Hey everyone! I appreciate your interest, and apologise for taking a while to get this latest update out. It’s been a crazy few days, and there’s so much to catch you up on. Forgive me, I’m currently writing this at the hospital over their crappy Wi-fi, but I hope to get at least one update out per week.
“Jared,” I stated. “Your house is fucking haunted.”
I grinned at Jared, but he was stone-faced. The tension in his face was palpable.
“We’re gonna need a plan.” He said.
The thermal camera footage shook me to my core. I asked Jared if we could take a quick break to collect ‘ourselves’ (read: myself). I wracked my brain, but I couldn’t imagine an earthly explanation for what I had seen. I forced myself to step back and view the situation as a scientist. What do we know?
We know that at 3:24am, without fail, an ear-shattering knocking sound rips through their home. We know that objects sometimes move without an obvious source of movement. Finally, we know that there’s at least one humanoid entity that we’ ve dubbed the Shadow Man. The entity that either appears as a shadowy figure, or he doesn’t appear at all to the naked eye, detectable on thermal cameras. The question becomes, how can we analyse these events, prove their existence, develop a hypothesis, and test further?
My thinking was interrupted by Jared, who had to go to work soon. We worked out a basic initial plan, which goes thusly:
Jared left for the day, and I got to work putting the plan into action. After carefully placing threads, and pouring salt, I locked up the home with the spare key, and left for the day. I decided to head to the coffee shop where I FaceTimed Sara in Part 2.
Before carrying on, I’d like to take a beat to answer some common questions. I’ve gotten a lot of comments, and DMs since posting my initial account of Jared’s haunting. I wanted to give my perspective.
Q: Are you going to show us your YouTube channel, or recent ghost footage?
A: Not yet. It’s important to remember that I’m a forensic analyst (Albeit one looking for a job), and Jared is a RCMP Corporal who would like to be able to support his family. If we release our findings at this early stage, without peer review or further analysis, we could be committing career suicide.
Q: Are you going to call a priest, rabbi, imam, medium, psychic, or “real ghost hunters” now that you’re convinced something supernatural is happening?
A: No. I’m not religious (neither is Jared), and we’re not entirely convinced any of that would help. We’re going to be very careful about who else we bring into this situation. Despite what we’ve seen, we want to approach this methodically, and verify our findings to a reasonable degree. Just because we have evidence of an invisible or shadow-like ‘being’ doesn’t mean that salt lines, a cross, or holy water would repel it, you know? This could be a hitherto unknown phenomenon, who knows what actually works, and what doesn’t?
Q: Why did Jenny’s expression ‘darken’?
A: My creative licence might have caused some confusion and/or suspicion. It’s important to remember that this thing harmed Jenny’s child, and she has a second baby on the way. This whole incident impacted her life in a very negative way. Some speculated the entity’s tied to Jenny. I asked her if she had experienced any paranormal phenomena before their move, and other than the childhood story from Part 2, the answer was no. Jared also verified that he had never experienced anything like this until their recent move. Even when he lived with Jenny previously at their old apartment building.
Q: Have you told Jared about your Reddit posts?
A: I’m ashamed to admit I have not, but one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’ve changed everyone’s names involved, including my own.
Q: What about the old lady next door?
A: I haven’t spoken to her yet (she frightens me lol), but they tell me her name is Patricia. According to Jared, she’s lived in her home for 40+ years, and has a lot of opinions about the length of their grass, or the cleanliness of their garage. “Judgy, but harmless.” was how she was described to me.
Q: What exactly is making those knocking sounds?
A: Great question! As of yet, we don’t know, but that leads me to the next development in our investigation:
I mentioned previously that I had a friend that specialises in Forensic Audio, let’s call him Owen. Owen and I consulted a number of times at the lab. We had an excellent working relationship because Owen, much like myself, didn’t take himself too seriously. We both respected the importance of the work though, so we got along famously. Shortly after locking up at the house, my phone buzzed. I received an email reply from Owen:
To: MarnieFrom: OwenSubject: Re: Knocking Sounds
Hey Marnie!
Wild to hear from you, it’s been ages! So what, you’re a ghost hunter now? Weird but ok lol, let me know when I can appear on your TV show.
