I’m nervous as we turn onto a dirt road at the sign that says “Automotive Shop.” The lonely trail has desert on both sides, and those amber and rust mountain peaks I saw from the arena glimmering in the background are right in front of me.
Neewa whines as our van slows down. Dad cracks open the door just enough for Neewa to push it open with her head and jump out the door. Leaping onto the ground, she runs alongside of our van and then into the desert kicking up sand, her nose just a hair off the ground. She stops short, checks out a prairie dog hole and continues searching for any other scents.
“Run, Neewa, run!” I cry, inspired by her energy and ability.
My attention quickly shifts to a faint image of the discarded settlement coming into view. I silently stare at the eerie-looking scene. It looks staged, like a miniature playhouse dropped from above. Surrounding the forgotten colony are steep canyon walls on every side, and ten-foot high sand dunes block the only road leading in and out.
Main Street, if you want to call it that, is the one and only street with a small row of buildings on either side. The dwellings once bustling with people are now empty.
It’s a forsaken town, a ghost town. Nothing else is visible anywhere around it. No electric wires, streetlights, or government building proclaiming ownership. No abandoned wagons or cars lie about, nothing. Nor is there anyone to be seen, except the Rayburns and us.
Parking our van alongside the Rayburn truck, we all get out as Neewa catches up. She prances around, circling us wildly, jumping, excited that we are going on a hike. Jackie, Dad and I gather up our backpacks and begin the hike into town.
Taken aback, I see a cemetery in the foreground, just about five hundred feet from where we stand. It is small, filled with knee high weeds and surrounded by a faded, mostly broken picket fence.
Mr. Rayburn points at the cemetery. “Places like this were called boom and bust towns, and they all had their own cemeteries. When someone died, they were buried with everything they owned. Most people had very few belongings, so the undertakers left their boots on. That’s why all the towns out West named their cemeteries Boot Hill. That accounts for the “Boot” part of the cemetery name. The “Hill” piece of the name can be explained by the fact that the location picked for the burials was the highest ground near the town. That was in case of a flash flood. The town folks didn’t want bodies floating all over the place after a storm.”
Mrs. Rayburn adds as they walk off together, “Many of these boom towns lasted only a few years or until the gold or silver ran out. After that everyone left town, well almost everyone. None of the inhabitants of Boot Hill ever did, I hope, ha ha ha.”
I look at Dad and Jackie, neither of them is laughing.
Inside the cemetery I find grave markers so battered by the wind and weather they are blank. The names and dates have worn off. Others have only faint impressions of the letters and numbers that once spelled out the name, date of birth, and when the occupant died. If we’re lucky we might find an epitaph saying something about the deceased or maybe how they died.
I exclaim, “Wow check this out, Tabor, Agnes P., Pioneer, Wife, Mother.”
Moving to the next grave, I can hardly believe my eyes. “Dad, Jackie, look. Seaborn Barnes, Sam Bass Gang, Texas Train Robber, shot in the legs during the Mesquite Train Robbery!”
Dad walks from the middle of the cemetery and whispers, “Getting any readings on the K-2?”
“No, nothing yet.” I kneel down and touch the brittle grave marker, wood flakes away from under my fingers.
“Christina, this is so cool. Get a picture of that one with the infrared camera—I mean the camera.” Jackie looks around as if she let our secret out.
Dad says excitedly, “There has to be something here. We will know if one of these graves gives off infrared or electromagnetic energy.”
“Don’t worry about the Rayburns. They’ll never figure out we’re hunting ghosts,” I say.
Dad and I are first to turn and walk toward the gate to exit the cemetery.
“Hey wait up, I’m not staying here alone. I’m finished with this place. Let’s get out here,” Jackie calls out running to catch up to us.
We only have a few hours before dark, so I’m taking thermo images as we walk into town.
The Rayburns are already leaving, heading back to their truck. We meet halfway between the cemetery and town.
Mrs. Rayburn says, “We’re headed back home to California.”
“Once many years ago, there were gold and silver mines all around this town,” Mr. Rayburn adds.
“Thanks for the tip on the ghost town. It’s really awesome,” I reply.
Jackie agrees, “Yeah, this is so cool.”
“Watch out for Sally Ann,” Mrs. Rayburn says laughing.
I look at her— “Sally Ann?”
Mrs. Rayburn replies, “She’s the ghost that lives in town. There is a legend about her and her brother. He was very ill and she, although dead for years, came back from the other side to encourage the doctor to help him.”
