high school boy added, "Well, I think spooks are kind of alien, don't you?"

Aaron, seeing that Emily was freaked said, "That was probably a spook moving through the hall. It appears that you might be a sensitive, someone that can feel them better than most. They normally have to use a lot of energy for just a regular person to feel them. Since with you were in the middle of the pack, it had to have gone through several of us to get to you. None of us felt it." Then he smiled gently and said, "Well, if you don't end up totally creeped out from the investigation tonight, I thing after some training that you're going to be a great addition to the team."

Emily was still a little shook up from her experience and more than a little glad she hadn't peed her pants, something she was capable of doing when she really scared or startled. The spook freaked her out, but it wasn't going to stop her from seeing what else might happen. All the equipment, all the spooky shit, all the excitement. This was turning out to be a really interesting evening.

The team quickly set up static night vision cameras all over the building. They had hundreds of yards of video and computer cables running everywhere. It took them about ½ an hour and the whole building seemed to be wired. They had what they called XCams in the so called hot spots, places where people had reported seeing or hearing things before. Essentially, the XCams were high definition security cameras that plugged into a central computer which recorded the video they captured.

It wasn't a half hour into the investigation, when Emily was wondering the halls with Justin, when all of a sudden there was a big black mass up in front of them in the shape of a tall man. She could definitely make it out in the darkness, it seemed to be twice as black as the ambient background light. It seemed to absorb the light like a black hole.

Justin who happened to be filming with his full spectrum hand held digital record chose that second to turn in the direction of the shadow man. Before Emily could squeak out what she seeing, Justin gasped out, "Oh my goodness, did you see that Emily?"

Emily was trying really hard not to pee her pants right then, but wasn't succeeding. Fortunately, she had brought along a change of clothes, underwear and jeans. she said, "Uh, huh! A big black shadow dude, right?"

Justin grinned and said, "Shit hot! I think I got it on the camera! Let's roll it back and look." So the two of them rewound the camera and sure enough, just as the camera turned down the hall, a big black mass was there, and then darted through the wall to the left. Justin let out a whoop, "Gotcha, you big black son-of-a-bitch!"

Emily was still shaking, she had just saw a ghost, or something. She was freaked beyond scared, but yet she kept her composure. She asked, "How often does THAT happen, seeing something like that?"

Justin smiled and said, "Oh, maybe once every 7 or 8 investigations. Catching one on camera though, very rarely. This is ghost hunting gold right here. We saw it with our eyes and I caught it with the camera. It doesn't get much better than this."

Emily had Justin take her to the restrooms. Once in the light he discovered what happened to his cousin, Emily's jean were all wet around her bottom. It went from her front triangle to a big wet spot over the lower half of her butt and down her thighs a bit. Justin pretended he didn't see it, the last thing he wanted to do was embarrass his cousin when they were trying to get her to join the team.

Emily went into the girl's room and she thanked goodness the water was still on in the old building. She stripped off her wet jeans and her soaked panties and rinsed both of them in the sink. Once her panties were thoroughly rinsed out, she used them to wash her skin, removing any dried on urine.

She was standing naked from the waist down, when Melody came in and saw Emily. She smiled, not unkindly, and said, "Don't worry about it Emily, I did that once on one of my first investigations. Do you have a change of clothes with you?" Emily nodded that she did. Melody said, "Smart, really smart, I wore my peed on pants for the rest of the evening and it stank to high heavens by the time we were done. I always bring a change of clothes with me now, just in case."

Emily slipped on her clean panties and jeans, and put her rinsed out ones in her backpack. The two young women headed back out to resume the hunt.

About an hour later, it was Aaron's turn to babysit Emily. By babysit, they meant to keep her from doing stupid things that may compromise the investigation, until they could teach her the ropes. Aaron didn't mind too much, he thought the tall auburn teen was really pretty. It was going to be nice to have a good looking girl on the team. He though Melody looked like she was rode hard and put to bed wet. Melody wasn't ugly by any means, she just didn't do anything to make herself look attractive. Emily on the other hand looked like a million dollars even in a tee-shirt and an old pair of stitched jeans.

The college sophomore was constantly telling her how they used the various equipment, right then they were using a really expensive camera that was called a FLIR. Forward Looking Infra-Red. It detected heat and turned it into a visual image. He showed her that the main drawback to the camera was heat reflections. He showed her time after time where their reflection would be on windows or hard surfaces.

Just when they were ready to go back to the command post, where the central computer and monitors were. It felt like someone poked Emily in the side. The girl squeaked loudly and jumped 3 feet to the left. She gasped out, "Oh shit! Something just poked me in the ribs and it was cold as hell!" Aaron swung the camera around immediately focusing on the girl. He was amazed and excited, right where Emily indicated was a big blue spot. Her normal image was a mix of red, bright yellow and white from her body heat, but the background was a montage of blues, purples and greens. A big blue spot on Emily's side was evidence that something cold indeed had touched her, corroborating her claim.

Aaron chuckled and said, "Oh my gawd, Emily, it's like you're a fucking ghost magnet. Please say you'll join the team! Please?"