I analyzed the surveillance footage audio and the recorder audio for ya. I’m glad you sent both, because with the zoom recorders alone I would have told you these were consistent with regular human knocks. Likely a neighbour pounding on the walls. With the surveillance footage I can tell this is inside a house with no obvious source. If you want to determine the locations more accurately, place your two audio recorders 20-30 cm apart. Similar to the human ear, we can determine the direction of sounds from interaural time delays, ie. the delay it takes for the sound to reach one ‘ear’ versus the other. That might give us more accurate directional data, but best guess, the knocks are coming from inside the walls.
Btw, did you notice the whispering?
It barely registers inside the house, but if you check the “BackYard2” surveillance camera it’s more audible. A good example is Day 35 around 2am, turn your volume up to max and you can hear a faint whisper. Idk if it’s even English. I’ll clean it up and send you a better version in the next few days.
Hope that helps!
Cheers,Owen
-——————————–
Whispering?! What whispering?
I grab my laptop and open the Ghost Experiments drive. I click into “RAW FOOTAGE” and click into Day 35. Before I even navigate to the BackYard2 footage, my stomach drops. A sickening realisation.
Day 35 was the night of the Shadow Man.
I plug my headphones in, and click into the appropriate footage. I scrub until I reach 2am, and turn the volume up several notches. Listening closely, all I hear is static, wind, bugs, and the rustling of trees. I close my eyes, and lean forward, ignoring the din of the coffee shop.
A loud rustle. Suddenly at 2:07am, a faint whisper.
I immediately have chills. The whispers are very faint, barely audible, even at max volume. The voice sounds human, but it’s hard to make anything out. The ‘words’ are indecipherable. The closest I can come up with for transcribing them is:
“…son…eealll…efar…ine…itree…ale…ooerr…”
The ‘words’ repeat.
“…son…eealll…efar…ine…tree…ale…ooerr…”
Over and over again. The whispers are fast, and quiet. At 2:17am, the whispers stop.
A thought strikes me, and I open up the Shadow Man footage from that same night. The Shadow Man materialises around 2:14. At 2:15, he reaches out to Simon. By 2:16, he’s lifted Simon up into the air. At 2:17, Jenny comes into the room, and the Shadow Man drops away into the floor. Whatever the whispering outside is, it stops exactly when the Shadow Man disappears. I’ve compared timestamps, it’s down to the millisecond. Goosebumps speckle my arms.
I rip my headphones off, and they clatter onto the table. The barista glances at me due to the sudden noise, and I shoot them an awkward “sorry, I’m not a psycho, I swear” smile. At least, I hope it reads that way. Probably not. My head continues to spin, something that’s happened a lot these days. I don’t have the energy to explain it, but I know Jared needs to hear this, so I forward Owen’s email to him. I call Sara.
Sara answers, talking in a low voice.
“Hey Marn, I’m at work, are you okay?”
“No.” I open with, catching myself, “Physically yes, I’m okay, no one’s tried to murder me.”
“That’s good.”
“I won’t keep you, I just wanted to talk to you ‘cause I’m scared.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I think this place is legitimately haunted.”
“What? You? Shit.” Sara pauses for a moment, and I hear her walking towards what I assume is the back of the restaurant. I hear her beckon across the room, “I’m taking lunch!”
Sara’s voice gets quieter, yet intense. “Girl, get the hell out of there. Leave now. Leave yesterday. Get your ass back home, pronto, double time, ASAP.”
“No, I’ve got to stay, and figure this thing out. I don’t think coming back will even help, because of the photo…”
“Photo? What photo?”
Oh shit. I told Sara a lot of things, but I didn’t tell her about the polaroid left sitting on my laptop in our apartment. I explained to her what happened.
“Oh god. That’s why you asked me about moving your photos? I thought you couldn’t find them or something. Wait, did you just leave me alone in a haunted house?!” Sara laughed. I’m glad she could still find the humour in all this. We spent several more minutes catching up. I told her a little bit of what happened over at Jared’s, but at that moment I wanted to hear more about her. I was happy to hear about the little details of restaurant life after the last few days.
As we were chatting, I should mention that I never paused the surveillance footage. I didn’t even notice at first, as the backyard was very still, but at one point I cut Sara off mid-sentence.
“Wait, what the fuck?” I blurted out.
“What? What?!” Sara repeated.
“I think there’s someone in their backyard.”
I scrubbed back and rewatched the video. At 2:48 am, for a few brief frames, something dark darts out from behind some brush to another patch of trees. It’s visible for maybe a second. I tuned her voice out for a moment, but I know Sara was very confused on the other end of the line.