Mr. Rayburn looks us in the eye and begins to tell the story. “About one hundred years ago the circuit doctor was in town and was awakened from a deep sleep by a bright light shining right in front of him. He sat up quickly, shading his eyes.
“At first he thought that he had overslept. But the glow was not coming from the window. As his eyes adjusted to the brilliance, he saw a woman dressed in white, standing at the foot of his bed. A heavenly light surrounded her, and she glowed from within as well. The doctor gasped in fear and huddled underneath his bedclothes.
“‘Do not be afraid,’ the spirit said in a kind gentle voice.
“The doctor took heart in her words. He withdrew his head from the covers and looked right at the glowing woman.
“‘I come to you from another world,’ the woman said.
“‘Who are you?’ the doctor asked.
“‘In life, my name was Sally Ann. I was sister to Simeon Carter.’
“‘Why have you been sent here?’ asked the doctor.
“‘I’m here to tell you that my brother Simeon will die of strychnine poisoning if you are not more persistent.’
“The doctor swallowed his guilt, remembering his pride in having thought he cured Simeon.
“One of the earliest lessons he had learned in medical school was how such pride could cause him to be too confident with his treatments. A patient could die if the doctor was not thorough. The doctor was falling into this trap with her brother Simeon.
“He thanked the ghost for her warning and promised to go to her brother at daybreak. Satisfied, the ghost vanished and the room was in darkness once more.”
After those words, the Rayburns walk toward their truck. Mr. Rayburn turns and says, “I ought to know, Sally Ann was my Grandmother.”
Seconds later they drive off, leaving Neewa and the three of us in the ghost town, alone with Sally Ann.
Within seconds of their departure, out of our knapsacks comes the paranormal stuff we have been concealing from them.
“Okay let’s go to town,” I say.
Dad warns, “We have a lot of ground to cover and not much time till sunset. Better get a move on it— our best chance to catch Sally Ann is at that hotel.”
It’s around eighty degrees, warm for this time of day. I can feel the nearby canyon walls radiating the day’s heat absorbed after many hours in the sun. There is little time before it drops from the sky and disappears. Then it will get cold and dark, fast.
Neewa runs off into the canyon, as if destiny was calling her.
“She can’t disappear in that box canyon, unless of course she can fly over those cliffs, ha ha ha.” We all laugh, although I am a bit nervous at the thought of it.
As we enter town, I stare at the faded gray structures that line each side of the street. The wobbly buildings, one and two stories high, have shadowy alleyways between them.
The entire town looks like it’s ready to collapse, complete sections of several roofs are torn away. Railings and steps on the front porches are crumbling and decaying. In the same condition are the wooden walkways connecting them. Splintered planks lie in the once muddy paths, left to rot. Long ago these paths connected the town’s bustling traffic of ladies in puffed-out dresses and feathered bonnets and men wearing vests, suites, and wide-brimmed hats to shade them from the hot sun.
Hollow openings are all that’s left of the windows and doors, blown out by the harsh windstorms that frequent the canyon. Several doors dangle by a nail or a hinge, still in place from the past. About the only things moving in town are a couple of shredded raggedy curtains fluttering about, still attached by a thread to the once modestly decorated second floor boarding rooms of the day.
Bang! Bang! Echoes down Main Street. The sound comes from somewhere and ricochets off the back of the canyon. I snap my head up to look for its origin, but I can’t tell which direction it came from.
“Jackie, make sure you don’t put your finger over the microphone. I want the audio recording of this ghost town to be perfect. It may be the only one ever made here.”
Dad whispers, “Be quiet, we might capture an EVP.”
I ask softly, “Jackie, what’s an EVP again?”
“Electronic Voice Phenomenon? It’s a captured recording of one or several disembodied voices. Most times the voices are not heard as they’re being recorded. Only when you play back the digital file can you hear them,” she smiles.
“Nobody go inside any buildings, they might fall apart at any minute.” Dad is repeating himself again because he’s stressed out about it.
“Chill, Dad, I heard ya! Stop with the crumbling buildings already, we’re not going in. You are so annoying.”
Jackie points, “Hey look! That was a dry goods store and over there the saloon, and there’s the hotel. What’s that other one?”
Jackie and I walk side-by-side, photographing the few signs still legible on the front of the buildings. One says “Sheriff’s Office,” another “Blacksmith.” We work our way around the back of town with my thermal imaging recorder in hand. I begin to tape the details of the back of every building. Jackie raises the digital camera with its sixty X zoom lens to her eye and scans through a door and down the hallway of a building. With that camera lens, it feels as if you are walking down the hall yourself. Next she zooms into each room through the outside windows.
