Ghost Hunting by Grant Wilson Jason Hawes Page A

have been known to manifest themselves outside as well as inside. In a place like Race Rock, it wasn’t a bad idea to have a set of eyes on the rocks themselves.
    Just to make it interesting, I got ahold of Brian and wagered two hundred dollars that I would catch a fish that night before he caught a ghost. Being the earnest soul he is, Brian took me up on the bet. I didn’t know what the fishing would be like, but I didn’t get a real haunted feeling from the lighthouse, so I thought my money would be safe.
    As Brian investigated the place, he offered to cut a deal with the lighthouse keeper’s ghost: if he let Brian obtain proof of his existence, Brian would split the two hundred dollars with him. It made sense in a bizarre sort of way, though I can’t imagine what the ghost would have done with the money.
    In the meantime, Grant made his way up to the attic and sat down in one of the chairs we had brought. We do that sometimes—just sit in a place, soaking up the atmosphere. But he couldn’t stay up there long. It was just too warm.
    At this point in the investigation, Heather and Andy were working together, Heather using her divining rods and Andy using an EMF detector. We wanted to see how the two modalities compared to each other. As luck would have it, neither of them came across anything significant.
    Out on the rocks, I wasn’t having any better luck than they were. I had been out there for hours already without a bite. At least I had some company in the form of one of the Coast Guard guys—Chris Osborne, or Oz, as he liked to be called.
    We were talking about fishing, about ghost hunting, and about the Coast Guard. Just passing the time. Then I asked a question about something, I don’t remember what. But I do remember Oz not answering.
    His eyes had narrowed, as if he was trying to concentrate on something behind me. I turned around, but I didn’t see anything. Just big, fat billows of fog.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “There’s someone out there,” he said, already on his way back up to the lighthouse. “I just saw a flare.”
    It seemed unlikely that anyone would be cruising around in that fog. But if they were, they were in terrible danger. The rocks were dangerous enough even on a clear night. On a night like this one…
    As it turned out, there was a boat out there. By the time the Coast Guard guys got to it, it had smashed against the rocks and was taking on water pretty quickly. As I watched from shore, the Coast Guard brought in the boat’s crew.
    Two guys, a father and son. The dad was maybe fifty, the son half of that. They had been out there for hours, their motor having conked out. The flare Oz had seen had been their last one. And the dad was a diabetic. He was already starting to have problems, so we got him inside the lighthouse and gave him orange juice and fruit.
    The two of them were extremely, extremely fortunate. The fog, the rocks, and the waves made for a deadly combination. If we hadn’t chosen that night to conduct our investigation, they would probably have drowned.
    Funny how things work out.
    Anyway, neither Brian nor I won our wager. He didn’t find any ghosts, and I didn’t catch any fish. When morning came, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the mainland. Needless to say we were disappointed, but the Coast Guard guys were even more so.
    Of course, we still had to analyze the data. When we did, we found some interesting things. A tendril of fog, for instance, that made its way into the bathroom and got thicker in the vicinity of the shower. And a cluster of orb activity, though neither Grant nor I are big on those phenomena as reliable indicators of the supernatural.
    However, the real eye-opener took place in the attic. We saw Grant sitting in the chair and opening himself up to the vibes in the place. Then we saw him get up and leave the room. As far as we knew, that was the end of it.
    But as soon as he was gone, the chair slid across the floor.
    It was dark