"That's what it took to build the Bucktail Scenic Highway," I told Glenn and Claudia. They're two of the library regulars, and friends of mine. "It was said to be impossible before they actually did it. It used between one to four hundred men, new heavy-duty equipment, and five tons of dynamite."
Glen, an architect, frowned. "Five tons? That sounds low...."
"Might have been more....Wait...." I looked over the old newspaper clipping I had in a folder. "Fifty tons. Fifty tons of dynamite."
"Ah, that sounds better."
"Yeah, my dynamite-judging abilities aren't so great," I said. "It's been a while."
We laughed. Claudia said,"Happens to all of us."
We laughed. Claudia said,"Happens to all of us."
They went to look for books. A guy came to the desk. "Did I hear you say you're a paranormal investigator?" he asked.
I looked him over. Old guy, gray hair. He had a button-down shirt, and a fishing hat that sat on top of his head as if he'd dropped it there and forgotten it. People recognized me as a paranormal investigator several times a week, and it's always the same question. Is he a nut, or reliable?
"Yes, sit. I investigate, and write about unexplained things."
He nodded. "I had two uncles that died in the Philadelphia Experience."
Nut.
"Really?" I said politely. You have to be a little careful with the nuts.
"Yep. They were in the ship when it disappeared....You know this story? A ship vanished and reappeared in---"
"Virginia."
He nodded. "Virginia. When it came back, my uncles were fused into the ship. My mom got a letter from the Navy, saying they were MIA. The government was covering it up."
"Give me their names," I said. "I'll look into it."
I wouldn't have even had the conversation. But it was Tuesday night.
Tuesday nights are really, really slow. Like "There's more excitement in a cemetery" slow. When I walked in the back room, I found Zach sitting with his feet up on his desk, drinking tea and playing a game on his phone.
"Yeah, I'm real busy," he said.
"You're not gonna get any crap from me," I told him. "It's so slow I just spent half an hour looking into the Philadelphia Experiment."
He squinted at me. "Not up to your usual standards. Wasn't that mostly made up?"
"Yeah. The story is that in 1943, the USS Eldridge disappeared and reappeared in Virginia before teleporting back to Philadelphia. Supposedly it killed soldiers and drove them crazy, However, the whole thing was pretty much made up by one guy. A man named Carlos Allende started sending mail to a UFO writer, insisting that this was the result of a government experiment that went wrong. Documents show that the Eldridge was actually nowhere near Philadelphia at the time."
"So what's your interest?"
"Got a guy who claims he lost two uncles in the incident. Which can't be literally true, but hell, it's a slow night."
"So you're gonna look into it."
"I'll see what I can find out."
"My wife has us booked for a night hike at Bald Eagle State Park. There have been some Dogman sightings in the area."
I can't believe I get to say sentences like that.
I was sitting between Kara and Millie. Across the table, Ashlin and Lacy were checking their notes. It was the monthly LHPS meeting, our gathering of ghost hunters and my only real attempt at a social life.
"Dogman?" asked Lacy.
"Yeah, dogs and wolves that run around on their back legs," I said. "They're half dog and half human....Kinda like the Mothman, or the Goatman."
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"I'm kind of self-educated."
"I'll get to my dues," Millie added. "I forgot the money tonight."
"So did I," I admitted. "Which brings me to something like eight months in the hole. I'll settle up next time."
Lacy grinned at me. "Or not."
Kara looked at her phone. "I'll get in touch with the client on Water Street. What else do we have?"
"The Spiritual Seekers got thrown out of Wildwood Cemetery for trespassing," I said. "Remember, that group I had to ream out for plagiarizing my work? They got caught trying to get in there at night."
"Good," said Ashlin.
"A couple of our cameras are going bad," said Kara. "We need to look into getting more."
"Theresa ordered the last ones, and she's on leave," Millie pointed out. "If she decides to quit entirely, we're going to need a new member."
"And a new president," commented Kara.
"Lou's the next one in line," Millie said.
I stood up. "Hey, we don't have to do it that way. We should really consider an election----"
"Lou is fine by me," said Kara.
Ashlin and Lacy were nodding. I said,"Hey, no, I don't need to just....No hard feelings if we want to choose someone else...."
"Lou," said Millie,"It should be you."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," I said. "Ashlin, where do we stand on the Brawn House?"
I was going through the cemetery records when the mail came. I'd found the grave of only one of the uncles----A soldier named Johnson, buried in Dunnstown. I was going through obits, so it was a normal day until I got my government documents in the mail.
I was at my desk, looking over them, when Millie came in.
