Chapter 7
Raven
I spent the next hour walking them through my footage—the cold spots, the EVP recordings, the electromagnetic anomalies. Even Kevin looked intrigued despite his skepticism.
"The dining room seems most active," I said. "That's where Walt spends most of his time when he's awake."
"Then that's where we focus," Kevin decided. "Shane and Raven take point there. Neil and Kim cover the lobby. Sam and Jess handle the pool area where you've recorded temperature drops. Tonya and I coordinate from here."
"Why do you get to stay in base camp?" Jess complained.
"Because someone needs to monitor all positions," Kevin said reasonably. "And because—"
"Because I'm pregnant," Tonya announced calmly.
The chaos that erupted was immediate—congratulations, questions, Shane looking stunned that his brother had trusted him with this news.
"Three weeks," Kevin confirmed, his usual stern expression softening. "We just found out."
"And you came tonight?" I saw Shane's protective instincts fired.
"I'm pregnant, not fragile," Tonya said firmly. "Besides, you needed us."
Walt appeared in the doorway, looking pleased. "Seven o'clock. Time to open the doors for the Halloween ball! Miss Raven, you haven't changed into your costume."
"The party doesn't start until eight, Mr. Harrison," Shane said gently. "We have an hour still."
"Oh. Of course. I should double-check the candy inventory." He wandered off again, humming "Monster Mash" with that strange harmonic undertone my equipment kept detecting.
"Is he always like this?" Neil asked.
“Yeah, lately his lucid moments are getting fewer and farther between,” Shane said.
"He needs proper care," Kevin said.
"He needs familiarity," Shane countered. "This place, as broken as it is, is the only home his mind recognizes."
"We'll figure it out," Neil said. "Like we should have two years ago if you'd told us."
"I thought I could handle it," Shane said tiredly.
"You did handle it," Sam said. "For two years. But you don't have to anymore."
As darkness fell and Walt finally settled into sleep after his medications, we prepared for the investigation. My cameras were recording everything, though I couldn't stream without internet. My subscribers would have to wait for the edited version.
"Everyone ready?" Kevin asked over the radio. Each team had one.
"Ready," Shane confirmed, standing beside me in the dining room.
"I’m going to start with the EVP?" I said.
"EVP?" he asked.
"Electronic Voice Phenomena. Basically, we ask questions and see if anything answers."
Shane looked skeptical but nodded. I set up my digital recorder and began.
"This is Raven from Dark Places, Deep Secrets. I'm here in the main dining room of the Wildfire Ridge Lodge with Shane. If anyone is present who wishes to communicate, please make yourself known."
Silence.
"We know about Rebecca and Jimmy," I continued. "We know what happened to you wasn't right. Walt talks about you. He’s sorry."
For several minutes, nothing. Then my thermal camera showed a gradual temperature drop near the bar—three degrees over five minutes. Could be a draft from the broken window twenty feet away. Could be something else.
"Did you hear that?" Shane whispered.
I rewound my audio, amplifying it. There—a sound like whispering, or maybe it was just the wind. When I isolated the frequency, it almost sounded like words: "...ault..."
"Fault? Walt?" I couldn't tell.
"Shane, Raven, we're getting odd readings in the lobby," Neil's voice crackled over the radio. "Temperature dropped six degrees near the staircase. Kim says there's a draft from upstairs."
"Pool area's showing EMF spikes," Sam reported. "But there's also old electrical conduits in the walls here. Could be residual charge."
I moved my EMF detector slowly across the room. It chirped sporadically—not the steady reading you'd get from active wiring, but not necessarily paranormal either.
"There," Shane pointed to my thermal display. A cold spot had formed near the corner, roughly human-sized but shapeless, shifting like smoke.
"Air current from the chimney," I said, but made a note. "Or..."
A door slammed somewhere in the building. We all jumped.
"That was the kitchen door," Jess reported. "Wind caught it. This place is full of drafts."
For the next hour, we documented everything. Temperature fluctuations that could be explained by the building's decay. EMF readings that might be old wiring or might be something else. Sounds that could be wind, settling wood, or animals in the walls.
But then around midnight something happened.
