Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (8 page)

“… One. Going dark, people.”

The lights went out. Mark blinked a few times to adjust. Then he took a seat next to Jen and waited. And waited. They watched the laser grid for any changes for a while. The dots didn’t dim even a tiny bit. Then Mark walked down the hall and back, looking into each room. After about an hour, there wasn’t much action. So Mark suggested trying something a little different.

“I know we always act respectfully when we know we’re calling out a spirit. But you know sometimes we have to provoke them a little. I’m going to try that.” He stood up. “Is there anybody here?”

Mark began to walk down the hallway. Jen got up and followed him. Mark didn’t see anything different from the last time he walked down the hall.

“Oh, I get it. You’re hiding out. Probably because you’re scared,” Mark said, raising his voice. “Well, I guess since there’s really no way for you to get off this island, you might as well—”

Mark stopped short when he heard a high-pitched squeal behind him. His eyes opened wide, trying to see everything around him.

“What was that?” Jen whispered.

“It sounded like a cell door… Remember when Lyssa tried to move one before? Let’s check it out.”

They walked quickly toward where the noise came from, looking at doors on the way. The empty hospital ward was bleak. The cells seemed to come at them, the bars flying by like spinning bike spokes. The medical equipment in each cell reminded Mark of torture devices.

They were almost back where they started when Mark stopped in front of the cell with the bathtub in it.

“Jen. This is the fifth time I walked past this cell today. But it’s the first time the cell door’s been closed.”

Mark reached out and grabbed one of the bars. The metal was warmer than he’d expected. The door was so heavy he needed to grab it with both hands. He pulled back hard. The door squealed as it opened.

“It’s the same sound!” he said excitedly.

Mark stepped inside the cell, placing each foot carefully as he slowly walked toward the center of the room. His mouth was dry. Being in the middle of the cell made him feel lost, as if the walls were a mile away. He had a sick feeling that he couldn’t get out. He saw the bathtub near the wall. It was white and stood out in the dark room. He spoke directly to the spirit.

“If you are here, we would like to communicate with you. Can you make the door move again?”

Mark watched the door closely. Jen was on the other side
doing the same thing. They waited like that for a few minutes, not blinking. But nothing happened. Jen joined Mark in the cell and looked around, trying to find something that might have caused the door to shut. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

At least until Jen got a weird look on her face.

“Mark… are you wearing cologne or something?”

“No. Why?”

“Do you smell that?”

Mark breathed in deeply. Out of nowhere a memory popped into his head. When he was a kid in school, the bathrooms had this pink powdered soap. The smell in the room was the smell of that soap.

“Yeah. It’s just like soap. I absolutely smell that,” he told Jen.

They examined the walls of the room first, then the ceiling, looking for an open air duct. But there were no vents in the room, so the scent wasn’t coming from someplace else.

“If it’s not coming from outside the room, it must be coming from inside,” Mark said.

They searched for where the smell was strongest. After a minute Jen stopped in front of the bathtub.

“I think it’s coming from over here,” Jen said.

Mark went over to the tub. The smell was almost overpowering. His eyes watered a little and he had to breathe through his mouth.

“It’s so strong,” he said. “But there’s nothing here. No soap, no water. This smell just came out of nowhere.”

Mark bent down. He touched the porcelain tub. It was bone-dry.

The darkness in D Block was thick. The flashlight in Grant’s hand was like a full moon on a pitch-black night.

“Frank said a lot of people felt dizziness and nausea in the area,” Jason said. “Especially in cell fourteen. I think we should use the EMF detector. It’s possible a high electromagnetic field reading is the cause of those experiences.”

“Agreed.”

They walked down the hall, watching the readout on the EMF detector. Even with the flashlight, it was disorienting walking down the dark hallway. Grant’s eyes had trouble focusing. It was like trying to walk on a rolling log. The room was stuffy, and it was hard for him to swallow. When they reached cell fourteen, they stopped. The EMF detector was rising fast, going from a steady 1.5 up to 6 in half a second.

“That’s really odd.”

They examined the area, looking for any source of electricity that would cause the change in the reading. Grant got low,
looking for where there might be an electrical wire or an outlet. There was nothing but solid concrete.

“I have no idea what’s causing this EMF spike. But it seems like it’s coming from the cell,” he said.

Grant moved toward the cell door. A hand touched his shoulder.

He spun his head. Jason was pointing down the corridor.

“I just saw something… Something changed in the darkness. Maybe a shadow. It was moving a few cells down,” he said in a hushed tone.

Jason walked toward where he pointed, still holding the EMF detector.

“Hello?” Jason said as he walked through the darkness.

Grant followed. He called, “It’s okay to come out. We’re not the guards.”

