©1 February 2025 Levite
http://themediadesk
1.
I was sitting at my desk, glaring at the Sheriff while an over dressed and overly smiley TV reporter named Hewett tried to get me interested in a paranormal case that he said he'd been following for a couple of years.
"I was with one of the groups that went in. I didn't have any cameras with me or anything, but it was an interesting night. We tried to find the source for the noises we heard and the lights that we saw from other rooms, but we couldn't." He spread his hands and shook his head, "I still don't know what was causing all the ruckus in the old convent."
"Convent?" I said. "What old convent?"
"It's a big old building in Bellmore that used to be one of the convents for the Sisters of Saint Joseph. It's, I'm trying to remember, it was built just before the Civil War, I think. " Mr. Hewett paused for a second. "They used it until the main place was built onto. Then it was an orphanage for a little while, and then it was empty, and then some other things, including a funhouse. Now it's a regular house and a couple is trying to turn part of it into a bed and breakfast for beach season."
"Bellmore," I said, "that's outside our jurisdiction."
The Sheriff laughed at me, "It's part of Hempstead, and I just so happen to know somebody that has been named as a Special Investigator for them."
"So does that mean I can go take a look and see what's going on?" I asked him.
"You can go see what's going on. And then discuss with Mister Hewett what, if anything, he can put on TV."
I looked up at Mr. Hewett, then I stood up and extended my hand to him. "Get me whatever information you can about the building, and we'll set it up."
Mr. Hewett's smile changed from one Made For TV to something that appeared to be genuine, "Thank you. I'll have that sent over to you as soon as I can."
I got all sorts of information from him and one of his friends about the place in Bellmore. And the story, as many stories on Long Island are, was fascinating.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph had several locations on the Island, as well as throughout New England. The building in Bellmore had been built as a small hotel, with part of it dedicated as a gentleman's club for businessmen from the City, but never turned a profit as either. The Sisters took over the property and many of them stayed there while the larger facility in Brentwood was being built. Then, as Mr. Hewett said, as the nuns moved out they brought in some orphans and other children to take care of. And then as other facilities opened for the children, the Bellmore property became less and less used. At one point a businessman had put money into the place to reopen it as a hotel and club, but then that deal fell apart during the Depression.
Since then the building had had a short life as a couple of different businesses. For about a year it was a thrift store, and the upstairs common room was a dance academy. Later it served a short but important starring role in a movie. But then, once again, it ended up empty until, for a time in the 1990s into the 2000s it had taken its turn as a seasonal commercial haunted house attraction. Which played out and closed for good after Halloween 2003. Finally being abandoned, and then sold.
Now, a couple by the name of Evans had purchased the building for, what would be a bargain basement price for a place on the Island. They had made plans, and hired an architect and an engineer to transform the old building, the core of which had been built in the 1850s, into their living space, several hotel rooms, a modern kitchen and serving area in what used to be the dance studio. And a couple of boutique type shops and some office space downstairs.
And, of course, as soon as the demolition started, things got lively in the building. But, as it turned out, that wasn't new.
Doing the background research into the material I had seen something in an old letter from one of the nuns to another sister that was going to be moving in.
"I pray that thou are not distressed by the scent of a gentleman's smoking pipe. One can still catch that in some of the rooms since we've been here, and none of us sisters smoke. But Sister Bernice finds the uncouth laughter we hear once in awhile most upsetting because none of us were laughing."
The letter had been written in the 1910s, before the sisters had moved out and the orphans moved in.
According to the brief I had on that portion of the place's history. Some of the orphans they took in in the teens and early twenties had been victims of neglect or abuse, or had medical issues. And several of them died either in the building or in the hospital after staying there for awhile.
That got my attention and I went back and checked on the notes about the nuns. A couple of them had passed in the building as well. As far as gentlemen with their cigars shuffling off this mortal coil in their lounge, there was no mention.
I also didn't see where anybody had died from fright going through the haunted house.
I looked at the floor plans that had been created by the architect based on the original drawings that they had found from when the building had been opened as a hotel.
The nuns had simply moved into the various hotel rooms, including the ones on the third floor that shared a communal bathroom. They used the hotel kitchen in the back on the first floor, and had two chapels in the building.
They had a community mass in the first floor space that later became the thrift store, and was now planned to become a faux leather shop with synthetic handbags and belts and other items made of material made to look like leather, but had never been an animal. The private chapel for the nuns was on the south end of the third floor in the former gentleman's club, and was labeled "Lady Chapel" on the blueprint, and was going to become the living room of the largest of the hotel-type suites for the bed and breakfast, and was the one that was the last straw for the Evans while doing the renovations and the reason they contacted the local paranormal investigators.
Which led to the string of events that resulted in my calling the investigators and the couple that owned the building.
I had a long telephone conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Evans on the topic of the findings of the paranormal group.
"The idea that perhaps there is some intentional apparatus that had been installed to mimic a haunted space made them think that perhaps everything was faked." I told them.
"We understand that Detective. But we have removed everything that we've ever found from the haunted house. None of it is active. And yet we still hear that moaning in the suite."
"And that room was never part of their haunted house," Mrs. Evans added.
"I can appreciate that, Mrs. Evans, and that is why Mr. Hewett has asked me to evaluate the property to determine if the phenomena being experienced is truly paranormal or is in some way being caused or influenced by the fact that the building had been a fun house."
