Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (30 page)

“Okay, Mom,” Mike wisecracked as he opened his backpack and got out a folder. Then he pulled a small flashlight out of the bag and switched it on.

It was just Mike, Grant, and Jason for this investigation. The rest of the team were back at the TAPS office.

“The caretaker’s name is Pete Abernathy,” Mike read out
loud. “He’s reporting activity inside the lighthouse. Shadows, footsteps, voices. He says he’s been experiencing them off and on for about three weeks now.”

“Which is about how long he’s worked there. Is that right?” Jason asked.

Mike nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. He’s a pretty young guy—just out of school, I think.” He looked at his notes again.

“The lighthouse at St. Augustine isn’t a working lighthouse anymore,” Mike went on. “There’s a visitor center next door and exhibits on the ground floor of the lighthouse. Then it’s quite a climb to the top. According to Mark’s research, St. Augustine is the eighth-tallest lighthouse in the entire country.”

“Sweet,” Grant commented. “What else?”

“So, Pete’s been on the job almost a month,” Mike continued. “He says the last caretaker warned him that there was some strange stuff going on. The old caretaker said
he
was told the same stuff when he was new—about thirty years ago. Pete thought the guy was joking.”

“Does he still think that?” Jason asked.

Mike looked up from the papers. “No,” he answered quietly. “Not anymore.”

About an hour later, Grant pulled the SUV into a parking lot. “Looks like this is it,” Jason said. A lit sign read
ST. AUGUSTINE LIGHTHOUSE
. Not that it was really necessary—there was no way anybody could miss the lighthouse. It shot straight up into
the sky. Jason, Grant, and Mike had been able to see it long before they got there.

“Wow!” Mike said as Grant brought the SUV to a stop.

It’s one thing to read that a building is tall,
Mike thought.
But seeing it in real life is something else.
The St. Augustine Lighthouse was painted white. Wide, black stripes curved around and around it.
It looks like a giant barber pole,
Mike thought.

At the very top was a glassed-in area where the light shone out of. At the bottom was a little red house.

As Mike, Jason, and Grant got out of the SUV, a young man came toward them from the front of the lighthouse. He was wearing a St. Augustine Lighthouse cap, a khaki shirt, and pants.

“You guys from TAPS?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Jason answered with a smile. He shook the guy’s hand. “I’m Jason, and this is Grant and Mike.”

“I’m Pete,” the guy said. “I’m the one who called you. Thanks a lot for coming.”

“Our pleasure. Trust me,” Grant said. “We’re really looking forward to investigating the lighthouse.”

“Why don’t you come into the visitor center?” Pete suggested. “There’s a meeting room in there. We can all sit down. I’ll tell you what I know.”

The team settled themselves around a table in the visitor center as Pete began to talk about the lighthouse.

“The lighthouse was built in the late eighteen hundreds on
the site of an old watchtower,” Pete explained. “It was built to warn ships away from something called Crazy Bank. It’s a weird sandbank that would appear, disappear, then reappear again in a different place. Super-dangerous for ships.”

“That
does
sound crazy,” Mike said. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before. I have a question. Aren’t most lighthouses closer to the water? This one seems kind of far away from it.”

“It is.” Pete nodded. “The shoreline has changed a lot since the lighthouse was built. The tide affects it a lot. The lighthouse is far away from the ocean
now,
but when it was built, it was right on the water.”

“I see,” Mike said. “The lighthouse was finished in 1874.”

“Right,” Pete said. “Some really bad things happened when it was being built. The man in charge of building it lived nearby. He had a wife and three young daughters. Two of the girls were killed in an accident.

“Some people around here say that the man’s wife and the daughter who didn’t die in the accident haunt the lighthouse. People claim they’ve heard their voices at the very top of it.”

“So what do
you
think about all this?” Jason asked.

Pete Abernathy sighed. “If you asked me that a month ago, I would have said it was all a lot of nonsense,” he said. “Stories like that are great for bringing in tourists. But does stuff like that actually happen in real life? No way. That’s what I used to think. ”

“And now?” Mike prompted.

“Now I’m not so sure,” Pete admitted. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve had some pretty strange experiences. Sometimes, when I lock up at night, I swear I hear a woman’s voice. Last week was the clearest so far. It totally creeped me out. That’s why I decided to call you guys.”

“Has anybody else seen or heard anything?” Grant asked.

“Yes.” Pete nodded. “One of the things the caretakers do is keep a log, sort of like a ship’s captain does. When I started having weird experiences, I wrote them in the log. I felt kind of silly, but I felt I had to. Then I got to wondering if other caretakers did the same.

“They did. There are reports going back a long time. And just before I decided to call you, I had a group of campers on the grounds. They claimed they heard a woman sobbing all night. The sound came from the top of the lighthouse. I don’t think it’s just me. I’m not making this stuff up.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” Jason said. He stood up. “And you’ve definitely given us lots to go on. Why don’t you take us over to the lighthouse, and we’ll get set up.”

