The Apparition

A few moments earlier, on the second floor, Matthew glances over his shoulder as he and Jacob approach the stairs.

“What the heck was that?”

Jacob looks behind them, then towards the landing. “I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure it came from behind us?”

Matthew laughs. “I’m just kidding, little buddy. There are no ghosts in this house.”

At that moment, the girls let out a bloodcurdling scream, as though their lives are in danger.

Matthew nudges Jacob’s arm. “Come on! Let’s see what’s wrong.”

They race down the stairs towards the sound. When they enter the sitting room, their friends’ expressions stop them in their tracks. William and Jessica stand motionless, looking utterly confused. Sarah, Alexis and Samantha huddle together, their eyes filling with tears. Their mouths are open, but none of them speaks. They look almost frozen with fear.

Matthew has never taken the paranormal particularly seriously. He rarely takes much of anything seriously, and he always seems to be in the wrong place whenever something strange happens. Jacob, meanwhile, is a shy, polite boy who is doing his best to fit in with his new friends.

Once Matthew gets over his initial surprise, he looks at Jacob and shakes his head in annoyance. Then he turns to the others.

“Now what did we miss?”

William manages a grin. “Not much. Just the most lifelike apparition we’ve ever seen.”

Matthew’s expression hardens. “You’re freaking kidding me, right? You’re telling me you saw an actual ghost?”

“A transparent figure appeared right beside the sofa,” William explains. “It slowly floated across the room towards the window, then vanished just as mysteriously as it appeared.”

“Shhh!” Jessica interrupts. “I think it’s still here.”

Everyone falls silent. The floor creaks, and they begin sweeping the room with their camcorders and snapping pictures with their digital cameras. Sunlight breaks through the clouds, brightening the room as the wind blows a curtain through the broken window.

Whatever has been in the room seems to be gone. The three girls finally relax enough to release one another.

“What the heck was that?” Alexis blurts out.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Samantha whispers, wiping tears from her face.

“I’m not sure,” Sarah admits, “but whoever—or whatever—it was didn’t seem too happy to see us.”

The three girls look at one another. “I think we should leave,” they say almost in unison.

Jessica takes a few deep breaths to compose herself. She looks from the girls to the rest of the group. “Maybe we should go. We can check the cameras and voice recorders to see if we caught anything.”

William and Matthew agree reluctantly. Both would rather keep looking for evidence, or at least find something that proves the apparition is a trick someone is playing on them. But the younger girls have had enough. Everyone gathers their equipment and heads towards the front door.

As they leave the sitting room and pass the stairway, they all turn towards the upper landing at once. For an instant, each of them feels certain that someone is standing there, staring down at them. Yet all they can see is sunlight reflecting off the walls and handrails.

A sudden chill passes through the group, as if someone has turned up the air conditioning. They face the front door again and quicken their pace.

“That was just weird,” William mutters.

Outside, as they turn onto the road, the three younger girls are still visibly shaken. Sarah glances back at William and Jessica, who are talking quietly behind them. William notices her looking and tells Jessica that the girls will probably have nightmares for weeks. They hurry to catch up, then rest their hands reassuringly on the girls’ shoulders.

“Remember,” Jessica says calmly, “if it can walk through walls or other objects, it can’t hurt you.”

“They may scare the heck out of you,” William adds with conviction, “but they’ll never physically harm you the way ghosts do in movies and television shows. That’s just there to make the shows scarier.”

The girls exchange glances, then manage small smiles and a few relieved giggles.

“Boy, do we feel silly,” Sarah says.

“There’s never been a scientifically substantiated case of a ghost physically harming someone in the real world,” William adds.

Jacob walks backwards, keeping his eyes on the house. From the road, it looks like any other vacant building. White paint peels from the walls, exposing bare wood. Several small windows are broken, and weeds and shrubs have taken over the yard.

Matthew gives Jacob a light clip on the back of the head. “What are you looking back for? Nothing’s following us.”

“I was hoping to see what they saw,” Jacob replies excitedly. “Maybe it’s looking out a window to make sure we leave.”

Matthew lowers his voice. “Judging by their faces when we entered that room, I don’t know if you really want to see what they saw.”

Jessica is already typing notes into her smartphone. Although she is feminine and attractive, she tends to approach an experience like this with a technical mind rather than letting her emotions take over. William leans over to see what she is writing:

Apparition Male Mid to late forties Angry Injured

He realizes she is recording the details of the figure they have just witnessed. He pulls out his own phone and begins making notes:

Male Mid to late forties Angry

He stops. His first observations match Jessica’s almost exactly. In all the excitement, he has forgotten one of the most important rules of ghost hunting: document every occurrence as quickly and accurately as possible, while it is still fresh in your mind. Worse, by looking at Jessica’s notes first, he may already have influenced his own memory.

He adds the details he remembers:

Lifelike Slightly transparent

They continue along the edge of the dirt road. Matthew surveys the surrounding fields, trees and derelict buildings.

