Month: August 2023

We got all the equipment in place and waited around the van until a little after seven o’clock. We wanted to make sure the sun was down enough that it would be really dark. That’s when big sis suggested that we take a sweep around the house to get started. At the same time, Beta Team headed toward the barn.

Mike waved his flashlight toward the area that we thought had been a garden. “We should probably check around over there too. Maybe get the clothesline poles and the edge of the yard on the way.” Emily agreed, so off we went.

It was hard to get Mike out of the habit of using his flashlight. Even with no moonlight, we were outside and the stars gave enough light to see by, but you had to let your eyes adjust. Worse, my cameras were each set for their own light level and they needed to adjust. Too much light and I got no picture.

“Watch your step,” Mike said as he got to the edge of the garden.

“Yeah,” Emily agreed, “It seems pretty rough.

Someone had churned up the ground at some time, making little rows for planting. Since then, whatever plants grew had withered. In the camera screen, they looked like a mass of little tentacles reaching up to snare their next victim. If we didn’t watch our steps, we could be those victims.

Emily stopped and pulled her audio recorder from its pocket in her vest. “Hello,” she called out. “Is there anyone here? We are here to get your story told. Is there anything you want to say?”

We all stood still to give anything a chance to speak.

I tried to keep my camera on both Mike and Emily during these EVP sessions. Trying to catch Electronic Voice Phenomenon events was a big thing in the paranormal investigation community. I wasn’t sure we would pick up anything more than the rustling of the October breeze through trees and grasses.

Bud didn’t say anything about hauntings in the garden, but it never hurt to check everywhere on the property. Really, what could go so horribly bad that it would cause a haunting in a garden? Images of chopped up bodies being tilled into the soil filled my head and I wished I hadn’t wondered about that.

The moment passed when Mike and Emily, somehow synchronized, turned to start walking again.

We made our way over to the treeline. There were enough broken branches and twigs to keep us from getting too close. The ground was more even there, compared to the garden. I swept the camera around the trees, first toward the horizon and then toward the base of the trees. The horizon was just to be thorough; I didn’t expect to catch anything. The base of the trees was to see if there were any little critters in our investigation area.

Critters were an issue for us. Obviously, they could cause many haunting-like activities, such as making noise or stealing little things. They could also decide to chew through parts of our equipment. Worst of all, they startle our investigators, making the investigators scream like little children, and seriously disrupting the mood of the investigation. I’ve kept some of the video of those incidents even after everyone wanted the record destroyed.

“Did you hear that?” Mike jumped around and froze.

Emily immediately turned her head in the direction Mike was looking and then she froze too.

As quietly as I could, I turned to point my camera toward Mike’s looking direction, trying to keep both of them in frame as best I could.

We all stood as silently as we could.

Emily raised the recorder, which was still in her hand. I saw her push the record button.

A sound came from a short way off. It was soft, barely audible.

It was a moan.

I almost forgot to reorient my cameras to capture the reactions of my investigators. I liked to think I was immune to this haunting stuff, but a moan in the dark still set my heart beating fast.

“Is there somebody here?” Emily asked. She extended the recorder toward the sound.

Mike took a step toward the direction of the sound.

The sound came out again.

Emily and Mike exchanged glances. Emily seemed worried. Mike’s face filled with glee.

Mike took another step.

This time, Emily followed. I followed them, trying to move behind them so I could keep both of them in the picture and look between them toward the source of the moan.

Three more steps, and Mike stopped.

Through the camera, I saw that he stood next to the clothesline pole closest to the road. He leaned in to listen, then reached out to touch it.

“I think I found our sound,” he said. “The pole is made of hollow steel pipe. The side here has a rust hole. The wind blows across it and we get that sound. See, it stops if I put my hand over it.”

He put his hand over the hole and the sound stopped. When he took his hand off, the sound started again. We watched it for a moment, documenting what happened. The stronger the wind, and if it had a slightly south-western source, the higher the pitch of the sound.

“I wonder how many people hear this when they think they hear someone being beaten up.” Emily said.

“That’s a good point,” Mike replied. “We should probably cover this up so we don’t hear it again when listening for other things.” He checked several pockets on his vest before finding a folded piece of tape large enough for the hole. The tape was intended for holding down camera wires or other quick fixes, but it would serve.

With the tape in place, the sound stopped. We could move on.

From the clothesline, we headed to the southwest corner of the house, the kitchen end. At each window, and at the kitchen door, we stopped to listen. Where the opening was low enough, I tried to point the cameras in. We made it past the back wall of the house, including the kitchen and master bedroom. Then we rounded the corner.

The first set of windows on the eastern wall still looked into the bedroom. Knowing that there had been reports from there, we lingered a little longer at each one.

Emily held her recorder to the window frame. “Is there anyone here? Do you want to tell us what happened?”

Through the camera, I could see the room, empty except for our equipment. The bedroom contained a motion-activated camera, an extra sound recorder, and a REM pod. The Radiating Electromagnetism pod was like a theremin, one of those spooky musical instruments that you play just by waving your hands around in their electromagnetic fields. The REM pod should pick up the presence of disruptive lifeforce energy that gets into its range. When that happens, we’ll get flashing lights and beeping. Raccoons love them.

