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Authors: Jason Hawes,Grant Wilson,Cameron Dokey

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BOOK: Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown
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“No stranger than all the other things going on around here,” Mr. Turner said.

It was after school the next day. Mark was sitting in the Turner living room with Bill and his parents.

“But you think you figured out what’s going on?” Mrs. Turner asked.

“Yes.” Mark nodded. “First of all, the people you see aren’t really in your house at all. Not as far as they’re concerned anyway. They’re in
their
house.”

Mrs. Turner looked confused. “You mean, they lived in a house that was built right here?”

“Almost,” Mark said. “It was an old farmhouse that was torn down. Then the developer brought in a bunch of fill dirt. It
happens all the time. So when your house got built, it was in the same place but—”

“It started out higher,” Bill guessed. He started feeling excited. He was beginning to understand. “It’s like our house is taller or something.”

“You’re right, Bill,” Mark went on. “Your house is also a little bigger than the old farmhouse. But the rooms are arranged in precisely the same way.”

“Precisely,” Bill said. “That’s your word, Dad.”

Mr. Turner put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “You’re right about that.”

“So if your new house and the old farmhouse look the same, but one is taller, what do you think that means?” Mark asked.

Bill thought it over. “It means the people
do
have legs. I just can’t see them. Because of what you said. The people aren’t in my house. They’re walking in the exact same places they used to walk, but in the old farmhouse. Where all the floors were lower. That’s why we can’t see their legs.”

“That’s what I think too,” Mark said. He looked at Bill Turner’s parents. “At TAPS we call this a ‘residual haunting.’ You see the ghosts, but they don’t see you. They’re in their own world, repeating the same things over and over. Like a tape player playing itself over and over again. It’s as though they’re stuck in their very own time warp.”

“So how do we unstick them?” Mr. Turner asked.

“That’s a very good question,” Mark replied. “There’s no sure way. No one way, either. Sometimes confronting the ghosts, trying to get them to see you, works.”

“I want them to go away,” Bill said.

Mrs. Turner made a sound of distress.

“I know,” Mark said. “I don’t tell very many people this, but I understand how you feel, Bill. My brother and I grew up in a haunted house. I was afraid too. Lots of times. But I told myself I could be brave, and you know what happened?”

“What?” Bill asked.

“The more I told myself I could be brave, the braver I got. My guess is, you can do that too. You’re brave in ways you don’t even know yet, Bill.”

“Thank you for coming,” Mr. Turner said. He stood up. “You’ve given us a lot to think about.”

“I hope I helped,” Mark said. He stood too. He shook Mr. Turner and Mrs. Turner’s hands. Then he shook Bill’s hand and gave him a business card.

“If you need to reach me, just call.”

 

“I’m brave,” Bill whispered to himself.

It sounded pretty convincing that afternoon when the sun
was out. Now, in the middle of the night, when everything was dark? Maybe not so much.

Bill wasn’t about to let his own fear stop him, though. Mark Hammond said
he
learned to be brave. Braver than he thought he could be. Bill was determined to learn to be brave too. Brave enough to put his new plan into effect.

Project Scare the Ghost.

I can do this. I’m going to do this,
he thought.

Bill was done with waiting for the legless man to come up the stairs. Done with hoping that the man wouldn’t come. Bill
wanted
the legless ghost to come tonight.

Because tonight, Bill was going to be brave. Braver than ever before in his life. He was going to help his family. He was going to help the man—help
all
the ghosts move on.

He stood at the top of the stairs. His eyes searched the darkness below. Any minute now, the man would appear in the downstairs hall.

There he is!
Bill’s heart began to pound. He could feel the cold start to creep upward. It circled his ankles like fog. Slowly, slowly, the legless man began to climb the stairs.

Bill stayed right where he was. The cold was up to his knees now. Rising higher and higher. Now the cold was at his waist. Then his chest. Bill’s breath came in short, hard gasps.

The legless man was halfway up the stairs now.

Wait,
Bill said to himself.
Wait for it.

The man was almost to the top of the stairs.

Bill’s whole body felt strange—like a cross between a rock and Jell-O. Hard and soft. He was scared. But he also felt brave. Was he going to stand and fight—or run for his life?

Now!

Bill was brave. No two ways about it. Because he
did
run.

Straight down the stairs toward the legless ghost.

Straight
through
him!

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Bill’s body went numb with the cold. His eyesight went out of focus. He felt his legs buckle. He reached for the handrail on the stairs. His fingers closed around it.

Then he was through, on the other side of the ghost. Gasping for breath, Bill swung around.

The legless man stopped. He stood motionless two steps above Bill.

Slowly… ever so slowly… he turned around.

His eyes met Bill’s.
He sees me!
Bill thought.
My plan is working!

