Episode Thirteen

by Craig DiLouie

By the time we arrived at Grandma’s house to start our new lives there, it had been emptied. Like her soul, everything that defined her house had gone somewhere else, leaving a hollow shell. The rooms still smelled like her, though, just a hint of bitterness.

This is why I started Fade to Black. Because I know there is life after death. Because I know spirits are real. And by finding them and trying to communicate, perhaps both they and the living can find the same comfort.

This is a good start to see the motivations behind the investigation

This place has some wild lore connected to it. Seriously, I could write a book.

Ha!

Virginia Tech with a PhD in physics. She designed all our ghost hunting protocols and is a crack investigator.

I find that hard to believe

Though I’m personally agnostic on the subject, I sometimes watch for the fascinating locations and cheap thrills. Which goes to show you don’t have to believe in ghosts to have fun in a haunted house.

This is me

Matt’s a true believer, and Claire’s a born skeptic.

This seems contradictory to what was stated before

Imagine if The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully ever tied the knot, and it’d probably look something like this.

This is what I was imagining

At first, it was like a corpse’s hand accidentally brushed me. Then a whole other horrible feeling shuddered through me. I thought I was dead.

Every time I closed my eyes, I watched him die. The shooting even showed up in my dreams, the dude thrashing around in his own blood screaming, Let me try again! I can do it! Imploring me or God, I still don’t know which. Not all ghosts haunt houses. Some try to live in your head.

The team thinks I tell this story too much. I don’t think I tell it enough.

Now that’s chilling AF

People come for the ghosts, but they stay for the characters.

The mind is the ultimate camera, he said. The body is the ultimate sensor. When we visit the location, open your mind and write down every single feeling. Everything is usable.

Maybe it’s also because even though I don’t believe, I sometimes wish there was real evidence so I could. Sometimes, I want to believe I can believe.

I doubted his perception though not his sincerity. I believe he believes it and that he found it meaningful. If something comes from a point of total belief, it’s not exactly a hoax.

It was fun, not science. Make-believe. People delude themselves all the time, and this one was relatively harmless, but come on. If Matt wanted to do it for real, he had to get real about doing it.

I’m actually hurting science, since every time an anomaly shows up on our equipment that I can’t explain, it’s automatically assumed to be a paranormal entity. Anomalies don’t mean ghosts. They’re simply things I can’t explain.

So, Dear Diary. The big question is: How do I tell Matt?

Human experiments.

Oh my! Foreshadowing, perchance?

Was that flirting or an admission…?!

Where others spot ghosts, I sense something worse. Ignorance and superstition awaiting battle.

Only the darkness all too often swallows the light.

A haunting is like a mirage that disappears when you examine it too closely. Once it’s gone, it pops up somewhere else to invite and taunt you.

In Greek mythology, the titan Prometheus stole fire and gave it to humans, creating civilization. As punishment, Zeus bound him to a rock and each day sent an eagle to eat his liver, the organ where the Greeks thought human emotions resided. The moral of the story is knowledge brings eternal emotional torment. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempts Eve and Adam to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God punishes them by banishing them. The moral of the story is knowledge destroys innocence and produces suffering.

The history of science is one of pain, broken dreams, and occasional triumph. This is the march of progress. This is the wheel of civilization.

Some lines of inquiry, however, are a black hole. They become suffering without end or result.

I find this to be a weird visual. Why not ‘military build’ instead?

being black in a horror movie is like wearing a red shirt on star trek

As funny as this is, it seems out of context for the character

allow me to offer the most important thing I learned about it: Never get into a creative partnership with your husband unless you share the same dreams. In the end, you will have to choose, and it will cost one or both of you something you hold dear.

You’ll be changed. Burned. And if you’re like me, you’ll want more.

Matt: Shiva’s third eye. It delivers wisdom but destroys all in its path. Kevin: That’s ominous. Claire: Some say it’s destruction in the same way autumn destroys the earth, which is then reborn in the spring. More like transformation. Renewal. Kevin: So not ominous if you’re a tree. Very ominous if you’re a leaf.

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” —Eden Phillpotts

tell you what does scare me, though. People. If you think about all the terrible things a single human being is capable of rationalizing and doing, it’s amazing we have enough trust to function as a society.

Like Shiva’s third eye, wisdom burns as well as enlightens.

To paraphrase something the philosopher Nietzsche once said, the right sentence is like a rock that can shatter your entire world.

I was seeing it all without affecting it as an observer. I was energy. I was one with the particles that make up reality. I was nothing and everything. The tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear if it makes a sound or not. I was there and not there, listening to the silence of the tree falling and not falling.

Science seems stodgy, but sometimes, it delivers a level of awe that is akin to religion. The universe is mysterious and beautiful with or without a prime mover or underlying truth justifying it.

Matt has his grail, I have mine. And I just found it.

I’ll stand at your side, without expecting you to complete me anymore. But first, I must reach you, and I won’t quit until I do. I don’t want to lose you the moment I truly found you.