The Ghost Chronicles (10 page)

“Do you have a copy of it?” Brian asked.

“No. But you can find it in Bob Cahill’s book,
Haunted Happenings
.”

“So, where did you get slimed?”

“Somewhere there’s a grave here…” I said, scanning the desolate parade of tombstones. “You can see the skeletal remains of
the person buried there by peering through a hole in the eroding ground.” I chose my next words carefully, not knowing how a rational person would react to what I was about to say. “So when I was here with Brian, I stuck my camera in the hole to snap a couple of pictures, when all of sudden my arm from my wrist to my elbow was covered with a thick, black, oozy gook that burned terribly. There was nothing above or below me, it just appeared out of nowhere.” As I retold the story, the horror of the moment resurfaced to my consciousness. My heart began to thud wildly in my chest. “I—I just freaked.”

“What do you mean you freaked?” Brian asked.

At Brian’s question I could feel the anger building in my voice. “Well, what would you do, Brian? One minute I’m taking a picture, and the next minute I’m scraping thick, black, foul-smelling, nauseating crud off my arm. How do you think I felt? I was totally repulsed. Meanwhile, Brian the Monk is standing there, laughing at me. And telling me that I’d been slimed, thinking it was the best thing he’d seen since
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.”

“What was it? Did you get a sample?” Brian asked.

“Yes, tell me, Mr. Scientist,” Maureen said, gesturing with air quotes. “Did you take a sample?”

Glancing at Maureen, I couldn’t help but notice her smug smile. I just wanted to smack her. Since she had already heard the story before, she knew that the answer was no. “Well, Brian, I consider myself a man of science. After all, I did graduate with a 4.0 in Environmental Science. But, on that day and at that time, it was all for naught. I guess we never know how we’ll react until we face our darkest fears. I was so repulsed by it that I was consumed with the need to remove it as quickly as possible. A decision I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Brian’s voice suddenly escalated with excitement. “So do think you can find this grave?”

Hesitantly, I replied, “I’m not sure. It’s been awhile. But I have an idea. Why don’t you find it?” I turned toward Maureen, still irritated with her “sample” remark. “You’ve got the dowsing rods, smart ass.”

* * *

* * *

“Fine,” I grumbled at Ron. Grudgingly, I removed my gloves and pulled my dowsing rods from my back pocket. “What are we looking for?”

“You know, the grave with the hole in the ground.”

“Okay.” I positioned the rods in my hand, closed my eyes and made the request: “Show us where the hole in the ground is.” Both the rods spun, pointing the way. Following the direction of the rods I took a step, then plummeted to the ground, my right leg disappearing into a gopher hole. I guess I had found what I’d asked for.

The sound of laughter reinforced my embarrassment. I was now the subject of unwanted attention, being asked to lead the
team, only to fall on my face, literally. With one leg swallowed up to my knee, I was unable to stand. Finally, once the laughter subsided and they realized my predicament, both Brian and Ron reached down and pulled me out of my snare.

Doing my best to hide my mortification and regaining my balance, I quipped, “Okay, guys, I guess we’ll have to be more specific.”

Carefully rethinking my words, I once again repositioned the rods to dowse. This time I focused my intentions and phrased my request appropriately. “Where is the location of the grave?” I paused. “The one where Ron got slimed.” I felt both rods begin to vibrate slightly, as they slowly turned in unison, changing direction to the left of where we stood.

Following the rods, we began our search. We snaked our way through the ill-kept cemetery, past the crumbling stones, avoiding the gopher holes. I opened my mind to reach out to any spirits that may be around us. Although I was finding it difficult to concentrate in the bitter cold, I began to feel a low-level energy prickling across my skin, so low it was almost indistinguishable from the numbness I was feeling. But it was there. “Ron, I’m picking up on some energy. But, it feels more like residual energy than anything else.”

As we continued to follow the dowsing rods, Brian asked, “Residual energy, what’s that?”

“There are different types of energies. Residual energy, or a residual haunting, is like an imprint in time, or memories if you will. An echo of the past. Much like videotape, the event is replayed over and over again, with no intelligent spirit, ghost, or other entity involved. Whereas an intelligent energy or haunting is when a spirit, ghost, or other entity interacts with the living.”

“Here it is. I found the grave!” Ron yelled.

“Excuse me…
you
found it?” I asked, unable to squelch the humor in my voice.

“Okay.
We
found it,” he reluctantly agreed. Ron glanced at the dowsing rods. “I guess those things really do work.”

“So how do you want to do this?” Brian gestured to Tom. “Can you get a shot of the grave?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Bending over, Tom placed his camera in the hole. He adjusted the lights to illuminate the grave and began filming.

After a couple of minutes, Tom stood up. Ron quickly took his place. He lay on the frozen ground, shifting a bit for a better vantage point as I knelt down beside him.

* * *

“Maureen, give me one of those, I want to try something,” I said, pointing to the dowsing rods.

She handed me the dowsing rod. Then she hesitated in a moment of indecision. “Here, take it. I’ll wait over here.”

“What? Where you going?”

In a hushed voice she answered, “I already made a fool of myself once; I’m not going to do it again—on camera, no less. Here, you do it,” she said as she raised herself off the cold ground and retreated to a nearby tombstone.

I held Maureen’s dowsing rod over the hole to see if it would pick up any energy. As if by magic, I felt a pull in my hand as the rod slowly spun from left to right. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was cool just the same. Putting down the rod, I picked up the EMF meter and was surprised by the lack of readings. I reached for my 35mm camera, stuck it in the opening, and quickly snapped a photo. Seeing the human skull was too much of a temptation for me. Sticking my arm into the hole, I rubbed the uneven surface
of the decaying bones. For some inexplicable reason, I slowly removed my hand and brought my half-frozen fingers to my nose and took a sniff. The sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh pervaded my nostrils, but the putrid odor was the least of my worries. By the shocked expressions of those standing around me, I had little doubt this gesture would come back to haunt me.