We set up a meeting the following morning at their place. Mr. Evans would be at work but said he'd try to take a half day off and come home early. Mrs Evans....
"Oh, please, call me Chastine. And he's Clay."
"Chastine."
"Yes, that's my first name."
"An appropriate name for somebody that now owns a former convent."
I could hear Mr. Evans laughing, but it was Mrs. Evans, Chastine, that answered, "That's what we thought."
.... Chastine promised me a full tour and some of their special blend coffee.
"I'm looking forward to it." I said.
2.
The building in Bellmore was big, old, and out of place on a street of much more modern structures, I parked on the side and saw that the stone lintel above the door still said Bellmore Inn in old, somewhat worn, block letters.
Chastine was waiting on me in what I was told would be their reception area.
"Tour first, or coffee first?" She asked me.
"Potty first, please, it was a long drive. Then a short tour just to get my bearings."
Her smile was genuine, "Right this way."
There were two old restrooms in what used to be the front lobby of the original hotel. And they had obviously not been restored other than keeping the plumbing working, and the motion sensor on the light.
I smiled at the period music they had playing softly in the background. It made the old room seem totally quaint as I washed my hands in what was probably a genuine marble sink with brass fixtures. The only incongruous note was a modern paper towel dispenser. But such was the reality of our time.
"Ready?" Chastine asked me as I pushed the heavy wooden door with a frosted glass window open.
"Yes. I love the restroom, it's almost completely original isn't it?"
"Yes. They had been sealed up for years, which probably saved them. There had been a false wall across here. We took it down, and there they were."
"Is the music on a loop or is it controlled by the light, so it's on when somebody is in there?"
"Music?"
That began my investigation.
There was no music. At least none that was controlled by the new owners. I looked for a speaker or anything else that would play soft piano music while somebody was doing their business in the restroom.
"I heard music," I said to Chastine while I ran the EMF detector over the room with the light on, and the light off. "And it wasn't distant or muffled."
"I believe you. I've heard it a couple of times. And others have as well. But only in the women's."
I shook my head as I inspected under the sink with my flashlight and the detector. "I give up. Can we do the tour now?"
"Now that you believe me that something is really happening here?"
"I believed you before. I just need to be able to prove it. One piano serenade in the potty isn't going to convince anybody else."
"OK. Want to start in the basement? It's where we've done the least work but have stored the most junk."
By 'junk' she meant everything from kneeling benches the nuns had used to the old sign in book stand from the hotel. There was a box of vintage dance shoes, and a large enough collection of horror props to outfit a movie. And next to the door was a plastic milk crate overflowing with ash trays. And that was just in the first room of the basement.
"That's the building junk, this one is our supply junk for the renovation," she gestured into the second room.
I saw a case of painting tarps sitting next to two boxes full of plumbing parts. "So you don't come down here except to get a drop cloth or bring down something you find in a closet."
"That's exactly what we do. And we are still finding stuff in cupboards and closets." She nodded to the first room. "Clay keeps telling me we're going to have the biggest yard sale ever when we're done. But a lot of what we find is trash."
"I could well imagine."
The rest of the tour was more of the same. The storefronts were about finished. The office space was just about ready to rent, and Chastine said they'd had a couple of businesses already asking about it. One of the stores had a firm commitment, the other one was still available, but it was also the less complete of the two. The old hotel kitchen in the back, they hadn't touched. Yet.
"Maybe a caterer will want it. Something like that," she said as we peeked in the door.
Upstairs on the second floor they had a dozen or so rooms down the hall from the lobby area. Eight of which were guest rooms, then there was the owner's suite, and the kitchen and dining area where we got our coffee.
The coffee was good, but nothing special. Not overpoweringly strong, it didn't have some odd flavor of nuts or greenery, it wasn't so acidic that it made the insides of your cheeks tingle, it was a good cup of coffee. And really, that's becoming somewhat rare.
"You can see these are almost ready to go," Chastine said as we walked out of their apartment into the hall. "And nothing really happens in here." Then she stopped and opened a couple of the other doors, "These were where the haunted house was at its thickest. They'd come in up the front stairs and they routed them through the side door there, then through those two rooms, and then across here and through these three rooms, and then down the back stairs into the shop."
"Exit through the gift shop," I chuckled.
"I don't know if they had a gift shop or not. I do know they had a haunted maze in it. But they may have sold shirts and cups and stuff as well. We've found some stuff like that down there."
The third floor was similar. The room that was the most complete, and, according to Mrs. Evans, it was the most active with paranormal stuff. "You smell cigars and tobacco pipes, and hear men laughing, and all that, in the day time. At night, you can sometimes hear the nuns whispering."
I didn't understand. "You can hear them praying?"
"No, it doesn't sound like prayers," she paused and looked around the room, then stepped out into the hall. I followed her, then she finished, "to me, when I've heard them. It sounds like just gossip. Sometimes you even hear them laughing. Not like the men, all loud and all, but soft. Like schoolgirls."
We looked into several of the rooms, some were more ready than others. But a few of them looked like either the orphans or the nuns had just moved out.
"Yeah," Chastine said, "we haven't done a lot in those yet. We've been concentrating on the second floor and the shops more," then she looked back toward the suite, "and that room."
