The Specter Files #1 part 1.2: Enter the Hospital

(Author’s Note: A.Z.) - We pick up where we left off last week.- in the future I will release parts 1.1 and 1.2 at the same time. and parts 2 and 3 will be whole.

(((((Other Author’s Note: N.W.L.))))) - This is the 2nd part of the first part of a the first Specter Files. I know. It’s confusing. I’m traveling for my sister’s wedding in Scotland and wanted to have something ready for these blogs. Please enjoy, as the Specter Detectors, (important characters in the upcoming Junior Rangers Investigative Club Novel: The Specters of Mammoth Cave) Enter the hospital grounds.

Amelia Zhang here- When last we left off, the Specter Detectors had just entered the courtyard of a domineering old abandoned hospital known as Charity. It’s night time as our two stars- Klaus and Sheryl in their trench coats, are followed by Clancy and Cody in Specter Detector T-shirts, and are being filmed by Mark on Camera.) They were speaking about how the Hospital was abandoned in the wake of a Hurricane. And that’s where we will pick up. (Reminder, when you see these paragraphs it’s Amelia talking to you the audience.)

ENTER THE HOSPITAL GROUNDS:

“The Hurricane was decades ago, why is the building still abandoned?” Mark asks, while capturing a group shot of the rest of the team in front of the large entrance ahead, below the tower.

Cody answers. “That’s another story entirely. There have been several attempts to get this pace up and running. First, again as a hospital. After that, there were talks about turning it into a community building. I think that’s the most recent plan. Whatever the case, some kind of construction is underway.”

“Then it’s a good thing we came when we did.” Clancy grins, turning to take in the structure. The camera pans around to share his view. To the left and the right, the two arms of the structure jut out to shelter a curved walkway. There’s a lot of glass, and several larger reliefs carved into blocks set into the walls. They are mostly scenes of people, doctors caring for patients and the like. Across the front of the structure a row of construction equipment has been collected, and a massive external elevator has been set up climbing the central tower. “We want to explore this place before it’s restored.”

“Why?” Sheryl asks. “Ghost don’t stop haunting a place because of a makeover.”

“For the ambiance.” Klaus twirls as he speaks, letting his trench coat flutter through the air. With the gate closed, crew seems enclosed in the dark courtyard. The noise of the city outside has died down. “This place won’t be nearly as much fun to explore after they repair all the damage.” (I don’t know why they left any of this in.)

The camera changes again, and the crew is moving through a wide hallway. It looks decrepit in their flashlights. Through their shadows the camera catches glimpses of brown stains patterned across the wall from knee to waist high—water stains or mold. The ceiling has partially collapsed and multiple colors of piping show through. “There’s a dour, expectant air down here.” Sheryl is up front, her low voice sounds tense, like it always does on an expedition. “It feels like something is waiting for us.”

“The lower floors flooded when the levee broke. This basement was entirely full of water.” Clancy explains. “That’s when the generators shut down, and they lost all power, save for a couple backup.”

“It doesn’t look that badly damaged.” Sheryl says. (I don’t know what she is thinking. It looks pretty bad.)

“They cleaned all of that out, and even started to get this place back in order before abandoning it.” Cody explains.

“Shh.” Klaus stops them, putting his hands to his ears. “Listen.” The camera wobbles as Mark messes with something. The group grows quiet, but a noise can be heard in the background. The clang of metal on metal. Clang… clang.. clang, clang clang………Clang. The sound repeats at seemingly random intervals for a couple of seconds.

“What is it?” Mark asks, nervous again.

“It could be another group exploring this place, or maybe some of the construction workers haven’t left yet.” Clancy answered.

“The guards said we’re the only ones in here. We were lucky to get permission.” Klaus replies.

“Then it could be scavengers.” Clancy shrugs, pulling out his phone. “The generator room is this way. Might be someone looking for spare copper, or other goods. We’ll pass by it on the way to the morgue.”

Belying this suggestion, Mark zooms in on a rolling shelf stacked with old electronics. Text appears on screen: Obviously, the construction crew has begun collecting abandoned equipment. Everything on that shelf had more value than anything which could be pulled out of a generator after two decades.

They pass by the generator room. Some of the machinery still looks shiny, and we get one of shots I mentioned, with Mark’s reflection, although you can only make out his profile. Some equipment is rusted. All of it has been taken apart.

Clang… clang, clang clang………Clang, clang. The sound is louder, so the group scans the room before Klaus pulls out an EMF reader. Turning it on, the green light quickly flashes yellow, and begins to slowly blip red.

“Is anyone there?” Sheryl asks, while Klaus waves the device around. The yellow fades as he gestures deeper into the room but returns towards the doorway. The red flashes strobe faster. (I think that they’ve turned off some of their flashlights.) The little beacon seems brighter than normal as they follow it out of the generator room and down the hall. Cody is walking with Mark behind the group helping him navigate while using the camera.