With no response, we moved to the next set of windows, the ones from the parlor. Emily again held up her recorder. “Is there anyone here? We are here to help you.”

My camera picked up the same equipment as we put into the bedroom. Bud said this was the room where people heard sounds of a fight and maybe something involving a woman. We wanted to capture any evidence of this one. Mike had set up extra cameras and audio recorders in the dining room that were pointed into the parlor.

Again, we stood silent, awaiting some sign. Unfortunately, all we heard was the lonely sigh of the cold autumn wind.

“Ooph”

We froze.

Mike turned to Emily and mouthed the words, “Did you hear that?”

Her eyes went big. She turned to face him directly and nodded a yes. Then she turned back to the window.

Her hand had been resting on the window frame, holding the recorder into the room. She started to pull her hand back, hesitated, then pulled back just enough so the recorder was still inside, but her hand was as outside as it could otherwise be.

We waited more.

Mike’s head bobbed a little, full of excitement and ready to go.

Emily’s eyes focused on the window, looking for absolutely any reason to jump back.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what was going on with me. Part of me was just as excited as Mike. The other part filled with frustration because nothing showed up on camera. As a budding filmmaker, a blank screen meant failure.

Mike finally broke the silence by whispering, “Let’s go inside!”

He spun and practically ran around the corner to the front of the house and toward the door.

Beta Team

I watched the Alpha Team head toward the house: Mike and Emily, followed by Skippy the Wonder Cameraman. I adjusted my own camera rig and called to Danny and Sarah, “Hey guys, we should probably get started.” Naturally, they were way more interested in each other than in anything else going on.

I turned away a minute to give them a chance to untangle. If this place wasn’t really haunted, I was in for a long third-wheel kind of night. I thought about seeing if I could change places with Josh so he could work Beta Team and I could walk around with Mike and his sister. At least those two weren’t getting along well enough to make me uncomfortable.

Maybe I should consider bringing a date to these things.

We finally got underway and headed straight for the door the old man showed us earlier. When we set up the cameras and stuff earlier, we also pulled the weeds so it would be safer to get in and out.

Outside, the stars had been enough to see by. Most farms had those street lights in the yard so you could see where they were from a distance. I guessed they killed the one here about the same time they pulled the electricity from the house. Maybe thieves stole the street light for the scrap metal.

Inside the barn, it was way dark, like waking up drunk at two in the morning in somebody’s basement with no lights or windows dark. After a moment, I could see the sky through the open haydoor in the opposite wall. Just what the lovebirds needed, a romantic skylight.

After a moment of adjusting, Danny said, “I think we’re going to need lights. We’ll never be able to move around in here like this.”

Sarah said, “I agree. How much? Flashlights? Headlamps? What do you think, Max?”

Ah good, they remembered that I was there. “If you use the headlamps on the lowest setting, it’ll be easier on my cameras.”

They both reached up and turned on their lights.

With the newfound light source, the starlight of the haydoor disappeared. Instead, we had two small pools of light and the ambient bounce from anything they hit. As Romeo and Juliet looked around, the spots jumped wildly from place to place. I knew from experience that they would settle down after a minute or two.

Danny asked, “So, where should we start?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “Do we want to see if we can find the grunting first or search the little rooms?”

“If the grunting is just a couple of boards, we’ll probably just have to wait until the wind blows the right way. Do you have any other ideas?”

“Well,” said Sarah, “Bud said some people thought it might be a pig. We could try an EVP session to see if we can get a pig.”

“That’s brilliant!” Danny exclaimed.

I was glad they couldn’t see my face; I’m sure my eye roll was very noticeable. Ghost hunting was kind of cool, but I didn’t really buy into it in a serious way. This was just something interesting to do and some of the geeks I hung out with thought it was cool. I always thought EVP was a bit hokey, but EVP to contact a pig?

Sarah started, “Hey there. Who’s a good… What should I say? A good boy? A good girl?”

Danny chirped, “Try saying good pig. That should be good enough.”

“Who’s a good pig? Eh? Can you talk to us? Can you give us a good grunt?”

I kept my camera on both of them the whole time.

They stood listening, their heads cocked to the side. Each held out a digital audio recorder, hoping to catch piggy noises that our ears might miss.

We all stood quietly for about two or three minutes. They were very determined to give the ghost pig a chance.

Still, nothing.

Danny’s recorder hand dropped to his side. Sarah’s did the same.

“We can try again later,” Danny said.

Sarah nodded agreement. “Besides, maybe something will show up on the recorders.”

That thought perked them up and the hopeful smiles returned to their faces.

After a moment of renewed enthusiasm, Sarah spoke again, “Maybe we should check those rooms.”

Danny asked, “Which end do we want to start with?”

Sarah seemed to think for a moment. “I don’t know.” She turned to face me. “Didn’t you say the middle two were the most interesting?”

I wouldn’t say interesting, but I knew what she meant. “Yeah, the two on either end are just little rooms with no features. We have cameras in there. The middle ones have windows out to the feedlot and one has a door leading out.”

“How about we start with the middle room without the door and do the door one next,” Danny suggested.

