Episode Thirteen, page 4
You might think it’s because the dashcam is capturing all this, but it’s real. You know how kids love to explore? Matt never outgrew it. His childlike excitement is infectious enough to get people to follow him into the dark, enough to get Vogan and Hirsh to pay him to do it.
His enthusiasm makes a striking effect on his boyish face, as his eyes are deep and dark, and his mouth purses under prominent cheekbones in this tight little smile. Like he’s guarding the world’s biggest secret and is dying to share it with you and you alone when the time is right. It’s actually kind of adorable.
He’s got that look right now as he tells us all the nasty things a negative spirit might try to do with us, and how we’ll need to be careful because safety first.
The traditional paranormal investigator look is “big game hunter,” black T-shirt under a hunting vest bulging with batteries and gear. Back in our YouTube and Patreon crowdfunding days, the T-shirts all had the RIP logo on them, which we displayed like a military patch. Like a police badge giving us special authority.
The complete look said: This is not Ghostbusters cosplay. I come from a very serious profession, scientific but hands-on and dangerous.
The investigator look has since evolved, one Matt adopted after we got the Pulse TV deal. Now it’s a cross between aging rock star and The Matrix. The old look branded the profession. The new look is supposed to brand us individually.
It says: I go where others fear to tread. There are people out there who need my help, which only I can give. It says: badass.
Right now, Matt sports his trademark leather jacket. Jessica wears one too. As a point of old-school pride, Kevin still wears the old FTB windbreaker, topping it off with a jet-black FTB ballcap. Jake usually has on a black T-shirt and battered old ballcap regardless of the weather.
Me, I break the mold by wearing what I’ve always worn, which is my trademark Velma from Scooby-Doo look. Ties or turtlenecks. A hat and a comfy gray raincoat, as I’m prone to getting cold, especially on a damp, gray autumn day like today. Basically, I’m a waif.
Kevin is now retelling a story from his days as a Philly cop, the one where he ran into a demonic spirit when responding to a domestic violence call. We’ve heard this one before, many times. I think Kevin’s a little full of it and has some unresolved issues.
The van leaves the highway and is suddenly in another world, endless brooding acres of maple, oak, and pine. We’re in rural Virginia now. I tune out Kevin’s stories while Matt smiles and asks tons of questions, instantly absorbing every bit of knowledge and adding it to his toolkit.
My hubby’s enthusiasm for the paranormal dragged me into all this. None of us would be here without him. I was a physics grad student at Virginia Tech when we started dating. There, I studied the mysteries of the universe, quarks and dark energy and parallel dimensions and the God particle. I dreamed of being the girl who produced a defensible Theory of Everything.
Yet it all seemed so mundane, so gratingly rational compared to what Matt was into. Ghost hunting. Searching for evidence of the paranormal. A dangerous and exciting world, and a challenge addictive from the words What if?
You see, I’d grown up in a very logical world, the only daughter of two loving middle-class intellectuals who raised me to think critically. We’d celebrate Christmas, but when I asked if there was a Santa Claus, the folks said, “Some people believe there’s a Santa, some people don’t. What do you believe?”
The same went with the Easter bunny, tooth fairy, and God. They exposed me to spirituality and various religions but didn’t raise me in one, trusting I’d choose for myself when I was old enough to be able to choose. Anything else, they saw as brainwashing.
In short, I’m a born skeptic, but I was also raised as one.
This nature and nurture worked out well for me, but I’ve always been a little drawn to passion and its delusions. The mad scientist who builds a monster in his lab is my idea of bad-boy hot. My way of rebelling, I guess. Maybe it’s also because even though I don’t believe, I sometimes wish there was real evidence so I could.
Sometimes, I want to believe I can believe.
At the time we started dating, Matt was with an amateur group called Ralston Investigates the Paranormal, or RIP. After a few proper dates, he invited me out on an investigation, and the team fanned out and disappeared with their motion sensors, electromagnetic field detectors, and spirit boxes and tape recorders for electronic voice phenomena.