I was reviewing audio when I caught it—clear as day for just two seconds. A young woman's voice, no mistaking it for wind: "Tell Walt..."
But tell Walt what? The recording cut to static.
"Play that again," Shane said.
I did. This time we both heard it, but the words after "Tell Walt" were lost in interference.
"Could be radio frequency bleeding in from somewhere," I said, trying to be objective. "Sometimes recordings pick up cell towers, radio stations..."
"There's no cell service up here. No radio stations in range."
I was adjusting my thermal camera when I saw it—two distinct cold spots had formed near the door. They held their shape for nearly thirty seconds, vaguely human-sized, before dispersing.
"Did you see that?" I asked Shane.
"Could be convection currents from the temperature differential between rooms," he said, but he was gripping my hand tight.
At midnight, all our equipment went haywire simultaneously. EMF detectors screaming, thermal cameras showing rapid temperature fluctuations, audio recorders picking up what sounded like multiple overlapping whispers.
Then, as suddenly as it started, everything went silent.
"Everyone okay?" Kevin's voice, tense over the radio.
Check-ins from all teams confirmed no one was hurt, but everyone had experienced the same phenomena.
"Electromagnetic surge?" Neil suggested. "Old building, maybe something shifted in the structure?"
"At midnight exactly?" Sam's skepticism was clear. "On Halloween?"
"Coincidences happen," Kevin said firmly. "But document everything."
I was reviewing the audio from the surge when I found it. Buried in the cacophony of whispers, two voices stood out. Young. Desperate.
"Not... his... fault..."
"Please... help... him..."
The words were fragmented, distorted, could be pareidolia—our brains creating patterns in random noise. But they were there.
"Shane," I said quietly. "Listen to this."
He did, his face grim. "That could be anything. Wind, our imagination..."
"Or it could be Rebecca and Jimmy trying to tell us Walt's not to blame for their deaths."
"We don't know that's what it's saying. We're interpreting random sounds—"
A loud crash from above made us both freeze. Then footsteps—clear, deliberate, walking across the floor above us.
"Walt's asleep," Shane said, already moving toward the stairs. "His room is on this level."
We found nothing upstairs. No sign of anyone.
But in the dust on the floor of what would have been room 237, there were footprints.
Old ones, partially obscured, but also..
. two sets that looked fresh. Smaller than Shane's boots.
One set that could be women's shoes, one set that looked like work boots.
"Those weren't here this morning," Shane said with certainty. "I checked this floor for structural damage yesterday."
"Wind could have blown dust around, revealed old prints," I said, but my voice shook slightly.
"Yeah," Shane agreed, but neither of us believed it.
We returned to base camp where the others had gathered, everyone comparing notes and recordings. The evidence was compelling but not conclusive. Everything could be explained by environmental factors, yet the timing, the patterns, the consistency across different types of equipment...
"So what do we tell Walt?" Kim asked quietly. "If these are just building noises and drafts?"
"Or if they're not?" Neil added.
"We tell him the truth," Shane said. "That whether Rebecca and Jimmy are here or not, they wouldn't want him carrying this guilt. That it's time to let go."
"And then we get him proper care," Kevin said firmly. "Jess, start making those calls tomorrow. Find a facility that will work with his condition, his needs. Somewhere close enough that Shane can visit daily if needed."
"I can help with funding," Shane said quietly. "I've saved enough—"
"We all help," Kevin cut him off. "That's what family does."
As we packed up the equipment, I couldn't shake the feeling we were being watched. Not malevolently, but sadly. Two young people who'd died trying to do the right thing, possibly trying to send a message via any means that they could.
Or maybe it was just an old building full of drafts and memories, and we were imposing meaning on random phenomena because we wanted to help Walt find peace.
Either way, the real ghosts that had been exorcised tonight were Shane's fears of asking for help and his brothers' hurt at being excluded. The family had come together despite the secrets, despite the strangeness of the situation.
That was the real haunting that ended tonight—Shane's isolation, his conviction that he had to handle everything alone.
The rest—the cold spots, the voices, the footprints—remained a mystery. And maybe that was okay. Some things didn't need definitive answers.
Sometimes the question itself was enough.