Chapter 1: Dark Places

Chapter 1:

Dark Places

Matt's Story:

How do I get myself into these things? I hate dark places, I hate spooky hallways, I hate creepy buildings, and most of all I absolutely hate being scared. Yet here I was once again holding on to a flashlight with a GoPro strapped to my head and following the back of my wife's head. A supposedly haunted hospital is the last place I wanted to be. The things we do for love.

I could see the dust all over the broken shelves and gurneys. It was at least an inch thick and didn't look like it had been disturbed by anything in the last decade. As I walked behind Ishtar I could see hallways branching off from the one we were currently in. I turned my flashlight down each one as we passed and saw that the beam of light made little difference in breaking up the void of nothing and blackness. I could feel the moment that I was done with all of this. I stepped passed another corridor that was filled with broken equipment and collapsed ceiling tiles when I swore I saw something move. I stopped and pushed my flashlight out in front of me and was desperate for the light to show me that my eyes were just playing tricks on me because I was tired.

James, my oldest and best friend, only joined this little group because he was bored. I honestly don't know how, the man works two jobs and is my age. All light brown hair and almost perpetual five o'clock shadow, he had what you would call a “dad bod” without the dad part. Then there was Stephanie, my wife's little sister, who was nicknamed TinyButViscious and matched that moniker to perfection; stood all of five feet and some inches. That didn't stop her though, she gave as good as she got and the fact that she had long blonde hair and a quick wit usually threw anyone for a loop.

The two of them were on the other side of the Hospital doing their own investigation so I knew it couldn't be them. I looked towards the direction that Ish had continued walking an called out to her. “Hey!” I hissed, not wanting to speak too much louder just in case there was actually something down the hallway. “I think I actually saw something move.”

I heard her stop and then I heard footsteps coming back toward me. I gave a sigh of relief as I saw her fire red hair come into focus. Even in the dim light that our flashlights gave off, I could still see her bright vibrant hair that matched her personality. She looked thrilled that I could have possibly seen something. I could see her eyes widen in surprise and her lips broke into an excited smile. She was loving this.

Of course she was loving this. It was her idea. She and her sister used to watch those ghost hunting shows when they were younger, you know the ones I'm talking about. The ones that have two main hosts and they are way too excited about being at a haunted building. They lock themselves in at night and set up cameras and microphones, have infrared cameras, spirit boxes, Ouija boards, and sometimes they have an “expert” that has a degree in demonology or something. Yeah, those shows.

Hey, that was what we were doing now, with less equipment. Mainly because we decided to do this last minute and were actually trespassing.

“What? What did you see?” Ishtar asked me unable to hide her enthusiasm.

“I swear I saw something walking down the hallway as I passed. I saw it move as I moved my light down the hall.”

“Let's check it out!” She nearly cheered.

“How can you be this excited? Horror movies start this way!” I knew my complaint wouldn't deter her.

“Oh stop, those are just movies. Come on.”

I watched, once again, as my wife took the lead down a hallway that looked like it was ready to collapse any second. There was so much garbage and junk on the floor that it started to become a chore to actually walk passed it. Luckily, and I use the word very loosely, there were rooms on either side of this hallway. My guess is that they were patient rooms instead of the doctors offices we had seen on the

other side of the hospital. I was pretty sure we were in the Emergency area. The doorways seemed to be clear enough of debris for us to maneuver around the piles of tetanus and dust.

You would think; with my extensive knowledge of horror and slasher movies, that I wouldn't get distracted by a noise. Not a loud noise like a closing of a door or a clear footstep. No, it was a soft noise, like the sound of someone breathing. I stopped dead in my tracks and felt the shiver climb from the base of my spine all the way up to the base of my skull. I felt every single hair stand on end one by one and the lump in my throat was threatening to leap out past my teeth if I so much as opened my lips to breath. My heart pounded in my chest and my fight or flight was screaming at me to strongly consider the latter.

Now I don't want you getting the idea that I'm a coward. I'm not, it was just at that moment I felt like I should have a talking dog and be craving puppy snacks.

I could feel my hand shaking as I turned the flashlight into the room and I was praying to what ever deity was listening that I wouldn't find anything and it was just wind. Scanning the room I saw the remains of a patient bed, two broken cabinets, a sink, and a face looking back at me.

What?

