©1 June 2025 Levite
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1.
I was sitting at my desk in the office evaluating a new vibration sensor.
It was small, and cheap. Made by one of the guys at the college, and seemed to work just as good as the far more expensive model I had that had gone dark during the investigation at the Irishman's house. And I had six of them on my desk.
The larger and fancier unit did all sorts of things, and could function while connected to a phone or laptop to tell you the strength and originating direction of the vibration it was detecting, and it cost thirteen hundred dollars, after law enforcement discount!
The ones from the techie at the college detected vibration, then they either lit up an LED, and/or, made noise. I could choose one of a couple of colors for it to light up with, and three different tones for the sound. And that was it, and they told me that, all told, including the batteries for the units, he had spent a grand total of just over a hundred dollars, including solder, to make over twenty of the things, way more than they needed for their group, so they sent me six of them.
I spread them out on the conference room table, then I went through and pushed the tiny buttons on the tiny circuit board that turned each one on.
"Well," I said after I pushed the button on the third on and noticed that the first two registered the vibration. So I spread the rest of them out until I turned the last one on ever so gently, and none of the others noticed.
Then I spent some time testing them by tapping and bumping the table, and even walking around the table without touching it.
I was able to tap one corner of the table and watch the sensors blink in sequence across it. And I was glad to see that if the sensor was closer to the tap, the light was a little brighter and stayed on a fraction of a second longer. The sensor furthest from my tap was only visible with the room light off. So, as the information from the college group said, the brightness of the LED indicated the strength of the disturbance. If I flipped the micro-switch that controlled the sound to the tone instead of the beep, it would also indicate the strength of the vibration.
And, instead of a rechargeable that took hours to get back to full strength, these all ran off 'double A' batteries that I could swap out quickly as needed.
The small sensors had even arrived in what used to be called a school pencil box, that even had room for a couple of packs of spare batteries that they sent with them. The 'fancy one' didn't even come with the USB charger I needed to charge it.
I heard somebody behind me, and changed the setting on the sensor closest to me, "come on in," I said and put it back on the table.
Whoever it was took a step and the unit lit up and buzzed. The one next to it lit up and made its quick tone.
"New toy?" the admin asked me.
"Yes, and I don't think I like the buzz," I said and tapped the table to make it buzz again.
"It is a bit annoying."
"And distracting, I want to go with the tone." I tapped the table next to one of the other ones and it emitted the somewhat muted tone that was in total contrast to the buzz.
As I went out on the special cases that came in, as well as working through the list of historic properties, of which there were about three dozen, I'd gotten very familiar with various forms of technology that, supposedly, can interact with the county's ethereal residents in their various forms.
That's because People have been coming out of the bushes, and closets, and appearing in the parking lot of the Sheriff's Office with various equipment and monitors and other things for me to use for over a year now.
And some of what they brought may be useful in some circumstances. But for what I do, and the way I do it, and where I do it. They're not.
For instance.
I've been given four different types of 'communications boxes', they have different names but that will do for here and now, that emit either a background tone of white noise, or a jumble of sounds which, apparently, some spirits can manipulate to communicate.
I tried it in the office, once with the proponent of the device sitting on the other side of the conference table, and we heard it say several different things. None of which made any sense at all, even if somebody from 'the other side' was trying to communicate with us.
I agreed to accept the box, and I did try it out in a couple of locations, and then I took the batteries out of it and it is in a storage box in the back of my car. Maybe at some point I'll think about it and try it again, or not.
Another was a sensor that detects a broad band of EMF radiation. Everything from static electricity all the way up to shortwave radio. The cheerleader for the device said that some of the more powerful spirits will emit low levels of energy when they move or manifest and his web antenna could detect them some distance away, and then a screen will pinpoint where they are and what energy they are giving off.
My opinion of the sensor was that it may have its place, and would probably work in some other locations, but Long Island is alive with radio communications of every frequency known, and all sorts of power sources and transmission lines, and the reliability of the device would be in question all except for places like the Preserve on Shelter Island.
And on it went. About once a week, or so it seemed, somebody would come in, or a package would arrive....
... let me stop right there for a minute.
Once a large parcel arrived from a delivery company addressed to the Sheriff's Department, but to the attention of: "the spirit investigator".
I had to put up with that for a few days, and somebody even put a sign on my cubical that changed my job from Detective to Spirit Investigator.
In any case, the parcel contained several investigation tools from a group out west, not on Western Long Island but Colorado. The letter inside said they had found these items useful in certain unusual situations, and as that was what I did, perhaps they would be helpful.
One of those was the motion sensor that had gone off, and then gone dead, in the Irishman's House. Another device I am still getting comfortable using, and that is a hand held discriminator that will, unlike the web antenna arrangement, not detect every electrical impulse on the island, but instead only the ones that probably aren't from a radio base station or, in my case, an electric car sitting outside.
And that brings up the people that come by the office. Some of whom I know for certain are just here because I was on TV, or they saw the article in one of the local magazines. Others I'm reasonably sure are here looking for a date, men and women, have been all flattering and smiling as we talked, and then I have to inform them that I am in a relationship. Which is somewhat true.
