Ghost Story
I AM MOVING THIS STORY TO ROYAL ROAD
Ghost Story
by
Heather Farthing, (c) 2017, all rights reserved
News from the Lighthouse
Ravenswood is a grand old lady, nestled in the rural South. Nearly three hundred years old and as elegant and refined as ever, she is known for apple orchards that span from horizon to horizon and beautiful antebellum architecture. Today, she is a romantic getaway for young couples looking to capture that Spanish moss and horse-drawn carriage aesthetic.
The 1840s told a different story, however. If the mounting tensions leading into the Civil War weren’t bad enough, a plague descended upon the town like a thick fog: the White Plague, tuberculosis.
While today, bed and breakfasts greet the morning with the smell of cooking biscuits and baking pies, the merchants and farmers of the past greeted the morning with funeral tolls and the sound of horse-drawn hearses plodding the streets.
The plague struck down the young heirs to the Southern aristocracy with brutal efficiency, claiming lives for over a decade, giving rise to the town’s still-active medical industry and leaving its fingerprints on the Gothic tendencies of the residents.
Do you want to see a recreation of an antebellum funeral? This is the place. Want to purchase a hand-carved coffin cabinet to prop up in your living room? Look no further.
But I, dear readers, am not here for the apple fritters or raven plushies, I’m here for the ghosts. While I plan on partaking of some of the town’s well-rated ghost walks, you know I like to walk my own path.
Signed,
The Lighthouse Keeper
Chapter one
The air inside my filter mask is muggy and smells like my breath, and no amount of mouthwash will ever make recycled breath smell okay. My skin is sweaty inside the rubber gloves, slipping and sliding around inside uncomfortably, making the deluxe camera difficult to hold.
These shots better be worth it.
My senses are on high alert. Everything, from the twittering of birds to the rustle of the wind, sets me on edge. Typically, you’re not supposed to urban explore on you’re own, especially if you’re a girl, but I guess that adds to the thrill.
I’m not stupid, though, I reflect, checking to make sure my pepper spray and stun stick are in easy reach. It’s hours before sundown, my day cut shorter due to the incoming rain. Besides which, the crime rate in Ravenswood is pretty good, and locals swear by the hauntings and give places like this a wide berth.
I make my way past the front desk, taking some good pictures to review later. I’ve never actually captured anything definitively of note, but there is still a kind of beauty to the images. Memento mori, as they say.
There are papers still on the desk, as brittle as snowflake, with faint, handwritten patient intake and another details you might find at the intake desk of a hospital in its final days. I photograph those, too, wondering if I should edit out names for confidentiality reasons, even though this place has been closed for over a decade.
Past the desk, down the hall, are the exam rooms. Tables, some still with roles of formerly-sterile paper are still waiting for patients under lights gone rusty from neglect. A few doors still have clipboards in their boxes, or some tables with exam tools still spread out and waiting for their time to come.
I think back to that time The Fearless Few went into a similar hospital and found bones still in the morgue. I swear I have never seen anything sadder in my life than a body that no one cared to retrieve when the hospital closed.
The thought of finding such a grisly sight sends chills down my spine with an uncomfortable shiver. I’m adventurous, but I don’t think I’m that adventurous.
A coffee cup, the inside stained black from evaporated coffee, sits at the nurse’s station next to an ancient computer, big, boxy, and white. I photograph that, too, composing the shot like I’m taking a candid shot of the nurse, in gray scrubs and comfortable, white tennis shoes, at her desk.
I can almost picture the hustle and bustle, forms in scrubs and labcoats phasing in like a scene from a movie. I imagine doctors in green scrubs, like from a TV show, with stethoscopes around their necks, moving from patient to patient, and faceless figures in the exam rooms, some with grumpy children, tired and under the weather.
I suppose I’m something of an archaeologist. I take pictures, make documentations, form theories, although I never disturb my surroundings. I’m a “take only pictures, leave only footprints” kind of girl.
My footsteps echo down the halls, raising hairs on the back of my neck. It sounds like I’m being followed, which is more than a little disconcerting. A lesser documentarian might mistake it for a ghost, but it’s really just the acoustics.
I move deeper into the hospital, increasingly sure that I’m alone. This place is relatively clean, no dirty bedding, used needles, or food containers, so it does seem to be well and truly abandoned.