I found the whole thing so weird it was intoxicating. My future hubby and I ended up doing it in a room where, legend has it, a jilted prom queen once slit her wrists and sometimes appears to pace in her pretty dress.
After, Matt told me what happened to him when he was a kid, his friendship with a girl named Tammy who turned out to be a ghost. I doubted his perception though not his sincerity. I believe he believes it and that he found it meaningful. If something comes from a point of total belief, it’s not exactly a hoax.
Real or not, the story touched me, and it certainly explained his passion to search for ghosts. I think that part of him never stopped being a kid. It’s more than just a love for the dead. It’s a love for truth, coupled with a belief that anything is possible. Most of all, he wants to know.
That, we’ve always had in common.
Only I approach it differently, needing objective over subjective evidence when it comes to accepting objective truths.
After our first investigation, I still enjoyed hearing his stories, but I stopped going out ghost hunting myself. When he asked why, I gave him the truth: It was all bull cookies. When someone makes a claim, they assume the burden of proof, and the proof itself must be trustworthy.
The investigations used equipment that produced margins of error you could drive a ghost story through. Houses make noises all the time. Every single odd thing the investigators saw or feeling they had, they interpreted as evidence of a haunting. The EMF meters picked up “ghosts” from cell phones and wiring. The SLS camera found random ghosts in the backgrounds, displayed as colorful stick figures. Digital camera flashes reflected from dust and bugs and pollen and raindrops in the air were called “ghost orbs” and taken as definitive evidence.
It was fun, not science. Make-believe. People delude themselves all the time, and this one was relatively harmless, but come on. If Matt wanted to do it for real, he had to get real about doing it.
In other words, I came across like the world’s biggest party pooper, but Matt went wild for it. This is exactly what I needed to hear, he said. Yes, let’s do it.
By the time I graduated, we were already married, and Matt earned a fair salary at an advertising agency. He asked me to join him in producing a YouTube show in which paranormal investigations were conducted with strict adherence to the scientific method, and I could present my findings.
It sounded like good fun, and it was, at least for a while. My idea of slumming with the weird kids. The next thing I knew, our popular YouTube show was picked up by Pulse and I was debunking hauntings on TV.
Which is not good for me. I want to be a real scientist, not play one on a screen. Once a week, I have the job of disproving something that can’t really be disproven. It’s like setting up cameras and recorders and disproving God. In a sense, I’m actually hurting science, since every time an anomaly shows up on our equipment that I can’t explain, it’s automatically assumed to be a paranormal entity. Anomalies don’t mean ghosts. They’re simply things I can’t explain.
To see what kind of discussion we were generating, I once made the mistake of reading the comments on one of our YouTube videos. A few applauded my scientific approach and how the show had enough integrity to shoot down claims of hauntings. Far more speculated on what I must be like in bed.
I thought I’d be further along in life by now. Starting something big with my PhD. I’m about to turn thirty-two, and despite all my yearnings, I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything yet.
In short, I’ve gone this far with Fade to Black, but I think I’ve hit a wall. I was never interested in being an entertainer. I was always interested in science, and paranormal investigation offered a distracting challenge. I’ve taken it as far as I can, though. I came into this with a burning desire to know, but after endless experimentation, I feel like I know enough.
Ghosts don’t exist, period. It’s more make-believe.
I say this with all love and respect to my husband and his childhood memories.
But no, ghosts aren’t real.
Once I’m gone, Fade to Black can achieve its full potential. I helped Matt realize his dream, but now I think I’m holding it back, while I know for damn sure that it’s become a ball and chain on my own aspirations. My graceful departure would be best for all concerned. At some point, playing it straight is going to wear out its welcome, and viewers will get bored. The producers will set tougher standards on what’s “producible” as an episode. Give up the ghosts or at least some juicy interpersonal drama, they’ll hint, or fade to oblivion. I’m just not cut out for the implicit brutality of the reality TV business and what’s expected of me.
