Ghost Hunting the Elgin Crawlspace, '13

Long ago, I lived in this house in Elgin, IL, and it was bloody damn haunted. 

My wife, now ex-wife, and I moved there in 2013 for various reasons, not the least of which was that she wanted to see another place than Chattanooga. I thought we might have an easier time of things--I had too many drug connections I wanted to leave behind, had lost everything both square and artistic, and was still foolish enough to believe relocation would make any sort of difference. Also, I hadn't seen my own family in years. We secured jobs, Jessica at a sports bar and me at Fisher Nuts. But--

Shortly after, while we made small talk with my mother in the kitchen what looked like a puff on a vape (then called e-cigs) flew across the foyer. My mother jumped, faintly grinning. 

"Did you guys see that?" she asked. Jessica nodded.

"It looked like a smoking elf," I said. 

"This house is haunted," my mother said. "I forgot to say that."

Jessica only liked paranormal stuff on television. She wasn't amused. 

About three months later, Jessica went to the downstairs bathroom around 2am. She woke me up by yanking the blankets off me and slapping me on the chest. I asked her what was wrong, the tears on her cheeks more than unsettling to me. I was ready to fight, wondering if some prick had been snooping in the windows. Elgin isn't horrible, but it isn't Mayberry, either.

"It looked like a kid from a long time ago floated out of that mirror in the hallway and up the fucking stairs that go to your folks' room," she said. "I don't think I want to live here."

I switched gears. Moving was not happening, not when we both had good jobs and a kick ass place to live. Around this time, all the ghost hunting shows were new and gaining popularity. We'd all had an experience. The only logical move in my mind was investigation. Shit, why not, right? I had a digital recorder, a computer, Audacity to clean and enhance files if needed, and was resolute--I would get proof of the paranormal I could show to others. By others, I meant John Bruni and Jessica's friends Spring and Raven. But mainly Bruni. If I caught something, see, Jessica's friends would say, "whoa, cool," and it'd be White Russians and football from there. But Bruni might write about it. Or I might. And he might help us both see print. I was struggling for a writing career at this time, much like I am now. I have the heart of a beat poet who lives his material, and this would be another weird fucking thing I could do for good copy. And dammit, I was also writing a book called POLARITY at this time, and I didn't want that being upset. I mentioned the lot and she agreed it would be likely detrimental to return to the land of pills and meth when I'd finally settled enough to work and write.

"I'll figure it out, honey," I said. "I'll make friends with the fucker or figure out a way to kick it out. Banish it." Following up with the boyish please-do-what-I-want grin I once had mastered. It drove her nuts in both good and bad ways.

I ran through the basic TV ghost hunter instructions, not beginning until about 2am, only lightly lubricated with twelve-year old Glenlivet. Three shots to get me past feeling a little like a dumb ass for asking questions of an empty basement. I thumbed the recorder to life and asked the unused fireplace and boxes of Christmas decorations if there were anyone with me. If they had names. Were they angry? Harmful intentions? I was answered with: XMAS SNOWMAN in my mother's ornate handwriting and another, more fitting text on another box lying next to a treadmill: HALLOWEEN GHOST. 

Did I want another pull from the bottle? Or to continue? I wasn't seeing anything. What if EVPs and shit like that were bullshit? But I'd seen that elf's vape, and Jessica had her mirror kid, plus mom's surety. Perhaps this was another Case of the Singing Frog, an entity not here for my amusement or my punk ass recorder. Ready to croak limply in public. I turned back for the stairs with "Hello muh ragtime GAAALLLL," playing through my head. Fuck it. I'd drink a bit more and then maybe hit the crawlspace. Or try to convince Jessica we were all loopy. But before I made the first step something popped in the laundry room. 

I stopped.

Creak. From the laundry room again. Cold of ancient instinct flooding the groin and giddy child's zing of what-if energy in the belly. I stepped into the laundry room, not turning on the light to break the almost-pitch of the room which was lit only jokingly by tumescent moonlight that flopped lustily through multiple blocks of frosted window glass close to the ceiling. It yearned for the floor. I knelt and crawled into the nothing of the crawlspace, feeling along the insulated under-loam, ignoring the switch on the wall, too high up to reach from my current vantage.

Now, I felt fucking weird. I hadn't been drunk but now I was sober as a man entering the circuit court for his petty beef. My eyes felt too wide, and cotton formed in the corners of my mouth. I was cold, and while winter stilled the outdoors, we had central heat. This felt like I was outside. I saw my breath. Throbbing between my eyebrows and incipient restless leg.

Well horseshit, I thought. I began to describe the cold and the sensations to the digital recorder, mulling over any questions I might want to ask, trying a few. I didn't feel stupid anymore. Scratching along the insulated floor not from my fingers and in silence I waited, eyes working to adjust to the dark, pineal expansion and--

Glowing red eyes over my shoulder. And that was good for me. Because I saw those fuckers. I fully, firmly fucking saw those glowing little beady red fuckers and what was worse is I stopped seeing them as if they'd blinked from existence, but no rat scurried off into the planks surrounding me, furthermore exterminators had been here a couple of months before strictly on precaution since my mother does things like that regularly. There were no fucking rats. 

I scraped and scuttled my way out of the crawlspace, feeling a bit embarrassed at the tween-like instinctive fear wriggling up my belly and into my chest. Composing myself, I left the basement, chuckling but excited to listen to what I might've caught on the recorder. Quiet steps through the sun-room and into the room Jessica and I had in the back of the house. She was watching anime on her phone. I shut the door and she tossed her phone and we listened to what I'd caught.

For a while, nothing. Just my queries coming faster I'd made them. No results. Then, on the recorder I said, "I think I see some glowing red eyes or some--"

"FUCK--YOU."

"Nope," Jessica said. She backed up. "That sounded demonic, Robert. What the fuck?"

"I didn't do that shit," I said. She had every right to think I had thanks to my old almost-made-it run in various metal bands, and one underground record label in Chattanooga. "I'd be a cunt if I did that. I believe in this stuff. You know that. I'm not gonna fuck off my own investigation by doing phony shit." 

"Then this house needs an exorcism," she said. "Because that sounded like a demon." 

"I didn't do that, either," I said, mostly kidding. She wasn't amused. 

I played it again. Maybe we were just hearing things; late night willies, what-have-you. But once again the two words made it absolute that there was a being in the crawlspace with me that didn't want me around. We were ready for them, focused on our faculties, and heard them again.  

Well, this has gone far longer than expected. I'm wondering if I have the sound files anywhere. They must be gone...but I never know what I, or someone I know is going to have lying around. There's more to this tale than is here, much more. Trips to the library to investigate the history of both house and land. A further investigation with John Bruni. Doors unlocking. Jackhammer bangs on the wall. Terrified birds. And one night, a stack of papers I'd set on my TV tray were swiped to the floor by an invisible hand, and something yelled at Jessica and me. After this, she couldn't be persuaded to live in that house anymore. 

I thought it was fucking awesome. I may tell these tales down the road. I think they want to be told, and that's important, too.