The expression on the man’s face was puzzled. Like he couldn’t quite figure out where he was. In that instant, Bill felt something change. The numbness vanished. He could see clearly again. He wasn’t afraid of the legless man anymore.

Bill opened his mouth to tell the man everything was going to be all right. But he didn’t say anything after all.

Because in a split second—between one blink of Bill’s eyes and the next—the legless man was gone.

 

“And he hasn’t been back,” Mark told the TAPS team a few weeks later. “None of the legless spirits have returned. Bill’s plan did the trick.”

“That was a risky move,” Jason said.

Mark nodded. “It was. When I said he was braver than he thought he was, I never imagined he would tackle the ghost head-on.”

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Grant said. “Though something tells me that kid may have a future as a member of the TAPS team.”

“Funny you should say that,” Mark replied. He pushed Bill’s letter across the meeting room table toward Grant. “He wants to know how old he has to be to apply. I think
you
get to answer that one!”

THE HAUNTING OF FORT MIFFLIN
 

T
he TAPS van slowed down as it entered Fort Mifflin, the site of their next case. The tires rolled over loose gravel, making a crunching sound. Lyssa looked out the window at the huge compound in front of her. Snow clung to the roofs of two long brick buildings. Lined up next to each other, the buildings looked almost like one building that stretched on and on. In front of them, Lyssa saw an uneven stone walkway that led to another set of buildings. Past that were big fields, and even farther out was a high wall that went around the entire fort.

When Jason stopped the van, she and Mark piled out. Lyssa stretched her arms to the sky. Stretching felt good. The TAPS team drove almost five hours to get to the fort, which was
just outside Philadelphia. Lyssa could see Grant and Jen and Mike approaching from the other van. The TAPS team was ready to investigate.

Mike and Mark had been talking about Fort Mifflin for months. The twins had all sorts of e-mails from people who went on tours of the fort. The visitors swore they had seen figures in windows, heard voices in the hallways, screams from other rooms. So when Jason and Grant got a call to come investigate, they organized the trip right away.

Now Lyssa could almost
feel
the history of the place. It floated all around her. But there was also something very gloomy about Fort Mifflin. The buildings seemed solid but worn down. Red brick showed underneath chipping paint. The peeling paint made them seem like spooky ruins.

A tall man appeared in the doorway of a building nearby and approached the group.

“Hi. You must be from TAPS. I’m Victor, the caretaker of Fort Mifflin.”

Jason introduced the team, and everyone shook hands. Then Grant said, “Why don’t we start with you telling us a little about the place?”

“Sure, I’d be happy to. My wife, Sarah, usually leads tours here. But she couldn’t make it today. So I’ll be your tour guide.”

Lyssa and the others followed him toward the closest building.

“There’s been a lot of history here. This fort was important in
both the American Revolution and the Civil War. Before the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin headed a committee to make sure a fort was built that would protect Philadelphia. Fort Mifflin was built in 1771. Only six years later, the soldiers here held off the British Army so that General Washington could get his soldiers to Valley Forge.”

“You mean George Washington, right?” Jen asked.

Victor nodded. “The fighting here lasted five weeks. It was the heaviest attack of the war. Hundreds of men were wounded. And 150 men lost their lives. They died right where you’re standing.”

Lyssa looked around her and shivered. She could almost see the heroic American soldiers being cut down by the British Army.

“Well, at least we won the war,” Mike said with a grin.

“But not this battle,” Victor told him. “The British ended up taking the fort. But if the soldiers here hadn’t held them off so long, the Revolution might have ended very differently. They call this place ‘The Fort That Saved America.’ And that’s only the beginning.

“After all that fighting, the fort was damaged so badly, it had to be built all over again.”

Victor turned swiftly and marched forward, like a soldier himself. Lyssa moved quickly to keep pace with him. She breathed in the crisp winter air. There was an electric smell, like
on days right before it starts to snow. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Victor stopped in front of the archway of a building. The entrance of the arch was blocked with iron gates.

“The dungeon is through there,” he said.

“The dungeon… that sounds so much worse than prison, but that’s what it was, right?” Mark asked.

“That’s right,” Victor said. “It’s always been called that, ever since it was built. The prisoners were kept in there. In the summer it was scorching hot. In the winter it was bitter cold. It wasn’t a good place to be.”

Lyssa looked in through the archway. The hall behind it was shadowy. She had to squint to see anything at all.

“What kind of paranormal activity has been reported in there?” she asked Victor.

“Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t like going in there at night. I get this real bad feeling, like somebody’s watching me, like they don’t want me in there.”

“Who do you think could be watching you?”

“We have records of about thirty prisoners who died in there. Many froze to death, some starved. So I’m not sure exactly who it might be. But whoever it is definitely is not happy.”

BOOK: Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown
8.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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