Emily still shaken said, "I don't know, this is all pretty freaky shit! How often do you all get touched like this?"

Aaron seeing how shook up Emily was pulled the girl into his arms and held her. Somehow he just knew she need a hug by a living person. He answered her as she was wrapped in the warmth and safely of his arms, "It happens, not very often, but it happens. Tugs, pokes, scratches, pushes, you name it. Usually it just a spook trying to get your attention. I wouldn't worry about it too much. They don't usually hurt you. That said, I do have to warn you that sometimes we get in with something malicious, but we know ahead of time to watch it then."

Emily, enjoying being held by the tall guy, asked, "So all this shit is real?"

Aaron smiled down at the pretty high school girl and said, "Yes, of course. There are ghosts all over the place. They are everywhere really, people just tune them out. Their brain just dismisses the activity as background 'noise'. Once you've been trained, you will start noticing them in places you never would have expected."

Emily giggled and asked, "Is it too late to take the blue pill Morpheus?"

Aaron smiled and said, "I'm afraid so, neo. It seems that you're out of the Matrixx now, and that means there's no going back."

Emily grimaced, "I was afraid that you were going to say that."

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The next day they met on the University campus in Aaron's apartment to go over evidence. In addition to all the experiences Emily had, they caught 7 class 'A' EVPs saying anything from, "Help me Doctor!" to the sound of a heart monitor. Almost all of the evidence pointed to residual hauntings, hauntings that were nothing more than recordings playing back events of things that happened in the past, they would play over and over again a specific times, like anniversaries or when conditions were similar to those when the event actually happened. But there were two EVP's that indicated there was something intelligent.

One EVP said, "Who are you!" The second one sent shivers up Emily's spine. It made the whole thing more real than any other experience she had during the investigation. It plain as day asked, "Can you hear me Emily?" Emily fell from her feet to be sitting on Aaron's bed hearing it, her legs refusing to hold her. She even peed in her pants just a little. She had a silver dollar wet spot in her jeans between her legs just over her urethra. She admitted to herself, "Ghosts are real!"

So with her personal experience backed up with evidence, another incident where Nick was pushed, and the VCR recording of the shadow person, the team declared the investigation a complete success. When the team broke up, Melody, who lived just down the hall invited Emily to come to her room. Once they were alone, Melody asked, "Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties, while you wash out your own?" The older girl noticed that Emily had peed.

Emily took Melody up on the offer, she stripped off her jeans, and then her panties which took the brunt of the urine. Standing bottomless in the Bathroom Melody shared with three other girls, she rinsed out her panties. Melody gave her a plastic bag to put them in and found Emily a relatively new pair of her panties from her dresser that the younger girl could wear and keep. Fortunately, the two girls wore close to the same size.

Cleaned up, at least on the underside, she put her jeans back on, Emily thanked Melody and left to find her cousin Justin so he could take her home. On the way home, Justin, her ever dorky cousin made a face and asked, "Do you smell urine?" Obvious the spot on her jeans was starting to stink.

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The next hunt was in a residential home. A couple were complaining that things would fall off the mantle of the fireplace and the light fixture would move on its own and there were all sorts of weird sounds at night. The team discovered the light fixture would move when the air conditioner would kick on. And if someone was walking on the floor on the back side of where the gas fireplace insert was, things on the mantle would jiggle. Finally, they determined that yes indeed the house was noisy, but they found natural explanations for just about everything. The couple that owned the house seemed almost let down that the house wasn't haunted. It seemed that having a ghost around was all the rage these days.

The hunt after that was around 50 miles away in the Jefferson Hotel in Jefferson, Texas. Jefferson had been spotlighted on several of the ghost shows on television as having a plethora of haunted locations. Jefferson Hotel was just one of many in the 'most haunted small city in Texas'. The team rented the two most haunted rooms in the hotel. Room 19 probably the most haunted, and another room on the second floor where it was purported to hear children playing in the night when there were no children in the building.

During the night, there wasn't much happening until Nick broke out the 'Spirit Box'. Nick explained to Emily that the machine scanned over FM frequencies at a rapid pace, forwards or backwards and was used by the spooks to form words or sentences in real time. It worked well, but sometimes when the ghosts heard their own voice, they would run away, scared. Emily though it was funnier than Robin Williams to have 'scared' ghosts.

During the spirit box session, they were asking all the usual questions. What is your name? Why are you here? Do you touch people? How long have you been here? Do you pull covers off of people? All reported activity in room 19. Then Emily squeaked out and jumped, she said she felt a hand on her shoulder. She sat hyperventilating when the spirit box chirped up for the first time that session and said, "I touched Emily". Emily freaked, here she was in another haunted location and another ghost using her name. Minutes later the box crackled again and said in the same voice, "Go away!" Obviously it didn't want the team there. Finally, there was one last voice, a child that called out plaintively, "Mama?"

Since some ghosts were drawn by fear, the team talked Emily into staying in room 19 with Melody. There was no way Emily was going to stay in the room by herself, not in a room where she already had been touched and a ghost talked about her by name. But she agreed to sleep their as long as Melody joined her in the large bed.