After running into camp, Dad is out of breath and shakes me, “Wake up, the camera started, wake up. Get your sister, let’s go.”
“Wake up who?” I ask sitting up, startled.
Neewa slides out of the tent opening following Dad as he gathers some stuff and starts up the trail.
My mouth starts to form words, who was the dead gambler? Then I realize it was just a dream.
Shaking Jackie’s shoulder and arm, “Jackie wake up, wake up, the motion detector went off.”
“What time is it?” Rubbing her eyes, she tries to sit up but falls over and back to sleep.
Putting on my boots I reply, “Three AM, and it’s cold out. Get the flashlights.”
In seconds Neewa and I are jogging up the trail with great expectation of what we will find.
By the time I get halfway there I’m out of breath, gasping for air. Neewa circles me as I stop and stand on the side of the path to catch my breath. I wheeze for more thin air. At this altitude my asthma could kick in at any moment. As I catch my breath, Jackie the cross-country runner passes by.
“Meet you up there, Christina,” she huffs.
Neewa runs to her side as she passes, Jackie pats her head. They run together for a few strides, before Neewa turns and comes back to my side.
There’s no one else out on the trail, no barking dogs or roaring car engines speeding by. Other than our flashlights streaking through the air, the stars and a half moon illuminate our path and reveal the dark silhouettes of the mountains around us.
I inhale the scents of the sage and lichen-covered rock moist from the morning dew. Mist hangs over the trail and disappears in the darkness.
I hope that she-devil doesn’t show up now.
A breeze whistles through the dry grasses and rock crevasses nearby.
Neewa and I sprint up the hill and finally arrive at the stakeout. Breathing heavy, I put on the night vision goggles and check for red or purple shapes moving in the sea of darkness around me.
“Yo, Poppy, no heat-emitting bodies giving off infrared thermal energy out here,” I report.
Dad is fidgeting with the cameras. “The digital camera ran for one minute and ten seconds,” he says. “But the infrared camera didn’t even turn on at all?”
“Why didn’t the motion detector turn on the IR camera?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, we have to check it out when we get back home.”
I suggest, “Jackie, check the radio frequency field strength meter.”
Jackie displeased replies, “Dad kept it in his backpack at the camp, it wasn’t even here.”
“My bad,” he says. “Check the other meters.”
“The light meter and the spectrometer are still in the tent in Jackie’s backpack,” I add with a bit of sarcasm.
“We’ll have to put them out next time,” Dad says.
Digital camera in hand, he rewinds the tape back to the beginning. As it plays we all squeeze together to watch the screen. Our faces are motionless, like children peering out of a window watching the first snowfall. Excited we watch, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Whiz! Something flies across the screen at the speed of light. It looked like a giant pair of wings. Losing my balance I fall backwards onto my butt.
“What is it?” Jackie exclaims.
“I don’t know. Neewa, stop licking my face, Yuck!” Her tongue swipes my cheek and eye.
“Ha, ha,” Jackie and Dad stare at me as I scramble to my feet.
“What was that?” I ask laughing, getting between them in front of the screen.
Disappointed, Dad replies, “Looks like a big old owl to me.”
Jackie sighs, “That’s no ghost.”
He rewinds the tape, playing it back in slow motion this time. We watch the screen anticipating the flying object.
Swoosh! It passes from one side of the screen to the other in a second.
“It’s a Western Screech Owl,” he mumbles.
An owl is not a ghost and an owl is not going to get me my own TV show.
“The meter is reading twenty-two milliguass (MG) of electromagnetic waves at the same time the owl flew past the camera,” I say.
“How do you explain that?” Jackie asks.
Dad is busy adding up all the EMF given off by our equipment.
“Let’s see, if we add up all the EMF from our stuff? Three MHz for the one cell phone, and about one and one half MHz for each camera and the other stuff added in we have a total of about eight MHz for everything. That leaves fourteen MHz unexplained, which is equal to the electromagnetic field given off by two televisions and a microphone,” Dad concludes.
“I don’t see any TVs here, do you?” I add.
“This is curious. If there were electric lights, wires or some other source of this energy, that would explain the fourteen MHz? But I don’t see anything that would give off that much energy,” Dad questions.
Determined to account for the discrepancy he explains, “I checked the electromagnetic field on the trail before I set up our trap. It was less than one MHz, which is the normal level anywhere on Earth. If it was the owl that caused it to jump to twenty-four MHz, then maybe the owl was not an owl.”
“Check the other meters. Did the aerometer register anything when the owl flew by?”
I read the meter, “The wind thingy says seventy miles per hour. That’s pretty fast for an owl. How fast do owls fly anyway?”
“Well if that owl caused the increase in wind speed, then that would mean it was an owl and not a ghost. Or the ghost could have taken the shape of the owl,” Dad ponders aloud.
I add, “I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense? We will have to double check everything again when we get home.”
Slowly the dark sky is filled with the new light, giving way to pink and fuchsia rays as the sun begins to rise. To the west is darkness, stars, planets, and the Milky Way. Like jewels they are dazzling, glowing, as we stand between night and day.
New light colors the mountains ruby red as it peeks above the ridge highlighting the jagged edges.
Warm colors of orange and purple radiate onto the soft blue horizon. Light pushes away the night, darkness fades into the light of day.
Dad and Jackie begin to pack up our stuff for the trip home as Neewa and I play a game. The game is I pet her with big strokes along her back, neck, and behind the ears. When I stop, she jumps up on me, begging for more. It’s Neewa’s favorite game.
On the way home Neewa and Jackie are asleep, but I’m awake thinking about that ghost. I was sure we were going to catch it. I wonder if we did?
I don’t know, having a video of an owl traveling at seventy miles per hour and a reading on one meter of twenty-four megahertz (MHz) of electromagnetic field doesn’t prove we captured Mrs. Waldo’s ghost?
But I know ghosts are real, they are. And I’m going to catch one.
We have the latest ghost hunting stuff, better than all the other ghost hunters. All paranormal investigators have equipment that detects different types of energy including magnetic, microwave, and wind as well as electrical, sound, and light.
Some scientists say these types of energy are white energy. They say white energy can be seen, touched, and measured. These same researchers say white energy makes up ninety-eight percent of all the natural energy in the universe.
A small group of scientists see galaxies moving in ways that can’t be explained by normal laws of mechanics. They theorize it is dark energy that comprises ninety-eight percent of the energy in the universe. Dark energy cannot be seen, touched, or measured. Nobody seems to know very much about it.
Drifting in and out of sleep, I wake up and fall back again as we travel the long trip home from Donner State Park.
I didn’t get the proof I needed to prove that the ghost exists, but I’ll capture one yet, you wait and see.
We arrive home too tired to unpack everything, so we take in the cameras and the most of the important meters inside. Then after walking and feeding Neewa I drop into my bed.
“Good night, Dad, love you.”
“Good night, Christina, Jackie, love you.”
“Love you, Dad,” Jackie says.
“Good night Neewa.”
Neewa cuddles up near my feet. She looks up at me, content. Her gray eyes stare back at me, looking for attention. She rolls to her side and takes a deep breath. Her rib cage rises and falls as she lets out a slight snort and closes her eyes.
When Neewa dreams she rolls over and lets out a yelp at the same time. Then she talks in her sleep in doggy language. I wonder what she’s talking about? Do all dogs dream? Do they all talk in their sleep?