“Sounds good,” Pete said. Mike could hear the relief in the caretaker’s voice. “What do you want me to do after that?”

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Grant said. “And leave whatever is going on inside that lighthouse to us.”

“All set?” Jason asked about an hour later. He peered over Mike’s shoulder to look at one of the laptop screens. The team had set up a command center on the lighthouse’s ground floor. The laptop Jason was staring at was showing pictures from a camera at the top of the lighthouse.

“All set,” Mike said. “I wish I had more cameras. It would be great to have one on each landing.”

“How many landings are there?” Grant asked.

“Nine.”

“Dude,” Jason said. “I don’t think we even
own
nine cameras.”

Mike laughed. “I know, I know. I just said it would be nice, that’s all.”

“So what
have
we got?” Grant asked.

“Three cameras,” Mike answered. “One on the upper level set to cover the top of the stairs and one on this level pointing up through the stairwell. I also have one on the fifth level. That’s halfway up. We should be able to see most of the stairs that way.”

“Excellent,” Jason commented.

“I have voice recorders in all those locations as well. We’ll each have our own portable recorders, of course. And flashlights.”

“Great work,” Grant said. “Sounds like we’re good to go.”

“Be careful on the stairs,” Mike warned. “I got dizzy a couple of times going up and down during my setup. Also, the stairs make a lot of noise. Go slow and steady so we can hear the voices—if there are any.”

“Gotcha,” Jason said.

He walked over to the lighthouse door. Beside it was the panel of light switches.

“Everybody ready?” Jason asked.

Mike and Grant nodded.

“Okay, then, this is it,” Jason said. “The investigation of the St. Augustine Lighthouse starts now. We are going dark.”

“This is Mike,” Mike said in a low voice. He was setting a level for his personal voice recorder. “Climbing up the stairs with Jason and Grant.”

Mike was first in line. He was the most familiar with the lighthouse because he did the setup.

“Wow,” said Jason, who was right behind him. “In this place, going dark really means
dark.
”

“You know it,” Grant spoke up. He was behind Jason. “But see where the windows are?”

He pointed up to the first of four tall windows along the lighthouse’s face. “I think it’s a little brighter up there.”

“It must be the lights of the town shining in,” Mike said.

The three climbed in silence for several moments. Around and around and around. Mike moved carefully, on the balls of
his feet. He tried to make as little sound as possible. Even so, the team’s footsteps seemed to echo through the lighthouse.

“We’re on the fifth landing,” Jason said.

That’s five more to go,
Mike thought. He leaned over the railing. He looked up, trying to see all the way to the top of the lighthouse.

Then he looked down.

Big mistake!
The second he looked down, Mike realized just how high up he really was.

Below him, the metal steps of the staircase spiraled down, down, down. Quickly, Mike shifted his gaze to his own feet. That was even worse! The steps were sturdy metal, but they were open mesh. A diamond pattern, sort of like a chain-link fence but smaller. Beneath his feet, Mike could see dark, open air.

If he stepped wrong, would he fall all the way down? What if the stairway just collapsed? It was very old, after all. Mike felt dizzy. Sweat broke out all over his body. It was getting hard to breathe. It felt as if a giant hand were wrapped around his throat.

“Guys,” he croaked, “I think I’m having some weird reaction to the height. I might need to stop or—”

“What’s that?
Did you see that?
” Jason broke in. His voice was urgent. He put a hand on Mike’s arm. Mike turned to face Jason, who was pointing to the landing two levels up.

“What?” Grant demanded. “What did you see, Jay?”

“Something just moved in front of the window on the landing,” Jason said. “I saw a black mass come in front of the light. You’re closer, Mike. Look up there and tell me what you see.”

Mike took a deep breath. He wasn’t dizzy anymore. He was too excited. He stared upward, aiming with his flashlight.

“It’s totally dark up there,” he said. “I can’t see a thing.”

“That means it’s still there!” Jason whispered fiercely. “It has to be in front of the window, blocking out the light.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “Try making contact.”

“Is there someone here with us?” Jason called out. “If there is, could you give us a sign? Can you move away from the window?”

“I have an idea,” Grant said quietly. “Shine your light on the stairs above that landing, Mike. I’ll shine mine between here and there. Jay, you climb. If anything moves either up or down, our lights should catch it. Maybe we can get a better look at what we’re dealing with.”

“Got it,” Jason said. “Okay, here I go.”

Jason squeezed past Mike and began to climb. Mike watched the way Jason’s flashlight moved as he circled around and around. He was almost to the next landing now.

“Anything?” Grant whispered from right behind Mike.

“Nothing,” Mike whispered back. “No movement that I can see.”

“Who are you?” Grant called. “Are you the woman who needs help? Are you a child?”

“Whoa!”
Mike cried. “Movement! I’ve got movement. Going up. It’s heading for the top of the lighthouse, Jay! Go. Go.
Go!
”