They had given me a lot to unpack. They knew all the details of that time, back when I was little, that left me orphaned and almost committed to a loony bin. I had, thankfully, been taken in by my aunt and uncle who did their best to raise me, but I know I wasn’t easy to deal with, at least early on. I had convinced myself I had imagined it, that the trauma of losing my parents had messed with my mind. But if it hadn’t…

“Oh, it just occurred to me, but there’s something we really should check.” Mrs. Thorne said. “Catch.” She through an object, small and dark, towards me.

“Ow, the fuck? This thing’s sharp!” I felt the roughness of it in my hand. It was dark, with age and corrosion, angular, square, with a hand-hammered head. An old nail, hand-forged.

“Well? Oh, you have no problems holding it.”

“The fuck? Get that away from me! No wonder you felt itchy earlier!” Dahlia shouted.

“Well, there’s no reaction to it from you, so you aren’t a changeling. I wasn’t certain, reading your files, so I figured it’d be best to check now.”

“Warn me when you do shit like that!” You really would think I would be the most angry one in the room, considering all the revelations concerning sealed records from my childhood being casually sub poena’d and browsed through by the most irresponsible federal agents I had ever seen to date.

Not that I’d seen many federal agents. But Daliah surged to the lead of "angriest in the room"; at the moment, I was too shocked to fully access the full breadth of emotions normal people experience. I think there’s a medical term for that. In my defense, things have just been too absurd. Surely we’ve hit peak absurdity at this point and things could make the reasonable descent back into merely “shitty and unreasonable.”

“I had it shielded. And surely it was worth checking just in case.”

“You know I would have mentioned it if she wasn’t human. What’s the real reason you were carrying around cold iron?” She had crossed her arms, tapping a finger against her elbow. I noticed there was a claw on that finger that hadn’t been there before.

“...I found it in the yard and thought it was neat.”

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Aren’t we getting off-topic?”

“Don’t deflect like that.” Liah said.

“But we really do have work to do.”

“What can we even do? We discovered one more danger that we’ve had to warn the interns about, but besides that, it’s still business as usual. We haven’t loca-” She paused in thought. “What did the list say again?”

“I didn’t take it too seriously. The main focus was on the station chief, I assumed the rest was just more of a general-area sort of warning.” Mrs. Thorne stared up at the fabric of the tent ceiling, tapping her chin as she tried to recall… something.

“With demons and the possibility of running into my dad’s side of the family, we really can’t take any chances.” Liah let out a huff as she let her arms fall to her side.

“Well then, I guess we should look back over the packet from the briefing. I want to say it was something to do with UFO’s.”

“Don’t be absurd, there’s no such thing as aliens visiting earth.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I wish I didn’t.”

“Well then, I suppose we should look at the briefing again. I’ll call Jeff and Gabe back over. We can have Sandra wait in here with Anna, and we can send Jessica into the house with Jeff and Gabe to do more ghost hunting stuff.”

“We’re still trying to do ghost hunting?” I felt harried. “We already found one.”

Mrs. Thorne gave me a flat stare.

“You found one. You don’t stop fishing just because you caught one fish. I thought you came here to ghost hunt, giving up so soon in the game seems so unfortunate.”

“You don’t need to mock me.”

“I’m not. After reading your file, it really would have been best for you to avoid anything to do with the unseen side of the world. Pick a normal college, a normal major, a normal job. You had the chance to live a normal life and, even for people with such a shitty hand dealt so early in life from the supernatural, most are able to. But you didn’t.

“Sure, it’s probably not healthy, but confronting the supernatural after it took so much from you is in a way admirable. And you’re an adult, capable of making adult choices, some of which are hazardous for your health. So yes, while it’s practically like dipping your toes overboard on a ship, using them as bait for whatever is that may be lurking below, it’s impressive that you have the balls to do that. Figuratively speaking. So since we have to practice sticking to our cover anyways, why not go out there and be the best ghost hunter you can be?” She reached into one of the bins and pulled out an EMF reader. “I trust you know how to use one of these?”

