3. LO
LO
W ithin one week of my messaging the Paranormal America team, they scheduled a time to come to my house to shoot. Paperwork was signed, a pair of boys no older than twenty-two scoped the place out for filming, and we were set to begin, all before I could even fully process what was going on.
“Have you met Stevie yet?” Annalise asks.
We’re both sitting on the couch in my living room, waiting for the lead investigators on the show to come by for my first filmed interview for the show.
Nearly everything is set up and good to go.
I did my hair and makeup like I normally do and put on similar clothes to what I always wear.
I don’t view this as going on TV to the degree that I need to be dressed up; I view this as a somewhat embarrassing cry for help.
“No, not yet.” When Annalise had recommended looking into Paranormal America that night at the bar, I’d done a little digging before messaging them.
Stevie is objectively hot. She has the lethal combination of great bone structure, great hair, and a great screen presence. The clips I watched of her were admittedly compelling, even as someone who’d never gotten into the whole paranormal TV show thing.
“I think she’s going to be even hotter in person,” Annalise says, as if she can read my mind.
I’m mostly unaffected. Annalise and I see beautiful people all the time; it’s part of our work.
And if I’ve learned anything in my time of living in a haunted house and telling people about it, people don’t tend to find it sexy when you’re at the end of your rope.
It doesn’t matter if I find Stevie hot since she’s almost definitely not going to be interested in a woman on the verge, anyway.
The doorbell rings out—a soft, beautiful series of notes—and I get up to go meet Stevie and whoever else she has with her.
When I open the door, I realize immediately that perhaps I underestimated Stevie’s looks a little too much. I blink at her, barely registering that she has other people by her side.
She keeps her brunette hair in an intentionally mussed wolf cut.
Her green eyes are wide and perceptive, brushing over me and hovering for only a second on my face.
Silver chains sit flat against her chest. Unsurprisingly, she wears all black—the perfect stylistic choice for someone who’s a little edgy and works in the paranormal.
I can’t help but admire the commitment to branding.
“Can we come in?” she asks impatiently—and even a little rudely. It immediately breaks the spell she has on me; she’s just another person in entertainment I could find hot but I absolutely should not get involved with.
I step to the side, and her colleague from the show offers me an apologetic smile. “I’m Andrew, that’s Stevie. She’s…efficient,” he explains.
“I’m used to it,” I say as Stevie and Andrew make their way into my home.
And it’s true—I am. Despite the California-cool stereotype, the entertainment industry is a completely different beast. Everything is serious, and time is quite literally money.
Stevie is just one of a million producers who skip niceties for the sake of getting things done.
I look around at what they’re seeing for the first time—the boxes I still haven’t unpacked, the empty spots in my entry way and living room where art and personal items should be.
It’s been a slow and intentional process getting moved in.
I’d rather take my time finding things I like than rush to fill the space.
But now that my house is about to be the featured location of a TV show, I’m regretting the decision to pace myself. I’ve been on camera for most of my life, so I don’t care about myself on screen, but I’ve never done an interview in my own place before. It feels strangely intimate.
“Sorry about…” I gesture at my house.
“We’re not Architectural Digest, we don’t care,” Stevie responds as she pulls a dining room chair into the living room to sit on. I can’t tell if I find her response comforting or dismissive.
“You have a beautiful home,” Andrew says, and I offer him a polite smile.
“Hi,” Annalise says from the couch. “Annalise.”
“Andrew, nice to meet you,” he says, walking over to her to shake her hand. Stevie only offers a glance and a nod of acknowledgement.
For the first time since messaging them, I wonder if maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe this is too far. Maybe there isn’t a ghost in my house, and I’ve just been making it up this entire time.
But then I think about how I only slept five hours last night because my living room TV kept turning on and off, and I know for certain this is for the best. Ghost or not, I can’t handle this on my own.
“How long have you guys been doing this? Like, ghost hunting or whatever?” Annalise asks. She turns and looks at me, mouthing, Hot! before turning back to Stevie.
“Oh, you know,” Stevie says, which doesn’t really feel like an answer, but maybe it’s an obvious one. We’d probably know if we’d ever actually watched their show.
I sit down on the couch as Stevie and Andrew fiddle with their equipment.