I looked through one of the rooms and opened a couple of the drawers on a built in dresser. "Oh, here you go," I picked up a primary grade reading book and an actual fourth grade math book, which I opened and took out a piece of writing paper. "Tommy didn't turn in his homework." I showed it to Chastine and she laughed, "You can add these to your collection."
"I'll take you down and you can put it in a book box, come on, I'll show you the star attraction of the place."
The "star attraction" was an automatic elevator, almost totally made of brass, that was installed in the building during the period between being an orphanage and when it was supposed to become a hotel again just before the Great Depression.
Chastine pushed the button and I could hear the thing begin moving. "Don't worry, it's safe. Once we took possession of the building we had the company come in and restore it. The motor, the cables, the brakes, everything except what you see is brand new."
When the doors opened the bright gleam from the brass was almost blinding. The original plaque on the wall above the new control panel proclaimed it as a Safety Lift and listed August 1931 as the date it was installed.
"Basement," Chastine said and I pushed the 'B' button.
The lift worked as advertised, and we arrived in the basement. I carried Tommy's schoolbooks to the junk room and put them in the box of books.
Then her phone beeped. "That's Clay, he's on his way home. And said he'd bring lunch. Is fried chicken OK?"
"Sure."
We went to their apartment on the second floor to wait on Mr. Evans, who I found out was named Clarence, and who went by Clay.
"And he calls me Chase. He's the only one that does, Clay's got a nickname for everybody. He'll be calling you something besides Elaine before lunch is over."
"That's fine," I looked around the apartment, "you mentioned activity in here."
"Oh, yes. There's whispering and banging, and even what sounds like a child crying, not a baby, but a child."
"When this was an orphanage, where did the children stay?" I asked.
"The girls were on this floor and the boys upstairs. They had to share that one bathroom in the hall. That's why we put a new one in the suite. The others have the pipes in, but we're waiting on toilets and stuff."
"I know the music happens in the daytime, but does anything else?"
"Sometimes. Especially if we're working in one of the rooms. We'll bang on the wall or floor, and there will be an answer."
"How about at night?"
"Oh, at night, that up there can sometimes be jumping. I mean it." She stopped and looked at me. "Why don't you stay the night?"
"It'd be interesting, but I didn't bring anything with me."
"Then come back tomorrow. I'll make sure there's fresh sheets and towels and stuff, and you can spend the night in the suite. Then you can investigate all you want and not have to drive home."
I thought about it. "You're on. We'll finish today, and tomorrow I'll come back and stay."
Clay arrived with a major spread of a fried chicken dinner, and was all enthusiastic about the investigation. "I don't mind having a ghost or two in the building. But sometimes it gets to be a bit much, Ellie. Sometimes it seems like there's at least one or two per room, and they're all different."
"Ellie?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, you look like an Ellie." He said.
Chastine shrugged.
I took it as a compliment and let it go.
After lunch Clay took me up to the attic that was only over the back half of the building. It was where the elevator machinery was, as well as the main air conditioning unit. "When they were up here doing this, they even had a minister come in and ask the ghosts to leave them alone so they could get it done." He gestured to the elevator control panel. "Their manager said they've had to do that before. Sometimes the ghosts let really attached to the old stuff and don't want to let it go. He told them they were just replacing the motor and the controls, that the elevator itself would stay. They seemed OK with that."
Then we went back down to the third floor and looked at the boy's bathroom.
I know it may just have been the power of suggestion. Or maybe the idea that I'd be trying to get a few hours sleep right down the hall tomorrow night. Or maybe it was just the odd smell of the place.
But.
I am here to tell you that I felt like I was being stared at the whole time I was there.
I'm a woman. I've been told that I am a rather pretty woman. And I know some men, and more than a few women, stare at me.
I don't know if it is ESP, or just part of being a woman, and a police detective on top of it, but I know when somebody is staring at me. And even moreso, when it is a group.
Not long ago when I was working on a county personnel issue I had to stop by a worksite where a contractor had been filing some unusual invoices for services the county department said weren't contracted for and hadn't been delivered. The work site involved a truck depot and materials handling equipment and that sort of thing. I parked next to the office trailer and got out of my car, and I could just feel the eyes on me. I glanced around, and sure enough, a dozen people, of all sorts of descriptions, were staring at me. Some were in the cabs of machines, others on the ground.
My car isn't marked, and unless they took the time to read the license plate they had no idea who I was or why I was there. But, I was the best dressed person in the depot, and from what I could see, the only feminine looking woman. And they stared.
It was even worse in a few minutes when the manager walked back out to my car with me and we stood and talked about his bringing proof of delivery of service to the county office that had questioned the matter.
I turned and nodded to the audience, then I got in my car, and left.
As it turned out, not only had the county requested the service, it was an ongoing contract from over three years ago that had somehow been forgotten about.
I had the same feeling now in the common restroom with Clay.
While he was talking about turning one of the two large shower areas into a sauna I slowly glanced around.
And I don't know if I saw shadows around the room or not. It's hard to say what was and wasn't there. But it wouldn't surprise me if they were there.
Later I did a baseline sweep of the entire building.
I even took a lot of photos with my new thermal imaging camera.
The full spectrum could show some heat signatures in the right conditions. But it wasn't a thermal. This was. Now I had images of the main areas I would concentrate on the following night with both. If anything changed, I'd have proof.
I also did a background sweep with the EMF detector, looking for radio waves, magnetic fields, unexplained electrical current, and anything else that might be left over from the place's days as a haunted attraction.