"Finding anything?" she asked.
"About what I expected."
"Got a minute?" she asked.
"Sure. These are Navy records from 1943; they can wait. What's up?"
She set a page down on my desk. "I was going over our bank account. We're down the thirty-one dollars."
I looked it over. "What the hell? I thought we had like six hundred dollars in there."
"Me, too. We've been talking about what new equipment to get."
"What are all these charges? Small amounts at a time, over the course of months. I think we've been hacked."
Millie nodded. "We don''t use the account too much, which is why we didn't notice immediately. The bank won't do anything unless you contact them within sixty days."
So I'm the new leader? Okay. Time to lead.
"Talk to the bank," I said. "I'll contact Theresa and see if she can explain this. We'll hold off on our dues, or take them in cash until further notice. We may have to close the account and reopen a new one; we'll discuss that at the next meeting."
"We may not get the money back," said Millie.
"Maybe not, but that doesn't matter," I said. "We can accumulate our dues and make it up in a month. Forget the cash, Millie. They didn't get us."
"Daddy!" My son came running down from the elevator,. wearing his Lego pajamas, new Lego hat, My Little Pony socks, glittery boots, and seven different superhero sweatbands. The usual.
I gave him a hug. My daughter came in behind him, in her wheelchair. Paul said,"How is your work going?"
"Pretty good, little man. Busy. I'm sorting these books for the book sale. What are you up to?"
"We went to lunch! Now we are going to the park!"
"Well, that's cool."
Tif looked over my stack of books on the counter. "Anything good?"
"By sheer coincidence, I found this one." I picked up a hardcover about the Philadelphia Experiment.
"Isn't that the one you've been looking into? The hoax?"
"That's the one. Guy says his uncles died in the Philadelphia Experiment, and it was covered up. Never saw any documentation, just heard all about this from many family members. Which makes me question just how good a cover-up this actually was, if the whole family talked about it all the time."
Tif grinned. "Any progress?"
"I ran the names against the military lists of soldiers who served in World War II. No matches---They aren't recorded as either killed or missing in action. I found one of the uncles, in fact, buried in Dunnstown Cemetery, where he's been since he died in 1974. Which makes him unlikely to have been fused into the Edlridge in 1943. Oh, and I ordered up the declassified files on the Eldridge. It was in New York, nowhere near Philadelphia when this whole thing was said to have happened."
"What're you gonna tell the guy?"
"The truth. Once I get all my evidence together. Of course, he's not gonna buy it---He'll accuse me of being part of the cover-up; the conspiracy bananas always do. But I can only do just so much."
Paul looked at my name tag. "L....O....U. That spells Daddy."
I laughed and hugged him. "That's right, little man."
"I want a comic book with Robin and Batman together."
"Come on, buddy. Let's go find one."
You have to wonder what's gone wrong with your life when a significant portion of it is spent in cemeteries.
The wind was blowing strongly as I walked across the Dunnstown Cemetery. I was wearing my blue sweatshirt with Bigfoot and UFOs on it, and carrying the photocopy I'd made of the cemetery index. I'd made sure to bring it along; I'd learned that the hard way.
I spotted the Johnson monument from thirty feet away---It was on a near corner of the cemetery, one large stone with the name on it. The family graves were clustered around it, but I didn't need to pick through them---I could see the little flags gathered around the World War II veteran.
I knelt by his grave. DALE JOHNSON, 1974.
Which made him somewhat unlikely to have been killed in a top-secret government experiment in 1943.
It ended the way it began---On a slow Tuesday night.
I'd been just dashing off an e-mail to Resurrection Casey. She was looking into a haunted building in Carbon County, and I was explaining how to handle that, with the caveat that she shouldn't be trespassing, or at least not get caught. The guy came in around the same time, and sat down at a table. Looking over at me across the room, he said,"You find anything online about the Philadelphia Experience? Like, on Google, maybe?"
"Well, that's not really the way I work, sir." I sat down across from him. "I use documents and hard evidence, not online stories. I've done some digging." I laid out the papers on the table. "There's no easy way to say this. The Philadelphia Experiment was a hoax. It never really happened. These are the ships' logs from that day; they show the Eldridge was in New York at the time, nowhere near Philadelphia. I checked the lists of soldiers killed or missing in action, and the names you gave me never appear."
"But that's not right," he said. "They sent my mom a letter saying that my uncles were missing in action."
"Do you have proof? Did you ever see this letter? Or just hear about it?"
Long pause.
"I found one of your uncles buried in Dunnstown, since 1974. Which means he definitely survived past 1943. Here's the cemetery record."