“Great!” Sarah said.

I followed as they practically skipped toward the door to the little room, their headlamps sending light randomly over the wall containing the doors. I decided that some part of both of them stopped developing at the age of seven.

In the room, they split up a little, but not too much. They didn’t like to be too far apart. Both picked a window to look out. Each window was a frame divided into six smaller panes in three rows of two. Sarah’s window was missing one pane in the lower right. Danny’s pane was missing two at top and one in the left middle.

On some unknown signal, they both turned back into the room.

“Do you see anything?” Danny asked.

“No, do you?” Sarah answered.

“How about you, Max? You see anything?” Nice of Danny to include me.

‘No, nothing showing up on any of the cameras.”

Sarah pulled out her recorder again. “EVP time?”

Danny answered by showing his own recorder.

“Is there anybody here with us?” Sarah started. “Can you try to talk to us?”

She paused for a moment to allow for an answer.

Even though I never really believed that there would be a voice, I still listened. I guess I kind of hoped there would be someday. It would probably give me something to believe in.

“What did Bud say was the name of the farmer who disappeared?” Sarah asked.

Danny pulled a small notebook from a vest pocket and turned a few pages. “It was Jacob Rumpe.”

“Thanks.” Sarah turned back to the room. “Jacob Rumpe, are you here? Did something bad happen to you here?”

Again, we waited.

The wind blew past the broken windows, but that didn’t sound like a voice. I also heard my own pulse in my ears. My nostrils picked up on all the dust, tinged with the scent of old hay. I was pretty sure I tasted the hay dust too.

Still no results.

“Let’s check the next room,” Danny chimed.

We filed out of the first room, along the wall into the next room, the one with the outside door.

Danny immediately went to the door and tried to open it. Like I experienced earlier in the day, it would only move a little before springing back.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m going to try to move this door in different ways to see if it sounds like grunting.”

He pushed hard and looked back expectantly.

Sarah shook her head no, her light moving accordingly.

He tried to deliberately rub the edge of the door against the frame. Still no grunt.

After a few more grunt-less attempts, he gave up.

Knowing what to do, they each produced their recorders for an EVP thing.

“Jacob Rumpe, can you hear us? Can you let us know you are here?” We gave it the requisite pause before the next questions. “Is there anybody here willing to talk to us? We are trying to find out what happened here so we can help.”

Still no joy in EVP town.

Without the slightest sign of dejection, my investigators headed out and toward the next room.

As we walked, a creaking sound came from the wood flooring, but not directly under us. Instead, it came from nearer the outside wall of the barn. Instinctively, we all froze.

“Did you hear where it came from?” Sarah asked.

“I think it was over there.” Danny pointed and tried to align his headlamp to where he was pointing.

“Do you think it was grunt-like?”

“No, it sounded more like just a creaky floor. Let’s check it out real quick, you know, in case it’s dangerous.” Danny’s voice rose with excitement.

We moved cautiously forward, listening for more creaking noises. Each step brought more soft sounds of wood against wood until we were in line with the bit of wooden floor against the outer wall.

“What do we do now?” Danny asked.

He took one more step forward and the floor fell away beneath his foot. He screamed as he lurched forward.

These situations leave me torn. As the camera guy, I’m supposed to hang back and catch everything on video. On the other hand, I should have probably been a bro and tried to grab him before he plunged to his doom. Then there was the fact that Sarah was between me and him.

In the light from Sarah’s headlamp, I saw that the entire floor raised up, becoming a wall near where Danny was falling.

He caught himself on the new wall.

All of us stood, breathing hard and trying to recover from this latest twist.

Danny pulled himself from the hole in the floor that opened by the drawbridge-like door. He moved back a few steps.

“Are you alright?” asked Sarah as she ran her hands over him to check him out.

‘Yeah,” he said, “just caught off guard. What is that thing?”

They turned their attention, and lights to the new wall. Following down to where it came out of the floor showed an opening where the boards had been. They leaned over to look in and I repositioned to get the cameras lined up.

The hole in the floor contained wood stairs leading down into a new room.

As soon as we pulled up to the farm house, I pulled the door open to get out. Sitting in the cramped back seat with Danny and Sarah for the whole trip was uncomfortable. They really should just get a room and skip the investigation. At least I wasn’t Emily’s little brother shoved in the cargo area.

I stretched as soon as my feet hit the ground. The cold breeze hit my face and fired up my circulation. Continuing with a sort of stretch-walk combination, I ambled back to the van that just pulled up. Unlike Emily’s wunderkind brother, Josh, I didn’t carry a camera everywhere. I just helped out with the video stuff; wasn’t trying to become the next Scorcese. My equipment rode in the back of the van.

Danny and Sarah caught up with me just as the van doors stopped. We gave Matt and his helper, Fleet, a minute to get themselves situated; it had been just as long a ride for them.

“We put your gear just inside the back doors,” Matt said. Matt was an old highschool friend of Mike’s. He ran a video conversion service and did some freelance editing. For these investigations, he watched the cameras and recordings from the monitors in the van. He seemed to like doing what he did, at least a little.