Until I realize something odd.
There’s a light humming in the air. It’s a small noise, one you probably wouldn’t notice in a world of idling car engines, ringtones, and televisions, but it’s there—like the noise of a refrigerator you only notice if the cable’s out.
It wouldn’t be the first place I’ve explored that still had power. I’m not really sure how it works, if someone still has the bill on autopay or someone just didn’t see the memo to shut it off, but it does happen from time to time.
I’m in the recovery wards, judging by the sign. These are the places where people would be put after surgery so the nurses could keep an eye on them before being sent to more private locations. The rooms are pretty spacious, with four two six beds neatly placed inside, a little worse for wear due to the long time off.
Except for one.
There’s a light on inside. I can see it from the hall. There isn’t a doorway, probably to facilitate movement of medical professionals beds, so the light spills out freely. It makes for a rather haunting shot, a bit of life still inside a place only inhabited by ghosts.
Curiosity picks at my brain. They say there’s a light bulb in a fire station that’s been burning for a hundred years, so I suppose it’s not too out of reason for someone to have left a light on, maybe from an inspection or police sweep. It could have even been another explorer, playing around with the still-running electricity.
The point is, though, that someone thought this particular recovery ward was interesting enough to go inside and mess with things.
Now, I could be walking into someone’s drug den or weird art project, but it’s just as likely it’s a room full of patient files or specimens, interesting things to photograph. I can’t very well leave before I check it out, now can I?
To my surprise, I’m actually greeted by the sights and sounds of brand-new medical monitoring equipment. A heart monitor beeps softly in one corner under the watchful eye of a camera focused onto a single bed in the center of the room, and the frail body sitting on top of it, breath ragged and restraints jingling with each pained movement.
There are paranormal cases of people walking straight into some kind of time vortex, seeing things they way they would have been in the past, or how the spirits trapped inside perceive things to be. I am quite sure this isn’t it.
An IV drip stands vigil over the comatose figure dozing on the hospital bed. The liquid inside is viscous and a nauseatingly vibrant shade of green, like something I’d see in a witch’s cauldron. The veins where the needle is seem irritated, or even outright burned, sending blackened spiderwebs across the right arm.
I can’t move my legs.
This isn’t a drug den. The IV would take too long to hook up and needs too much of an expert touch. This is…this is something else, something more…clinical.
Whimpering in pain, the figure jostles his restraints. The ankles and wrists, most of the calf and forearms, actually, are covered in the most vivid mottling of red and black bruises I’ve ever seen, like he tried to slip out of them by brute force with little concern about the muscle and bone damage he’s doing.
I take a hesitant step forward, eyes on the camera.
The room smells clean, antiseptic. There’s a tang of rubbing alcohol and fresh paint. The walls are a distinctive blue tone, and slightly gritty, like sand was mixed into the paint. It’s new, like days new, prepped just for him.
As I approach the camera, I feel like I’m outside of my body as I hit the power button. I still feel watched and exposed as I approach the figure, but at least I’m not on that particular feed.
“Alright, Spooky, what the heck is going on here?” I ask the figure.
The figure whimpers, mumbles something indistinct. He’s a sickly sort of pale and thin as a rake, like pictures I’ve seen of people in tuberculosis wards. Even his hair is a ghastly pale color, so white it’s nearly blue. The eyes are shadowed and bruised, burned from tears. There’s needle tracks on both arms.
“Bitte…bitte,” he mumbles. “Bitte nicht mehr. Ich möchte nicht hier sein.”
I don’t speak German, but the sound of pleading is a universal language. I find myself standing next the bed, watching myself from the outside, looking down from the roof. His hand is in mine, cold, trembling, trying to squeeze. His fingernails are black, like when the nail beds are damaged.
“Bring mich nach Hause,” he begs. “Bitte…”
My cell phone burns in my pocket. I could make a call. It would be anonymous. I could make it from my car, from the RV, from three states over. I’d report someone in dire need of help and no one would ever know I was here when the police come to take the body away.
“Bitte…”
The hand in mine has no skin, no flesh. There is only bare, white bone, smooth and glossy against my gloves. It trails up to cracks in the wrists and forearm, and then disappears under the thin hospital gown, reappearing as a clavicle, a spine, a skull.
