Long time no see blog readers. Here's a short story I wrote around Halloween 2017.
Hope you enjoy reading this as much I enjoyed writing it.
I’d just finished up a long, lucrative exorcism contract for a digital forensics firm. While it
had paid well, the job had been exhausting, requiring long days and nights nearly as long. I’d
practically slept there. We’d caught and expelled hundreds of ghosts over the two weeks, staying
the last day only to confirm that we’d ended the haunting. Certified Ghost Free.
The client had been a friend of sorts. He’d taught me as an adjunct professor in my
college days, back before I’d started my ghost-busting business. And he’d approached me with
the intent to pay, not asking me a favor. But a two-man operation like ours expelling over 200
ghosts in less than two weeks is nothing short of miraculous.
After that I was ready for a good long rest. It wasn’t to be.
Duty called. I answered.
The caller was an old friend from high school, name of Seth Jackson. It’s funny how
people come out of the woodwork when you’re in the ghost-busting business. In this digital age
you can keep in touch with just about anybody, but usually it’s confined to being friends on
Facebook. Like some photos, maybe comment on some. Limited contact. Start a ghost-busting
business, and suddenly they have your personal number to call you when they suspect their kid is
being haunted.
Not that I minded really. My old professor had paid well, but I liked the smaller jobs. It
was more personal. Though I suppose it was plenty personal for the specters that had haunted
him and his business. Most of them had been suicides—committed after his company had proven
they’d cheated their spouses. And one particularly nasty one for cheating on his taxes.
I drove down a few hours to meet the kid who was being haunted. Just to observe, at first.
Verify there really was a haunting. Imagine my surprise when, upon walking into the school, the
first person I met was my old ghost-busting partner, Jobadiah Tucket.
Tucket and I had been old Army buddies. He’d been my sergeant in fact. Within a few
years of getting out of the Army we’d gotten together and started our little ghost-busting
operation, basing it on some of our experience together in the Army. My ghost-busting company
now. Tucket had sold me his share and gotten out. Couldn’t take the stress of the job anymore.
Hard to blame the guy. There were days I wouldn’t mind going into quasi-retirement teaching
elementary school either. The pay isn’t nearly as good as ghost-busting, but the stress is
somewhat lower. Somewhat. There’s a reason I’ve stuck to busting ghosts.
It turned out that Tucket was Buster Jackson’s teacher—Buster being the kid who was
haunted. And he’d encouraged Seth to call me in the first place. Well, if Tucket thought it was a
haunting, it almost certainly was, but I still did my due diligence. A few hours observation was all
it really took to verify this haunting was the real deal. I’d even paid for a lunch in the cafeteria.
Things would just start floating up around Buster, seemingly at random, and while he was
at about the right age for a sorcerer or magician to start manifesting magic for the first time, he
clearly had no control over it all, frequently bewildered and often frightened by what was
happening. That, and what happened was often mean. Buster would fall, as if he’d been tripped
by an invisible leg stretched out. In the cafeteria, his tray was knocked out of his hands by an
invisible force. When he made it to the table and began eating, food was smeared against his face
and shirt by an invisible hand.
In short, it looked less like a haunting and more like a supernatural grade-school bully.
Well. I knew exactly how to deal with that.
When school ended, I rented a hotel room and set it up as a supernatural safe house.
My approach to ghost-busting has always been as mystical as technological, though I’ve
never used a proton pack like in the movies. Holy water? Yep. I’ve used it. Magic potions and
alchemy? I’ve used those too. Just don’t expect me to tell you how. Those are trade secrets. Same
as the technological methods, the spirit shields and traps I’ve largely designed myself.
What people don’t realize is that the most important part of ghost-busting is not the
gadgets or magic. It’s your brain. Once you’ve established that there is a spectral presence, and
yes I have technological and magical tools that confirm that, the most important thing you can
do is intelligence gathering. Do some reconnaissance. Why is this spirit hanging on to the world
of the living?
Contrary to popular wisdom, ghosts don’t always hang on because they have some
purpose to fulfil. Unfinished business as it’s called. That can happen, but that’s just one
explanation among many. Some spirits can hang on by sheer force of personality. I suspect this
one was just too mean to move on.
It was pretty easy to establish that until a few months ago, Buster Jackson had been the
frequent victim of a bully. Why had it stopped? If you guessed a tragic accident involving playing
too close to the railroad tracks, you’d be right. Sad for the bully’s parents and a tragedy for the
community, but Buster Jackson’s life had immediately improved. Until the past few weeks, when
the haunting began.
