Page 37 of The Haunting of Lockton

“Are you one of the patients here?” Paxton held out the EVP recorder. He did a double take at the door. “Did you guys see that?”

“What?” I asked, following where he pointed.

“I thought I saw something dash past the doorway.”

I rushed over and poked my head out into the hall, seeing nothing but paint chipping off the white walls and a falling-apart wheelchair by the closest window. I had run over almost immediately, and the hallway was long. If someone had run by, I would’ve seen them or at least heard the echo of their footsteps.

“Let’s try putting down an EMF.” Julian grabbed one from his backpack and placed it in the open doorway.

“That’s the electromagnetic thingy, right?” Paxton asked. “If a ghost gets close to it, what happens?”

“The sensor will go off,” I answered. “A blue light will blink, and it’ll make a dinging sound.”

“The small black box won’t hurt you,” Julian said in a louder voice, taking several steps back and pointing the handheld camera at the meter. “It’s how we can communicate with you. If you—”

Ding.The blue light flashed.

We all stared at it in stunned silence.

“Good job,” Julian said as a wide smile spread across his face. “Can you touch it again so we—”

Ding.

“Damn, that was fast.” My heart banged in my chest as adrenaline pumped through my veins.

“Are you a female?” Paxton asked.

No response.

“Male?”

Ding.

The dings seemed to be direct responses to the questions, not just random spikes. I considered other explanations, like electrical currents disrupting the signal or anything like that, but I came up empty.

“Paxton asked earlier if you were a patient here at Lockton,” Julian said. “If the answer is yes, can you touch the box or stand close to it?”

Nothing.

“Are you a nurse?” I asked.

Again, no response.

“Did you—”

The door to the room slammed shut, knocking the EMF detector toward us.

The lock was on the outside of the door.

“Shit!” I bolted forward and grabbed the handle to throw it back open. Part of me had been worried we’d be locked in, but the door opened without problem. Thank god. “What the hell was that?”

Julian and Paxton followed me out of the room, snapping their heads in all directions as we darted into the hallway.

“It was like the ghost thought we were patients and locked us in our room.” Julian retrieved the EMF detector from the floor and turned it in his hand. “I’d say it’s a residual haunting, but they answered us, which indicates intelligence.”

“Residual haunting?” Paxton asked.

“A type of haunting where the ghost doesn’t register our presence,” Julian explained. “Think of it more like a memory.They follow the same path they did while alive, whether we’re here or not. Shutting the door to that room could’ve been something the entity did so many times that the action was imprinted in this space.” He tucked the EMF back in his backpack. “The ghost felt more intelligent to me, which means they can communicate with us. I’m eager to review evidence and see what we caught.”