“I’m glad nothing got broken overnight,” I say, looking at all the lighting and sound equipment they’d left here.
“Yeah,” Stevie says. Yet another noncommittal answer. What the hell was her problem?
“Is your ghost…active?” Andrew asks. He sounds almost a little nervous, which I didn’t expect from someone who’d been going into haunted places for pay for at least one season of television.
I admittedly didn’t look into Andrew or Stevie beyond that, so I have no idea how long either of them has actually been paranormal investigators.
“Yeah. She makes herself known,” I say.
“You know it’s a she?” Stevie asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just guessing. The stuff the ghost is doing doesn’t feel particularly…aggressive, I guess. Mostly just lights flickering. No threats or anything. At least, not yet. I’d imagine those to be mostly male-ghost behaviors, but maybe I’m stereotyping.”
Stevie shrugs. “They can run the gambit.”
She throws herself down onto the chair across from me coolly, and Andrew gets to work on the camera and adjusting the lighting around me. The other two boys on their crew come in and out to help.
I’m used to shows having what feels like a million people around me at all times on set, so it’s weird for it to be so quiet. The closeness makes me uneasy. All over again. I’m regretting my decision to go on camera to talk about this, but it’s definitely too late now.
It also doesn’t help that Stevie has a kind of magnetism that makes it hard not to stare at her.
I feel an annoying urge to impress her. She’s been nothing but off-putting, but I keep finding myself turning my attention her way as she moves around the room to check equipment and the way my living room looks on camera.
“Alright, let’s get this moving. The light is good right now,” Stevie says and sits down in my chair to face me on the couch. “We’re going to start with just having you on camera.”
I nod, and Annalise gives me a thumbs-up from her spot on the couch.
Stevie glances down at the clipboard in her lap, one of her legs propped up on the other one to form a confident square.
“Thanks for doing this,” Stevie says
I’m so caught off guard by the earnestness that I don’t have the time to formulate a response before Andrew starts rolling. Stevie and I watch him for our cue.
Once Stevie gets the go-ahead, she turns back to look at me. “How’s your day going?”
“Oh, it’s okay,” I say. I know this is just her way of loosening me up before interviewing me, but I appreciate it.
Despite my years of practice with interviews, my palms are slick with sweat.
I’m uncharacteristically nervous; I can hear it in the slight shake of my voice, and I can’t get myself to sit still.
I wasn’t even this nervous for the Emmys.
I don’t know if it’s because of Stevie or because it feels strange to go on record about something other than my career, but I can’t dwell on it on camera.
I have to talk my way through the nerves, just like I used to do when I was early in my career and every audition felt like life or death.
“I was kept up all last night. I think the ghost knew you were coming.”
Stevie’s lips turn up in an amused smile just for me to see.
My heart flutters in a way that is totally unwelcome.
Despite my efforts to not be won over by Stevie, I don’t think this is a battle I’m going to win.
Even Annalise would say so what if she’s awful?
You can still fuck and that is not helpful in this moment.
“Is that something you’ve gotten used to? ”
“It’s been a trend. Things get…weird when there’s a change in routine.”
“Tell me more about that.”
Somewhat annoyingly, having Stevie’s undivided attention sends butterflies fluttering through my stomach. Now isn’t the time for butterflies; this is serious.
“A lot of things happen here that don’t seem particularly paranormal, but they also don’t feel normal, either,” I explain.
The camera and the people hovering around my living room disappear as I just focus on telling my story to Stevie.
“My electricity flickers a lot. Things like a TV turning on and off seem more like it’s about the house than a ghost, but it happens all the time.
And no one has found anything wrong with any of my wiring. ”
“Odd,” Stevie says, and I nod in agreement. “Have you seen anything? Or anyone?”
“I haven’t actually seen anything, but I’ve felt the presence of someone else in the room with me,” I say, carefully choosing my words. “I’ll just be, like, cooking or something and just…feel it.”
Stevie leans forward in her chair, her green eyes captivating me. “Do you believe in ghosts, Lauren Lane?”
My name on her lips sends an unfortunate flush through me—a reminder that my sex life has suffered in the time since I moved in. “I think what’s been going on here is enough to make me believe in them.”