I moved the whole family to the room I’d set up at the hotel and prepared to spend the
night at the Jackson residence myself. Normally I might have had my new business partner or
one of our interns do it, but I hadn’t brought any of them along on this job. It was me or no one.
So, I settled in to wait. I expected the ghost to waste some time trying to break into the
hotel room. Ghosts aren’t stupid. They know where to go to get to who they’re haunting. They
just never believe that my safeguards will work.
I had a book and some music, and was singing along to Michael Jackson when I noticed a
vase start to float up into the air. Show time.
The ghost started throwing things. Honestly, it was straightforward from there. The ghost
was mostly throwing things at me, so it was simple to catch most of it and save it from being
destroyed. It was a bit of a workout, but the ghost of a 10-year-old bully did wear out before me.
The last things thrown at me were the fridge magnets, spelled out to say, “FutGuster
Jackson.” The bully’s nickname for Buster. I didn’t bother catching these, allowing them to litter
the floor. Easy enough to clean up later. I sprayed down the ghost with ectoplasm, and then
grabbed it. I can touch the spiritual plane, anyone can, as long as I have sprayed it down with
ectoplasm first. And if you don’t mind the feel of slime. I don’t. Not much anyway.
And I spoke the Commands. Ghosts are much like computers: if you know how to give
the right input, they’ll do exactly what you want. The commands I spoke expelled the ghost bully
from the physical world and into the Beyond. The Spirit World. Ghosts remain in our world
because at the moment of death, that spirit decides not to go. And once that choice is made, here
they remain, at least until someone like me comes along and kicks them into the afterlife where
they belong. And we’re not as rare as you might think. I’m just the guy who made a business of it.
And that was basically it for the case. Nice and straightforward.
Oh, I did my best to straighten up the mess around the house made by an angry
poltergeist, but I got a full night’s sleep, my first in weeks, and then picked up the family from the
hotel and charged them for my services. He could afford it. And then I cleaned up my
protections from the hotel room. Wouldn’t want housekeeping to discover my trade secrets,
would I?
But the best part was knowing 10-year-old Buster Jackson wouldn’t be troubled by his
bully ever again.
Hope you enjoy reading this as much I enjoyed writing it.
Certified Ghost Free
Sometimes this ghost-busting job is just not worth it.I’d just finished up a long, lucrative exorcism contract for a digital forensics firm. While it
had paid well, the job had been exhausting, requiring long days and nights nearly as long. I’d
practically slept there. We’d caught and expelled hundreds of ghosts over the two weeks, staying
the last day only to confirm that we’d ended the haunting. Certified Ghost Free.
The client had been a friend of sorts. He’d taught me as an adjunct professor in my
college days, back before I’d started my ghost-busting business. And he’d approached me with
the intent to pay, not asking me a favor. But a two-man operation like ours expelling over 200
ghosts in less than two weeks is nothing short of miraculous.
After that I was ready for a good long rest. It wasn’t to be.
Duty called. I answered.
The caller was an old friend from high school, name of Seth Jackson. It’s funny how
people come out of the woodwork when you’re in the ghost-busting business. In this digital age
you can keep in touch with just about anybody, but usually it’s confined to being friends on
Facebook. Like some photos, maybe comment on some. Limited contact. Start a ghost-busting
business, and suddenly they have your personal number to call you when they suspect their kid is
being haunted.
Not that I minded really. My old professor had paid well, but I liked the smaller jobs. It
was more personal. Though I suppose it was plenty personal for the specters that had haunted
him and his business. Most of them had been suicides—committed after his company had proven
they’d cheated their spouses. And one particularly nasty one for cheating on his taxes.
I drove down a few hours to meet the kid who was being haunted. Just to observe, at first.
Verify there really was a haunting. Imagine my surprise when, upon walking into the school, the
first person I met was my old ghost-busting partner, Jobadiah Tucket.
Tucket and I had been old Army buddies. He’d been my sergeant in fact. Within a few
years of getting out of the Army we’d gotten together and started our little ghost-busting
operation, basing it on some of our experience together in the Army. My ghost-busting company
now. Tucket had sold me his share and gotten out. Couldn’t take the stress of the job anymore.
Hard to blame the guy. There were days I wouldn’t mind going into quasi-retirement teaching
elementary school either. The pay isn’t nearly as good as ghost-busting, but the stress is
somewhat lower. Somewhat. There’s a reason I’ve stuck to busting ghosts.