My investigators and I, the Beta Team, walked around to the back doors. I knew what to expect, so I pulled the first door open and stepped back behind it.

A large, yellow blur flew out of the open door, bounded a short distance across the yard, then turned back. In an instant he had his front paws up on Danny’s chest.

Danny rubbed him behind the ears. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? It’s you, isn’t it?”

Rumples was a retired search dog of some sort. Danny adopted her when her hips went bad, or something. He insisted on bringing Rumples along to look for signs of animals at the haunting sites. Rumples was well disciplined but Danny wasn’t. That led to problems, so Rumples spent most of his time tied up at the van with Matt watching him. Most clients didn’t want a friendly, furry monster running all over their house.

I grabbed my battery belt and fastened it around my waist. Next, the camera frame, an aluminum structure with shoulder straps, hung from my shoulders with its own waist strap. I plugged the battery cables into the cameras, one low-light, one infrared, and one normal. Each fired up as the juice flowed.

Sarah grabbed her and Danny’s vests and headlamps while Danny played with Rumples. She put on her kit, and set Danny’s on the floor of the van by the door. While DAnny suited up, Sarah held back Rumples who had discovered his food bowl in the van.

A large man came around the side of the van, causing all of us to jump. At first, I just saw the red, plaid coat, then the rest of him. “Hi,” he said, “they call me ‘Bub’. Which one of you folks is going to be looking at the barn?”

Danny, friendly as ever, held up his hand. “Hi, Bub. My name’s Danny. This is Sarah. The one with the cameras is Max. We’ll be in the barn tonight. What can you tell us about it?”

“Lots!” Bub said, with way too much enthusiasm. “Want the tour before the sun gets too low?”

“Sure.” piped Danny.

Bub turned and strode off toward the barn. He had a really long step. Danny and Sarah ran after him. I hit record on the normal-light camera and followed, trying to keep everybody in the shot.

The barn looked to be in good shape for its age. The paint had almost all peeled, leaving just a little red as a reminder of times past. Some of the windows were broken, but the low sun glinted from the remaining panes. They looked dirty, and a few were cracked. Weeds grew up around the foundation, but the old stones still showed through.

“Out back,” Bub described while pointing, “you can still see the feedlot. Weeds are growing up through the broken concrete. There’s still a few of the fence posts. Nobody ever reported anything spooky out there. They say all the things happened inside the barn.”

I panned the camera over to the old feedlot, zooming to get a little more detail, what there was of it. There seemed to be some larger chunks of concrete slabs that had been the floor of the lot. Weeds, mostly thistles, stuck up through the cracks. They wore their October brown. The fence posts he mentioned still stood around the perimeter. Even from a distance I could see they wouldn’t last much longer, all split and weathered.

Then, I took the camera across the roof of the barn. I’d seen plenty of these old barns. The tall, peaked roof meant there was probably a haydoor on the other end. That meant the inside would have a hayloft on the second level and animal pens or work rooms on the ground floor. There was probably a big, empty space in the middle.

To get a sense of place, I spun around to show the distance to the road. As steadily as I could, I followed the road to the driveway, then up to the house, and back around to the barn. I paused for a moment at the house. Graffiti covered its walls, at least on the lower floor. As I got back to the barn, I looked carefully. There were no signs of any graffiti there. Maybe something on the other sides or inside, even, but nothing I could see. That seemed weird.

Bub tugged on an old door, fighting against a clump of grass that had grown in front. I jogged a little to catch up, getting there just as he got the door open.

I stepped into the dim insides of the barn. The screen on the back of my camera flickered as it adjusted. Beams of sunlight streamed in from the west windows, showing sparkles of dust.

Most of the structure looked like it was in good shape. The large beams of the frame seemed solid and straight. Looking up, some of the rafters and walls sagged a bit. Some light sifted in through the cracks in the wall boards and the holes in the roof. Other than the dust, and us, it sat empty.

The opening for the large haydoor opened in the far wall, toward the peak in the roof. Facing east, not as much sunlight came in that way. The remains of ropes and pulleys still hung near the top of the opening. Below that, the hayloft extended half way down the length of the barn and completely down both sides.

On the south side, walls with doors sealed the area beneath the loft, probably to make work rooms or storage. Fences did something similar on the north side to make livestock pens. I caught the scent of hay, dust, and just a little animal smell to suggest it was probably hogs.

Bub started up again. “The barn is unusual. Hooligans go into the house and tear things up and paint all over. Then they run off claiming it’s haunted. They don’t do that out here. Something about this barn, especially at night, keeps them away. They say it’s the grunting.”

Danny and Sarah exchanged excited glances. This spooky stuff really got them excited.

“The grunting?” Danny asked.

“Well, that’s what they say,” Bub answered. “You see, one of the fellows that disappeared from the farm was Jacob Rumpe. He used to raise pigs. There were a lot of rumors about him, saying he was up to all kinds of no good. When he disappeared, people came up with all kinds of theories. One was that he was eaten by his pigs. There’s no more reason to believe that than anything else, but people like a good story.”

“When did he disappear?” Sarah asked.

“Let’s see, that was back in 1930,” Bub answered. “It was during Prohibition and all that organized crime. It was also the start of the Great Depression. A lot of people went missing back then, for a lot of reasons, so there’s no telling what really happened.”

