We made the empty apartment our main base of operations for the investigation. Once the cameras and instruments were all set up, we filmed one of the most classic elements of a Soul Searchers episode: Yuri’s lecture.
In documentary terms, the shot was called a talking head. Yuri sat with his back against a neutral background—in this case, a section of blank wall where a future resident might put a dresser—and addressed someone just off camera. The viewer only saw his torso and head, hence the terminology. But to me, it always felt like Yuri was delivering a lecture in one of his history classes—an engaging one, full of death and tragedy, but a lecture nonetheless. It would later be cut into sections and sprinkled throughout the episode, but we filmed everything he knew about the allegedly haunted location in one large chunk.
Before Kit left, giving Yuri someone to look at had been her job. Now it was mine.
“Before its renovation into a restaurant and apartments, the building anchoring The Enclave was one of many boarding houses for underpaid and overworked iron miners,” Yuri told me as the camera rolled. “The property was owned by the Bishop Mining Company, who also employed the miners. This was a common tactic at the time. Mining companies would deduct the cost of their employees’ lodging, food, tools, and more from their paychecks. Frederick Bishop was largely considered fair compared to some of the more notorious mining barons, but even with a paternalistic employer, the life of an iron miner was difficult and dangerous.”
Because he was talking to me, I kept wanting to break in with questions. I had to purse my lips to stop myself from interrupting his flow to ask where the other boarding houses were and how closely intertwined the mining and psychic communities were.
“As the economic landscape of Donn’s Hill shifted, the need for the boarding houses dried up. The mining company sold the land to residential developers, and most of the original buildings were demolished. But due to its proximity to the industrial and manufacturing district, this particular neighborhood was the last to continue catering to Bishop Mining Company employees. After the company formally shut down their boarding program, the buildings here sat vacant for decades.
“An empty property such as this can be a magnet for trouble from both the living and the dead. It would hardly be surprising for the sightings reported by the residents here to be genuine. But we need to find out if there’s really something going on or if the staff of the Ace of Cups is concocting more than cocktails.”
He waited a beat, then nodded and stood. Noah gave him a high five, which was something I had never seen Yuri give or receive.
“That was great,” Noah said. “What’s next?”
Yuri nodded to me. “Now you’ll see why I begged Mac to join our team.”
My cheeks warmed as Noah, Fang, and Alexi all turned their eyes on me at once. I wasn’t used to having this many strangers with me at this stage of an investigation. Previously, it had always been just Yuri, Kit, Mark, and Striker. On the one occasion we had pulled together a larger group, I had known nearly everyone there from numerous prior encounters. The only exception had been a paranormal debunker named Raziel Santos who had crashed the séance just to try to prove we were frauds.
A sense of déjà vu washed over me. This moment felt strangely similar to that day. Only this time, the skeptic was our cameraman. Still, if there was anything here, anything at all, I had to do my best to make contact with it.
I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. “Okay. There’s a nice open area in the center of the room. Alexi, you’ve seen stuff up here before, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I’m in the first apartment by the stairs, and I’ve seen—”
Yuri held up a hand to stop her from saying any more. “We are doing an experiment this time. Mac will be calling out with as little direct knowledge of the incidents as possible.”
Alexi frowned. “But she was in the room when I explained it all downstairs.”
“She wasn’t listening.” Yuri’s tone was one-part apology to Alexi, one-part guilt trip for me.
Noah rolled his eyes. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I couldn’t wait to wipe the smug, all-knowing smirk off his face.
“Alexi, since you have a strong connection to this place, I’d like you in the circle.” I pointed to a spot on the floor. “You can sit there, and Yuri will sit there. I want to lean my back against the cupboards, so I’ll be over here.”
“What about me?” Fang asked hopefully. “Do you want me in the circle?”
I shook my head. “I want you over in the corner by the bathroom. You can monitor sound from there. And Noah, you can move around wherever you think you’ll get the best shots. Just don’t walk between the three of us, okay?”
“Prop open that door,” Yuri told Fang. “I want to be able to hear any movement in the hallway.”
Everyone took their positions. I fished two souvenirs from my trip out of my bag: an herb bundle from my mother’s nightstand and Darlene’s alien head lighter, which I used on a black three-wicked candle that I rested on the floor beside the herbs. As soon as I was settled, Striker took possession of my lap.
“Ah, I see.” Yuri nodded at the cat. “Striker makes four.”
“Next best thing to nine,” I said, grinning.
The warm glow of the candle’s flame reflected off his glasses. “If you believe it will strengthen your power, I believe it will too.”
Fang switched off the lights. The candle illuminated Alexi’s and Yuri’s faces, but I couldn’t make out much detail outside of our little circle. That was a relief; I didn’t think I would be able to concentrate if I could see Noah’s doubtful expression.