"Well, there was a cover-up---"
"Must have been a pretty bad one, considering your whole family knew about what actually happened."
"They got to you," he said. "Somehow, the government got to you. What did they do, pay you off?"
"Right, tons of money. That's why I'm still working the slow shift and doing articles about gravity hills."
"Somehow, they got to you," he said. "You're part of the cover-up."
"I'll leave these documents with you," I said. "You can debate this with the documents. But that's what I've found out."
I returned to the desk, sitting down at the computer.
Zach walked by. "What're you up to?"
"I'm searching for information about Dogman sightings," I said. "It's Tuesday night."
"Yep. They were in the ship when it disappeared....You know this story? A ship vanished and reappeared in---"
"Virginia."
He nodded. "Virginia. When it came back, my uncles were fused into the ship. My mom got a letter from the Navy, saying they were MIA. The government was covering it up."
"Give me their names," I said. "I'll look into it."
I wouldn't have even had the conversation. But it was Tuesday night.
Tuesday nights are really, really slow. Like "There's more excitement in a cemetery" slow. When I walked in the back room, I found Zach sitting with his feet up on his desk, drinking tea and playing a game on his phone.
"Yeah, I'm real busy," he said.
"You're not gonna get any crap from me," I told him. "It's so slow I just spent half an hour looking into the Philadelphia Experiment."
He squinted at me. "Not up to your usual standards. Wasn't that mostly made up?"
"Yeah. The story is that in 1943, the USS Eldridge disappeared and reappeared in Virginia before teleporting back to Philadelphia. Supposedly it killed soldiers and drove them crazy, However, the whole thing was pretty much made up by one guy. A man named Carlos Allende started sending mail to a UFO writer, insisting that this was the result of a government experiment that went wrong. Documents show that the Eldridge was actually nowhere near Philadelphia at the time."
"So what's your interest?"
"Got a guy who claims he lost two uncles in the incident. Which can't be literally true, but hell, it's a slow night."
"So you're gonna look into it."
"I'll see what I can find out."
"My wife has us booked for a night hike at Bald Eagle State Park. There have been some Dogman sightings in the area."
I can't believe I get to say sentences like that.
I was sitting between Kara and Millie. Across the table, Ashlin and Lacy were checking their notes. It was the monthly LHPS meeting, our gathering of ghost hunters and my only real attempt at a social life.
"Dogman?" asked Lacy.
"Yeah, dogs and wolves that run around on their back legs," I said. "They're half dog and half human....Kinda like the Mothman, or the Goatman."
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"I'm kind of self-educated."
"I'll get to my dues," Millie added. "I forgot the money tonight."
"So did I," I admitted. "Which brings me to something like eight months in the hole. I'll settle up next time."
Lacy grinned at me. "Or not."
Kara looked at her phone. "I'll get in touch with the client on Water Street. What else do we have?"
"The Spiritual Seekers got thrown out of Wildwood Cemetery for trespassing," I said. "Remember, that group I had to ream out for plagiarizing my work? They got caught trying to get in there at night."
"Good," said Ashlin.
"A couple of our cameras are going bad," said Kara. "We need to look into getting more."
"Theresa ordered the last ones, and she's on leave," Millie pointed out. "If she decides to quit entirely, we're going to need a new member."
"And a new president," commented Kara.
"Lou's the next one in line," Millie said.
I stood up. "Hey, we don't have to do it that way. We should really consider an election----"
"Lou is fine by me," said Kara.
Ashlin and Lacy were nodding. I said,"Hey, no, I don't need to just....No hard feelings if we want to choose someone else...."
"Lou," said Millie,"It should be you."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," I said. "Ashlin, where do we stand on the Brawn House?"
I was going through the cemetery records when the mail came. I'd found the grave of only one of the uncles----A soldier named Johnson, buried in Dunnstown. I was going through obits, so it was a normal day until I got my government documents in the mail.
I was at my desk, looking over them, when Millie came in.
"Finding anything?" she asked.
"About what I expected."
"Got a minute?" she asked.
"Sure. These are Navy records from 1943; they can wait. What's up?"
She set a page down on my desk. "I was going over our bank account. We're down the thirty-one dollars."
I looked it over. "What the hell? I thought we had like six hundred dollars in there."
"Me, too. We've been talking about what new equipment to get."
"What are all these charges? Small amounts at a time, over the course of months. I think we've been hacked."
Millie nodded. "We don''t use the account too much, which is why we didn't notice immediately. The bank won't do anything unless you contact them within sixty days."
So I'm the new leader? Okay. Time to lead.