Danny asked, “Do people actually think they hear grunting or is that just a story going around?”

“It’s hard to say,” Bub said. “If you’ve been drinking or hitting the dope, a couple of loose boards rubbing together can sound like anything. Whatever it is, the kids don’t come out here, day or night.”

Sarah pointed toward the interior doors on the south side. “Does anything happen in those rooms?”

“Not that I know of. Like I said, nobody comes in here so their stories don’t get more specific.”

“Ok,” said Danny. “We better get our equipment set up. It’ll be six-thirty soon and we’ll be in the dark.” He turned to Bub. “Thanks for all your help, Bub. You sound like you really know what’s going on around here. It’s really appreciated.”

“Happy to help,” Bub said. Then he shook Danny’s hand, nodded to Sarah and myself, and headed out through the same door we came in.

Danny, Sarah, and I huddled together.

“What do you think?” Danny asked.

I pointed to the loft. “I’d like to set up a camera at this end to catch the loft and the big, open space underneath. That should get most of the barn. We’ll need to go into those rooms to decide what to do there.”

“I like it,” Sarah said. “I also think we should set up a couple of directional microphones to see if we can catch the grunting sound. It may be just a couple of loose boards. If so, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding them and replicating the effect.”

“Ok,” Danny said, clapping his hands together. “You guys know what you’re doing. Let’s get it done.”

The other two headed back to the van for the basic equipment. I stayed behind to take a quick look at the rooms. If I left them to check the rooms, they’d probably find one too romantic and get distracted.

As expected, the rooms were small. Their doors opened easily, though some of the strap hinges screeched with rust. There were six in total. The middle two contained windows to the south, letting in some light and showing the feedlot.

The fourth room also contained an external door. I checked it. Like the door Bub fought with, this was barricaded by overgrowth. Like the windows, it opened to the feedlot. In general, one camera per room, just in case, would be adequate. Matt had a lot of little motion-activated cameras just for spaces like these.

The floor on the barn, in front of the rooms and on the west end, was wood. The rest seemed to be concrete, probably added after the original barn construction. I wasn’t sure if it served some sort of purpose, but I ran the camera over it anyway. It was always good to capture details, especially anomalies. Who knows, maybe those were the grunting boards.

I thumbed the walkie-talkie on my camera frame. “Hey, Danny.”

“This is Danny” came the response.

“For those rooms, I think just six of those little motion-activated jobs should do.”

“Roger. I’ll get those.” Danny liked to use words like “roger” when using the walkie-talkies.

I took one more look around the barn while waiting for the others, mostly to find someplace comfortable.

I didn’t get as excited about these investigations as the others did, especially Danny and Sarah. I just did it as something to do. In the twelve investigations I’d been on, we never found any actual haunting. This was just going to be a cold night of walking around filming the two lovebirds going crazy over every little noise. At least I was out of the house.

It was hard to keep Mike in frame. He was in the front seat of the SUV and I was stuck in the back with the boxes of equipment. That’s the disadvantage of being the junior guy on the team. That, and the fact that my sister Emily, the one in the passenger seat, was Mike’s girlfriend and they didn’t want to seem like they were playing favorites. The biggest problem for the moment was the bumpy dirt road we were heading down.

Mike turned back to everybody in the back seat, and me in the cargo area. “We’re almost there,” he said.

I was sure he wasn’t going to show up well on the video. We were headed west and it was a little after five o’clock in late October. Only another hour till sundown and all the lighting was going to be tricky. If I could keep from pointing my camera straight into the sun, I should be able to get some good high-contrast shots.

It was Emily’s turn to talk to everybody. “Everybody knows your job. Alpha Team will cover the house. Beta Team will cover the barn. Remember there’s no plumbing, no electricity, and the place is likely to collapse and kill us all before the night’s over, so be careful.”

She didn’t seem very enthused, something that has been happening in the more recent investigations.

The members of the Beta Team were the ones in the back seat. Danny Hopkins, Mike’s best friend from college, was the leader. Sarah Lynch was Danny’s girlfriend. Even with their heavy coats they managed to snuggle close together enough that I could video the rest of the trip. Not snuggling with them was their camera guy, Max McDermot. He was a lot older than me, about thirty-two, I think. He had a couple of jobs and did video stuff on the side. He wasn’t a film student like me.

Emily went on, “It’s supposed to get down into the low fifties tonight, with a west wind. Make sure you stay bundled. If you get too cold, get back to the van to warm up. We don’t need any icicles tonight.”

The van she mentioned was still behind us, probably. Looking through the rear window of the SUV, I mostly just saw the dust we were kicking up. A darker spot said the van was still there. The Tech Team, just Matt and Fleet, had the van with all the recording and communication equipment. They would keep a remote eye on all of us through the night and keep a warm place with plenty of coffee.

As we crested the hill, I tried to focus in beyond the windshield and past Mike and Emily to see where we were going. It looked like it was probably a more complete farm at one time, but now was just a house and barn. There was a line of trees along the west edge of the yard; they were going to provide some great imagery before the sun set. A driveway joined the road next to a headless mailbox post.