It turned out that Tucket was Buster Jackson’s teacher—Buster being the kid who was
haunted. And he’d encouraged Seth to call me in the first place. Well, if Tucket thought it was a
haunting, it almost certainly was, but I still did my due diligence. A few hours observation was all
it really took to verify this haunting was the real deal. I’d even paid for a lunch in the cafeteria.
Things would just start floating up around Buster, seemingly at random, and while he was
at about the right age for a sorcerer or magician to start manifesting magic for the first time, he
clearly had no control over it all, frequently bewildered and often frightened by what was
happening. That, and what happened was often mean. Buster would fall, as if he’d been tripped
by an invisible leg stretched out. In the cafeteria, his tray was knocked out of his hands by an
invisible force. When he made it to the table and began eating, food was smeared against his face
and shirt by an invisible hand.
In short, it looked less like a haunting and more like a supernatural grade-school bully.
Well. I knew exactly how to deal with that.
When school ended, I rented a hotel room and set it up as a supernatural safe house.
My approach to ghost-busting has always been as mystical as technological, though I’ve
never used a proton pack like in the movies. Holy water? Yep. I’ve used it. Magic potions and
alchemy? I’ve used those too. Just don’t expect me to tell you how. Those are trade secrets. Same
as the technological methods, the spirit shields and traps I’ve largely designed myself.
What people don’t realize is that the most important part of ghost-busting is not the
gadgets or magic. It’s your brain. Once you’ve established that there is a spectral presence, and
yes I have technological and magical tools that confirm that, the most important thing you can
do is intelligence gathering. Do some reconnaissance. Why is this spirit hanging on to the world
of the living?
Contrary to popular wisdom, ghosts don’t always hang on because they have some
purpose to fulfil. Unfinished business as it’s called. That can happen, but that’s just one
explanation among many. Some spirits can hang on by sheer force of personality. I suspect this
one was just too mean to move on.
It was pretty easy to establish that until a few months ago, Buster Jackson had been the
frequent victim of a bully. Why had it stopped? If you guessed a tragic accident involving playing
too close to the railroad tracks, you’d be right. Sad for the bully’s parents and a tragedy for the
community, but Buster Jackson’s life had immediately improved. Until the past few weeks, when
the haunting began.
I moved the whole family to the room I’d set up at the hotel and prepared to spend the
night at the Jackson residence myself. Normally I might have had my new business partner or
one of our interns do it, but I hadn’t brought any of them along on this job. It was me or no one.
So, I settled in to wait. I expected the ghost to waste some time trying to break into the
hotel room. Ghosts aren’t stupid. They know where to go to get to who they’re haunting. They
just never believe that my safeguards will work.
I had a book and some music, and was singing along to Michael Jackson when I noticed a
vase start to float up into the air. Show time.
The ghost started throwing things. Honestly, it was straightforward from there. The ghost
was mostly throwing things at me, so it was simple to catch most of it and save it from being
destroyed. It was a bit of a workout, but the ghost of a 10-year-old bully did wear out before me.
The last things thrown at me were the fridge magnets, spelled out to say, “FutGuster
Jackson.” The bully’s nickname for Buster. I didn’t bother catching these, allowing them to litter
the floor. Easy enough to clean up later. I sprayed down the ghost with ectoplasm, and then
grabbed it. I can touch the spiritual plane, anyone can, as long as I have sprayed it down with
ectoplasm first. And if you don’t mind the feel of slime. I don’t. Not much anyway.
And I spoke the Commands. Ghosts are much like computers: if you know how to give
the right input, they’ll do exactly what you want. The commands I spoke expelled the ghost bully
from the physical world and into the Beyond. The Spirit World. Ghosts remain in our world
because at the moment of death, that spirit decides not to go. And once that choice is made, here
they remain, at least until someone like me comes along and kicks them into the afterlife where
they belong. And we’re not as rare as you might think. I’m just the guy who made a business of it.
And that was basically it for the case. Nice and straightforward.
Oh, I did my best to straighten up the mess around the house made by an angry
poltergeist, but I got a full night’s sleep, my first in weeks, and then picked up the family from the
hotel and charged them for my services. He could afford it. And then I cleaned up my
protections from the hotel room. Wouldn’t want housekeeping to discover my trade secrets,
would I?
But the best part was knowing 10-year-old Buster Jackson wouldn’t be troubled by his
bully ever again.
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