"Sure. What's your name?"
"Make it to Randy and Sue."
"You got it." I scribbled To Randy and Sue, Best Wishes! Lou in the book and handed it back. Someone pointed a camera in my direction, and I held up a copy of my book and smiled.
Record scratch.
Freeze frame.
I'd been working on the book for literally years. Back in 2012, I'd been offered the book contract on the same day I'd lost a previous job. The supervisors of Wayne Township had offered to pay me to write a book on the history of their area, and I'd worked on it for quite a while. I'd actually long since fallen out of love with the project, but it had just recently been published, and I was holding a book signing at the library.
"So why did you choose Wayne Township?" asked a woman. "What was so special about it?"
"Well, they paid me," I said. "But there's also a lot of neat history out there. Some cool legends, and some mysteries. It's really a fascinating place."
She smiled. "Will you sign mine?"
"Sure," I said.
"Who the hell knocks on a library door?"
It took me a moment to figure out where the knock was coming from. Not from the main entrance, but from the emergency door behind my desk. I walked over and opened it. A woman was waiting outside in the cold---Short, dark hair, looking kind of unfocused, as if nothing that happened was taking any sort of permanent hold on her. I could smell alcohol on her, the sort of entrenched scent of a really heavy drinker.
"That's the guy I want to see!" she said cheerfully, stepping inside. "People told me I should talk to you. I'm very spiritual."
"Have a seat." I dragged a chair out of the reference room for her.
She sat down and dropped a thick scrapbook on my desk.
"You're the guy in the newspapers," she said, as if just now discovering it.
"That's me."
"I been told to talk to you. I'm very spiritual. I have stuff that'll blow your mind."
She opened the scrapbook. The first page held some photos of, apparently, shadows on a wall.
"This was impossible," she said. "It had to be spirits. There's no way this could have happened. Do you see it?"
"I'm not sure what you want me to see."
"You can't see the ghosts unless you have the same vision as me. Give me your glasses."
"I'm good."
The next page was my most recent article, about the Griffin House. She looked up at me, apparently losing her train of thought. "So they come to you?"
"Ghosts, you mean?"
"Yeah."
"Not really, no. I wait for someone to contact me with a report, and then go check out the property."
"....I don't understand."
I took a deep breath. "When someone believes their house to be haunted, they call me. I go and investigate, and try to find the truth."
"How do you do that, if they don't come to you?"
"Well, with my team, it's all about proof. We're looking for something provable and measurable."
"....I don't understand."
I saw Mel at the desk, watching with considerable amusement. Zach turned and fled for his office.
Another deep breath. "We take photos, audio recordings, measure temperature and electricity, and check the history of a property, looking for the truth."
"How do you do that?"
"Well, we use cameras and recorders, and instruments to measure. The point is proving what we find."
"....I don't understand. People told me I should talk to you." She looked around the room. "How do I get a library card?"
"We can sign you up with an ID with the current address."
"Wow. I gotta sign up sometime. Which way did I come in?"
"Let me walk you out. I can point you in the right direction."
I walked her to the lobby, where she said,"Whoa. What's that?"
"That's the main doors."
"That's a side street."
"No, ma'am, that's Main Street."
"No way."
"I promise."
"How long you worked here now?"
"Almost eight years."
"Wow. People told me I should talk to you. I'm very spiritual."
She headed off down the street. I walked back inside, where Mel was now laughing.
"On my self-evaluation, I said I needed to be more patient," I said. "That was a good start."
"You did good," she said.
Sometimes you get the nuts. It happens when you're a paranormal investigator.
My name is Lou. I work for the local library, which is how everyone knows where to find me. I also write a column for the newspapers, mostly about local history. And I do paranormal investigation. I'm the leader of the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers, but I also have something of an independent career. I look into ghosts, creatures, and old legends, trying to find scientific explanations.
Sometimes this leads me to prizes, interesting adventures. Sometimes, it brings the insane people to me, ranting about crazy stuff. Usually, it's fascinating.