Mike slowed down to make the turn, following the dirt driveway up to the house. I fought to keep from tipping off my box. The van pulled up behind.

The Historical Society had sent pictures of the house, but it looked much worse in person. Someone had broken all the glass from the windows. The old paint pulled away leaving just gray wood. Vandals replaced some of the paint with graffiti in basic colors around the ground floor. This was going to look great on video.

Everyone started their climb out of the vehicles. I popped the rear hatch of the SUV and crawled out the back. Even if I was the youngest, sitting on boxes the whole way made me feel like an old man. I stretched and watched as the Beta Team headed back toward the van.

Mike and Emily stood at the passenger-side front door. That usually meant they wanted some privacy. It was a good time for me to get some shots of the surroundings to set the mood. For the investigations, I was the camera operator for Mike and Emily, the Alpha Team. It kind of reminded me of the Jimmy Olsen character from the Superman comics, like I was just tagging along with Mike’s Clark Kent and Emily’s Lois Lane. Every once in a while, I was tempted to interject, “Super duper!” just to see if they’d notice.

The cold air wouldn’t show up but the wind blowing the remaining leaves would. I turned up the audio gain to make sure I got the wind noise. With the trees mostly barren, and the harvested corn field in the background, this was going to give one of those feelings of desolation. You know, that feeling like you were suddenly all alone in a void and you really need to find your way back to the real world before you cease to exist. The scent of decaying leaves helped in person, but the camera left that out.

“This has got to be the last one,” Emily whispered.

“I know,” said Mike. “It’s just hard.”

“What’s so hard?” Emily said back. “Nobody is going to take me seriously as an accountant if they find out I hunt ghosts on the weekend. I can’t keep doing this.”

“But, we already got all the equipment and Danny is really into it. I can’t just abandon Danny.”

“But you want me to abandon a career? All my plans for the future? What happens if we have kids, huh? You want to drag them out to places like this to see if they can survive?”

Mike looked around for a moment trying to come up with a response. “Yeah, well, what about Josh? He seems to get a lot out of this camera work. It’s good experience for him.”

“Josh? Are you kidding? He would probably film a clock in black and white and call it avant garde or something. He doesn’t need this.”

I would have been annoyed at her suggestion if it wasn’t a little too on the nose. I actually thought about doing that a semester ago when I couldn’t think of a film project for a class.

Anyway, it was the same argument they had been having for a few months. I knew my sister, and she was getting to the end of her rope. I really liked Mike, but he was not going to win this one. Anyway, not officially any of my business.

Paying attention to the camera again, I scanned across the yard, having to step away from the SUV to get a better angle. That seemed to end Emily and Scott’s little discussion.

Part of the yard looked rough. I guessed it was probably a garden at one point. It was a rectangle that was little more weedy than the rest, but it all looked brown and dead. Further back, two t-shaped, rusty poles stood, all that was left of a clothes line.

Panning back toward the house, I saw the man walk out the door.

“Uh, guys,” I said to Mike and Emily. When they looked my way, I nodded toward the man.

He was some old dude, probably in his sixties or early seventies, and he was big. He wore one of those red plaid coats like you see in old nineteen-fifties Christmas movies. His cheeks were a little chubby, but there was some sort of sterness like he used to be a cop or something. With his long legs, it didn’t take him long to reach Mike and offer up a hand to shake.

Mike shook his hand and said, “Hi, we’re from Pedersen-Hopkins Investigations. I’m Mike Pederesen.”

“People just call me ‘Bub’. Come on; I’ll show you the house.” He turned and started back toward the door.

We followed, Mike first then Emily. I trailed and tried to keep everybody in frame without tripping over anything.

As we headed toward the house, a yellow blur zipped by in the yard, headed for the garden.

Emily called back toward the van, “Matt, can you get Rumples? He’s headed out behind the house.”

Rumples was the eight-year-old golden retriever with the team. She belonged to Danny, but on investigations she was the responsibility of the Tech Team. Her main job was finding animals in places they weren’t supposed to be. She was really good at it. Before Danny got her, she was a cadaver dog, the kind law enforcement people use to find bodies. With age, her hips went bad, so they retired her.

“All that’s left is the barn and the house these days,” Bub said as we headed up the porch steps. “The Rumpe family held it for almost a hundred years. Jacob Rumpe, he was the first disappearance. That was back in the prohibition era, so disappearances weren’t such a big deal back then.”

The Historical Society had mentioned a few disappearances. That was part of the reason people thought the place was haunted.

I panned across the porch, partly for some artistic footage and partly because it may show signs of the animal activity that contributes so many of the noises of hauntings. It was made of wood slats across beams that sat on a stone foundation. I learned a lot about buildings since I started helping on these little excursions.

The roof of the porch sagged against the pillars, but didn’t look like it was going to fall any time soon. I moved around slowly to make sure all the graffiti was readable. People always wanted to know if markings were satanic or ritualistic or something. They were mostly the scrawl of some idiots who giggled because they were painting on someone else’s walls. Just a few less brain cells and those people would smear their feces on everything.