Then, while Clay and Chastine ran out to the store, I sat on the stairs between the second and third floor and just listened to the building around me with my directional recorder running next to me.
I knew there was nobody else in the..... let me rephrase that ... I knew there was nobody else alive in the building with me.
The Evans had only been gone for about ten minutes when I heard somebody walking down the hall just above me. If I remembered correctly, it would have been between the back set of bedrooms and the big bathroom, across the hall from the elevator.
The walking stopped, and never happened again.
Then later I know I heard somebody talking. I asked if they wanted to speak to me, but nobody answered.
I got up and walked as softly as I could up to the third floor and looked around. Then I went down to the second floor and did the same thing.
Then as I was returning to my spot on the stairs, I would swear that I smelled cigar smoke. And it wasn't one of those new flavored cigars. This smelled strong, like a big thick one from Honduras or someplace like that.
"OK, Clay and Chase, you've got yourselves a very interesting building here." I said to whoever was standing near the top of the stairs watching me.
When they got back from the store I was in the room that used to be the study for the nuns on the second floor. It was small, and quiet, and I know I saw somebody walk in there when I came down the stairs just to look around again.
"I've seen her," Chastine said. "Once I got a good look at her, I think it's one of the older nuns. But she never sees me, she doesn't react, she just walks in there and goes to that corner."
"Residual."
"That's what we've been told a lot of it is."
"I'll let you know what I find out tomorrow night."
I drove home and went through the photos and recordings I had.
The footsteps were there on the audio recorder. And according to the program on the computer, they were moving along the hallway just as I thought. But then the recorder continued to pick them up a few minutes later, not as loud, going back the way they'd come. I hadn't heard the return trip.
It also picked up the whispering, but there it had recorded a second voice, much lower than the first, answering when I asked if they wanted to speak to me.
"... .... no... not now." the soft voice said.
I wished it also had a odor detector.
3.
I packed a light travel case with a change of clothes, and then thought about it and packed a nightgown as well on the assumption that whatever was there might be more comfortable interacting with somebody who wasn't in a business suit with a pistol under their arm.
Then I drove back to Bellmore and made one stop on the way.
I went to a store and bought two more digital audio recorders like the ones I had. And a big pack of spare batteries. And then, as an afterthought, a couple more memory cards for the cameras based on the idea that if I had them, I wouldn't need them.
Today for lunch Chastine ordered pizza!
"We've gotten to be good friends with the people that run it. They remember when our building was the thrift store and all that. She said that one time she'd stopped in downstairs to just look around and saw a nun by the door to the back stairs. But then when she looked back, she was gone, and the door was boarded up."
I'd heard of things like that, "A time slip."
"A what?"
"It's more of a memory of the building. You see something that had been there years ago. Why it picks right then to come through, nobody knows."
"Have you seen one?" Chastine asked me.
"I've seen some things I can't explain. And I might have caught a glimpse of something like that on a case with a lighthouse. But I'm not sure. I am sure about a woman I saw in a kitchen, there's no doubt about that. And she was intelligent and interactive, not just a residual."
"Oh. I'll get us more coffee, tell me about her."
The pizza arrived, and was excellent.
While we ate she showed me some of the material they had about the building. And I found out that during the days when the original hotel opened, there had been a small upright piano in the lobby area that was being played when notable guests arrived.
To keep things in order I sorted the material into piles by date. First was the original hotel. Then the building's time as a convent. And then orphanage.
And there were fliers from the second gentleman's club that promised the finest imported cigars and pipe tobacco were available to their select clientele of notable businessmen that were served by "lasses" in Burlesque costumes. I smiled in spite of myself as I took a picture of it. The image on the flier showed a young woman in a risque outfit with a serving tray standing next to a seated gentleman with a cigar. The gentleman was holding a drink. The flier had been produced during Prohibition. When the new owner was trying to get the place back open as a hotel again.
It didn't work out.
The last thing Chastine showed me was a box full of photos with names written on the backs. They were all black and white, some were group shots that were four by six, but most were of single children, or sometimes siblings, but a few were of adults, again, with names on the back.
"This one has a date, June 13," Chastine read off the back of a picture of a girl named Kelly.
"But no year," I said looking at it.
And that's the way it was for most of them.
Then I saw something that darkened the mood considerably. "Here's one that died," I showed her the photo and then turned it over so she could read the back.
"Oh, poor thing." Chastine read the name and dates, then looked at the photo again. "She doesn't look healthy at all. I wonder what was wrong with her."
"I don't know. At least malnutrition. But probably something else as well. Nineteen twenty five. Right at the end of the orphanage."
"Maybe that was the end of it," Chastine said softly.
We took a deep breath and looked at more photos.
"Mr. and Mrs. Thurmon, Thurman, Thurmen... something like that. Thanksgiving. 1947," I read off the back of a photo. Then I showed Chastine.
"They look like a nice couple."
"Look at the room," I said.
"That's the suite. It's the only room with that style of window."
"But what was it in 1947. The years after the war. That's a long time after the elevator was installed. What were they doing here then?"
"I don't know." Chastine said.
Chastine had to go out and run some errands that afternoon, so, before Clay got home I went out to my car and got my overnight bag, and my investigation kit.
Then I did another sweep through the place, and spent some time just sitting and listening with the recorders running.