I moved my light back to where I saw the face, ready to scream like a b***h, but didn't see anything. That was impossible right? It had to be shadows or something that my light bounced off of to make it look like a face. Instead of stepping back into the hallway and grabbing Ishtar by the hand and

dragging her out of that place, I instead did the stupid thing and stepped inside without saying anything. Classic horror movie mistake, I was as good as dead.

My hand reached out to the wall and found the light switch. Now I know logically that there was no possible way there was any power running through this old busted out building, but it was like habit. I click the switch expecting to see light come on so I could verify that there was nothing in the room but old equipment and garbage.

One click, two clicks, three clicks!

It finally dawned on me what I was actually doing and I cursed under my breath. “Matt, you are an idiot. The place has been without power for years, and here you are flipping a switch like a dumb a*s. Get your head on right.” I looked behind me to see Ishtar's light moving in the distance and was more glad than ever she hadn't been close enough to see what I had done.

I looked back in to the room and instantly screamed and tumbled backward!

Ishtar rushed back to see if I was alright and found me rubbing my back and my flashlight spinning in a circle just inside the room.

“You okay! What happened?” she asked me concerned.

“Oh it was nothing.” I sighed heaving myself up onto my feet again. “I just scared the crap out of myself by shining a light on my own reflection in the window.”

“Are you hurt?” she asked trying to hold back a laugh.

“Just my pride.” I said as I leaned down and picked up the flashlight.

She laughed. It was one of my favorite sounds. Her laugh was music in the dark and I couldn't help but laugh myself. I checked the GoPro to make sure it was still in place and then moved into the hallways again.

“This place seems dead. It's all just creepy hallways and paranoia. Can we call it a night?” I asked, hoping that she would understand that I really wanted to go.

“Come on.” She pouted. “It's not even 3 a.m. yet! That's when the fun is really supposed to start.”

I pulled out my phone and checked the time, it was only one o'clock in the morning. “Alright, two more hours, then we're outta here.”

She let out a small squeal of glee and then kissed me quickly. “Thank you! Two more hours, I promise. This is so much fun!”

My wife had a very strange idea of fun. My idea of fun didn't include hallways that were filled with broken chairs, spiders, rats, and asbestos. Then again I was a simple man with simple needs. Ishtar headed back down the hallway and I followed behind her a little more closely this time. I wasn't going to let any more noises distract me. As I made my way deeper into the Emergency Wing of the hospital I made a mental note of the surroundings I could make out. Nurses station, busted medicine case, turned over chair, mold covered mattress, wheelchair moving on its own...

I stopped again and this time I grabbed my wife's hand. “it moved.”

She looked to where my light was pointed and she saw the rusted wheelchair sitting in the middle of the open space completely still. “It's a wheelchair. We've passed by like a hundred of them.”

“Yeah,” I said moving a little closer to it. “But that one was moving on its own.”

“It was not!” She sounded thrilled.

“I looked right at it as it moved babe. Why would I lie?”

“To get my hopes up. I wanna catch something spooky on camera. We can put it up on the channel and show everyone what we captured.”

She was talking about her streaming channel. Ishtar isn't actually my wife's real name. It's the name she's known by her subscribers. We were recording all this to put on her channel for content and to have a little fun. Ishtar wasn't huge, she didn't have millions of followers, but she did have a good amount. Before tonight she had about 20,000. After this, if we caught anything spooky or creepy, it could sky rocket. Ghost hunting apparently had become a big thing and now we were following the trend. It was a bonus for her that it was something she wanted to do anyway.

“Don't worry, I'll make sure all the good stuff shows up.” I was her editor for her non-live streamed content. Which meant that I was going to get to have all the fun of combing through all the footage to try and find anything. I just hoped my GoPro had caught the chair moving.

“I know you will, cause you're awesome, and that's why I love you.” She kissed the tip of my nose and then turned back around to keep exploring. I looked around the area again and scanned it with my flashlight, thankfully nothing else decided to move on its own as I did.

I really wish I could say that the rest of the two hours were filled with us chasing noises, seeing shadows move, and equipment floating off the ground, but I'd be lying to you and I promised myself that when I started telling this story to whom ever was listening to it, that I would tell the truth and nothing but. Regardless as how strange it is. We called it at about a quarter after three in the morning. We were all tired and I needed some form of sleep before I scanned through the footage. We all made our way out of the hospital the same way we got in and once outside we started talking about all the things that had or had not happened. Ishtar couldn't help but tell Stephanie and James about my horrifying encounter with my own reflection. Needless to say, everyone had a good laugh, me included.

