The search took longer than she had anticipated as James had neglected to show them where any bathrooms were located. She supposed that he was more concerned with showing them the major areas of the mansion where activity had been reported rather than every single room. She also knew this was a guy thing…it probably had just not occurred to him on a practical level. Just as she felt she could not hold out much longer, Natalie turned a corner off the main corridor and looked to the right and sighed in relief.
She dashed inside the bathroom making it to the toilet in what felt like just the nick of time. She relaxed as she relieved herself and at the same time made herself let go of the mix of the little annoyances that were beginning to build for her with Antony at the moment. It would not serve them well if she let herself get distracted and consumed with these emotions. Besides, it was nothing major. Just little quirks in his personality that rubbed her the wrong way from time to time. She needed to focus on the project for now. There would be plenty of time later for her to discuss these issues with Antony.
If they did not get this investigation done and done well, Natalie knew they would be facing bigger problems once they got home than all the little things that most married couples argued over. They were banking a lot on the success of what they might discover here to make a TV producer back home salivate over them. Antony did not know how crucial the outcome of their foray at the Woodchester needed to be, but Natalie sure did. That, she thought, was what she had to keep in mind now. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths and focused on these thoughts.
Natalie flushed the toilet and walked to the sink to wash her hands. She was focusing on the investigation now, trying to think of all the equipment they had brought along and feeling all of a sudden as if they had forgotten something. As she had been laying out and arranging all the gear, what was it that she felt was missing…God, she was so tired…she could hardly think. She looked up into the mirror and was shocked to see this image of herself staring back at her with large bags under her eyes.
For a moment, Natalie was not sure this was actually her. She was a young woman for Christ’s sake! It was like she looked years older than her actual age. Partly to break her gaze and partly to try and help wake up some more, Natalie turned on the tap at the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She turned off the water and let the cool stream drain down her face, the individual droplets collecting on her chin and dripping into the basin. She reached over and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the canister by the sink and patted her face dry. As Natalie looked back again, she could still see how her lack of sleep had settled on her face, but it did not seem as bad to her as when she had first looked. She tossed the damp paper towels into the waste bin and stood still in front of the mirror as she examined her face.
She touched under her eyes and sighed. However, just as she dropped her hands from her face, Natalie caught the sight of another face in the mirror and she froze. Off behind her to the left, Natalie spotted what looked like the image of an older man’s face. She remained still, just shifting her eyes to take in the sight. There was no body attached to the face…just this apparent floating head. She looked more intently at the face. He was wearing a hat that looked similar to what Natalie had seen earlier in her research of some of the soldiers that had been part of the British battalion that had been housed in the mansion during World War II.
She was not sure if this was real or is she was just imagining it, a combination of her fatigue and all that she had read about the Woodchester. The image did not waver or vanish as she stood rigid and looked. The man had a wide slash across his forehead that was leaking fresh blood. One of his eyes was missing as well, but from the other she could see that he was crying. There were streaks of black soot mixed with smears of blood across his cheeks, broken only by the clear tracks of the tears cascading down his face from his remaining eye.
The image did not come closer to Natalie, nor did it retreat or seem to be fading away as she looked. Her heart was pounding and the pulse in her neck throbbing, but she did not cry out or make any sudden movements that might disrupt the moment. She was still not sure if she was hallucinating or not, but it sure seemed real. As she stood and pondered her next move, she thought of all the stories that James had told them. She sure did not want to be just another visitor reporting a sighting with no proof. Especially considering how that would impact the reputation of their business and the validity of their investigation and making them less attractive to a television offer.
Not wanting to make any sudden moves that might kill the experience, Natalie slowly and cautiously slid her hand to the front pocket of her light parka to retrieve her cell phone. She had no idea why she thought a sudden movement might make it all vanish. Logically it made no sense, but all the same she moved with trepidation. At the same time, she was pretty sure that if this image was real, that it would not last forever. She eased the phone out of her pocket and tapped the button for the camera.
However, when she looked back up too try and snap a quick photo for confirmation, the face was gone. She spun around quickly. It was just her alone in the bathroom. The whole incident had taken up only seconds, maybe a minute total, but Natalie cursed herself for her delay. Even without physical proof, Natalie was elated. She was sure now what she had seen had been real. She had been doing these things long enough to discern between actual manifestations and hallucinations. It might not be something they would include in their final presentation for a TV show, but it was, at least to her, proof of actual specters at the Woodchester.