“Of course, that’s what I came here to do.”

“Good, because I honestly have no idea how to, and I’ll need you to show Jeff and Gabe the ropes.” Sandra sighed.

“You know that those are like, a basic part of our cover story.”

“If they wanted undercover federal agents who were competent they would have asked one who had actually gone through the proper training to do this job.” Jeff and Gabe chose this moment to walk in. “Speak of the devil.”

“Very not cool, Amy. You know what shit’s out there right now.”

“Good, you’re here.” She ignored their valid criticism of what was almost a flag being raised. “We were just going to get back to the ghost hunting. Or you were, here with Jessica. Sandra and Anna are on monitors, and Liah and I need to check over the mission briefing again.”

Jeff and Gabe looked over at me, dumbly holding the EMF meter. They wordlessly began to dig through the boxes for more of them before I interrupted.

“One of you should grab one of those laser thermometers.” I said, pointing at another electronic device with a pistol grip. “And take a camcorder as well.”

“Don’t all the ghost hunters use those EMF meters?” Jeff asked.

“That’d just be redundant. Ghosts supposedly can manipulate electromagnetic fields, but one of the most common signs of hauntings you hear about, at least from the so-called “experts” that I’m beginning to doubt are really experts now, are temperature changes. Cold spots and the like. So a laser thermometer is super useful for finding abnormal cold spots.” I continued to lecture them about the “proper” use of the equipment. They, despite their expert status for the supernatural, at the very least humored me while their boss, annoyingly, looked on amused. I pushed down my annoyance.

I may not be an expert, but at the very least I was the nearest thing here to an expert on acting like a normal person. Okay, maybe not “normal,” but a- what was the term they used, “mundane?” A mundane ghost hunter. Not the kind of ghost hunter to show up carrying live grenades and assault rifles. When I paused for breath, the boss infuriatingly spoke up again.

“Bye bye, boys. Have fun storming the castle! And you two, actually watch the monitors, we don't want any scandalous canoodling while we're on the job.” And with that, she and Daliah turned off into the night. Gabe shrugged.

“You heard her. At least there’s one less ghost to find.”

The room where not more than an hour ago we held a séance still smelled of the incense we had used during the ritual. I started scanning the room with the meter, noticing nothing more than the occasional spike whenever I got near an appliance or power outlet. It was always worth noticing hot spots even if there was a normal explanation after all. It’s been theorized that unusual EM activity caused by wiring and appliances could cause the feelings often associated with hauntings, so it’s good practice to rule those out before proclaiming a place “probably haunted.”

At least it would be if this place wasn’t already 100% confirmed haunted. Seriously? These people just being so blasé over phenomena that is the holy grail of ghost-hunting is just too much. I thought things would be scientific, and instead I get witchcraft and clay tablets, angels and demons, and fucking fairies. But, if I were allowed to take the more scientific approach I wanted, this could be an opportunity.

“What did the homeowners say was happening here again?” I asked Jeff. He seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders despite everything.

“A pale woman- I guess we can check her off the list unless there’s more of them- and footsteps. You know, usual haunted house stuff.” He scratched at the short-cropped hair near the edge of the harness holding on a set of night-vision goggles. Raised, of course, I had the lights on for this step. As I said, baseline measurements first. We honestly should have done this beforehand, before the interruptions.

“I think I remember him saying the kids had seem some stuff fly off the shelves. Maybe those ones?” He pointed over to a complex of built-in shelving attached to a large pillar sticking out of the center of the room. I had given them a quick scan when we had first started, when there was a mild spike in EMF, likely due to the charging cables entwined with the game consoles.

“I didn’t get anything off them, but we can give it a closer look. Maybe they were talking about other shelves, I’m sure they have more of them.