"Talk to the bank," I said. "I'll contact Theresa and see if she can explain this. We'll hold off on our dues, or take them in cash until further notice. We may have to close the account and reopen a new one; we'll discuss that at the next meeting."
"We may not get the money back," said Millie.
"Maybe not, but that doesn't matter," I said. "We can accumulate our dues and make it up in a month. Forget the cash, Millie. They didn't get us."
"Daddy!" My son came running down from the elevator,. wearing his Lego pajamas, new Lego hat, My Little Pony socks, glittery boots, and seven different superhero sweatbands. The usual.
I gave him a hug. My daughter came in behind him, in her wheelchair. Paul said,"How is your work going?"
"Pretty good, little man. Busy. I'm sorting these books for the book sale. What are you up to?"
"We went to lunch! Now we are going to the park!"
"Well, that's cool."
Tif looked over my stack of books on the counter. "Anything good?"
"By sheer coincidence, I found this one." I picked up a hardcover about the Philadelphia Experiment.
"Isn't that the one you've been looking into? The hoax?"
"That's the one. Guy says his uncles died in the Philadelphia Experiment, and it was covered up. Never saw any documentation, just heard all about this from many family members. Which makes me question just how good a cover-up this actually was, if the whole family talked about it all the time."
Tif grinned. "Any progress?"
"I ran the names against the military lists of soldiers who served in World War II. No matches---They aren't recorded as either killed or missing in action. I found one of the uncles, in fact, buried in Dunnstown Cemetery, where he's been since he died in 1974. Which makes him unlikely to have been fused into the Edlridge in 1943. Oh, and I ordered up the declassified files on the Eldridge. It was in New York, nowhere near Philadelphia when this whole thing was said to have happened."
"What're you gonna tell the guy?"
"The truth. Once I get all my evidence together. Of course, he's not gonna buy it---He'll accuse me of being part of the cover-up; the conspiracy bananas always do. But I can only do just so much."
Paul looked at my name tag. "L....O....U. That spells Daddy."
I laughed and hugged him. "That's right, little man."
"I want a comic book with Robin and Batman together."
"Come on, buddy. Let's go find one."
You have to wonder what's gone wrong with your life when a significant portion of it is spent in cemeteries.
The wind was blowing strongly as I walked across the Dunnstown Cemetery. I was wearing my blue sweatshirt with Bigfoot and UFOs on it, and carrying the photocopy I'd made of the cemetery index. I'd made sure to bring it along; I'd learned that the hard way.
I spotted the Johnson monument from thirty feet away---It was on a near corner of the cemetery, one large stone with the name on it. The family graves were clustered around it, but I didn't need to pick through them---I could see the little flags gathered around the World War II veteran.
I knelt by his grave. DALE JOHNSON, 1974.
Which made him somewhat unlikely to have been killed in a top-secret government experiment in 1943.
It ended the way it began---On a slow Tuesday night.
I'd been just dashing off an e-mail to Resurrection Casey. She was looking into a haunted building in Carbon County, and I was explaining how to handle that, with the caveat that she shouldn't be trespassing, or at least not get caught. The guy came in around the same time, and sat down at a table. Looking over at me across the room, he said,"You find anything online about the Philadelphia Experience? Like, on Google, maybe?"
"Well, that's not really the way I work, sir." I sat down across from him. "I use documents and hard evidence, not online stories. I've done some digging." I laid out the papers on the table. "There's no easy way to say this. The Philadelphia Experiment was a hoax. It never really happened. These are the ships' logs from that day; they show the Eldridge was in New York at the time, nowhere near Philadelphia. I checked the lists of soldiers killed or missing in action, and the names you gave me never appear."
"But that's not right," he said. "They sent my mom a letter saying that my uncles were missing in action."
"Do you have proof? Did you ever see this letter? Or just hear about it?"
Long pause.
"I found one of your uncles buried in Dunnstown, since 1974. Which means he definitely survived past 1943. Here's the cemetery record."
"Well, there was a cover-up---"
"Must have been a pretty bad one, considering your whole family knew about what actually happened."
"They got to you," he said. "Somehow, the government got to you. What did they do, pay you off?"
"Right, tons of money. That's why I'm still working the slow shift and doing articles about gravity hills."
"Somehow, they got to you," he said. "You're part of the cover-up."
"I'll leave these documents with you," I said. "You can debate this with the documents. But that's what I've found out."
I returned to the desk, sitting down at the computer.
Zach walked by. "What're you up to?"
"I'm searching for information about Dogman sightings," I said. "It's Tuesday night."