Antony would believe her too. She had that. She ran from the bathroom, her exhaustion that was just moments ago dragging her down gone. This was it! She was sure of it now. They had hit the jackpot to make them very attractive to television producers. What she had seen was far more intriguing and stunning than at least half of the schlock that was currently passing for authentic haunting evidence on current shows. The longer she ran down the long corridor the more excited Natalie became as she could not wait to tell Antony what happened to her. But when she got back to the foyer, it was empty. All their gear was still lined up right where it had been before she left, but Antony was nowhere to be seen. Natalie skidded to a stop, as a sharp wave of fear and panic rippled through her chest, as she wondered what had happened to him. She prayed that he had just wandered off, but after her experience in the bathroom, she was not so sure…
Electronic Voice Phenomenon
Natalie was torn between fear that something had happened to Antony and anger that perhaps he had gone off on his own to start without her. A quick survey of the equipment on the floor, though, seemed to indicate that everything they had unpacked was still there. Her excitement over the sighting was becoming a faint memory as Natalie’s imagination began to run wild. She was just about to call out for Antony and begin a thorough search when she heard footsteps come up behind her from down another corridor.
“Oh…hey, babe!”
Natalie whirled in surprise as Antony appeared as if from out of thin air smiling as if he did not have a care in the world. Natalie was relieved but still angry that he had just walked off and put her in this position. Despite all her promises to herself, Natalie snapped and lashed out at him.
“Goddammit, Anthony! Where the hell were you? I thought maybe something had happened to you!”
Antony just stared at her, shocked at the ferocity of her voice. He had never heard Natalie use such language and certainly not directed toward him before. His face fell as he looked at her with genuine hurt in his eyes. He said nothing for a beat waiting to see if she was done with her tirade. The space between them went deathly silent. There was just the ticking of a faraway clock and the rapid breathing of Natalie following her outburst.
“Sorry, Nat. I thought I heard you calling my name from down that other corridor.” He gestured weakly to the hallway from which he had just emerged. “I thought maybe you had seen or heard something that you wanted me to check out.”
Natalie suddenly felt foolish and ashamed. She dropped her eyes and stared at her feet.
“Oh shit, Antony…I’m just so tired. I overreacted and lost it. It just startled me when you were gone. There was this…I saw…shit…”
“It’s OK…I know I have been pushing us hard since we left home. Just forget it. You said you saw something?”
Natalie swallowed hard, hating herself for how she had blown up. She sat on the edge of one of the large equipment cases and went through the whole episode that she had just experienced in the bathroom. Antony furrowed his brow as she told the story realizing that she might be right. They might have in fact stumbled upon a goldmine of a haunted house. He knew that Natalie had been through enough investigations and was seasoned enough in her experience not to have let her imagination convince her of something that was not really there. Her description of the soldier’s face in the mirror was vivid enough to convince Antony that this was one of the British officers that had been left in the mansion following his death at the nearby bridge after the Nazi bombing.
“I feel like a fool for waiting so long to get a photo.” Natalie said, her voice cracking with emotion, as she fought to hold back her tears. She was letting her worn out physical condition control her and she hated when that happened.
“Never mind. Sounds like it happened so quickly. My experience has always been that unless you are prepared from the get-go, the chances of getting documentation are slim to none. Sounds like you only had a few seconds to react anyway.”
Natalie just shrugged, appreciating his compassion and understanding.
“The interesting thing is, Antony…I never called out to you.”
He looked at her hard.
“Really?”
Natalie nodded and wiped away the few forming tears from her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“In that case, I think we have a good place to start. I think that maybe someone or something is trying to lure us along here. Let’s grab some gear and go back down to that bathroom. Not sure we will see anything more, but it seems like a good place to start based on your experience.”
Natalie nodded and went to Antony and hugged him tight. His reassuring embrace made her know all was well between them. Also, he was taking her story seriously. Or at least he was humoring her. She did not care which at this point. They were finally getting started with the investigation and she knew once they began working that her outburst would be long forgotten.
Antony shouldered one of the larger backpacks that held the heavier equipment while Natalie took a smaller pack and the ultraviolet (UV) camera. She led the way back down the corridor she had taken to get to the bathroom. They walked slowly and deliberately looking carefully from side to side as well as ahead of them just in case a new manifestation might arise without warning. Antony did not want another opportunity like the one that Natalie had just seen had slip away from them without having a chance to document it. Their breathing became more rapid yet coordinated as they moved along, but nothing happened. They saw nothing and all they heard was the steady, regular echo of their steps on the rough stone floor.
They finally reached the bathroom and they set their packs aside. Natalie readied the camera as Antony removed the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) device from his own backpack. For a long time, they had wanted to acquire an infrared (IR) camera for photography sessions, but the price point was just out of their budget at the moment. The IR technology was the preferred method by most researchers, but a UV system was getting more and more reliable now and was an adequate alternative to IR for a fraction of the price. Antony had developed a good professional relationship with Barry Fitzgerald who was well respected in the US for his expertise in filming spirits with different techniques at various light spectrums. According to Barry, he actually preferred the UV approach these days. He had told Antony at a meeting they had both attended that the whole idea was to observe phenomenon within specific frequencies.