“Christina, look! That door, it’s got a bright light around it,” she turns her head toward me with a chilling look on her face.
I walk to her and stare at the door. It’s glowing around the edge, and seemingly pulsing. An intense halo surrounds the border of the door.
The weather-beaten cedar door has deep silver and gray vertical ridges. The glass doorknob is missing, probably taken by a treasure hunter who didn’t have enough room or strength to take the door.
“I’m going in,” I whisper to her.
“No, Christina, Dad said don’t go inside.”
“I’m just going to check that door.”
“Don’t go,” she whispers.
Before she can finish her words, I climb in the window and walk at a snail's pace down the hall. The door frame shimmers, and appears to pulse. A breeze in the air rushes by me as it is funneled from the flat prairie, into the building, and through the narrow corridor. Sweat beads on my forehead and drops down into my eyes and nose. I stare at the glowing outline of the door. Closer and closer I tiptoe until the finger on my sweaty hand glides along its edge. I’m about to push it forward when it swings open—all of a sudden bright light hits me square in my eyes, blinding me. Trembling, I slink inside and peer around the room expecting to see something.
The brilliant orange and yellow setting sun sits in the middle of the window opposite me.
“Christina hurry up,” Jackie implores.
The room is empty except for a broke chair and a three-legged table turned over on its side. Just bare floorboards, no ghosts, nothing. I turn and walk back to Jackie who anxiously waits.
Dad’s gone over to the hotel with the K-2 and radio frequency field strength meter. He’s at the hotel door when we come from behind the buildings.
“The K-2 is lighting up like a Christmas Tree,” he exclaims, holding it up for us to see. “Look!” The green, yellow, orange and red lights flash. “What do you think of this? It could be Sally Ann?”
“Could be,” I agree. “Dad we recorded everything.”
“Me too, Dad, I zoomed down every hallway and into every room.” Jackie backs up my account of our whereabouts.
“Okay, it’ll be getting dark, no telling who or what might be out here at night. We’ll check all the recordings at home, let's get out of here.” Dad starts walking back.
If only the Rayburns stayed a little longer. We could have stayed into the night. With them here we would have found Sally Ann for sure.
But with only three of us out here, no thanks. Even the National Paranormal Society recommends a minimum of three adults at an Investigation. I’m not sure if that’s for verification, or just safety?
I fall behind everyone headed for the van as we exit town in a hurry.
“Hey, what is the name of this town anyway?” I yell to Dad and Jackie leading the way out.
“Don’t know? We should try to figure that out,” Dad answers.
“I saw it on the hotel, its Potosi, it's spelled P-o-t- o-s-i,” Jackie answers.
“What kind of name is that? French?” I suggest.
“Maybe,” Dad replies.
As we make our way back toward the van we pass the cemetery. I stare at the forgotten souls piled up in neat rows, covered in weeds, forgotten. Abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
The cooler night winds are arriving in town. Dad hands me a sweatshirt from his backpack. I gaze back at town. It’s a real ghost town. The only thing moving in town is the tumbleweeds blowing down Main Street.
“Bang!”
“AHHHHH!” I scream, “What was that?”
That freaked me out, I’m getting out of here. Panic grips me, my heart pounds. Jackie raises her hand to cover her mouth, as if to catch a deep sigh.
“Relax,” Dad utters. “That’s the same shutter we heard banging on the way into town.”
“It’s a shutter? I didn’t see any shutters anywhere in town. I’ll check the video when we get home, you’ll see, that was Sally Ann.”
“It didn’t sound like the one I heard when we first got here. That one sounded more like a gun shot?” Jackie recalls.
“That can’t be?” Dad replies, “There isn’t anyone around here for miles?”
“If it weren’t for the chilly winds and whirling dust and sand, I might like this place. Ha-ha.”
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
“Not to mention the banging shutters and raggedy curtains in the windows.”
It’s just the wind, it’s just the wind, I tell myself. The wind always kicks up when the sun goes down. It’s definitely time to go.
Really loud I yell, “Neewa! Neewa! Come girl!”
“Neewa, Neewa, Come girl,” eerily echoes off the canyon wall.
My heart races as I turn and stare, searching for her, straining into the twilight. But she is nowhere in sight.
“Neewa! Neewa!” I implore.
Sure enough the canyon answers in a fading reply, “Neewa, Neewa, Neewa, Neewa.”
Where the heck is she? Seconds pass like minutes as all of us stare into the darkness.