I closed my eyed and focused on Elizabeth’s breathing exercises. It took longer than it had in Darlene’s house, but within a few minutes, I managed to block out all other distractions. Like I had done there, I sent my consciousness outward. I pictured my psychic sense like a fog that spread from room to room, touching everything, feeling for anything that didn’t belong to the living world. I retraced our steps back to Alexi’s office and the bar, calling with my mind all the way.
Hello? Is anyone here? Come talk to me. I’m upstairs.
When nothing answered, I slowly pulled my senses back toward my body. Back up the stairs. Back down the hallway. Back into our circle.
Striker began to purr.
A sudden thrill ran through me. There it was—the feeling I had been missing. The sensation of something reaching back.
A door slammed shut. My eyes popped open.
The young man standing just inside the closed door gave off a soft, flickering glow, as though lit by another candle I couldn’t see. He didn’t look at me—or at anyone else in the room for that matter. As I watched, he walked to the corner, sat on thin air, and started taking off his boots.
The rest of the crew still watched the door.
“There’s someone here,” I whispered to Yuri.
I expected the man to look up when I spoke, but he ignored me. He just sighed heavily and stared down at his feet.
“Where?” Yuri asked.
“In the corner.” I pointed to the back of the room. “He’s sitting on something. Can you see him?”
“No. What does he look like?”
“Young. Maybe Fang’s age.” A lump formed in my throat as I studied him. “He’s thin. Really, really skinny. I think… I think he’s sick.”
The spirit’s hands shook as he pulled his second boot free. His cheeks were hollow, and watching the way his shoulders contracted with each shallow breath made me want to cough.
“What is he doing?” Yuri prodded.
The man stood and stretched, then walked a few feet and bent slightly. He brought his hands to his face a few times then patted his cheeks. Like watching a mime, my mind filled in what I couldn’t see.
“He just washed his face. Now he’s drying it with a towel. Not at the sink, though. Over there, by the wall.”
“These apartments used to be set up like dorms,” Alexi whispered. “Just bunk beds and washbasins with a shared toilet down the hall.”
The man went back to the place he had been sitting before—only this time, he stretched out. It looked like he was lying down, but his form hovered a couple feet off the ground.
“I think he’s going to bed.” I looked at Yuri. “Do ghosts sleep?”
His brow furrowed. “I’m not sure. It seems unlikely.”
For a few minutes, Striker and I watched the dead man as my team watched me. Just as I started to wonder if his form would fade away once he zonked out for the night, he swung his legs out and hauled himself to his feet.
“He’s walking back to the door,” I whispered.
His hand closed around the knob. The door opened, and he left it that way as he slipped out of the room.
“He left. Did you get that?” I asked Noah. “The door opening?”
“Got it,” he murmured. His voice trembled.
My legs tensed. I wanted to stand, to follow the ghost out into the hall, but I didn’t dare break the circle for fear I wouldn’t be able to see the spirit if and when he came back. I could guess where he went; there was one thing I always had to do before falling asleep, and if I forgot, my bladder chased me out of bed again within seconds of lying down.
But what kind of sense did that make? He was dead. Why go through the motions of washing a face no dirt could stick to and emptying a bladder he could never fill?
Unless…
“He doesn’t know he’s dead. He’s just going through the motions.” I turned to Alexi. “I’m guessing the door opening and closing is what’s freaking out the staff, right? They hear it at night?”
She nodded.
“Is it at the same time every day?”
Her eyes widened. “Same time, down to the minute.”
“I think he’s stuck in a loop. Maybe it’s a random day, or maybe it’s the last day he was alive. But he’s just redoing the same thing over and over.”
“A psychic impression.” Yuri rubbed his chin. “Interesting.”
“What does that mean?” Fang asked.
“Wait.” As I felt another of Yuri’s lectures coming on, I heard Kit’s voice inside my head, screaming at me not to miss the moment. “Fang, will you turn the overhead lights back on? And grab that ring light. Noah, make sure you get this.”
Noah moved in closer. “Do we need to change backgrounds?”
“No, he’s fine where he is.”
Yuri’s lips rolled into a paternal smile. Once we were back in position for a talking head, he dove into answering Fang’s question. “There are a few names for these phenomena. Psychic impressions. Residual hauntings. Spiritual afterimages. Whatever you call them, they are one of the most widely reported types of paranormal activity in the world. Have you ever seen the images from Hiroshima? The shadows burned into stone? Many paranormal researchers believe psychic impressions are formed in a similar way, by an event as shocking to the soul as an atomic bomb.”
“An event like what?” I asked.
“Dying,” he said simply.
I gave a small involuntary shudder.
“Obviously, there are many other circumstances that can cause a powerful impression,” Yuri went on. “I once met a man who moved into his deceased mother’s house. His mother had been very abusive to him while he was growing up, and he hated being back in his childhood home. In the night, he was repeatedly awakened by the sound of a child crying inside his old bedroom closet. He remembered hiding there when his mother came home drunk.”
“He was haunting himself?” I asked.