You know what they say. If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your afterlife.
"So," I asked as we left the house,"What do you think?"
SaraLee looked over at me as we walked down the sidewalk. "The client seems credible. I got some feelings in the front room, near where she said the hot spots were."
"We'll talk about it at the next meeting," I said. SaraLee was the new member of LHPS, one we'd just recently picked up. It was her first intake interview, though we'd investigated her place in the past.
"Hey," SaraLee said. "So I know your feelings about psychics and mediums, and that you don't believe in them. But I have this feeling....a vibe that you don't want me in LHPS. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I'm getting."
I sat back in the car seat, and sighed.
"If I gave you that impression, Sara, I'm sorry," I said. "I can be an asshole sometimes, usually without realizing it. Look, my main problem comes down to proof. I work real hard to do the historic research and prove what I say. Meanwhile, some people will claim to have a feeling and expect me to take it on faith. Some people claim to hear voices, which any mental patient could do. But I'm looking forward to working with you, Sara, and you're one of us."
"I'm looking forward to it, too," she said. "Just not the paperwork. I just wanted to make sure I'm not forever feeling like the girl who's not wanted on the team."
"You have time to have a cup of coffee or something? My treat," I said. "I'd like to sit down and talk."
"That'd be great," she said. "I had a premonition of that."
So two paranormal investigators walk into a coffee shop....
"Coffee," I said to the cashier. "Black and extra large. Like my kid."
SaraLee smiled. "Hot chocolate for me." It was almost eight PM, but I'd long since built up an immunity to the effects of caffeine. She dug into her bag and got out a book.
"By the way," she said,"I brought you a present." She slid it across the table to me.
"In The Seven Mountains," I said. By Henry Shoemaker! Sara, where did you get this? I don't have this one yet!"
She smiled. "I knew you liked Shoemaker."
"It's got Pipsisseway's Pine.....Wow." I tore myself away from the book. "I have something for you, too." I slid an LHPS button across the table to her. "Until you get a uniform, this will do. You know our little ghost symbol is named Henry, after Henry Shoemaker?"
She smiled. "I remember that from the fundraiser in Highland Cemetery last September. So what's up with you and the psychics? Tell me all about your worldview."
"Okay. You work at, what, Sam's Club? I'd imagine you know the job. Maybe even know some of the more common prices. Now, imagine someone comes in and claims all your prices are wrong. They can't prove it. They don't work there. But they insist you're wrong, and you have to just blindly believe that, and they say they know better than you."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I can see that. Just so you know, I don't claim to talk to ghosts or anything....Sometimes I just feel things. I use my body as an instrument, the way you take measurements."
"Look, Sara, I never wanted you to feel unwelcome," I said. "I admit I had reservations. But you're smart and you've been active, and that's what really matters, especially since Kara and Lacy left the team. You're on the team, which means that I might fuck with you, but nobody else gets to."
She smiled and drank some of her hot chocolate.
"We've had problems with another team that claims to be psychic," I said. "After I told the owner of the Kistler House that her place wasn't on the Underground Railroad, she went and found a team that would tell her what she wants to hear. They claim to have had discussions with the ghosts of escaped slaves, in spite of I can prove the place wasn't built at the time."
"That old Victorian---?"
"Yeah, it was built about 1889. So the owner has run around town telling everyone I'm wrong. It would be damaging my career if my reputation wasn't already pretty solid. So, I mean, it's that kind of thing, you know? Drives me crazy."
"I can see why," said Sara. "I'd like to learn about the history research, how to prove these things."
"I can go with you sometime down to the Bellefonte Courthouse," I said. "Teach you how to do this. We can look up the research on your place."
She smiled. "I'd like that."
We walked out onto Bellefonte Avenue. "Oooh, it's snowing," SaraLee said.
"Hey," I said. "Are we good?"
Sara smiled.
"Yeah," she told me. "We're good."