I may as well state that right now. That while Derek and I are still very good friends, that he has admitted that he is still fully devoted to his job at the dealership. That came about because after not seeing him in person for two weeks, I stopped by the business and almost had to make an appointment to even speak to him. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to me, or anything else, they were running a service special, and he had even spent several days out in a bay working on cars because they had more business than they had technicians. When we talked, he had just crawled out from under a utility truck from changing the grease in the rear axle, we chatted while he cleaned up, and he said he was delighted to see me, but he had to get back to work. I didn't see him again until after the special ended at the end of the month. Then he bought me dinner and flowers.
And, yes, I know, it is equally difficult to maintain a relationship from my side when I spend at least one night a week, and sometimes all weekend, in a haunted gas station or something.
The gas station isn't one of the historic properties. It was built in the forties, and served as an actual filling station with two service bays for a number of years. Then as things changed in the seventies, it sat empty for awhile, and then the County took it over during a road project, and so it has remained. A somewhat unofficial County Transportation storage unit and field office out along the highway on the Northern Peninsula.
"Yes, ma'am, Detective," the Transportation Supervisor said, "I've been out there myself, and I will still swear that I saw somebody walk up to the office door in the first garage and look at me, like he was going to say something. Then he just disappeared."
It sounded residual, but as they'd had some other issues, I agreed to go out and check it out. Besides, it would be something different from sitting in a two hundred year old house with some angry old man telling everybody it was time to go to church. Which I had done for two nights in the last week from the historic list. And it would get me a chance to field test some new toys.
I parked out in front of the old gas station and looked around. This region of the Island was about all that was left of actual large agricultural fields. But even out here, overpriced weekend homes and apartment buildings were starting to intrude.
As for the building itself, the gas pumps and their related tanks and pipes were long gone, but you could still tell what it had been, and even, I suppose, which oil company it had represented when it was new. I knew I remembered them from when I was much younger, but now, I had no idea what brand it had been. I got out of my car and went and checked the key they'd given me in the office door.
It unlocked and I walked in and noticed something immediately. Somebody had been smoking in the building, and it wasn't the spirit of a long forgotten station attendant, there was an actual vintage ash tray on the old desk, and it had fresh cigarette butts in it. I moved it out of my way and went out to get my bag and my lunch.
This was another case where there had only been reports during normal business hours. But as I looked around the old shops, nothing seemed unusual or unexpected. I set up several sensors and a recorder, and put a camera on a stack of traffic barrels, then I went back into the office and sat at the desk and opened the pizza box.
"Want some lunch?" I asked whoever was in the building. "I'll share."
There was no answer.
Today's pizza was a seafood special, with a white sauce and cheeses. To me, it could stand to be a bit spicier, but it was always good, and today was no exception.
I was there for several hours.
I talked about needing service on my car. I played the bell sound from an old gas station signal alert on my laptop. I even opened the one garage door in the far bay where a tractor spends the winter and pulled partway in and asked if somebody could check my oil.
I had to laugh about that, because if the old timer came out and tried, he'd be totally at a loss when he opened the front hood and didn't find an engine, but instead, all the electronics for the electric motors, the gas engine and generator were in the back.
But nobody seemed interested in helping me.
Not long before the end of the regular County Employee work day two highway trucks stopped by and one of the workers came in and wondered who I was and why I was in their building. I just showed them my badge and ID and told them it was an official investigation of the location.
He shrugged and asked if it would hurt if they put their tools away. I told him, "no, it might actually help because that's normal activity."
The four of them carried in weed whackers and a chainsaw and some shovels and rakes, then, after a couple of them took a good look at me, they left.
It took a couple of minutes for all my sensors and monitors to return to baseline. But they finally did as I sat in the office and contemplated another slice of pizza.
My fleet of low cost vibration sensors that were scattered throughout the building started blinking here and there, and occasionally emitted a bit of a tone. Then one, and only one of the EMF detectors began to make its sound and then flash for a second.
I never saw anything. I never heard anything. And nothing ever turned up on the cameras or recorders. But something was definitely moving around in the bays, including having to walk through the tractor to get from one side to the other without setting off the sensor on the front or back of it.
I moved slowly and did a handheld thermal sweep and detected a cool spot that moved one way, and then the other about three feet from the floor and registered about the size of a large beach ball. The building's heater fan was off, and there was no noticeable draft in the bays. I continued my sweep and the cool spot turned up near the door that I had opened. It paused there then drifted back toward the tractor.
I took several shots with the full spectrum camera, and only caught a bit of haze that might have been it.
Then I went back to the office and ate that slice of pizza.
The sensors calmed down for a few minutes. Then. Every so often, one or another one someplace else in the garage area would go off.
And that was the way it stayed until almost midnight, when I gave up and packed my toys and went home.
But it did prove that the new equipment worked, and that something, or somebody, was still working at the old filling station.
And then Derek and I had a weekend where neither of us had any work stuff to do.
Saturday walked on a deserted beach, we had the unhealthiest lunch on the Island. We wandered through a flea market and bought each other silly presents, where we were given tickets to a local theater production of a classic musical for that evening.
We went to dinner. And then we sat through what may be the worst stage production of "Fiddler" that wasn't done as an intentional comedy.
Including the lead actor forgetting the words to "rich man" halfway through the number. The audience, and some of the other cast, remembered the lyrics, and rescued him by singing it with him.
Derek has a good voice.
It was a wonderful weekend.
And then Monday, we both had to go back to work.
-end Hey-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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