They did. There was the kitchen, full of shelves filled with kids snacks, staples, canned goods and essentials. There was the basement, with an earth floor and a wooden furnace backed up against the same large pillar as above. Shelves were against all the stone foundation walls, packed with more non-perishables as well as cans of water and even more cans of ammunition. A prepper’s paradise.

The upstairs had shelves in the kids rooms filled with toys, shelves in the master bedroom filled with clothes and guns, shelves in the bathrooms filled with toiletries and guns. But none of them registered a blip on the EMF meter. None of them showed more than a few degrees difference from the surrounding room. And, looking through the camcorder Gabe had grabbed, none of them had any creepy entities that showed up on camera but weren’t visible to the naked eye.

“I guess I’ll check this one again.” I said, back in front of the first shelf I had looked at.

“Do you think there’s something there?” Jeff asked.

“Probably not, but after earlier I’m really not feeling the ‘asking for a sign that an entity is there’ thing that the ghost hunters you see on TV are fond of.”

“Always a good idea.” Gabe agreed. “Acknowledging them just gives them more power.” Ominous.

I scanned the whole shelf again, noting the same spikes around the appliances. Then, unlike before, I crouched down and scanned further. Near the bottom of the shelving, there was a slight increase in the reading. Not off the charts, but enough to raise an eyebrow.

“What is it?” Jeff asked.

“Maybe wiring in the pillar?” I looked closer. Roughly five foot by five foot, paneled in wood. Something that big, in the center of the house, with a slightly abnormal EMF reading. Don’t you- What a cliché. What an absolute cliché. “I think the old chimney for the furnace is in there. Or the old chimney for the original cabin. Out in the mountains they’d often have it in the middle of the house, for better heat dispersal.” I tried to convince myself. I didn’t even need to say what I suspected for the two men with me to pick up on it.

“It wouldn’t be the first we found today. Especially those spook types. They love their hidey holes. I bet if we knocked down the walls we could find gold and machine guns.” Jeff explained.

“Oh.” Somehow that was more mundane than my first thoughts. Generally when you strongly suspect there’s a secret passage in a haunted house you think horrific crimes and heartless torture and death.

“And if that creep was trying to summon demons he may have tried to use sacrifices to improve the effectiveness of his rituals” And Gabe just had to ruin it. “Well, should we try the basement?” Very reassuring.

Back in the basement I tried using the EMF meter around the furnace, where it entered the pillar. Nothing, nada, except for a tiny spike around the wiring for the thermostat. There were panels above that which Gabe, without prompting, pried off using a large combat knife. I tried not to think too much about the damage.

“Looks just like a brick chimney.” He said. The furnace chimney went right into it. But then, despite my better judgement, I had a realization.

On the other side of the pillar, opposite the chimney, the EMF flashed, about the same level as above. I followed the pillar down, with the reading growing the further down I got.

“Jeff, if you could…”

“Say no more.” He took temperature readings down the whole length of the pillar. None were abnormal.

“So whatever’s causing the unusual EMF is probably not supernatural.” I muttered. Before I could finish the thought Gab’s knife came out again, and he started prying off a plank from the pillar. A musty breeze escaped as the plank came away. Two more planks followed, making a large enough hole for him to stick his head through.

“It looks pretty deep.” He said as he shined a flashlight around. “And there’s a ladder.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell us we should go down there?” I asked wearily.

“Of course not, at least not before calling it in. Holes in the ground are dangerous.”

“Because that’s were monsters hang out?” I was just tired of this all.

“No, because a lot of harmful gasses are heavier than air. They sink to the bottom of things like that. You get halfway down the ladder and just, lights out, you fall to the bottom. It’s not pretty. I don’t suppose we packed a canary?” The last was directed at Jeff.

“With this kind of job we have sensors and a couple oxygen tanks. We’ll have to call this in to Amy first though.”

“What should we tell her?”

Jeff walked over to the hole and pulled out a chemlight, cracking it open and dropping it down into the depths below. He looked down after it for a bit.

“Well, Jessica, I think we found what caused your readings. Gabe, tell her we found vacuum tubes.”