And then I followed a random knocking sound around on the third floor.
"Somebody is having fun with me," I said to the hallway.
I sat on one of the old wooden benches in the boys bathroom and just let them play, and I got the impression it was more than one, entertaining me.
There was a knock over in one of the toilet stalls, then there was some sort of odd brushing noise in the hallway that may have been a floor broom. In another minute, there was another tapping sound that I had heard not long before over by the sink.
I got up and walked over and felt under each water faucet to see if one was dripping. They weren't. And there was no broom in the hallway.
Then the knock happened on the other side of the room by the showers, and there wasn't anything in those stalls that could move if it wanted to.
This time I stood in the middle of the room and just slowly turned in a circle, taking a photo every few seconds with the full spectrum. Then I walked slowly back to the bench and got the thermal and did the same thing.
Even while I was taking the pictures, the knocking and tapping and brushing, and even the sound of rustling fabric kept happening every so often.
"Do you like having your photograph taken?" I asked the room. Then I waited a minute and asked how many of them were there making noise for me.
After some more knocks and taps I picked up my cameras and recorders and went downstairs and sat at the table we'd eaten lunch at until Chastine came in from her appointment. And then we sat and chatted until Clay got home.
Chastine made us a nice simple supper, and I listened to why they had decided to cash in everything they owned, and sold a house closer to the City to buy this place.
"The sale gave us enough to get a decent interest rate and still have a line of credit for the remodeling. But if we don't get open soon we're going to run out of money."
I understood that and said I'd do what I could to clear up the mystery of what was going on.
"But what if I verify that it is truly paranormal?" I asked them.
They exchanged looks, "I guess we'll have to market the place to a different sort of guests," Clay answered.
Chastine nodded, "And maybe it'll make it harder to find a caterer to rent the kitchen," she added.
They agreed to hide in their room all night and not come out unless they heard me screaming bloody murder.
One of them even locked the door to their apartment behind me. I had the majority of the building to myself.
"OK, it's just us." I said to whatever seemed to be standing at the top of the stairs to the third floor. "You remember me don't you? I was here yesterday with Clay and... oh, what does he call her? Clay and Chase, that's it."
I started with another baseline sweep and new photographs.
Then I took the new directional audio recorder and sat it on the bench in the third floor hallway and put the new general recorder in the front suite where, later, I'd try to get some sleep.
Then I started the active investigation sitting in the third floor restroom listening to them tap and rustle around me.
Once they got comfortable with me being in the room, I started taking pictures with both the full spectrum and the thermal.
Then when I got tired of that I walked down to the nun's study and, again, just sat and watched the dark around me.
A shadow walked by. I heard whispering. I took some pictures. And I just sat there.
There was a brief flash of light in one of the other rooms. I went and checked the room, there wasn't a light fixture in the half finished room, and no sign of an electrical short. For there to be a light in the room, it would have had to have been from a passing aircraft that only shined its landing light in that particular window.
After an hour or so of that I went back up to the big bathroom and turned on the lights and started looking for noisemakers.
I crawled around on the floor and stood on the stool to peer into the exhaust vent. I used the EMF detector to see if there was electricity somewhere that it shouldn't be, and checked to make sure the partitions between the showers hadn't been tampered with.
"I was just over there," I said to whoever decided to start tapping on the side of a toilet stall. And it was tapping on the metal of the side partition and not the tile of the back wall.
I went over every inch of the toilet stalls. The dividers were solid, there were no wires or speakers, nothing that could make the noise. While I was sitting the wrong way on a toilet and looking down behind it and checking inside the flush tank I heard something behind me. A rustling and what may have been a footstep, and what sounded like somebody bumped into the partition.
It wouldn't have surprised me to look back and see either Clay or Chastine behind me.
But I knew they weren't.
"I'm done," I said to the room, and then I whispered, "chock di." I put the lid back on the toilet tank and stood up. I backed up and turned around to face the opening of the stall.
And nobody was there.
"OK, I'll turn the lights back off."
I went back down to the lobby on the second floor and sat and listened and watched.
It was a lot quieter down here. So I didn't stay long, but instead went down to the stores.
My investigation down there proved one thing. They've got mice.
I worked my way back up to the third floor and now I looked and listened to see if mice could make the noises I kept hearing in the hallway and the bathroom.
The answer was, no. To make the knock I just heard on the wall of the shower divider the mouse would have to be three feet tall and built like a rodent super hero. Also, the mice in the store showed up as little glowing dots that scurried along the far wall on the thermal. Whatever hit the wall, and again now, showed up as colder than the surroundings.
It was just after ten at night, and I thought maybe if I didn't look as intimidating something might want to speak to me, so I went to the suite and changed out of my work clothes and into a vastly more feminine nightgown. And it was one I was certain the Mother Superior of the convent would not approve of.
I looked at myself in the mirror in my bathroom and smiled. I did look nice in it. Perhaps the gentlemen in the club would approve. So I opened walked back out into the living area that had been both the chapel and the club, and stood there for a moment.
"Well? How do I look?" I said to the darkened room. "Sorry I don't have any bootleg liquor or cigars."
I glanced over at the recorder that was on the table. It was still running, maybe it caught an answer.
Then I picked up my recorder and camera, and realized that I no longer had a convenient pocket to put anything in, so I'd just have to lay whatever I wasn't using down while I worked with the other.