I drop the hand in surprise, letting out a frightened gasp, hands knitted just in front of my face but not touching my mask.
“Bitte,” the skeleton implores through even, white teeth. Its arm pulls against the restraints, shudders, and sickly white flesh keeps it from slipping from the padded cuffs. Defeated, the arm drops and the young man whimpers again.
I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. I drive the RV somewhere spooky, I take pictures, I write up reports, I post the stories online. I never, ever see anything I can’t explain.
I mean, I’m sure there are people who believe they saw what they say they did, it just hasn’t happened to me. A lot of paranormal stuff kind of goes the opposite of “seek and ye shall find.” The people who want it don’t get it, the people who are freaked out by it can’t get it to leave them alone.
And I am without a doubt, one hundred percent sure, this wan, pale figure in a hospital bed and cloth gown just barely keeping his dignity, turned into a skeleton.
Whatever this thing is, it’s being tortured, probably experimented on. Whatever that green stuff is doing to it—him—is killing it.
Probably not the smartest thing I’ve done, as a lone single woman who routinely goes into abandoned buildings to take pictures without telling anyone where she’s at or when she’ll be done, I start unstrapping the restraints and pull out the IV.
He squeezes my hand again, his eyes open, wide, staring, and vulnerable. I guess this is what they call a soul connection, because I feel like he’s looking into mine, laid bare against the icy fingers of his gaze. I can’t tell if they’re unfocused for focused too well, but they’re as pale as his hair and, just long enough to take notice, have beaded reptillian slits for pupils and black sclera. He blinks and they’re normal again.
“Bitte,” he pleads. “Bring mich nach Hause.”
“I’m going to get you out of here, don’t you worry,” I reply, hand against his forehead. He’s sweating but looks cold, and I seriously hope I’m not unleashing another super-plague, but it’s not like whoever’s been keeping him here has taken great precautions against disease.
He’s barely able to move, unable to support his own weight. Fortunately he’s not very tall and doesn’t weigh much more than a broom handle, but it’s awkward, dragging him slung over my shoulder, his bare feet scrabbling against the tile floors.
Fortunately, it’s a hospital and wheelchairs are easy to come by.
Chapter two
Ghost Story
by
Heather Farthing, (c) 2017, all rights reserved
News from the Lighthouse
Ravenswood is a grand old lady, nestled in the rural South. Nearly three hundred years old and as elegant and refined as ever, she is known for apple orchards that span from horizon to horizon and beautiful antebellum architecture. Today, she is a romantic getaway for young couples looking to capture that Spanish moss and horse-drawn carriage aesthetic.
The 1840s told a different story, however. If the mounting tensions leading into the Civil War weren’t bad enough, a plague descended upon the town like a thick fog: the White Plague, tuberculosis.
While today, bed and breakfasts greet the morning with the smell of cooking biscuits and baking pies, the merchants and farmers of the past greeted the morning with funeral tolls and the sound of horse-drawn hearses plodding the streets.
The plague struck down the young heirs to the Southern aristocracy with brutal efficiency, claiming lives for over a decade, giving rise to the town’s still-active medical industry and leaving its fingerprints on the Gothic tendencies of the residents.
Do you want to see a recreation of an antebellum funeral? This is the place. Want to purchase a hand-carved coffin cabinet to prop up in your living room? Look no further.
But I, dear readers, am not here for the apple fritters or raven plushies, I’m here for the ghosts. While I plan on partaking of some of the town’s well-rated ghost walks, you know I like to walk my own path.
Signed,
The Lighthouse Keeper
Chapter one
The air inside my filter mask is muggy and smells like my breath, and no amount of mouthwash will ever make recycled breath smell okay. My skin is sweaty inside the rubber gloves, slipping and sliding around inside uncomfortably, making the deluxe camera difficult to hold.
These shots better be worth it.
My senses are on high alert. Everything, from the twittering of birds to the rustle of the wind, sets me on edge. Typically, you’re not supposed to urban explore on you’re own, especially if you’re a girl, but I guess that adds to the thrill.
I’m not stupid, though, I reflect, checking to make sure my pepper spray and stun stick are in easy reach. It’s hours before sundown, my day cut shorter due to the incoming rain. Besides which, the crime rate in Ravenswood is pretty good, and locals swear by the hauntings and give places like this a wide berth.