The frame of the door stood empty. Rust spots marked where screws or nails used to hold the door. I adjusted my camera because it was in the late day sun and the opening was really dark.

Bub crossed the threshold, so we followed.

The old man continued his tour. “After Jacob went away, the farm passed to his cousin. It went through a couple of generations after that. In nineteen-seventy-two, John Rumpe moved in with his wife Mary. They planned to build the farm up to its prior glory.”

Once inside, our eyes and my camera adjusted to the lower light level. I started my shots. Vandals tore the old wall paper and knocked holes in the lath walls. Sarah, our resident construction person, taught me that the insulation behind those was a great home for vermin.

Like outside, graffiti covered everything.

To the right, on the outside western wall, stairs went up to a balcony on the second floor. I remembered that many of these old houses were built on a four-square plan and would have had another room above the one we were in. This one was very airy with the open space. I turned to get the second floor windows in the shot. They would let in more light, even though they faced north.

“This was the dining room,” Bub said. Apparently, they liked it big. Some people report seeing hauntings. They don’t see things that happen in this room, they see things while they’re in this room.”

“What sort of things do they experience?” Emily asked. I noticed she wasn’t standing very close to Mike. That made it harder to keep them both in frame.

“Let me show you,” he said. He turned to the room to the east.

I rushed ahead to get a shot of the whole room and then be able to catch Mike and Emily’s expressions as they came in. It pays to be a cinema student.

This one was as trashed as the dining room. Two windows opened to the north and another two to the east. Out of the east ones, I could see the barn. For one of the east windows, the sash weight hung against the wall, dangling by the remains of its rope.

I expected the room to smell musty, but it carried the same autumn air as the outside.

Bub waived around. “This was the parlor. People say they hear moaning and scuffling in here, like maybe somebody was fighting.”

Any evidence of an assault was long gone. They say, though, that violent episodes lead to those residual hauntings, you know, like an emotional recording that plays back. It could be that sort of thing. It could also be drunk people hearing boards creak.

“They speculate that it may have something to do with John and Mary. They were the other disappearances,” Bub went on.

Mike reached out to tap me on the shoulder. “Make sure we get cameras, separate sound recorders, and EMF meters all over this room.”

I nodded, like I didn’t already know how to do my job. We needed different equipment not just to get various angles, but we wanted different technology. The ghost hunters believe that spirits can interact with different wavelengths of energy, so one device might catch something another would not. The EMF meters just measure the electromagnetic fields that ghosts give off. It helps that they also pick up on shoddy wiring, which a house with no electricity should not have.

Bub led them into the room to the south. “This was John and Mary’s bedroom. People say you can hear a woman screaming and the sounds of someone being dragged into the parlor, but in the parlor, it stops suddenly. But that’s where it gets strange.”

Most of this was standard haunting, but Bub knew how to tell it. No wonder the Historical Society sent him out. The “gets strange” part caught everybody’s attention. I was lucky that Mike and Emily’s faces were in frame to catch their expressions.

“You see,” Bub continued, “they say it’s like a woman screaming and being dragged. But when the woman stops screaming, they think the recording keeps playing back, just without her.”

You could tell that Mike was starting to wonder about this. Could this be their first real haunting? Every investigation so far had been animals in the attic or loose boards, or something else they could explain away. That’s how he and Emily met, when he found the raccoons in the crawlspace of our mom’s house. I watched as he looked over to see if Emily shared his interest.

She didn’t.

Bub led us back through the parlor and dining room to the kitchen. The remains of a sink and cabinets clung to the walls, but the room was otherwise trashed. Near the lower cabinets, little bits of linoleum still stuck to the floor, but most had been ripped to the wood.

The back door opening stood just as empty as the front. From the windows, I saw the clothesline poles.

“They put indoor plumbing in back in the forties and then updated it in the sixties. They also switched the wood stove to propane. I don’t know of anybody experiencing anything in here, but down there is a different story.” The old man pointed to an opening with a set of stairs leading down.

The stairs to the cellar sat below the stairs leading to the second floor. It looked dark and I didn’t remember seeing any windows around the foundation of the house. Even if there were, the sun was already getting low in the sky. I turned on the light on my camera.

The big man made it down safely, so we probably could too. Mike and Emily each dug a flashlight out of their vest pockets. This time, I was going to film from behind; art versus freaky basement.

Unlike the dryness of the rest of the house, the cellar stank of must and moisture. The steps and walls were made of cut stone. It was a cramped space, only half the size of the kitchen. Bub had to duck to fit and the rest of us crouched just out of instinct.

“This was the old fruit cellar,” he said. “There used to be shelves bolted to the walls but they aren’t here anymore. You won’t see any graffiti down here. Don’t know why this gets left alone, but nobody wants to be here. It could be the light or the smell. Anyway, people say they don’t like it.”

I panned around a little more. Our lights glinted off moisture on the stones. Small, rusty holes showed where the shelves used to be bolted in place. I decided to look to the floor to see if any of the old wood remained. That’s when I noticed that the floor was just packed dirt.

“Let’s head back up,” Bub said. He went back up the stairs and we followed as quickly as we could. Why we followed quickly was a mystery, but it seemed like the thing to do.

