Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown (11 page)

“Besides getting a weird feeling, have you ever
seen
anything strange in the dungeon?” Lyssa asked.

“I… There was one time. Out of the corner of my eye. I
thought I might have seen something, like a figure of a man huddled over. But by the time I turned to face it, it was gone.”

Without another word Victor sprang ahead. As if he had to get away from the dungeon.

He led the team across a field to an old cannon next to a mound of dirt. In the middle of the mound was a crooked wooden door with a few rotting planks. Victor kneeled down in front of it. He put his fingers through a metal ring and pulled the door open. Tiny spiders scattered into the cracks of bricks as the door opened. A wobbly-looking wooden ladder plunged into the darkness below.

“This is Casemate 11. It’s a new find. I discovered the door in the ground a few months ago. I was mowing the grass, and I saw it.”

“What was this place used for?” Jason asked.

“A casemate is a room used to store guns and ammunition. Soldiers used them as places where they would fire on the enemy. But this one was used a little differently. When a prisoner got in trouble in the dungeon, they sent him down here. This was a solitary confinement area. It’s quite a bit larger than just a single cell, though. There are a few different areas down there.”

The TAPS group leaned over to get a look into the cavern. Loose dirt tumbled down the sides of the hole. Lyssa got a quick chill down her neck. She could imagine how awful it was to be a prisoner trapped inside. Like being buried alive.

“Actually, the casemate is one of the reasons I called you all in,” Victor continued. “It’s safe to go down there—the roof won’t fall on your head or anything like that. But before we let tourists go in, we need to know if we’re going to have other problems.”

“What kind of other problems?” Lyssa asked.

“It’s like a maze down there. Lots of twists and turns. You basically have to walk single file. If something was down there—something frightening—there’d be no getting away from it.”

Victor leaned over and gently closed the wooden door.

“I’ve got one more place to show you, and then you’re on your own.”

He led them back across the field to a yellow building. It had a large balcony hanging over a porch. The team stood silently on the stone walkway in front of the porch steps.

“This was the officer’s quarters,” Victor said. “The fort’s commander lived in there. But some people believe that someone else lives here now. The wife of Sergeant Pratt. It’s a very sad story. Back in the 1800s, when the sergeant and his wife, Elizabeth, lived here, medicine wasn’t what it is today. They had a little daughter who died, right up in that bedroom.”

Victor raised his hand, pointing to a window next to the balcony.

“Elizabeth Pratt was so heartbroken that she cried for a week,” he went on. “Everybody could hear her—from the prisoners in the dungeon to the soldiers in the mess hall. She
wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep. She just cried and cried for her poor daughter. After that, she couldn’t take the pain anymore. She hanged herself right from that balcony.”

“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard!” Lyssa gasped.

“Some say that Elizabeth Pratt is still there. That her spirit has not left the room. Some tourists who passed by this building say they saw her in the window. Sometimes, near nightfall, they say they can hear her, weeping for her daughter.”

In the Fort Mifflin dungeon, it got dark very quickly. Mike and Mark stood next to each other in the prison, underneath one of the few lightbulbs in the room. The bulbs threw a dim orangey light onto the floor. Mark leaned against the arched door frame. In front of him were rows of the original cots that the prisoners had slept on. Each cot had a thin green blanket on top.

“This is so cool!” Mark said, his voice echoing through the large room. “This place has so much history. If only these walls could talk.”

“I’d like it better if the walls stayed quiet,” Mike said. “This place is spooky enough already.”

The air in the dungeon was still. The place was dead silent. A prickly feeling ran along Mark’s spine. Mark shook it off. Then
he let out a forced cough. He just needed to make a noise to break the quiet. Cold air stung his lungs as he breathed in.

“It’s freezing tonight,” he said. He looked down the long hall to the fireplace. “I wish there was a fire going in that thing right now.”

Grant’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Time to go dark.” Mark was about to flick the switch off when his brother grabbed his arm.

“Wait a second,” Mike said. He looked strangely at his brother, inspecting his face.

“What’s wrong?” Mark asked.

“Are you shivering?”

“No. I brought gloves and a scarf. I’m fine.”

Mike let go of Mark’s arm.

“Do you hear that?” Mike whispered.

“Hear what?”

“That chattering sound. It sounds just like someone shivering. It’s coming from somewhere in the middle of the room. Maybe it’s just the windows rattling.”

“Mike, there are no windows. This is a prison.”

“What could make that sound, then? Don’t you hear it?”

Mark felt a tingling in his hands. Yes, he could hear it now. It sounded just like teeth chattering. He glanced around, looking for a possible source of the sound. He found nothing that might make a rattle.

“I’m going to turn off the lights now,” he said in a hushed tone. “Maybe the infrared camera will show us where the noise is coming from.”

