look at the stain next,” John said. He clicked on his flashlight and moved the beam over the hardwood floor. They’d seen it earlier when they were doing their prebroadcast walk-through. Supposedly it was blood, but John had his doubts.
“That stain is gross,” Theodora said.
“Gross is good for Halloween,” John answered.
“We’re back in ten,” Jackson warned. “Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”
John and Theodora positioned themselves near the stain and waited to be told they were live.
“Showtime,” the cameraman whispered, and John launched into his spiel.
“We’re back with this special live Halloween broadcast of Spirit Chasers,” he said, staring at the tiny red light on the night-vision camera that Jackson was pointing directly at him. “For those of you just tuning in, I’m John Fogg, and I’m here with my wife, Theodora Knight, and members of my Spirit Chaser team, investigating a home in rural Pennsylvania. We’ve dubbed it the House of Torment, because throughout its history, its many residents have almost all been victims of troubled lives.”
John moved through the inky black, flicking his penlight across the floor as he walked. “Right now Theo and I are checking out a strange stain that, according to the current owner, Fritz, grows more pronounced when paranormal events in the home begin to escalate.”
He shined the beam of the flashlight on the living room floor, illuminating a dark stain shaped like the state of Florida. “Jackson, can you show this to the folks at home, please?”
John continued as he watched the red light on the infrared camera turn away from him and down toward the floor. “If you remember, Fritz believes this is a bloodstain left when the previous owner murdered his wife, supposedly on this very spot.”
“Just one of the many disturbing events that have transpired in this seemingly accursed home, and part of the reason why Fritz refuses to live here anymore,” added Theodora as the couple knelt to examine the darkened spot.
“Right,” John agreed. “Once he began renovating the place, he began to notice strange sounds and smells, and he reports seeing shadow figures from the corners of his eyes.”
“John, why don’t you get some EMF readings while I get out the blood test kit?”
The sound of Theo going through her things could be heard, and the red light on the camera again faced John. He removed a cell phone–sized device from his pocket and held it over the spot, slowly moving it around the area of the stain. As he did so, he reminded the folks at home that he was looking for high electromagnetic fields supposedly emitted by ghostly beings, and expressed disappointment that the device remained perfectly silent, as it had throughout the evening’s investigation.
John felt his wife poke his arm in the darkness.
“Here’s the kit, hon.”
He reached for the offered items and again knelt before the stain. “In this bottle is a hydrogen peroxide mixture that will react to a chemical found in blood called catalase. If this really is blood,” John said as he removed the cover on the plastic bottle and squirted some solution onto the tip of a cotton swab, “then the liquid should start to bubble.”
He knew it wouldn’t, but he had to go through the motions for the live show. Again the camera panned down to the stain. He could imagine the viewers at home, sitting on the edges of their seats, eyes glued to the screen, hoping that John would confirm a bloodstain.
“And as you can see,” he said, rubbing the saturated swab across the stain, “no bubbles, indicating that this stain is definitely not blood.”
“I’m guessing some sort of petroleum product, maybe,” Theo said as she squatted next to her husband. She placed the tip of a well-manicured finger on the center of the dark spot and gently rubbed at it. “Whatever it is, it’s saturated the wood. It could be that it reacts differently to the temperature in the house during the change of seasons, and that’s what leads the homeowner to believe that it’s indicating paranormal activity.”
John’s walkie-talkie squawked and he removed it from his belt, hoping that it was something good to save the show—maybe some disembodied footsteps, or better yet, a creepy voice recording from the EVP session Phil Carnagin and Becky were conducting in the basement.
“Go for John,” he said into the device.
“John, it’s Phil. Think we might’ve found something you’re going to want to see.”
“We’ll be right down,” John said, forcing himself not to sigh in