Sunday morning and Jackie and I pull out the cameras and all of the scientific meters. I’m downloading the video files onto my hard drive using the firewire and moviemaker program.
“Click, capture, click, publish. I will have Sally Ann on this tape, I guarantee it, maybe even her aberration,” I tell Jackie.
She answers, “Yeah Christina, sure, an aberration. I don’t think so.”
After an hour or so of reviewing the video I tell Jackie, “See, I told you there isn’t one shutter on any of those windows in the ghost town, not one! What do you say to that? Where did that banging shutter come from?”
Watching the last ten minutes of the video of the ghost town, suddenly I hear, “%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“What’s that? Jackie did you hear that?” The hair fuzz on my arms stands up.
“No, I didn’t hear anything, just static,” Jackie replies.
“Play that back, the hotel part,” I shriek.
“%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“Wow! Did you hear it that time?” Convinced.
“I think I heard something, Christina, but it sounds like noise to me.”
“Play it again,” I demand.
“%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“I heard it that time, it’s static all right. Christina, you heard static, that’s all it is,” Jackie insists.
“No, that’s an EVP. We just heard a recording of the disembodied voice of Sally Ann. She was talking to us.” I jump to my feet.
“Christina, no one will believe that noise is Sally Ann?” Jackie adds.
“We need something else, and it has to match up the with the same time line when we recorded Sally Ann’s EVP.” I’m serious.
Running to my backpack for the other meters, “Let’s get the rest of the equipment and check everything we had at the ghost town. The approximate time of the encounter was at about one hour and fifteen minutes into the investigation.”
“I’m on it,” Jackie answers, doubtful.
In the next ten minutes we take out every piece of equipment we had there and check all the readings and cross-reference everything with the time line.
“Looks like the only device with a reading is the radio frequency detector. It recorded eighty MHz (Mega Hertz), whatever that means?” I say.
Jackie answers, “I’m not sure? It must mean something?”
One thing I know, the eighty MHz of electro-magnetic radiation had to come from something. That’s why Dad’s K-2 meter was lighting up outside the hotel. Sally Ann was there.
Sometimes spirits communicate in that frequency, or so I’ve heard. It could have come from the natural magnetic field in the atmosphere or a computer screen, electric motor, cell phones, or walkie-talkies.
I nod, “I’ll prove it to you, that was Sally Ann. Hold on, hold on. I got a text from Mike. I wonder if he got the cell phone picture I sent him yesterday? Remember when I went down that hallway inside the hotel?”
I read his text out loud, “Ha-ha, pls, u r trying to trick me! U think throwing powder in the air and taking a picture of it, will make me think it’s a ghost? Lol the picture you sent me is a fake.”
“What is he talking about, I didn’t throw any powder,” I scroll to the message I sent him and look at the picture.
“Oh my God look Jackie! It’s an apparition of Sally Ann in the hotel room! I caught her with my cell camera. She’s standing in the corner pointing her finger at something.”
Jackie looks at the picture. “It looks like someone threw powder into the air. How do you know that is her? It could be her brother?”
I inspect the photo. “It’s got to be her! She’s a little bit of a thing. Kind of cute, huh. First she talked to us and now I have a picture of her. I’ve got her now!”
Besides Jackie look at the time I sent the photo, it was taken at one hour and two minutes into the investigation The EVP was recorded at one hour and ten minutes in, remember? That’s around the same time.
It must have taken all of her strength to materialize and talk to us. I wonder what she is trying to tell us?
I continue checking all the meters and digital film from the ghost town, but find nothing else. “Looks like that’s it, the cell phone picture, EVP, and we got the radio frequency field strength meter that recorded the eighty megahertz (MHz), whatever that means?” I look at Jackie.
She replies, “I kind of know, it’s a magnetic field given off by stuff, just like EMF. The RF meter measures electro-magnetic radiation given off by objects like microwave signal towers, satellite television signals, or radio signals. And it’s all measured in megahertz (MHz).”
I pitch in, “Sometimes the radiation is just hanging around in the air. But it could be a spirit trying to ‘cross over’?”
Jackie wraps it up, “Or one trying to come back?”
Dad walks in the door after returning from his Sunday morning basketball game with the guys from work.
I jump at him, “We recorded Sally Ann’s EVP. And the RF meter had a reading of eighty MHz at the exact same time we heard Sally Ann. And remember the K-2 was lighting up by the hotel? I double-checked everything, every meter and all the stuff. There isn’t anything else. That’s everything we got at the ghost town. Oh, and we got the picture.”
Dad looks at me over the top of his reading glasses. “You got a picture?”
I reply, “Yeah, you know the one I took with my cell phone in the hotel? I sent it to Mike. He sent it back a text saying I tried to trick him by throwing powder in front of the camera. When I looked at the photo I sent him, I realized it was Sally Ann’s apparition in the picture. That proves she was there. I knew it.”
Dad motions for me to hand him my phone so he can see the picture, “Could be, could be.” He looks closer at it, “I’ll bring the picture to work and analyze it.”
I add, “I’ll send it to you.”
He answers, “I thought we agreed not to enter the buildings?”
I ignore him.
Dad says, “I’ll count up the electro-magnetic radiation given off by the stuff we had at the ghost town. Hum, let’s see, three cell phones, that’s five MHz and the cameras are about ten MHz. We have to add the radio frequency EMF and light meters, they’re about six MHz, so that’s twenty-one MHz. And the Altimeter, that’s another three, total twenty-four. That’s nowhere near eighty MHz, we have fifty-six MHz unaccounted for.”
Dad states, “I have to bring the EVP recording to work and see if I can enhance the file on the equipment we have there. I’ll give it a forensic audio treatment (FAT) and an acoustical signal analysis (ASC). The FAT will tell us any characteristics of the recording—for example distortion, excessive noise, the speed of the sound, if the tape is demagnetized or if a dropout is present. The ASC will decipher hard to hear inaudible speech signals through forensic phonetic experimentation. If it is a recording of speech, the graphical representation or spectrogram can be printed out. That will give us a voice picture of someone or something. It's kind of similar to a photographic picture of a person.”
“Dad, I double-checked everything, every meter, and all the files on the cameras. There isn’t anything else. We got the EVP recording of Sally Ann, the radio frequency reading of eighty MHz, your K-2 readings, and of course the picture. That’s everything from the ghost town.”
I continue, “I think it proves there was something there? It’s conclusive. I know it. I know we recorded Sally Ann or maybe her brother.”
Jackie adds, “I think it was her brother, Simeon.”
“Dad, ya know I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you do at work anyway?” I ask.
“Oh, I just test stuff, different equipment, that’s all.”
“I’ll bring this recording of Sally Ann’s EVP to work and analyze it when no one is around. You and Jackie check the Internet for information about anything paranormal that gives off fifty to sixty MHz of electromagnetic energy. See what you can find out. And remember, not a word to anyone.”