“Why are haunted houses always in the middle of nowhere or on the edge of town?” he asks. “It would be nice to find one closer to home.”

“They aren’t all out here,” Jessica replies. “But would you admit your own home was haunted, or that strange things happened there? And even if you did, would you invite a bunch of teenagers inside to investigate?”

“Are you kidding? When a kid believes in ghosts, people assume it’s just an overactive imagination.”

“Exactly,” William says. “Adults spend years being told they should know better than to believe everything they see and hear. Society teaches them to accept only what’s generally considered fact.”

“Growing older sounds like it sucks,” Jacob says. “Why can’t people believe what they want without everyone calling them crazy? If you see something, I think it’s real.”

William and Jessica exchange a glance, shrug and smile. Neither feels like starting another debate.

After several minutes of walking in near silence, William turns to the group. “Why don’t we head back to my place and see what we caught on the cameras and recorders? You know my dad doesn’t mind us hanging out in the basement. Besides, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

William’s father has always welcomed his friends. He even builds a recreation room in the basement so they have somewhere to gather without disturbing him. Raised on a farm and working in construction since he was sixteen, he is a big, powerful man with a smile that makes life seem uncomplicated. Every kid in the neighbourhood likes and respects him. His deep, authoritative voice may have something to do with it: when he calls, you go to him rather than shouting back.

Not every adult treats the group that way. Some drivers give the teenagers dirty looks and shake their heads as they pass. Neighbours either wave and smile or retreat indoors, sometimes looking back over their shoulders. To some people, a group of teenagers together must be planning trouble.

All seven live in a relatively clean, quiet, working-class neighbourhood where hard work and family matter. William and his father share a large, well-kept house. As the group enters, William calls out, “Hey, Pops! My friends and I are heading to the basement.”

His father glances up from his usual chair, where he watches television or plays cards. “Okay. Just not too loud.”

“Hi, Mr. Rogers,” the group calls as they pass.

“Hello,” he replies with a smile.

He rarely pries into what the kids are doing. He has always made it clear to William that getting into serious trouble while living under his roof will have consequences William will remember for a long time. William believes him, although his father has never actually given him the licking he warns about.

Downstairs, William switches on the recreation-room lights. The others stop and stare. Computers and other equipment are arranged around the room, ready for reviewing the evidence they have collected.

“When did you get all this stuff?” Sarah asks excitedly. “And when did you set it up?”

“Last week. Dad and I went to an auction at an office building that was being renovated. He wanted some filing cabinets, and all this equipment was piled behind them. The auctioneer said it was included, so Dad gave it to me. We got it cheap.”

“That’s a sweet deal,” Matthew says. “Your dad gave you all of it?”

“Yeah. He says a computer can’t drive nails or pour concrete, so he has no use for one. The funny part is that some people thought the computers were going to be auctioned separately. They didn’t even bid against Dad for the cabinets.”

Jessica studies the setup with obvious relief. “This should cut our reviewing time by more than half. Does everything work?”

“Definitely. The computers and laptops still had the company’s data and most of its business software on them, so I wiped all of that. I’m surprised they didn’t remove the hard drives, or at least erase them. I guess they left town in a hurry.”

Until now, the group has had to connect its equipment to a single computer bought at a flea market, or use an old television to review video. For audio, they have relied on a couple of old headphones. Thanks to a company that expanded too quickly and went bankrupt, they now have several relatively new computers and laptops, a thirty-two-inch LCD television, quality headphones and a backup drive for storing anything they cannot explain.

As the oldest and most experienced investigators, William and Jessica divide the work. Matthew takes the camcorder he used with Jacob, along with Jessica’s. Jacob reviews the audio recorder they used. Sarah takes her team’s video recorder, Samantha gets all the digital cameras, and Alexis reviews her team’s voice recorder. William connects his own camcorder to the television so he can watch the footage on a larger screen.

Jessica checks that everyone understands their task. Satisfied, she picks up her purse.

“I’m heading uptown to see what historical records I can find at city hall about the old house.”

As she steps outside, a chill passes through her. She shrugs it off and starts down the walkway. Before she reaches the sidewalk, the unmistakable feeling that someone is watching her makes her stop. She looks up at William’s windows, then at the neighbours’ windows and the spaces between the houses. Nothing moves.

Puzzled, she continues towards downtown. The feeling stays with her, and she keeps glancing around throughout the walk.

Back at William’s house, the younger investigators are beginning to test his patience. Alexis calls him over to listen to what sounds like a voice, but it turns out to be two members of the group talking in another room. Sarah finds a figure moving past a doorway on her video, only for William to identify it as a reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Samantha shows him a photograph filled with what she thinks are orbs. He explains that digital cameras often capture airborne dust as bright circles. Then Jacob asks him to listen to a creak that sounds like footsteps on a wooden floor.

“We can’t tell whether that’s one of us walking or somebody else,” William says. “If we can’t identify the source, it isn’t solid evidence. We’ll have to discard it.”