Mark turned off the switch. Inky darkness surrounded him. For a split second he couldn’t see a thing. He reached out and touched his brother’s arm.

“It stopped,” Mike said. “The noise stopped.”

Side by side, they made their way in between the rows of beds. A tiny beam of moonlight slipped in through the door behind them. This was the only light in the room. It cast a shadow in front of the brothers as they made their way down the hall.

In the dark, the details of the room were invisible. But when they looked on the IR camera’s screen, they could see more. Everything in the room showed up as cool blue images. It was so cold in the room, Mark’s hair felt stiff in his scalp. He looked at his brother. The blue light from the screen lit up Mike’s face, making it look frozen in ice.

Suddenly Mike stopped. “Mark, look at this.”

Mike pointed to the image on the screen of the bed in front of them. The bed was a deep navy blue, like the rest of the room.

Except for one spot. There was a small patch of green on the bed. The green area was on top of the blanket in the shape of an upside-down
V
, the wide part facing them.

“Mike, what’s that green triangle on the screen? Why is that spot warmer than the rest of the bed?”

“I’m not sure.”

Mark took a closer look.

“The green lines almost look like the imprint of legs. See? Like someone was sitting here and then got up,” he said.

The shivering noise,
Mark remembered just then. Mike said it came from the middle of the room—right where they were now standing.

“Yeah, I see that. If someone was sitting here, their thighs could have left some heat on the blanket,” Mike said. “Who was in here tonight before us?”

“No one. It’s just been us for the past hour. And it’s so cold in here, even if someone was sitting on the bed before, all the heat would be gone by now.”

“But if no one else was here…”

Mark’s throat closed up as he swallowed. He stared at the screen. The camera was telling him there was someone sitting on the bed in front of him. But that was impossible. The only other person in the room was standing right next to him.

But when Mark looked up, there was no one on the bed. He walked over to touch the spot. He felt the smallest amount of warmth coming off the thin blanket.

“What can you see on the screen now?” he asked his brother.

“Your hand is red hot. The green part is still there too, below your hand.”

Mark moved his fingers around. All he felt was the rough blanket. He took a step forward. The sound of his footstep bounced off the walls of the empty room.

“Is anybody here-
eer-eer-eer?
” his voice echoed. “Anyone?” His own words answered a moment later, saying back
“anyone, anyone, anyone…”

Mark slowly turned his head from side to side, checking over the motionless room. Each bed looked exactly the same as the others.

“Mark!” Mike’s voice was a harsh whisper.

On the camera screen a glowing yellow figure appeared at the end of the hall. It was the size and shape of a man. The glowing figure stood very still in front of the fireplace. It looked like a person trying to get warm.

Mark looked down the hall. He couldn’t see the end of the room clearly. It was too dark. Everything blended together after a few feet. He got dizzy looking out into the darkness. “Hey!” he yelled. “You! By the fireplace!”

No answer.

“He’s not moving,”
Mike whispered.

“Hello?”

After his echo died, there was silence again.

“It’s still there, Mark….”

“Let’s go—fast.”

Gulping in chilly air, the twins ran to the other end of the dungeon. They stopped a few paces from the fireplace. Mike aimed the IR camera.

“There’s nothing here!” he said. “The figure was right there a second ago!”

Grant opened the heavy door to the officer’s quarters and walked inside. Jason was right behind him. They went over to the staircase, taking in the layout of the foyer. The first floor felt pretty normal. But that wasn’t where Sergeant Pratt’s wife had hanged herself.

At the bottom of the stairs they stopped.

“After you,” Grant said.

Jason went ahead. Grant followed, carefully climbing the stairs. The wooden steps creaked under his feet.

“I can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth Pratt,” Jason said as he climbed the stairs. “That poor woman.”

“I know,” Grant said. “The story really stuck with me too. And based on what Victor said about hearing her at night, I think Elizabeth Pratt might be stuck
here
. She could be so attached to this place that her spirit just never left.”

At the top of the stairs, Grant got the audio recorder ready. He took a moment and looked around. The glass used in the windows was old, like in a church. It wasn’t completely flat, and it made the outside world look wavy and broken.

Grant stepped into the hall. His knees wobbled. Suddenly it felt as if the floor dropped beneath him, and he tumbled forward. He reached out for the wall to steady himself.

“Whoa! I almost fell over.”

“Watch your step,” Jason said. “Be careful—this floor isn’t level. It’s so old, it slants. It’s like you’re walking in a fun house.”

Grant took a breath. The air was musty. It had that old-book smell. He took a cautious step forward and walked ahead of Jason to Elizabeth Pratt’s bedroom.

He peered into the room from the doorway. There was a chair in the corner and a four-poster bed against the wall. The rest of the room was bare. The curtains to the balcony were open. He could see straight out through the windowed doors onto the balcony. There was something hypnotic about what he was looking at. He couldn’t take his gaze away from the balcony.