The other three quickly race ahead lead by the red blinking device until “A ha!” Klaus launches himself into another room.

Mark is the last one in. You can hear his heavy breathing. Is it nerves or exercise? By the time he and the camera have view of the room, the rest of the crew has spread about the center of the space, Klaus is crouched in front of a series of metal cabinets the tails of his trench coat on trialing dust.

The metal cabinets are the kind seen in forensic tv shows, (the ones which hold bodies.) They have their heavy metal doors wide opened. “This is the morgue.” Klaus explained. “During the flood after Katrina, this entire basement was filled with water, and it was inaccessible. But if this room is haunted, it doesn’t have to have been from that event. You can imagine some spirit showing up from the nearly a century of bodies which were stored in this room. Maybe several, and perhaps some still linger.” He shuts off the EMF reader which is now nearly only red. (I know this is where you would have checked out here if we were watching this together Lucy.)

“Let’s see what they have to say.” Sheryl pulls out a small voice recorder. I don’t know why, but she likes that better than the spirit box. (They use that later in this episode! Just wait!) She introduces herself, then calls out a couple of questions. “Is there anyone here? Anyone lost when the hospital was abandoned? Anyone from the long history before that, who has been waiting down here for years, waiting for their voices to be heard? Is there anything you want to say?”

Here the narrator takes over as the scene plays out again in black and white. This time it’s Cody’s comforting southern accent. “While Sheryl asked her questions, we were later able to isolate two notable responses, and a third potential sound.”

Sheryl’s questions play out again, chopped up and paused to sync with audio from the recorder.

Sheryl: “Is there anyone here?”

Recording: “Yes, here.” Cody has helpfully added text subtitles.

Sheryl: “…waiting for your voices to be heard?”

Recording: “Here… all … wet?” The question mark after the last word is how the Specter Detectors indicate that they aren’t certain of a word. (I listened to it multiple times, and to me, it sounded more like “hurt?” than “wet?”)

Finally, Sheryl: “Is there anything else you would like to say.”

Recording: tra… gil… dy.

(This one sounded like empty syllables to me.)

The camera shifts back to the expedition. The video to present time. Sheryl asks a few more questions, but they quickly decided to leave, spurred on by Klaus when he asks, “Does anyone else feel like it’s getting stuffy down here?” (There’s been some debate about whether Klaus’s bouts of stuffiness have more to do with spiritual pressure, or whether he might just have allergies. The morgue looked decrepit, but Sheryl has, in the past, stated that whenever he starts to complain about stuffiness, she also starts to feel increasingly dark presences.”

On cue, Sheryl notes, “I feel a ominous presence to this place. I don’t think we should linger.”

“Let’s head out.” Clancy motions for the team to leave, and Mark seems only too happy to follow. his breathing slows down and quiets until you can’t here it anymore. (Mark isn’t allergic to anything, except, maybe, the ghost hunting.) “Why don’t we explore some of the upper floors.”

Skipping a bit ahead, they climb several sets of stairs and wander down some halls.

The strange new narrator takes over. Her voice playing on top of their shadowy walk through darkened halls. “Whether ghost are reflections of people in the past, the spirits of those lost lingering after their mortal frame is gone, memories recorded into the walls of hallowed spaces, or something else entirely: they undoubtably, are formed as impressions left by the past, for us in the present. They must want to be seen, or we want to see them. Otherwise, how could we even acknowledge their presence?

I believe ghost are formed by a strange alchemical reaction of a spirit’s desire to persist and our living desire to see them. The observer and the observed. These must be the elements which sustain ghosts on our plane, whereas most living pass on to what comes next. These two elements might come in different ratios, and take many different forms, but without them, I don’t think you can have a ghost. And without a catalyst: trauma, violence, tragedy, surprise, and on, I think it’s very hard to sustain either of those elements. Otherwise, we’d be overrun with the formerly living.”

Other than a few eerie shadows, and more signs of decay mixed with evidence that the structure is being taken apart for future construction, there isn’t really anything in the footage of their slow walk through the lower halls. (Which is probably why they let the narrator ramble.) And there isn’t a lot of activity as they move up the structure Until…

Stay tuned for part 2!

(Congrats Lucy! You made it through part 1! Take a break! I hope you aren’t too scared yet.)

A last note from Me, Nathan W. Landrum. This is the end of the first part of the Specter Files. There are two more parts. Check out this first part, collected into it’s own article. And look for the other two parts of the Specter Detectors first adventure on the Specter Files pages soon. Here : The Specter Files - where you can learn more about the Specter Detectors and continue their various adventures, including the next two parts of their ghost hunt in a New Orleans Hospital. - N.W.L.

This might not be the last time I post a fictitious blog entry here. But future Specter Detector stuff will be there. I’ll be back to regular blogs next week. Thanks!!!!!