So, Dear Diary. The big question is: How do I tell Matt?
DAY ONE
FADE TO BLACK
PROD: Ep. 13, “Paranormal Research Foundation”
DIRECTOR: Matt Kirklin
CAMERA: Jake Wolfson
Loblolly pines crowd the lens, a thick forest shrouded in shadow. The camera jerks to settle on several people standing in front of the chipped columns of a stately old mansion partly wrapped in kudzu. At one time, the big house was a brilliant white, but the paint is peeling, and time and nature have reduced it to a dull gray.
Matt: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Kevin: Give me a sec, Claire, this lav mic—
Claire: Right there works—feels fine now. Windy out here today, though.
Kevin: Don’t worry about it. It’s coming from behind you, and I put a—
Matt: She sells seashells down by the seashore.
Kevin: deadcat on the boom shotgun—
Matt: She sells seashells—
Kevin: So we should be fine.
Jessica (walks on screen long enough to hold up her clapboard): Mark!
Claire: Testing.
Matt: Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
Kevin (off-camera now): You’re both good for sound.
Claire: You about done warming up the voice box, darling?
Matt: Just a second. Yes! Okay. I got this.
Jake (behind the camera): We’re rolling.
Matt (with as much gravitas as he can muster): Welcome to another episode of Fade to Black, where we put paranormal claims to their toughest test. I’m Matt Kirklin, lead investigator.
Claire (smiling): And I’m Claire Kirklin, co-lead investigator.
Matt sweeps his arm to present Foundation House’s warped veranda.
Matt: Behind me, on this gray fall day, you see what looks like an old mansion you’d find in a scary movie. For me, it’s the Holy Grail. This is the home of the Paranormal Research Foundation, whose scientists mysteriously vanished in 1972.
Claire: Locals have reported an apparition, flashing lights, and cold temperatures around the site. But that’s not what caught our eye.
Matt: That’s right. Unexplained phenomena are only part of the history of this place. Reports about the Foundation are hard to credit. Their experiments defied all standards of decency and possibly broke laws. Human experiments.
Claire: Most towns we visit, the people living there advertise spooky legends to draw tourists. But not here. As far as we know, the house has never been investigated. We expect to find very little contamination at the site.
Matt: Very little. In fact, the house has not been occupied at all since the disappearances. Once we get inside, we expect almost everything to be just as the Foundation left it. I’ve always wanted to explore this one, not only for its paranormal activity, but its unsolved mystery.
Claire: Matt talked about this house on our first date.
Matt laughs at this bit of ad-lib, and once he starts, he can’t stop. Claire joins him.
Matt: She’s right. I did. Whew! Okay, let’s pick it up from here.
Jake: Anytime you’re ready.
Matt (serious again): Is the house haunted? And just as important, what happened to the paranormal researchers who worked here? Come with us as our investigative team applies leading-edge ghost hunting equipment to one of the most exciting and mysterious sites we’ve ever explored. Stay tuned as we Fade to Black.
Claire: And cut.
Matt (breaks into a goofy, self-conscious grin): How was that?
Jake: Awesome. Good job.
Claire: I think it was good.
Matt: The human experiment part didn’t sound a bit hokey?
Claire: Actually, I was wondering if I pivoted away from it too fast.
Matt: How about we take that part again?
Claire (shoots him a sly smile): Anything for… ratings.
Matt laughs and wraps his wife in a hug.
Matt: I love you, honey.
Claire: I love seeing you so giddy about this one. You’re acting like a little kid on Christmas morning. Like you did on our first date.
Matt: This is going to be the episode that changes everything.
FADE TO BLACK
PROD: Ep. 13, “Paranormal Research Foundation”
FIELD NOTES, Matt Kirklin
3:30 p.m.
Matt and Claire pull up to Foundation House, get out of the van, and greet Jim Birdwell, who works for Gravois Holdings Ltd., the property owner. GOOD
3:33 p.m.