I make my way past the front desk, taking some good pictures to review later. I’ve never actually captured anything definitively of note, but there is still a kind of beauty to the images. Memento mori, as they say.
There are papers still on the desk, as brittle as snowflake, with faint, handwritten patient intake and another details you might find at the intake desk of a hospital in its final days. I photograph those, too, wondering if I should edit out names for confidentiality reasons, even though this place has been closed for over a decade.
Past the desk, down the hall, are the exam rooms. Tables, some still with roles of formerly-sterile paper are still waiting for patients under lights gone rusty from neglect. A few doors still have clipboards in their boxes, or some tables with exam tools still spread out and waiting for their time to come.
I think back to that time The Fearless Few went into a similar hospital and found bones still in the morgue. I swear I have never seen anything sadder in my life than a body that no one cared to retrieve when the hospital closed.
The thought of finding such a grisly sight sends chills down my spine with an uncomfortable shiver. I’m adventurous, but I don’t think I’m that adventurous.
A coffee cup, the inside stained black from evaporated coffee, sits at the nurse’s station next to an ancient computer, big, boxy, and white. I photograph that, too, composing the shot like I’m taking a candid shot of the nurse, in gray scrubs and comfortable, white tennis shoes, at her desk.
I can almost picture the hustle and bustle, forms in scrubs and labcoats phasing in like a scene from a movie. I imagine doctors in green scrubs, like from a TV show, with stethoscopes around their necks, moving from patient to patient, and faceless figures in the exam rooms, some with grumpy children, tired and under the weather.
I suppose I’m something of an archaeologist. I take pictures, make documentations, form theories, although I never disturb my surroundings. I’m a “take only pictures, leave only footprints” kind of girl.
My footsteps echo down the halls, raising hairs on the back of my neck. It sounds like I’m being followed, which is more than a little disconcerting. A lesser documentarian might mistake it for a ghost, but it’s really just the acoustics.
I move deeper into the hospital, increasingly sure that I’m alone. This place is relatively clean, no dirty bedding, used needles, or food containers, so it does seem to be well and truly abandoned.
Until I realize something odd.
There’s a light humming in the air. It’s a small noise, one you probably wouldn’t notice in a world of idling car engines, ringtones, and televisions, but it’s there—like the noise of a refrigerator you only notice if the cable’s out.
It wouldn’t be the first place I’ve explored that still had power. I’m not really sure how it works, if someone still has the bill on autopay or someone just didn’t see the memo to shut it off, but it does happen from time to time.
I’m in the recovery wards, judging by the sign. These are the places where people would be put after surgery so the nurses could keep an eye on them before being sent to more private locations. The rooms are pretty spacious, with four two six beds neatly placed inside, a little worse for wear due to the long time off.
Except for one.
There’s a light on inside. I can see it from the hall. There isn’t a doorway, probably to facilitate movement of medical professionals beds, so the light spills out freely. It makes for a rather haunting shot, a bit of life still inside a place only inhabited by ghosts.
Curiosity picks at my brain. They say there’s a light bulb in a fire station that’s been burning for a hundred years, so I suppose it’s not too out of reason for someone to have left a light on, maybe from an inspection or police sweep. It could have even been another explorer, playing around with the still-running electricity.
The point is, though, that someone thought this particular recovery ward was interesting enough to go inside and mess with things.
Now, I could be walking into someone’s drug den or weird art project, but it’s just as likely it’s a room full of patient files or specimens, interesting things to photograph. I can’t very well leave before I check it out, now can I?
To my surprise, I’m actually greeted by the sights and sounds of brand-new medical monitoring equipment. A heart monitor beeps softly in one corner under the watchful eye of a camera focused onto a single bed in the center of the room, and the frail body sitting on top of it, breath ragged and restraints jingling with each pained movement.
There are paranormal cases of people walking straight into some kind of time vortex, seeing things they way they would have been in the past, or how the spirits trapped inside perceive things to be. I am quite sure this isn’t it.
An IV drip stands vigil over the comatose figure dozing on the hospital bed. The liquid inside is viscous and a nauseatingly vibrant shade of green, like something I’d see in a witch’s cauldron. The veins where the needle is seem irritated, or even outright burned, sending blackened spiderwebs across the right arm.