“Can I call you back?” Sara objected, but I hung up on her anyway. She still loves me. Using my editing software, I cut out that one moment of surveillance footage, and pulled it into the colour editor. I won’t bore you with the exact process, but in reducing the noise, lifting the brightness, and applying some corrective tools, this was my result.
A person in a large, black hood in a crouched, running position as they dart out of sight. Bushes and trees obscure their legs, but I can see their hands, which appear lighter in skin tone. From the angle, it’s impossible to see their face, and hard to get an accurate judgement of their size. One thing is clear: Someone is in Jared’s backyard.
Someone is whispering in Jared’s backyard, in the middle of the night.
After emailing my alarming findings to Jared, I drove to my motel to check in. I was relieved to see a clean, well-kept little building, and a series of connected wooden cabins parked in front of a thick tree line. It’s very Pacific Northwest.
I met the motel’s lovely manager, Wendy, an unfiltered, plaid-wearing free spirit of a woman. Wendy was initially concerned as I had connected with her as a part of a safety-escape plan. Once I made it clear that I was safe, she opened up about all sorts of things. She talked about things to do in town, her relationships, and I found out she even knew Jared and Jenny. She called Jared “a fine piece of ass” (again, unfiltered) and told me some things about Jenny’s family I didn’t know. Jenny’s family has lived in town for a few generations, and Wendy used to go to school with Jenny’s mom. Apparently she was a very nice woman, who passed away from cancer a few years ago, leaving the house to Jenny’s older sister Heather.
After peeling myself away from conversation with the lively Wendy, I went back to my room to settle in. The cabin was fairly small, with a queen bed, a mini fridge, wooden dresser with a small TV on it, and a half bath. The back window looked out into the nearby forest, and everything felt peaceful for a moment. After the last few days, it was nice to have a space of my own. After a much-deserved nap in my room, I woke up in the evening to a text from Jenny inviting me for dinner over at her sister’s place.
I checked the time, and swore under my breath. It was after 6 pm, and Jenny had texted me two hours ago. Shit, sorry I fell asleep. Is it too late to come for dinner? I wrote, sending the message. Jenny replied, No worries! Dinner’s not done yet, come on over. She sent the address along. I looked in the mirror. Oh god. I sprayed my hair with dry shampoo and brushed it, before putting a toque on (“beanie”, for you non-Canadians), and hoping for the best. I applied some deodorant and put on the least wrinkled shirt in my bag, and was on my merry way to Heather’s place.
Approaching my destination, I realised that Heather only lived a few blocks away from Jared and Jenny, in the same affluent area of town. Pulling up to the house, it was obvious that Heather’s home was much older. The architecture was a colonial style, big and boxy, with two pillars on either side of the front door. Not a style you see much of on Vancouver Island, but not unheard of in older, rich neighbourhoods. I mentioned in Part 2 that Jared’s home didn’t look anything like a haunted house, but this place… does. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very well maintained, and has a modern paint job, it’s big, and old, and creepy. I don’t plan on mentioning this to my hosts.
Before I reached the front door, Jenny swung it open to greet me. She introduced me to Heather (I acted like I didn’t learn her name from Wendy down at the motel), and her husband John. Heather bore a striking resemblance to Jenny, though she was clearly the older sister. John was a burly man with a large beard, with tattooed arms, and wearing a camo baseball hat. John seems like a stoic type, he barely spoke a word.
The home was beautiful, decorated with large pieces of antique wooden furniture, and the walls were covered in family photos. Heather and Jenny walked me into the living room, where they had set up a play area for baby Simon. He was crawling around on the floor in a little dinosaur-themed onesie, grabbing at various toys scattered about the place. He seems like a very happy child.
“Hi Simon!” said Jenny in an excited, high-pitched tone. “This is my friend Marnie!” She enunciated my name slowly and clearly, ‘MAR-NIE’, He curiously glanced up at me with an adorable smile, and quickly went back to crawling around.
“Aww, he’s a cutie!” I couldn’t help but say. I’m not a big fan of kids, but it’s hard not to smile back at a baby. Simon continued ripping across the floor, and the sisters continued showing me around the property. As I admired elaborate paintings in their hallways, I commented on how beautiful their home was. Heather replied,
“Thanks, it belonged to our mother. She passed away three years ago. Couldn’t bear to let the place go.” I offered my condolences. John called us in for dinner. It was halibut, veggies, and rice. Simple, but delicious. Over the course of the evening, I learned that their mother was also a seamstress, she taught the girls everything she knew. She went into real estate after their father died when the girls were young. Heather told me she never took to dressmaking like her sister did, but she followed her mom into real estate, and now is the CEO of their business.