Matt tells Birdwell the team is here to help, but Birdwell says he doesn’t need it. The owners agreed to allow FTB on-site as the property’s been sold. The house will be torn down! A luxury wilderness hotel is going up! USABLE?
3:48 p.m.
Birdwell shows off the main floor. House is as the Foundation left it, but plenty of graffiti, broken glass, used condoms, and such, mostly in the family room, left by partying kids. Library, dining room (Base Camp), kitchen, main bedroom converted to offices. RESEARCH OFFICES GOOD, REVIEW
4:05 p.m.
Walk up the grand staircase, where partying kids said they heard heavy footsteps, big painting of Lord Shiva at the top. BEAUTIFUL VISUALS, GOOD
4:06 p.m.
Birdwell gives a tour of the second floor, mostly bedrooms and storage. NOT MUCH HERE
4:13 p.m.
Tour of the bedroom where apparition was sighted (Apparition Room). Jessica backs into Jake, who says “boo” and makes her jump about a mile. FUNNY, GOOD
4:23 p.m.
Birdwell shows us the basement. Wow! Plenty of old equipment and research spaces. Monkey cages! The uncovered well is great, but can’t see much, too dark. SUPER CREEPY, GOOD
4:32 p.m.
Find a room with a standing mirror in it but no machines. Our tracks unsettle the dust on the floor, and Jessica notices a sinister-looking symbol painted on it. GREAT DISCOVERY, GOOD
Matt Kirklin’s Journal
This is it, gang.
We’re on our own for the night. Kids locked in a candy store.
Now we just have to find where the candy is hiding.
I gotta say, this place is pretty wild.
The narrow dirt track leading up to Foundation House is just incredible. Basically, you’re driving through a dense forest, branches whacking the windshield and everything. Claire and I drove real slow, rocking on the ruts so hard at times I thought our heads would bonk together.
Then the house, chipped and peeling and generally worse for wear, suddenly appeared out of the trees like a lost city half buried in kudzu.
Even Claire’s eyes popped wide at the sight, and she’s pretty hard to impress. When you watch the episode, the video speaks for itself, but it’s not quite like being here. This place gives you that melancholy, deep feeling only ruins can.
The crew had gotten here ahead of us to set up on the veranda, Jake on camera, Kevin on audio, and Jessica prepping Jim Birdwell, who works for the property owner and would give us a tour and the keys to the place.
A lot of people naturally get nervous with a camera lens aimed at their face from only three feet away, but Birdwell handled it like a pro. The only problem is he didn’t have much to say aside from a basic tour. As a local, he’d heard the stories about the house, but he’d never seen anything strange himself.
Which is fine, though we’re always hoping for gold. A story about how he saw or felt something himself. Angry religious railing against messing with spirits. A dire movie-style warning to stay away.
No such luck. Instead, he went on a rant about teenagers coming out here to “booze and fornicate.” No matter how well he locked up the place, they always found a way inside to party hardy.
It all didn’t bode well for what we’d find inside, but my fears proved unfounded. The inside is as amazing as the outside.
The first impression is actually a bit of a shock. You know you’re instantly being transported back in time; you’re just not sure to which decade.
The architecture is grand, with classical elements, and the paneling and wallpaper are all beautifully vintage, if peeling and scarred by graffiti. The furniture, however, is pure early seventies, with couches, throw rugs, and polypropylene chairs saturated in once-vibrant pea green, yellow, pink, and peach colors or flower patterns. The interior design theme is jarring, upstart flower power seeming to smirk while it flips the bird at the stodgy, unhip, square architecture.
I told Birdwell how grateful we were that Gravois gave us exclusive access to Foundation House. Only then did I find out our lucky break was because the company sold the land, and the new owners are gonna tear the house down, so why shouldn’t they grab some extra cash on the way out, since we offered some?
You heard me right. They’re gonna tear it down! For a wilderness hotel!
