Ask yourself what it is you want to prove at the investigation. If you're like me, you've come to the conclusion that you don't want to prove anything. Proving is for district attorneys, scientists and maybe politicians. With that in mind, here are my notes from a recent investigation I was involved with.
As we entered the home of the long dead woman, I wonder how it felt to call this place home. I try to imagine the feeling of waking each morning to the sounds of birds chirping at the windows instead of the incessant sounds of traffic as commuters make their way to workplaces miles away. Silence.
One of the ghosts that is said to haunt this home has always been a special hero of mine. A survivor, she. Not of the lets-eat-bugs, and outsmart our competitor type, but a genuine survivor.
A woman who lived with more tragedy than most will see in three lifetimes, a woman who endured the taunting remarks and public scorn only those who walked to a different drummer in the nineteenth century could know.
And so we begin. I think of her. And pity her, her lot in life. In silent commiserating pity I feel that she is here in her home. I make no claims to psychic power, I have no motion detector or EMF field detector, and yet I know. Here we are, seven of us, a century after her death, skulking through her beloved home, touching the cool carved wood that is the banister she probably touched a hundred times? A thousand times?
Her prized possessions are laid out before us. There's the paintings, faded and dark, the furniture, too frou-frou by today's standard, the bookcase of tall leather tomes, and the family albums filled with the stern faces of ancestors all dead. These are the things she loved in life, the things she left behind.
A long, highly carved, table graces the dining room. At the table are ten chairs, count them. She was a lonely woman, unliked and misunderstood by most. How often did dinner guests fill these chairs? Twice, maybe three times? With high hopes she probably bought them, only to spend many lonely dinners staring at these empty chairs?
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