They walked cautiously, asking the spirit to show itself. Finally they stopped where Jason saw the movement. They pointed the flashlight into the cell and around the hall. As Grant waved the flashlight, cracks in the walls lit up.

“Jason, do you think the flashlight could have caused what you saw?”

“I don’t think so. It was a big thing, the size of a person.”

“Well, whatever it was, I don’t think it’s here anymore. We’re not getting any responses. The EMF is steady, too. I think we should go back to cell fourteen.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. Let’s stay focused,” said Jason. “People say they’ve seen shadows and apparitions with glowing red eyes.”

Back at the door to cell fourteen, Jason and Grant decided it would be better if only one of them went in at a time. The cell was just too small for two people. Jason volunteered to go in first. He took the flashlight from Grant and disappeared into the cell.

Grant turned to face the hall. He kept his ear toward cell fourteen to make sure Jason was okay. He could hear Jason moving around the cell and tapping the walls. At the same time he watched the hallway closely for any movement. If anything changed, he would be able to see it. And now there was no chance of it being caused by the flashlight.

But all of a sudden Grant felt something was off. Jason was being totally quiet in the cell.

“Jason? You all right?”

There was a scrambling sound from inside the cell.

“Grant! Get in here. NOW!”

Grant rushed into the cell and he instantly felt strange. He felt as if the walls were closing in on him. The cell was just so dark and he couldn’t see Jason at all.

“Jason?!”

“Down here.”

Jason flicked on the flashlight.

“Sorry. The light was reflecting into my eyes. But check this out.”

Grant walked to where Jason was crouching down on the floor.

“When I walked in here, I felt the way Frank said a lot of the visitors feel. I got a little tense and queasy. And then I found this.” He pointed the light to what looked like the base of a toilet. But it was sealed up. “And then my plumber side kicked in. I saw a small hole in the wall—see, right over there—so I looked through it. There’s a sewer line running right behind this cell.”

Grant took the flashlight and shone it through the hole. He put his head closer and got wind of a stale stench.

“I doubt the pipes are in use now, but they definitely were at one point,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “And the gases coming from them can be toxic. They can put a person on edge, especially in a small space. Think about it: that smell is so faint you wouldn’t even realize you were breathing it in. But it could still cause a major headache. Maybe to some people it would even cause mild hallucinations.”

“Like seeing glowing red eyes…” Grant said thoughtfully. “I think that’s enough to call that claim debunked.”

Jason put his arm out and touched the wall. The concrete had a chalky, powdery feel. He rubbed his fingertips together. He realized that without the flashlight on, the cell was exactly the way it was for the prisoners all the time. That was much more frightening to him than the claims of glowing eyes.

“Well, the sewer line definitely explains at least some of the visitors’ claims,” Grant said. “And
maybe
it explains that shadow you thought you saw. But what about the spike in the EMF reading? Think of how many prisoners must have been standing exactly where we are, going crazy bit by bit. Isn’t it possible some of that energy remained in the cell?”

Jason stood for a minute, thinking it over.

“It’s possible,” Jason said. “And you’re right about the EMF spike.
That
I can’t explain.”

Mike and Lyssa had been sitting at Central Command for hours. It was after midnight when the rest of the group met up with them.

“Really great stuff, guys,” Mike said. “I can’t wait to go over the footage tomorrow.”

“Hopefully when we go over it, we’ll pick up on something we’ve missed,” Jen said. “So far we’ve all had personal experiences—phantom smells, doors closing, seeing shadows—but as far as we know, we haven’t caught anything on tape. I’d really love to get some hard evidence.”

“There’s still the Citadel left,” said Lyssa.

She thought back to her experience when she and the team investigated Fort Mifflin, a fort from the Revolutionary War.
There she went into a prison they called Casemate 11. It was a lot like the Citadel. It was also underground. Both were solitary confinement cells. Lyssa had seen a ghostly face of the inmate in Casemate 11, and that face would never leave her mind. She remembered how scared she was when she saw the face. The thought of being trapped in a closed space with a spirit again terrified her. But at least this wasn’t her first time. She knew she could do it.

“If you all don’t mind, I’d like to go down there to collect evidence,” she said.

Jason and Grant looked impressed.

“Sure!” Jason said. “Mike, why don’t you go with her? We’ll stay here and monitor you.”

Lyssa grabbed her favorite piece of equipment, the audio recorder, and Mike took the camera. Then they made their way down to the Citadel.

Just outside the archway leading into the Citadel, Lyssa stopped and looked through.

“Everything okay?” Mike asked.

“Just wanted to get a good look. Are you ready?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah. Let’s start.” Lyssa calmly walked forward. A few feet into the Citadel she turned on the audio recorder. “Hello? Is anybody down here?”

Lyssa and Mike moved side by side. Every twenty feet or so
there was an opening in the wall that led into a different chamber of the Citadel.