I can’t move my legs.
This isn’t a drug den. The IV would take too long to hook up and needs too much of an expert touch. This is…this is something else, something more…clinical.
Whimpering in pain, the figure jostles his restraints. The ankles and wrists, most of the calf and forearms, actually, are covered in the most vivid mottling of red and black bruises I’ve ever seen, like he tried to slip out of them by brute force with little concern about the muscle and bone damage he’s doing.
I take a hesitant step forward, eyes on the camera.
The room smells clean, antiseptic. There’s a tang of rubbing alcohol and fresh paint. The walls are a distinctive blue tone, and slightly gritty, like sand was mixed into the paint. It’s new, like days new, prepped just for him.
As I approach the camera, I feel like I’m outside of my body as I hit the power button. I still feel watched and exposed as I approach the figure, but at least I’m not on that particular feed.
“Alright, Spooky, what the heck is going on here?” I ask the figure.
The figure whimpers, mumbles something indistinct. He’s a sickly sort of pale and thin as a rake, like pictures I’ve seen of people in tuberculosis wards. Even his hair is a ghastly pale color, so white it’s nearly blue. The eyes are shadowed and bruised, burned from tears. There’s needle tracks on both arms.
“Bitte…bitte,” he mumbles. “Bitte nicht mehr. Ich möchte nicht hier sein.”
I don’t speak German, but the sound of pleading is a universal language. I find myself standing next the bed, watching myself from the outside, looking down from the roof. His hand is in mine, cold, trembling, trying to squeeze. His fingernails are black, like when the nail beds are damaged.
“Bring mich nach Hause,” he begs. “Bitte…”
My cell phone burns in my pocket. I could make a call. It would be anonymous. I could make it from my car, from the RV, from three states over. I’d report someone in dire need of help and no one would ever know I was here when the police come to take the body away.
“Bitte…”
The hand in mine has no skin, no flesh. There is only bare, white bone, smooth and glossy against my gloves. It trails up to cracks in the wrists and forearm, and then disappears under the thin hospital gown, reappearing as a clavicle, a spine, a skull.
I drop the hand in surprise, letting out a frightened gasp, hands knitted just in front of my face but not touching my mask.
“Bitte,” the skeleton implores through even, white teeth. Its arm pulls against the restraints, shudders, and sickly white flesh keeps it from slipping from the padded cuffs. Defeated, the arm drops and the young man whimpers again.
I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen. I drive the RV somewhere spooky, I take pictures, I write up reports, I post the stories online. I never, ever see anything I can’t explain.
I mean, I’m sure there are people who believe they saw what they say they did, it just hasn’t happened to me. A lot of paranormal stuff kind of goes the opposite of “seek and ye shall find.” The people who want it don’t get it, the people who are freaked out by it can’t get it to leave them alone.
And I am without a doubt, one hundred percent sure, this wan, pale figure in a hospital bed and cloth gown just barely keeping his dignity, turned into a skeleton.
Whatever this thing is, it’s being tortured, probably experimented on. Whatever that green stuff is doing to it—him—is killing it.
Probably not the smartest thing I’ve done, as a lone single woman who routinely goes into abandoned buildings to take pictures without telling anyone where she’s at or when she’ll be done, I start unstrapping the restraints and pull out the IV.
He squeezes my hand again, his eyes open, wide, staring, and vulnerable. I guess this is what they call a soul connection, because I feel like he’s looking into mine, laid bare against the icy fingers of his gaze. I can’t tell if they’re unfocused for focused too well, but they’re as pale as his hair and, just long enough to take notice, have beaded reptillian slits for pupils and black sclera. He blinks and they’re normal again.
“Bitte,” he pleads. “Bring mich nach Hause.”
“I’m going to get you out of here, don’t you worry,” I reply, hand against his forehead. He’s sweating but looks cold, and I seriously hope I’m not unleashing another super-plague, but it’s not like whoever’s been keeping him here has taken great precautions against disease.
He’s barely able to move, unable to support his own weight. Fortunately he’s not very tall and doesn’t weigh much more than a broom handle, but it’s awkward, dragging him slung over my shoulder, his bare feet scrabbling against the tile floors.
Fortunately, it’s a hospital and wheelchairs are easy to come by.
Chapter two
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