“A lot of people,” he told Antony, “try using full spectrum lighting, and it really goes against what you are trying to accomplish. For UV frequencies, though, the advantage is that it can break down the manifestation just as it starts to come into a form that we can understand.”
And that had sold Antony. He knew, much like what had just happened to Natalie, that once a manifestation began, you had a very small window of opportunity. The UV technology was therefore the best bet to capture an image. The other plus of using a UV system, Antony found out, was that it can also aid in detecting potential hoaxes in paranormal hunts such as thin laser lights, fishing line, holograms, transparencies, and the like. The location of the bathroom was good as it was far removed from the ambient light that seemed to be streaming in just about everywhere else on the ground floor of the mansion. The bathroom was well removed from any exterior windows and they were setting up in near blackout conditions.
To a beginner, this environment could be unnerving, and Antony had seen more than his share of amateur ghost hunters run in terror once activity began as the darkness around them freaked them out. Natalie activated the camera and began a scan of the doorway and then the entire interior of the room to eliminate any possible devices that some enterprising mansion employee might have set up to ensure their visitors would be able to go home saying they had seen ghosts at the Woodchester. It was an old trick of places that depended on a constant stream of tourists to keep them afloat financially.
Antony recalled the most well-known instance of this in a hotel in Maine that he had read about when he was in college. The Koryeta Hotel, in Bangor, had for decades been a draw for the curious as the current owners began to supplement their lagging income from overnight guests by offering tours of the place saying it was haunted. There was indeed a good backstory at the Koryeta, from the early 1900s that apparently was true. A young girl had thrown herself from a balcony, being overwrought from a failed romance.
While true, the story over the years had gotten embellished and exaggerated, and soon the story that was told to encourage visitors to the tour had only a faint resemblance to the actual one. For years the tour ran with people streaming back home telling of the blood curdling ghost viewings they had seen at the Koryeta Hotel. Eventually, professional investigators looked into the place based on the wild stories that were being reported and it was found that the whole thing had been a scam.
It was a primitive UV camera that had detected a whole series of devices that had been installed by the current owners to ensure successful tours that had been advertised as “guaranteed ghost sightings”. The first cameras were not as sophisticated as they are now, and were used primarily in the early days to reveal hoaxes, not so much to film manifestations. But in this case, they more than served their purpose. The hoax was made public, and the owners fled in the dark of night to avoid prosecution. The Koryeta Hotel fell into disrepair for years, no one wanting anything to do with it until an unknown writer by the name of Stephen King came along and renovated the old hotel as his home.
“All clear on the hoax front, Nat?”
“All clear. Go ahead and start the EVP and I will keep filming.”
The EVP technology, though still employed by almost all paranormal investigators and ghost hunters, has been attacked since its application for such study. In the field, EVP are typically electronic sounds that are interpreted as the voices of spirits. Sometimes the voices, according to its believers, are unintentional recordings of spirits present in a location or voices responding to questions asked of them by the researchers. Depending on who you speak with, EVP has been lauded as a breakthrough technology as well as been described as a laughable hoax as many valid scientific explanations have arisen over the years emphasizing its being nothing more than a parlor trick.
For Antony, he was still on the fence as to whether or not he bought into the validity of the EVP technology. He did know, though, that the majority of the people who they were trying to gain as subscribers to their website program
and more importantly who tuned in regularly to cable TV shows on ghost hunting, all expected to see EVP used and were true believers. Antony, for his part, was just giving them what they expected. He had seen examples where it sure looked valid as well as times where he just rolled his eyes as strongly as any skeptic out there.
For his purposes at the Woodchester, Antony would be recording using the technique of responses to actual questions. He had found this approach much more dramatic when presented as opposed to just letting the recorder run and then trying to convince an audience that what they were hearing was a ghost. He began with just the same simple basic questions he normally used in all his investigations.
“Who are you?”
He paused as Natalie continued to film. Nothing. Just the dripping of a faucet.
“Why are you here?”
He waited again, but there was nothing.
“Can you show us yourself?”
The silence remained. Antony knew as the questions became more specific and more detailed that a response was less likely than the opening general requests. He tried a few more.
“Are you there?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Can we help you?”
However, no matter what he tried, there was no response. He looked over at Natalie but she just shook her head no.
“Sorry, Antony. Nothing showing up.”
The room was quiet and still. Antony was about to go back to the beginning of his series of questions when the EVP device crackled and an audible pop startled Antony. A wisp of smoke trailed from the top of the device and curled up toward the ceiling.
Haunted House Tales Page 22
