Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,91

chair beside me at the coffee house in Lexington, Sawyer stretches out his legs and lays a hand along the back of my chair, his fingers caressing my shoulders. Sylvia’s eyes follow the motion. Not angry, not jealous … more like confused.

We’re all jam-packed together—five of us at an intimate table meant for possibly three. Considering everyone at this cramped table, except for me, was sired by giants, we’re all up close and personal.

Sawyer and I are particularly squished together. Our legs and arms brush along each other’s with every inhale. Each touch sending little zaps of electricity into my blood. For someone new to the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing, he’s very relaxed touching me in public—as if we’ve been dating forever and have had time to become very aware and comfortable with every part of the other. I’ll admit, I’m loving every delicious second. I feel so very … alive.

But it’s time for me to focus on our project and not how Sawyer’s fingertips are tracing seductive circles along one back of my neck. I turn my laptop around to show Dr. Wolfe the pictures Sawyer and I took at the bridge.

“Here are the pictures I told you about,” I say in reference to the email I sent her that helped with her agreeing to this interview.

Dr. Wolfe’s eyes narrow as she studies one picture then moves on to the next, studying the next one with the same excruciating precision. “I agree. These definitely look like orbs.”

I’m riding so high that it’s practically a miracle that my toes are touching the ground. I glance over at Sawyer and while he still wears skepticism like a second skin, he smiles at me.

Orbs are round balls of light anomalies that can represent spirits. We caught several in the same spot in the middle of the bridge, but my favorite picture is the one with the orb hovering next to Sawyer when I stole his camera from him. He looks so cute, as skeptical as he does now, and it’s brilliant that a spirit rode shotgun on his shoulder.

Sawyer, of course, dismissed it all as particles of dust, but the shapes are too perfect, too round, too bright. But even he, when we played the EVP of “He’s hurting” on the computer, had no explanation other than stunned silence.

Dr. Wolfe pushes the laptop back toward me. “I have to say I’m very impressed. It’s very difficult for even the most seasoned ghost investigator to capture actual active spiritual evidence like you have. Most times, people believe they are making contact, but instead are caught up in a residual haunting.”

Now everyone at the table is focused on Dr. Wolfe as I’m betting they are as lost as I am.

“What’s a residual haunting?” Sylvia asks.

“A residual haunting is when an event that is so traumatic, so emotional, happens and the energy created from the huge outpouring of emotion, most likely negative emotion, imprints onto the area. That emotion becomes a loop, replaying over and over again. It’s not an actual spirit, it’s a memory.”

When it’s clear we’re all dumfounded, she continues, “Think of the hauntings often associated with widow’s walks by the sea. Those ghosts appear at the same time of day and the apparitions do the same thing—whether it be they just appear staring out at sea or they walk along the same stretch of area then disappear. Sometimes there isn’t an apparition involved. Sometimes it’s the same sounds at the same time of day. Like the slamming of a door or—”

“Footsteps going down stairs,” Sawyer says.

We all glance at him. His smile is gone, his eyes serious, and I can tell he’s thinking of our house.

“Yes,” Dr. Wolfe says. “There is no communication with these phenomena as it would be the same thing as trying to have a conversation with people who belong to a memory in your head. Your memories, to you, are alive. You see them play out in radiant color. Sometimes you remember something so vividly that you can almost taste the air, feel a touch, or sense a presence. That’s what a residual haunting is like, only we all see the memory being replayed.”

“What I hear you saying,” says Miguel, “is that something so powerful happened that it can’t be forgotten?”

Dr. Wolfe looks at each of us before answering. “Yes, and it was so powerful that it literally reshaped the world surrounding it forever.”

* * *

Because Miguel has an SUV and a full tank of gas, he drove us