I spot her faint image under a shadowy ledge. She’s a minute speck of white sprinting in the dark shadows.
“There she is! Come on girl, come on,” I beg her.
The canyon whispers, “Come on girl, come on.”
Crossing the rocky terrain, she glides effortlessly down the slope. Her strong body and powerful muscles carry her over the rough landscape. She maneuvers around boulders and bounces all the way through the canyon.
Neewa is strong now and weighs more than forty pounds. She is over two and a half feet tall and when she stands on her hind legs, her black padded paws and ivory toenails reach my shoulders.
“Come on Neewa, let’s get out of here, we’ve had enough excitement for one day. This place creeps me out.”
After loading up the van we begin the drive home. I sit in the darkened van thinking what a great day this has been. First the rodeo with the cowgirls, horses, bulls, and steer. Then the ghost town and the Rayburn’s story about Sally Ann and her brother. The best part was the ghost town. I finally investigated a real ghost town.
I can’t wait to get home and check the video we took in the lab. If I captured Sally Ann, I will be famous. I’m going to tell everyone back home, all my friends will think this is so cool.
Neewa curls up next to me on the seat. The van’s big seats have lots of room. But she is right next to me and rests her head near my leg like she always does. Her eyes close and she lets out a big sigh through her wet nose that shines even in the darkness.
***
“Christina, wake up we’re home,” Dad says.
“Oh my God, I’m too tired to do anything tonight.”
I can barely walk inside to go to bed. Neewa follows me in and I stop in the kitchen to fill her bowls, which she quickly empties.
“Good night, Dad, love you.”
“Good night, Christina, Jackie, love you.”
“Good night, Dad, love you.” Jackie says.
“Good night, Neewa.”
As I crawl under the covers just as she catches up to me and jumps up taking her spot at the foot of the bed. Carefully she turns in a tight circle and lies down for the night. Now in her familiar white fluffy ball, she groans and places her nose on her tail. Then she sighs and watches me till I close my eyes. Then she closes hers.
***
Sunday morning and Jackie and I pull out the cameras and all of the scientific meters. I’m downloading the video files onto my hard drive using the firewire and moviemaker program.
“Click, capture, click, publish. I will have Sally Ann on this tape, I guarantee it, maybe even her aberration,” I tell Jackie.
She answers, “Yeah Christina, sure, an aberration. I don’t think so.”
After an hour or so of reviewing the video I tell Jackie, “See, I told you there isn’t one shutter on any of those windows in the ghost town, not one! What do you say to that? Where did that banging shutter come from?”
Watching the last ten minutes of the video of the ghost town, suddenly I hear, “%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“What’s that? Jackie did you hear that?” The hair fuzz on my arms stands up.
“No, I didn’t hear anything, just static,” Jackie replies.
“Play that back, the hotel part,” I shriek.
“%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“Wow! Did you hear it that time?” Convinced.
“I think I heard something, Christina, but it sounds like noise to me.”
“Play it again,” I demand.
“%^&*($#@)&%%)@#$)(&^%$$#.”
“I heard it that time, it’s static all right. Christina, you heard static, that’s all it is,” Jackie insists.
“No, that’s an EVP. We just heard a recording of the disembodied voice of Sally Ann. She was talking to us.” I jump to my feet.
“Christina, no one will believe that noise is Sally Ann?” Jackie adds.
“We need something else, and it has to match up the with the same time line when we recorded Sally Ann’s EVP.” I’m serious.
Running to my backpack for the other meters, “Let’s get the rest of the equipment and check everything we had at the ghost town. The approximate time of the encounter was at about one hour and fifteen minutes into the investigation.”
“I’m on it,” Jackie answers, doubtful.
In the next ten minutes we take out every piece of equipment we had there and check all the readings and cross-reference everything with the time line.
“Looks like the only device with a reading is the radio frequency detector. It recorded eighty MHz (Mega Hertz), whatever that means?” I say.
Jackie answers, “I’m not sure? It must mean something?”
One thing I know, the eighty MHz of electro-magnetic radiation had to come from something. That’s why Dad’s K-2 meter was lighting up outside the hotel. Sally Ann was there.
Sometimes spirits communicate in that frequency, or so I’ve heard. It could have come from the natural magnetic field in the atmosphere or a computer screen, electric motor, cell phones, or walkie-talkies.
I nod, “I’ll prove it to you, that was Sally Ann. Hold on, hold on. I got a text from Mike. I wonder if he got the cell phone picture I sent him yesterday? Remember when I went down that hallway inside the hotel?”