The excitement of the moment began to wear thin, as the bitter cold penetrated my clothing. Unable to endure it any longer and eager to get my blood circulating again, I decided to move on.

“So what’s next, Ron?” Brian asked.

“Well, there’s a tomb here that’s been broken into several times.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Actually, it’s pretty bizarre. You want to take a look?”

“Sure. Lead the way.”

“No problem. This one I can find.”

Within moments we reached the crypt. Eerily, the battery in Tom’s camera failed. “That’s odd. These are seven-hour batteries and should have had plenty of time to spare.”

Maureen and I glanced at each other; a smile crossed our faces.

“Coincidence, I think not,” I said.

Brian waited for Tom to replace the battery in his camera. “So, Ron, what is so bizarre about this particular crypt? Can you share with me a bit of the history?”

We stood in front of a heavy door with an embossed cross. “The Pierce family crypt has been broken into several times in its history. The first time was back in the 1880s when several youths broke into the tomb. They propped up the corpses, poured liquor down their throats, and had a mock game of cards with them. Later they were arrested in town, wearing the clothes of the deceased.” I paused for a moment, sniffled, and then continued. “The most
recent time was in 2005, when an inmate performing community service broke into the vault and twisted the skull off one of the corpses. He then proceeded to parade around the graveyard with the skull on his shoulder and even had his picture taken with it.”

“Ewww,” Maureen said. “I’m sure his mother must have been real proud of that snapshot. That’s a nice Kodak moment.”

“That’s disgusting.” Brian paused to gather his thoughts. “So, Ron, why do you think it’s been broken into so many times?”

“I’m really not sure. Out of all the tombs in this cemetery, why this one? Always the same one? Do you believe in curses?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought about them,” Brian answered.

“It’s just conjecture on my part, I really can’t say for sure, but… What if someone placed a curse on this family? A curse that ensured that they would never rest in peace. And after all that’s happened to this one particular crypt over all these years, wouldn’t it make sense?”

“Okay, this is good. But we need some action. Any ideas?” Brian asked.

“Ron, this place is dead,” Maureen said. “No pun intended. But really, I’m not feeling anything. Other than the residual energy from before, that is.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know, let’s take a look and see what we can dig up.” I led the group deeper into the burial grounds. We had contacted local law enforcement to ensure a safe and legal investigation, and now we were getting a boring one. I racked my brains for something, anything to salvage this episode. Here we were in one of the most haunted cemeteries, a place where I’d been slimed, no less, on the spookiest night of the year, and it seemed that nobody was home.

As we stumbled through the darkness, we came upon a lone dead tree perched on a barren hill. Large, bulbous, seemingly animated roots stretched out, as if in search of sustenance to quench its unearthly appetite. A creepy feeling crawled up my spine. I half expected to see a hangman’s noose dangling from its rotting limbs, casting an eerie shadow in the moonlight. Along with it came an overwhelming feeling of doom. Was this the omen of some forthcoming evil lurking in the darkness, waiting to pounce on us? An unnatural silence fell upon the group.

A dark, hulking figure came out of the shadows, and the sharp, shrill, blood-curdling scream of a female voice startled the group, breaking the deadly silence. It was Beth, Brian’s intern, who screamed at the approaching figure, the first utterance we’d heard from her all night.

“What the hell!” I cried, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Tom turned, the light of his camera slightly illuminating the approaching figure. It was Pete, a friend of mine whom I had invited along to try out his new infrared camera. He was so late and I had been so preoccupied with the investigation that I had forgotten that he was coming.

Once everyone regained their composure and the introductions were completed, we continued our investigation. We left the precarious presence of the “hanging tree,” as we had aptly named it, and headed down the hill to another portion of the burial
ground. Passing old and ill-kept graves, we came upon a large, flat tomb. Focusing the light from our failing flashlights, we struggled to read the etchings on its weather-beaten surface in an attempt to find who had been buried there. “Okay, 1776, that’s the date. The name, can anybody make it out?”

Silence was my answer as everyone attempted to decipher the engraving, to no avail. As the light in Tom’s camera faded out, he spoke up. “Brian, that’s another battery down. How weird is that?”

Still, with little other paranormal activity to note, I decided that we should try an experiment to see what we could conjure up. I turned to Maureen and asked her if she had her tarot cards.

* * *

When Ron asked me if I had my tarot cards, I cringed. “They’re in the car, why?” I was just getting to know how Ron thought, and I didn’t like where this was going.

“I want to try something. You think you can do a reading on the crypt?”

“Are you crazy?” I can’t believe I was actually contemplating doing a reading in a cemetery. Some people would say any tarot reading at all would be consorting with the Devil, let alone doing it over someone’s grave.
Oh, I am so going to hell
, I thought to myself. “Fine. Then you go get ’em.” With that, Ron disappeared into the darkness.

“Maureen, while Ron’s gone, why don’t you show me how those things work?” Brian said, motioning toward the dowsing rods. I’d just begun to demonstrate them, when I heard a yelp in the distance. Looking in the direction of the cry, I saw the silhouette of Ron, illuminated by the streetlight. That’s when I realized he had also fallen into a hole. Our laughter echoed in the stillness of the night as we watched him stumbling to get out.

Now that’s funny
. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” His voice vibrated in the distance.

After the laughter subsided, I continued my demonstration until Ron returned.

Taking the cards from their velour pouch, I tentatively laid them on top of the tomb. I removed my crystal ball, which felt more like an ice cube between my chilled palms, and positioned it on a small purple satin pillow.