Something very bad had happened in there, and though I was not sure exactly what that thing was, I knew it like I know the sound of rain and the feel of fire.
I took my friends and got out of there. We did some more walking around and some more EVP work, trying to chase down as many actions as we could. But the night was winding down. We decided to do one more round of the place. Everyone else went down to the first floor. The Boss and I stayed upstairs. We were in one of the classrooms talking and trying to coax a little more from our childlike visitor. Suddenly we heard whistling in the hall. We assumed it was the others and continued our conversation. But then we heard the others coming up the stairs—on the other side of the school. When they came to our room, they asked us if we had been whistling. We said we had thought they were the ones doing it. Luckily, there had been a camera set up in the hallway, shooting down to capture any movement. We rewound to the spot. Sure enough, with no one around, an unsettling bit of whistling began to lilt through the air. It made me excited to check what we had gathered that night. It was also the perfect capper for the evening.
It was 2 a.m. Even though we had the building until seven that morning, we were all tired and longing for our beds. So we began packing up and getting our shit ready to take it all home. We crawled into our vehicles for the trip. You can imagine the dichotomy: these adventurous scamps who had been so eager to see what the old madam had to offer, now so obviously exhausted that most of us fell asleep in the car before we got back to the two-lane highway that led the way back to the hearth. Our curiosity sated, we fell in between the sane and slumber, minds racing for the close embrace of sleep while cataloging our various encounters. Nuff said, as Stan Lee put it. Shut the machines down and recharge.
It was a few weeks before I was able to sit down and sift through the hours of footage and audio tracks to see what I could find, helped along with a healthy dose of coffee, smokes, and quiet. There were all the cameras in the halls and the gym, the audio recorders set in the various classrooms and bathrooms, and the handheld recorders we were all carrying around with us. Let me tell you: the only thing more boring than reading and recording your own audio book is sitting, watching, waiting, and listening to hours of content in the hopes of capturing something fantastic. Some shit did not even show up—there were various tracks that failed to record for some reason. Listening back, I could hear voices complaining that the power kept draining in the batteries. So some of the evidence did not get captured. Note to self: next time plug the shit into a wall socket. Of the stuff that was recorded, there are several conversations of past experiences that I will tell you about later on in the book. There are hours of nothing. There are noises from outside and squeaking wood—the floors in the Theater Room were especially peculiar sounding. It gave me the impression of breathing, somewhere between Darth Vader and Bane. So my investigation was moving in fits and starts, from silence to silly quips.
That was until I found something that could not be explained.
In some of the rooms, out of nowhere, the recorders picked up soft humming. This was not electric in any way; this was musical, the sound of a child walking around with a song stuck in his or her head. It showed up on several different recorders, almost like this kid was casually strolling through the halls from room to room singing for anyone who could hear. It made me wonder if this was the kid that The Boss heard when we were sitting around in a circle. I also found breathing in the boys’ bathroom where we all felt sick. This was a recorder we had set up and left to see what we could get. The breathing appears hours after anyone has been in there. It starts, lasts a few seconds, and then it just stops. It
I took my friends and got out of there. We did some more walking around and some more EVP work, trying to chase down as many actions as we could. But the night was winding down. We decided to do one more round of the place. Everyone else went down to the first floor. The Boss and I stayed upstairs. We were in one of the classrooms talking and trying to coax a little more from our childlike visitor. Suddenly we heard whistling in the hall. We assumed it was the others and continued our conversation. But then we heard the others coming up the stairs—on the other side of the school. When they came to our room, they asked us if we had been whistling. We said we had thought they were the ones doing it. Luckily, there had been a camera set up in the hallway, shooting down to capture any movement. We rewound to the spot. Sure enough, with no one around, an unsettling bit of whistling began to lilt through the air. It made me excited to check what we had gathered that night. It was also the perfect capper for the evening.
It was 2 a.m. Even though we had the building until seven that morning, we were all tired and longing for our beds. So we began packing up and getting our shit ready to take it all home. We crawled into our vehicles for the trip. You can imagine the dichotomy: these adventurous scamps who had been so eager to see what the old madam had to offer, now so obviously exhausted that most of us fell asleep in the car before we got back to the two-lane highway that led the way back to the hearth. Our curiosity sated, we fell in between the sane and slumber, minds racing for the close embrace of sleep while cataloging our various encounters. Nuff said, as Stan Lee put it. Shut the machines down and recharge.
It was a few weeks before I was able to sit down and sift through the hours of footage and audio tracks to see what I could find, helped along with a healthy dose of coffee, smokes, and quiet. There were all the cameras in the halls and the gym, the audio recorders set in the various classrooms and bathrooms, and the handheld recorders we were all carrying around with us. Let me tell you: the only thing more boring than reading and recording your own audio book is sitting, watching, waiting, and listening to hours of content in the hopes of capturing something fantastic. Some shit did not even show up—there were various tracks that failed to record for some reason. Listening back, I could hear voices complaining that the power kept draining in the batteries. So some of the evidence did not get captured. Note to self: next time plug the shit into a wall socket. Of the stuff that was recorded, there are several conversations of past experiences that I will tell you about later on in the book. There are hours of nothing. There are noises from outside and squeaking wood—the floors in the Theater Room were especially peculiar sounding. It gave me the impression of breathing, somewhere between Darth Vader and Bane. So my investigation was moving in fits and starts, from silence to silly quips.
That was until I found something that could not be explained.
In some of the rooms, out of nowhere, the recorders picked up soft humming. This was not electric in any way; this was musical, the sound of a child walking around with a song stuck in his or her head. It showed up on several different recorders, almost like this kid was casually strolling through the halls from room to room singing for anyone who could hear. It made me wonder if this was the kid that The Boss heard when we were sitting around in a circle. I also found breathing in the boys’ bathroom where we all felt sick. This was a recorder we had set up and left to see what we could get. The breathing appears hours after anyone has been in there. It starts, lasts a few seconds, and then it just stops. It
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