And now, barefoot and very casually dressed, I went back out into the building to see if anything noticed the difference.
I opened the hallway door and stepped out into the hallway and suddenly felt very vulnerable, and maybe even a little sexy, even though this wasn't the time or the place for that.
"Chock di," I whispered my Muay Thai combat phrase for the second time that night. Then I stood tall and walked down the hallway. Just to make sure that nothing silly happened I threw the deadbolt on my door and let it close onto the frame, that way, I couldn't be locked out.
There was a light in a different room that seemed to move. This room had a working light fixture, but it didn't move.
Then I went into the boys bathroom and looked around the room.
For the first time today it was quiet and still. There was no knocking or tapping. And I didn't see anything moving. I was tempted to go get my towel and take a shower in there just to see if that would get a reaction, but I decided not to. But I did wash my hands in one of the showers and used a paper towel to dry off my hands and feet.
I picked up my camera and made sure the flash was off, then I snapped a few pictures.
Next I checked in the study.
"Is this night shirt approved for convent wear?" I asked the dark.
I stopped in the lady's room in the lobby area to do what I needed to do, but there was no music.
Then I walked through the first floor shops and then just before midnight I headed back upstairs.
I was on the stairs going up to the lobby when I saw something move across and down the hallway toward the hallway. I stepped quickly and lightly up to the second floor and then tip-toed, literally since I was barefoot, to the hallway.
I didn't see anything in the hall. But as I stood there I could see a dark shadow move partially out of one of the open room doors down from the study, about halfway to the owner's apartment.
I walked as slowly and softly as I could down and stood outside the room. I held the recorder out and asked the question about my night gown again. I didn't hear anything, but I was hoping the recorder did.
So I headed back upstairs.
I stopped on the stairs and took several photos of what I thought I saw above. Then I slowly and softly walked back up and just looked and listened.
I could feel somebody, or rather, several somebodies staring at me.
"Do you like what I'm wearing? Or should I go put my work clothes back on?" I asked them. "If you can knock on the wall again it'd let me know you like this."
In a minute there was a series of taps over by the toilets. Then there was another super-mouse bang from the showers. I was just about to say something else to them when there was more knocking. Then there was what sounded like a door from the hallway, and more tapping by the sinks. And then the rustling.
"OK, I won't go change. Can I ask you some other questions." There was more knocking. "If you are one of the children that lived here, can you knock a couple of times?"
They tapped and knocked.
"If you were one of the nuns that lived here. Please knock."
They knocked and tapped.
"If you just like making noise. Do it."
They did.
I didn't have any good answers, but I had a lot of recordings of noises.
"I'll be back in a few minutes."
I felt them staring at me as I walked back to my room.
Inside the suite the feel of the room was totally different. But I didn't smell any tobacco smoke or see anything moving.
"How about you? Do you like my night gown?"
I didn't hear any answer.
It was after one in the morning. I went to my bathroom and took a quick shower to wash all the dust from the evening off, then I left the recorders running and went to bed.
I think I'm very glad I am a sound sleeper because of what I found on the recorder the next day.
Chastine and Clay invited me to breakfast.
I told them that I had had an interesting night, but that I wasn't sure everything was what it appeared to be. "But I'll go through what I've got and let you know."
"If you need to come back and verify anything, let me know, your stay is on the house." Clay said.
"I'll remember that. Thank you." Then I left for my office.
I had a lot of audio and photos and even some video I'd shot with my regular camera. It took time to go through it. But by that afternoon I had some interesting things saved to show to the Evanses, and to Mr. Hewett, and I was about halfway through the files.
That night I slept in a room where I didn't wake up to roll over and felt like I was being watched, that I could hear half imagined whispering, and catch a whiff of pipe smoke.
Back in the office I went through the remaining files and found some more of interest.
Some of the audio recordings revealed what sounded like air conditioning noise or even traffic outside that occurred when I thought I'd heard whispering. One of the photos of what I thought was a moving shadow turned out to be a stationary architectural feature that makes a double shadow with a light from outside and the illuminated exit sign over the door behind you.
But there were other things that couldn't be explained away as "the light from Venus reflecting off swamp gas."
I thought about where I wanted to do the big reveal, and decided to do it in our office, away from anybody, or any thing, that might listen in and get upset. So I contacted Mr. Hewett, and the paranormal team, and the Evanses, and even my boss and then reserved the conference room for the following Monday.
4.
"Good morning, and thank you all for coming," I said from the front of the room. Then I ran through and introduced everybody.
"And you're Detective Elaine," Chastine said.
"Yes." I answered.
I went through a brief history of the building, and included some images from the time, and some of the images I had taken that illustrated the topic. Including a good shot of the flier with the gentleman with the drink.
"Anybody see a problem here?" I asked, "look at the date in the corner."
"July, fourth, nineteen twenty nine," somebody read. "Roaring twenties."
"Prohibition." I said softly, and aimed my laser pointer at the gentleman's drink. "I suppose that's root beer."
They all laughed.
Then I showed them the images of the way the building looked today in the daylight. Including the gleaming elevator and the store that was just about ready for a vendor to move in.
"And now, would you like to see and hear the evidence that I verified as paranormal, and what wasn't?"
The vote was unanimous.
"This recording sounded like voices, or something. It's a car with a boom boom radio from outside."