Though on the way home, James and Stephanie both started talking about how creepy the whole place felt. Not just the standard creepy either. They said that they felt like they were being watched. I'll admit that feelings like that weren't uncommon when exploring these old buildings. We hadn't done this too often, maybe two or three times before this and each time I got the same feeling.

“I wouldn't worry too much man, all these old places make people feel that way.” I tried to assure him.

“No I know that, this time felt different though.” James said from the back seat.

I felt him scoot forward.

“I mean the last house we were at was supposed to be haunted by like evil malevolent spirits right? This place though, I know I heard footsteps.”

Out of the four of us, James was the more excitable of us. He wanted to believe every noise was a poltergeist, or every curtain that was moved by the wind was a ghost coming to say hello. It was admirable in an X-Files “I want to believe” sort of way. It reminded me a lot of the day I asked him if he wanted to join us for a trip to an abandoned school house for the first time. His eyes got real wide and laughed saying “You can't be serious?” I told him bluntly that we were and he was invited. He went from skeptical to excited in seconds.

“You heard foot steps?” Ishtar asked skeptically.

“Yeah, when we were near the cafeteria. Clear as day!”

Great, I was not going to have to tediously scan through the footage he got with the volume up as high as possible to hear these footsteps. All the while I needed to focus on the video in order to see if I could debunk it somehow. Maybe Stephanie took a few loud steps or maybe it was a rat. I know it sounds like I am complaining a bit about the whole editing thing. To be fair, doing this for my wife isn't as bad as I make it sound. It is just extremely time consuming and because of our normal jobs I normally don't get to do this editing until it's dark. Guess what gets creepier when you are doing in at night when everything is quiet in the house? If you guessed looking at GoPro footage of haunted houses, give yourself a gold star.

“You said that before and it was your own steps echoing.” I reminded him of the last time he got all excited about it.

“He's telling the truth though.” Stephanie chimed in from behind Ishtar. “I heard them too. We spent a good thirty minutes trying to recreate it and couldn't. It sounded like someone was walking toward us and then just stopped.”

“Awesome!” Ishtar cheered. “Finally something to cool to show the fans!”

I spent the rest of the trip home asking more details to try and gauge what time they heard the noise so I could narrow down on the footage where to look. From what it sounded like, it was just after I had my experience in the room that I though I saw a face. The one that wasn't my own reflection. I didn't know if the events were a coincidence or not bu I was going to have to re-watch things before I made that judgment.

It wasn't too long of a trip, maybe an hour or so, but during that time both Stephanie and James kept bringing up how they felt like eyes were on them as soon as they split off from us. I asked Ish if she felt the same way and she couldn't say if she did or not.

“It's not fair that you two get to hear noises and stuff. All we got was my knight in shining armor screaming at his own reflection.”

“I mean, if I saw that reflection I'd be terrified too.” my wonderful sister in-law added with a smile.

“Hey!” I snapped. “I was only terrified by how good it looked.”

“Good for a corpse.” James added and then had to duck me swatting at his arm.

“So when is our next adventure?” Steph asked as she grabbed her gear from the trunk. I use the term gear lightly; it was a Camera, comfortable shoes, portable battery charger, and a jacket. We weren't what you would call “Well stocked” on ghost hunting equipment yet.

I honestly wish things were that simple again... but I am getting ahead of myself.

“It will be after I get this stuff looked through and edited. Plus I have a infrared camera coming and some stands for stationary cameras.” I said grabbing the rest of our stuff.

“You know, this group needs a name. Like the Ghost Hunters.” Ishtar said as she closed the trunk.

“Don't make it something cheesy, I won't be a part of cheesy.” I said with an exasperated sigh.

“Do we want it to kind of represent what we do?” James asked.

“Probably” I responded.

“Oh! OH! I got it!” Ishtar was beaming. I love my wife, but she loves word play and puns so I was sure this was going to be a groan worthy name.

“What?”

“The PNWA.”

“What's that mean?” James asked before I could.

“The Paranormal North West Archives. It's a play on the Pacific North West, It's perfect since we travel around her to find stuff and record it. Like an archive.” She looked really proud of coming up with that so quickly.

“Guess we got a name now.” And that was how all this really started.

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[Carrie]

Ghost hunting in an abandoned hospital. To bad no monstors