I read his text out loud, “Ha-ha, pls, u r trying to trick me! U think throwing powder in the air and taking a picture of it, will make me think it’s a ghost? Lol the picture you sent me is a fake.”
“What is he talking about, I didn’t throw any powder,” I scroll to the message I sent him and look at the picture.
“Oh my God look Jackie! It’s an apparition of Sally Ann in the hotel room! I caught her with my cell camera. She’s standing in the corner pointing her finger at something.”
Jackie looks at the picture. “It looks like someone threw powder into the air. How do you know that is her? It could be her brother?”
I inspect the photo. “It’s got to be her! She’s a little bit of a thing. Kind of cute, huh. First she talked to us and now I have a picture of her. I’ve got her now!”
Besides Jackie look at the time I sent the photo, it was taken at one hour and two minutes into the investigation The EVP was recorded at one hour and ten minutes in, remember? That’s around the same time.
It must have taken all of her strength to materialize and talk to us. I wonder what she is trying to tell us?
I continue checking all the meters and digital film from the ghost town, but find nothing else. “Looks like that’s it, the cell phone picture, EVP, and we got the radio frequency field strength meter that recorded the eighty megahertz (MHz), whatever that means?” I look at Jackie.
She replies, “I kind of know, it’s a magnetic field given off by stuff, just like EMF. The RF meter measures electro-magnetic radiation given off by objects like microwave signal towers, satellite television signals, or radio signals. And it’s all measured in megahertz (MHz).”
I pitch in, “Sometimes the radiation is just hanging around in the air. But it could be a spirit trying to ‘cross over’?”
Jackie wraps it up, “Or one trying to come back?”
Dad walks in the door after returning from his Sunday morning basketball game with the guys from work.
I jump at him, “We recorded Sally Ann’s EVP. And the RF meter had a reading of eighty MHz at the exact same time we heard Sally Ann. And remember the K-2 was lighting up by the hotel? I double-checked everything, every meter and all the stuff. There isn’t anything else. That’s everything we got at the ghost town. Oh, and we got the picture.”
Dad looks at me over the top of his reading glasses. “You got a picture?”
I reply, “Yeah, you know the one I took with my cell phone in the hotel? I sent it to Mike. He sent it back a text saying I tried to trick him by throwing powder in front of the camera. When I looked at the photo I sent him, I realized it was Sally Ann’s apparition in the picture. That proves she was there. I knew it.”
Dad motions for me to hand him my phone so he can see the picture, “Could be, could be.” He looks closer at it, “I’ll bring the picture to work and analyze it.”
I add, “I’ll send it to you.”
He answers, “I thought we agreed not to enter the buildings?”
I ignore him.
Dad says, “I’ll count up the electro-magnetic radiation given off by the stuff we had at the ghost town. Hum, let’s see, three cell phones, that’s five MHz and the cameras are about ten MHz. We have to add the radio frequency EMF and light meters, they’re about six MHz, so that’s twenty-one MHz. And the Altimeter, that’s another three, total twenty-four. That’s nowhere near eighty MHz, we have fifty-six MHz unaccounted for.”
Dad states, “I have to bring the EVP recording to work and see if I can enhance the file on the equipment we have there. I’ll give it a forensic audio treatment (FAT) and an acoustical signal analysis (ASC). The FAT will tell us any characteristics of the recording—for example distortion, excessive noise, the speed of the sound, if the tape is demagnetized or if a dropout is present. The ASC will decipher hard to hear inaudible speech signals through forensic phonetic experimentation. If it is a recording of speech, the graphical representation or spectrogram can be printed out. That will give us a voice picture of someone or something. It's kind of similar to a photographic picture of a person.”
“Dad, I double-checked everything, every meter, and all the files on the cameras. There isn’t anything else. We got the EVP recording of Sally Ann, the radio frequency reading of eighty MHz, your K-2 readings, and of course the picture. That’s everything from the ghost town.”
I continue, “I think it proves there was something there? It’s conclusive. I know it. I know we recorded Sally Ann or maybe her brother.”
Jackie adds, “I think it was her brother, Simeon.”
“Dad, ya know I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you do at work anyway?” I ask.
“Oh, I just test stuff, different equipment, that’s all.”
“I’ll bring this recording of Sally Ann’s EVP to work and analyze it when no one is around. You and Jackie check the Internet for information about anything paranormal that gives off fifty to sixty MHz of electromagnetic energy. See what you can find out. And remember, not a word to anyone.”