I played what was on the regular recorder and it sounded like whispering. But then on the directional I could separate it out and it was clearly a sound and then an echo of the same noise from outside from further down the hall.
They saw the shadow in the hallway outside the study that turned out to be a trick of the light.
Then I showed them the thermal images of mice, and how that wasn't what was making the noises in the third floor bathroom.
"This one took a bit longer to figure out." I said and showed them an odd hotspot in a thermal image. "There's no glass or metal in or on that wall." I brought up another photo where you could see the wall in question off to one side of the photo of the lobby. "But, it is an old air shaft, and downstairs, is the water heater for the entire building."
"Neat."
"And now, the other stuff. This is what you came all the way out here for. And we'll start on the first day I was there."
Then I played the EVP from the first day when a woman told me that they didn't want to talk to me.
"No. Not now." The recording said.
"And that sounded like she was right next to you." The female investigator said.
"That's what I thought. And this is the only recording I got with that voice on it."
"I guess she meant that she really didn't want to talk to you," the Sheriff said with a smile.
I had one image of what looked like a group of individual shadows in the boys shower room. And several of the one that kept standing at the top of the stairs.
"OK, I'm going to play this video just to see if you see something. Ready?"
I had set my regular camera on a stool and had it take a full minute of video looking down the third floor hallway from the suite to beyond the stairs toward the boys shower room. It played at regular speed on the big screen.
"I saw something but I don't know what," the Sheriff said.
"Yeah, by the stairs on the left."
"Play that again," somebody else said.
"No problem," I answered and clicked on the computer to make it go.
"There!"
"That's it," I said.
A tall shadow came out of the room just beyond the bathroom and stood by the stairs. Then it faded away.
"It kept doing that all night. Just standing there. Sometimes it would stand there, then go back into the bathroom. Other times, it was like this."
I put another image on the screen that was one that I'd taken on the stairs going up from the second floor. "And there it is. Just standing there."
While the surroundings were dim and in places dark, right next to the left banister at the top of the stairs there was a dull black mass that was noticeably darker than the surroundings. In a similar photo taken at a different time, the mass wasn't there.
"And this sound may be related to that... whatever it is."
I put the directional recorder software on the big screen and then played the audio of the footsteps.
"I could hear it coming down the hall. But then this," I pointed to the later tracing of the sound of the retreating steps. "I didn't hear, but the recorder did."
"Can you play it again and turn it up?" The lady investigator asked. "As loud as it'll get, I think I heard something. Right before the second set of steps."
"No problem."
Now we all held our breath as the footsteps approached. You could even hear a slight creak from the floor. Then there was a muttering. A brief silence, and then the second steps.
"Hang on, I'll let you listen to it with these," I got a set of ear buds out of my computer bag and handed them to the investigator and replayed it with the audio through them. "Anything?"
"Yeah, I think so, play it one more time."
I did.
"I think it said 'lights out'. And it sounded like an older woman. Older than the other one anyway."
I replayed it through the room speakers and we all listened.
"It said something like that," most of us agreed.
"Good ears," I said to the investigator.
"I've been doing this a long time. I hear stuff like that now."
"In this EVP I had left one of my recorders running on the counter of the lobby for about an hour. It picked up traffic, the air conditioner, and then, at about the forty minute mark, this...."
I played about half a minute of silence, and then as the silence began to get old you could hear something approaching. And it sounded like it was whimpering.
The sound got louder, with a rustling, and then softer. And then it was silent again.
"I cannot explain what that was. And it never happened again."
I played it again and most of the people around the table listened intently, and then shook their heads. "It was something, but no idea what," Mr. Hewett said to a general agreement.
"I don't have a photo of me in my nightgown, but that provoked the two clearest Electronic Voice Phenomenon recordings of the evening. This is the first one, in the old Lady Chapel and Gentleman's club."
They listened to the bathroom door opening and my question to the room about whether or not they liked my night gown, and my apology about not having any cigars. Then in the silence afterward there was a male voice, and some others laughing afterward.
".... take it off ...."
And there was the expected reaction from those in the conference room.
Then later in the old study when I asked the Mother Superior if it was approved.
"... yliekeit ... ut no...."
"I'll play it again," and then I told them what I could hear in the headphones, "She said, 'I like it' and then the 'but no'. With some sort of European accent, maybe French." I played it again and most of them nodded that they could sort of hear that.
"That must be some night gown." Mr. Hewett said with a smile.
Then I went through what I had that I didn't have evidence for. Including the piano in the restroom on the second floor, and the totally random smell of both a serious cigar and some much sweeter pipe tobacco. As well as the other shadows that were camera shy.
"On the whole. I didn't find anything that was evidence of the haunted house equipment, or anything else that said this was either a hoax or something that was otherwise explainable, besides what we saw earlier."
I put up the photo of the shadow at the top of the stairs.
"Most of these appear to be residual. The only two that appear to have any intelligence behind them at all is the one from the suite, and the nun's study. And even with them, it is not malicious. I didn't feel any negative energy, nothing harmful, nothing evil. The memory of the orphan boys in the shower room is just that, a lingering memory of when they were there. That room was probably very important to them, and their emotional energy, essentially, soaked into the tile. Like our friend here," I nodded to the shadow at the top of the stairs, "they may be there as long as the building is there. And there probably isn't anything we can do about it."
I looked at Mr. and Mrs. Evans, "Since it is your building, I'll start with you. What do you think? Any questions?"