“It sounds like she would be very proud of you both.” I told them. The sisters smiled warmly at each other. Out of the blue, John spoke up.
“So Marnie, you’re some kind of ghost hunter?” He chuckled. I felt my cheeks turn red.
“No, no, no. I’m a Forensic Analyst, Jared hired me because I’m a sceptic.”
“Is that the only reason?” John said with a disgusting grin on his face. It was clear to me then that John knew about my past relationship with Jared.
“John!” Heather yelled sternly. John put his hand up, as if to say, ‘Hey, it’s not my fault I’m an asshole’.
I’ve encountered many men like John in my time as a server, I knew well enough not to engage him further. People like this are hoping for a reaction, it’s best not to feed into that. As dinner was already coming to a close, Heather made up an excuse and ushered us to the living room to get away from her absolute peach of a husband.
It was getting late at this point, and Jenny decided it was time for Simon to change, feed, and tuck in for bed. As she unzipped little Simon’s onesie, my eyes bulged when I could see, clear as day, elongated red hand prints along the sides of his torso. I must have made a noise of surprise, because Jenny glanced up at me.
Without saying a word, Jenny stopped to pull a makeup removing wipe out of her purse. She wiped it over the handprints, which remained perfectly visible. Jared must have mentioned this to her.
“There. It’s real.” Jenny looked at me with momma bear intensity. I was flustered.
“I.. I didn’t..” I stammered out, before Jenny cut me off.
“This thing hurt my baby. We’re not messing with you. It’s real, now please do your job, and help us get rid of it.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. Baby Simon started to let out little cries. Jenny switched her focus back to him, and put on a cheerful voice as she changed him, then took him upstairs to feed him, and put him to bed. I was left alone on the couch with Heather for a moment, then she excused herself to go help John with the dishes.
I felt like utter garbage. I had no idea how to get rid of this ghost, or demon, or whatever it was. At best, my plan was to study it. At that moment, I decided I should quit, and go home. What good was I actually doing here? I pulled out my phone to compose a message to Jared, when I saw I had a reply from him, sent 15 minutes ago. It had been such a long day, I had nearly forgotten about the hooded figure, and the whispers in the backyard, but Jared must have just seen this. His email read simply:
WHAT????
As if on cue, the front door opened. It was Jared, still in his uniform. He still had a few hours left on his shift, but he must have left early.
“Where’s Jenny?” he asked in a commanding tone.
“Upstairs, with Simon.”
“Did you tell her about the person in the yard?”
“No, I wasn’t sure if I–” Before I had even finished, Jared started marching upstairs. He had a very concerned expression on his face. I couldn’t make out the specifics, but I could hear Jared’s voice coming from upstairs. His voice started loud, but quieted down. Jenny likely reminded him Simon was trying to sleep.
I stood up. Now felt like a good time to leave. Today had officially sucked, and it was time to go back to my quiet motel room. While gathering my things, Jared and Jenny came down the stairs, still talking. I was surprised to see Jenny was carrying Simon in her arms.
“–Best case scenario, someone’s fucking with us. We need to get you out of town, tonight.”
“Jared, slow down–” Jenny’s words came to an abrupt halt when she let out a blood-curdling scream.
Without warning, Jared’s leg was pulled forward with great speed, as if a rope was tied to it and pulled hard by twenty men. While airborne, another invisible force smashed him in the back, driving him upwards. His spine bent as though receiving an uppercut from a massive fist, and his face smashed into the ceiling. Then he fell with great speed, smashing through the rails of the stairs, and tumbled all the way down. It was sudden, violent, and utterly shocking.
Heather and John rushed to Jared’s aid. Jenny stood on the staircase, screaming and crying with horror. Baby Simon joined in on the cacophony. I stood completely motionless, stunned.
I don’t remember what I told the first responders, or the RCMP. Jared was taken in for emergency surgery. We were whisked away to the hospital for evaluation. I held Simon at one point as the doctors spoke to Jenny. The events of the evening no longer mattered.
I am terrified.
EDIT: Link to Part 4