He took us through the kitchen and back to the dining room, and then up the stairs, stopping on the balcony.

Mike and Emily stood close to where Bub stopped. I stood at the top of the stairs so I could keep the camera on them.

“This is the one that really scares people, probably because the story has an official record.”

“There’s an official record of a haunting?” Emily asked.

Bub smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said, “there’s an official record of the violence.” He patted the balcony railing firmly with his hand.

“Shortly after the last disappearance, Mary Rumpe’s uncle came to see what was going on. He was a retired G-Man. That’s what they used to call federal agents back then. Anyway, he was snooping around but nobody knew about his law enforcement past. A couple of men, probably responsible for the disappearances, decided to get rid of him too.”

“It was a neighbor, George somebody, and his buddy, a corrupt deputy named Pitman, who came over. They tried to hang the G-Man. They had his suicide note in hand before they even got here. They probably would have gotten away with it but they got a surprise.”

The old man paused and looked into the distance through the second floor windows.

I thought, this has got to be the best storyteller in the whole Historical Society and I needed to learn some of his craft.

After his dramatic pause, Bub continued. “The G-Man had some buddies from the Bureau coming for a visit. They showed up, two carloads of them, while the struggle went on. The G-Man shouted for help, his buddies came in, and there was a shootout. The bad guys died right here where we’re standing.”

Mike and Emily instinctively stepped back, their eyes drawn to the floor. Their expressions clearly that of shock and a little fear and I got it all on video. Super duper!

Bub gave them a moment to recover, a slight grin on his face. “Nobody figured out if those men had anything to do with John and Mary’s disappearances, or where the couple went. That’s why it’s all a mystery.”

He motioned toward the stairs suggesting they should head down.

“Since then,” he went on, “the place has been deserted. It was a crime scene for a while. Then relatives took over the fields but didn’t use the farmstead. They tried to rent the house, but nobody would stay. Eventually the last heir passed and the county took ownership of the property. They sold the fields but the house and barn sat unwanted. Now it’s all condemned as dangerous, so they’re going to tear it down and make it into fields as well. It’ll all be nothing but a memory.”

I could see Mike looking around. He usually did that when finishing with a guide to see if there are any other questions he can think of.

“Why’s the Historical Society interested in the house? I’m sure they had some reason to call us?” Mike asked.

Bub smiled like he knew something, but then decided to answer with something else. “Well, they just want to wrap up the stories of the hauntings and maybe have something interesting in their little museum and newsletter. If you folks can find something to liven things up a bit, I’m sure it would be appreciated.”

“Well, thank you,” Mike said. “I guess we’ll start setting up. The sun will be down soon.

Emily held up her hand for attention. “Bub, I didn’t see a car when we pulled up. Are you ok to get home?”

“I’m fine,” Bub answered. “My place is very close. Thanks for asking, though.”

Somewhere outside, Rumples barked at something.

A new story is in the works. I think it is a good one. The setting is great. The backstory is awesome. The characters should be compelling. It’s all there except for one thing, and it’s something with which I always struggle.

The tale itself is simple. A group of paranormal investigators go on a job and split into two teams of three. They go through their normal investigation experiences. That is the easy part; I can see it all clearly in my head.

Describing those external activities is straightforward. The whole thing plays like a movie in my head. I sometimes wonder if I should be writing screenplays instead of these short stories and novels. There needs to be a way to go from my brain direct to DVD (or streaming these days).

The hard part, for me at least, is clearly describing the interpersonal relationships of the characters. Each of those teams is made up of a romantic couple and a camera operator. Each couple has similar experiences, but reacts very differently. Further, each goes in with their relationship in a different state. Conveying this with correct emotional value and not just piling on exposition can be difficult.

With multiple characters, it is permissible to change the viewpoint, basically which character is “telling” the story at any given time. If the story changes viewpoint too often, it will confuse the reader. If the viewpoint doesn’t change enough, it gives the feeling that only those characters are important and the reader must rely on those characters to make correct assumptions about the thoughts and feelings of the others. Characters tend to be very unreliable in this regard.

In the novel The Ruins by Scott Smith, there is an ensemble of characters and the viewpoint changes between them. It seems to work fairly well. Honestly, I did not like the characters and hoped they would die and be replaced by more likable characters, but that was probably how they were intended to be written. Even there, though, there was a smaller group within the ensemble who got more viewpoint time. The lesser characters only got point of view if they happened to be (effectively) alone. This kept the viewpoint from becoming confusing and did establish some characters as being more active in the story.

At the moment, I’m contemplating making the two camera operators the primary viewpoint characters. It fits with their function of trying to keep the others in frame and in focus. In doing so, they also tend to lose their own situational awareness, which may work out. Also, they are not involved in the couple dynamic of the other team members, so they can be more objective. I imagine the other characters just get used to the camera operators and don’t even think about them.

I think I may take this approach. It will require rewriting the parts I’ve already got scribbled. I kind of wonder how long this story is going to run. The last two stories ran about twenty-three thousand (It Gets Away) and forty-six thousand words (Timmy’s Zombie Abatement Service). That’s the range for a novella. None of that includes notes and related writing. This may end up taking a while. I hope I get it right.