Chastine's response was immediate, "So there's nothing dangerous. Nothing that's going to hurt us or our guests or the customers in the stores or anybody."
"Not right now. I didn't find anything evil. Annoying, yes, I think that is exactly what some of them want to be. But, to be honest, I think some of it is a memory of a good time. The guys in the club, they were having fun with me. And the boys in the shower room were playing. Teasing me. Which is probably why one of the nuns told them it was time for lights out."
"That's what the nuns would do," the Sheriff said.
"And they said it every night for how many years?" Clay added.
"Residual," the investigator with good ears said to many nods.
"What about the crying?" Chastine asked, "You've got it on the recorder."
"It's what kids did. When they were taking in the orphans, there was probably a lot of crying. Even some of the younger nuns may have gotten homesick and walked around at night being upset. It's heartbreaking, but harmless."
I looked at Clay, he shrugged, so I went on.
"Mister Hewett, this meeting is your fault. Any questions?"
"No. This was more than I ever imagined. I'm speechless."
"For him, that is unbelievable," the male investigator said with a laugh.
"Really, it is," Hewett agreed with them. "When you're done, we'll talk about an interview or something. But I don't even know where to start."
I nodded and looked at my boss, "Sir?"
"I'm with him. I knew you did investigations like this, but I hadn't seen stuff like that before. With that... whatever... shadow, on the stairs. If I saw that in person." He trailed off shaking his head.
"He'd shoot it," I said with a smile.
"I might." He looked back at the screen, "OK. I've got a question. Not with this place, but what would you do if you came across something that was evil?"
"Like what Sergeant Perkins was working with?"
"Well. Yeah. Exactly."
I stopped to explain that to the others. "The Sergeant was with another police department, and was very upset with the way his career was going, and sought power over others through the dark arts. Really, Dark Arts. And something bad happened to him because of it."
"How bad?" Clay asked.
"We don't know. He's never been found. We don't know if he is dead or alive. He vanished. Period."
"Oh."
"If I come across something like that, I know enough to back out, quickly, and then I'd call Father Irving at the Our Lady of the Island Shrine and get some professional assistance from that side."
"Good answer," the Sheriff said.
"Next?" I looked at the two investigators from the paranormal club.
"You went in by yourself?" The lady asked.
"Yes. Well, Clay and Chastine were in their apartment, but they stayed there all night."
"And you were OK with that?"
The Sheriff laughed, "She forgot to tell you something. Besides carrying her .380 in her shoulder holster, Detective Elaine is also a double black belt in Judo and Muay Thai."
I frowned but nodded, "but I don't think a switch-kick jab combination would be very effective against a ghost."
"No, maybe not," the lady said. "But I mean still, you're dealing with spirits and stuff."
"I treat them with the same respect I treat any human I investigate. Until they give me reason not to."
"You don't want to see the booking photo of a guy that gave her reason not to," the Sheriff added.
"I did, it's not pretty," Mr. Hewett said and made a circle around his right eye with his finger.
"Yes?" I said to the male investigator.
"Do you always work alone? We always have at least three when we go in."
"Usually. Yes. That way I control the entire investigation. If I hear a stomach growling, I know if it's mine, and if it wasn't, well, then I've got something good."
"That's a good point. We have to tag any audio or video if something like that happens at the time, I even say my name so I know I did it. Sometimes there's more of that on a tape than there is EVPs."
"I still make an announcement to the recorder when I go in or out of a room. Just in case I don't remember if I went into a room at eleven or at ten after."
Clay actually raised his hand. "Do you think it'd be worthwhile to bill our place as a haunted bed and breakfast?"
"No," I said flatly. "Yes, it is possible you might get some interest from the people that like that sort of thing. But it might keep others away. And you can't guarantee that something is going to happen when the guests are there. And, from what I understand, once you're done with the renovations things will settle down again and it'll return to whatever the baseline was before you started. And then what?" I looked at the image on the screen. "Our friend there may spend all their time standing there, but then again, I'm not sure, they may take some time off. I'd mention it in the information for the place, but I wouldn't make it the headline."
"I wouldn't deny it either. If somebody asks, say 'it might be, come see for yourself'." The Sheriff added.
"I know a lady that does a lot of promotion for places out here, she's worked for other sites on the Island as well. I'll have her call you and see if she has any suggestions."
The owners looked at each other and then Chastine nodded, "We'd appreciate that."
Mr. Hewett had had time to think about what he wanted to put on TV.
We sat in the Sheriff's office and discussed it, and decided that a short interview, of limited scope, that showed some of the images and video I'd taken of the Evans' place, and the golf course, and the lighthouse, and so on, which would let people know what was going on, without sensationalizing it.
And we wouldn't mention the ghost that wanted me to take my night gown off.
About a week later we sat in the conference room and watched the finished piece.
Given that I still thought Mr. Hewett was a clown, it wasn't bad, and I agreed to let it be run on TV.
Evidently a few people did see it. And we had to field some questions from locals and from other media types on the Island and in the City. And a handful of queries from national outfits of one stripe or another. But, it wasn't bad, and in a month or so it pretty much blew over and I was able to go about my business without worrying about some photographer following me around.
Which closed the case.
-end convent-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the geographical features of Long Island exist, including the Sisters of Saint Joseph building in Brentwood, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
http://themediadesk.com