“Essentially. Often, these imprints are auditory only. Guests on the Queen Mary report hearing sounds of splashing in an empty pool. Workers remodeling an old children’s hospital swear they hear laughter from rooms that have been vacant for years. But what Mac is describing is either a less common version of this type of haunting—where a visual impression has been left—or it is simply something only those with a higher level of psychic sensitivity can discern.”
“So you’re saying it’s just like a movie?” I asked. “His spirit isn’t actually trapped here?”
Yuri bobbed his head from side to side. “It is impossible to say.”
“If he comes back, I’m going to try to channel him,” I decided. “Maybe if we tell him he’s dead, he can move on.”
Alexi frowned. “If this is a ghost and not just some kind of spooky recording, won’t that piss him off? If somebody showed up in my bedroom and said, ‘You’re dead, get out,’ I’d be mad.”
I looked at Yuri. “What do you think?”
“It could work. But”—he nodded his head toward the doorknob—“he is already able to interact with our world. If he does get angry, you might push him into becoming a poltergeist.”
I swallowed. I’d had enough of those to last a lifetime. “I’ll tread lightly.”
My words implied a confidence I didn’t truly feel. Channeling a spirit—inviting them to speak or write or otherwise interact with the living world through your body—was something I had never actually done. But I had seen it. Gabrielle did it at her séances, and I had personally witnessed an elderly man say goodbye to his deceased son, who spoke with Gabrielle’s voice.
It was the kind of experience that left a mark.
I remembered with a start that I had meant to channel Camila Aster. In the moment, it was only an excuse I had given myself for breaking into the empty yurt, but it was something I still wanted to do. Finding Anson Monroe’s house, learning about Elizabeth’s death, hightailing it back to Donn’s Hill, and getting absolutely no sleep since coming back had driven that plan from my mind, but I still wanted to do it.
This could be my practice run.
Looking at it that way gave me the strength I needed to square my shoulders, straighten my spine, and nod at the others that we were ready to begin. I held Yuri’s and Alexi’s hands. Fang turned the lights down, and we went back to waiting.
Before long, Striker’s purring increased in volume.
The spirit stepped into the room and closed the door.
I thought about the way Gabrielle had seemed to communicate wordlessly with the spirit before he spoke through her. She must have been calling to him with her mind, just the same as I did when trying to make contact with a ghost. How did she deepen the connection? How did she get them to speak?
Well, I had to start somewhere.
He was halfway across the space when I called to him, but with my mouth and my mind in tandem. “Can you hear me?”
Either he couldn’t or he didn’t feel like responding to the strange woman in his bedroom. He continued past me and lay down.
I tried again, pushing harder, imagining the words wrapping around the two of us and connecting our wrists as I spoke them. “Can you hear me? Please talk to me.”
Still nothing.
“Any response?” Yuri whispered.
“No. He’s back in bed.”
It felt strange and rude to talk about the spirit while he was right in front of us, but I had to assume he couldn’t hear us. Frustration grew in my chest, and I squeezed Yuri’s and Alexi’s hands. There was some kind of invisible barrier blocking my words from reaching the ghost, and I didn’t know how to break through it. Was he too far gone? Could only the recently dead be channeled? Did I need a more personal connection, something more meaningful than, Hey, look, I see a ghost, so let’s talk to it?
No. Or rather, maybe. It could be one or all of those things, but the main problem—the key issue—had to be me.
I wasn’t strong enough.
I was no Gabrielle.
With a sigh, I released my grip on the others in the circle. “I’m not getting a response.”
“Maybe if you knew his name,” Yuri mused. “I might be able to find it. I can look into the historical records and see if there’s anything about deaths of the miners who lived here.”
“Sure,” I said half-heartedly.
Yuri stood, and as he broke the circle, the sleeping spirit faded away. Striker hopped off my lap and went to sniff the floorboards where the ghost had been, but I took my time getting to my feet. Disappointment and frustration warred with elation and exhaustion inside my body, and I worried I might keel over if I stood too quickly.
Fang switched on the overhead light, face jubilant. “Holy crap! You guys, that was awesome. I mean”—he grabbed his long hair with his hands and pulled it straight against his cheeks—“the door just whooshed, and then Mac was all, ‘It’s a ghost!’ And I felt it. I felt it!”
“Yeah, kid,” Noah muttered. “We were all there.”
Our new cameraman looked even more stunned than I had dared to hope. I fought the smile off my face and asked casually, “Believe me now?”
“I want to see what the cameras picked up before I say for sure. But…” He ran a shaking hand down his face. “Damn.”
“Are you okay leaving the spirit here a bit longer?” I asked Alexi, who still sat on the floor across from me. “I guess I could try to help him move on with a smoke cleansing now if your tenants are really uncomfortable.”
Banishing a spirit didn’t require any level of personal connection. It was something I had done on my own, and I knew it was well within the limits of my abilities.
Limits being the key word, I thought sourly.
I expected her to take me up on my offer, but her eyes danced. “Are you kidding? Do you know how many people will want to spend a night in this room now? The ghost can stay forever.”