Matthew, with a bit of a chuckle in his voice: “You’ll love this; Jessica claims that she had a dream about the old mill back in the 1800’s, and she saw the man arrive at the mill and all the events that happened right up until he was killed and taken away by soldiers. She then saw the Johnsons discussing the gold they had left over and Mrs. Johnson hid it in the house when the sheriff arrived.”
Brenda, in a very confused voice: “Back up. What man arrives at the mill and what gold?”
Jessica began to explain about what she discovered during her research on the Johnsons property, and about how the notebook mysteriously disappeared when she went to the bathroom.
Brenda was even more confused than before. She explained how she was the women who was researching the old mill and had asked Dorothy to put together the information for her. She was planning another hunt on the property herself, as she was never really satisfied with the investigation she did as a teen. The stories she heard about the old mill growing up were the reason she became interested in Parapsychology, and since the equipment she had back then was so archaic compared to the new electronic devices, she thought she would try it again. She told the group there was definitely no green notebook in the research material when she went to the archives to review the documents. She said she wanted to know a bit more of the history of the property before she went to do her new investigation. Then Brenda dropped a bombshell on the team, “My father’s last name is Waters, but my mother’s maiden name was Johnson. My family were the ones who actually built the old mill.”
The team was stunned. They didn’t know what to say, as they just looked around at one another. The eerie silence lasted about a minute, until William asked Brenda, “And in your family history, you never heard about a man who stole Union gold for the Confederate Army and was captured at the mill?”
“No,” replied Brenda, “We only heard that the wealth came from travellers heading west buying supplies. There is a town legend about a gold theft from a train, but nothing substantiated. There are no records of a train carrying gold going through here.”
Jessica: “I guess the notebook was in a box of old documents that were donated to the archives and no one ever read it? I guess Sherry-Anne never did tell the secret to anyone?”
Brenda: “I guess not. But how could something like that remain secret all these years? I would think someone would have read the notebook eventually.”
Jessica: “There was a box full of old recites and invoices that were on the floor when I was looking at the research material. As I was pulling papers out, perhaps the notebook was buried in them and somehow fell behind the box. I don’t know of anyone who would be interested in those types of documents, other than a historian.”
William: “That makes sense, but where is it now?”
Everyone just shrugged their shoulders since, no one knew.
Brenda looked at Jessica, “Have you ever had any psychic dreams or other psychic impressions before?”
Jessica responded, “Not that I’m aware of, why?”
Brenda: “Just curious. A lot of dreams people have are actually psychic, they just forget about them about two seconds after waking up. I figured if you remembered one dream, you may have remembered others. So why do you think the ghost is this traveller? You said only a light appeared on the video.”
Jessica opened up her purse and handed a paper to Brenda. Brenda looked at the paper. She was studying it for a few moments before speaking, “Where did this photo come from?”
William: “It’s a cleaned up frame from my video. Actual it’s the negative of the video frame I extracted.”
Brenda was amazed. The image in the photo was clearly a man, based on the moustache that was visible. Brenda was a bit overwhelmed by what she was just told by the group, and shown. See sat for a moment trying to absorb all the information.
Brenda decided this was a good time to go through the preliminary exercise with the group she does before trying to use any type of psychic ability. “I think we need to change gears for a moment,” said Brenda. “I promised to teach you how I prepare myself to use my psychic abilities. It is also a great way to calm down your mind if it starts to become a bit overloaded, like mine is with all this information you’ve shared with me.”
The group was excited to learn this technique. They figure that it may be able to help them become more psychic. Brenda instructed them all to sit in a relaxed position and close their eyes. She then began talking, “A lot of people believe that the energies in your body flow in and out through your head. It is believed that the body can absorb energy from any portion of it through the skin, but the greatest concentrations are in your head. The base of the head where it meets the neck is believed to be the in-put channel where most outside energy flows into your body. The right side of your head just above the temple is where you release excess or negative energy. The point in the center of your forehead directly above the center of your eyes is the greatest focal point. This is referred to as your focal center, or third eye. To ready yourself for any psychic experience, sit comfortably with your eyes closed. Feel the energy flowing into your body through the base of your head. Try his now, just visualize a large amount of energy pouring into yourself from the base of your head, and you can even place your hand near the area and you should feel either warmth or a tingling sensation. At this time, feel or visualize the excess energy leaving your body through the right side of your head. I want you to continue to visualize this energy entering your body, and feel it flowing down over your face, your torso and arms, your waist to your legs, and all the way down to your feet. Once you’ve achieved that, you are going to see in your mind the energy building up at the focal center in your forehead. Then you are going to see this energy pour out of your forehead and out into the universe. Where the energy left your body through the focal center, you will see a large screen appear over the focal point. I want you to pay attention to anything that appears on this screen. This is your first psychic impression.”
Most of the group was less than impressed. “All I see is what looks like clouds”, said Alexis. “All I see are trees”, said Jacob, “like I’m lying down looking up at the sky in a forest.”
Other members are a bit more impressed. “I saw the house at the old mill”, said William. Jessica added, “I see my mother talking to a stranger.” Matthew was probably the most surprised of the group, “I see a river with sun glistening off it.”
Brenda smiled, “Not everyone will see something at first. With practice you will see something. It may be a memory, a future event, or just something that’s been on your mind for a while. With practice you can visualize specific things. When I was trying to determine what day you would like to meet, I pictured a calendar and when it appeared it had a brighter box in the Thursday spot. This indicated to me it would be on Thursday.”
Brenda checked the time and announced to the group it was getting late and that they should call it a night and meet again on Saturday around nine in the morning at the old mill, which would give her time to review what the group has shared with her. The group agreed that that would be a great idea. As they were leaving, Brenda grabbed a book from her shelf and handed it to William. William looked at it. It was titled “Easy Astral Travel”. William thanked Brenda for the book and said he’d return it soon. Brenda told him to take his time, as she read it quite a while ago.
As the group was heading home, they were discussing their impressions of what they just went through with Miss Waters. They were intrigued, but not overly impressed, as she did not share a lot of her experiences with them. They all hoped that during the next meeting it would be different. Matthew asked William what type of book Brenda gave him, and William showed it to the group. “Well at least someone got something out of that meeting”, said Jessica in an annoyed tone.
William asked her why she was so upset. Jessica began to explain how she had all these great expectations for their meeting, because of all the things that have happened in the class room during that week. “She seems so in control in the classroom, but she seemed to be out of her element when we starting talking about the traveler,” remarked Jessica.
Alexis was a little surprised by Jessica’s comment. “Didn’t you tell us not to expect too much from our first meeting? You said that she may be a bit uncomfortable if we asked too many questions and put her on the spot.”
Matthew agreed with Alexis, “Yeah, you said to just go in and see what she has to say. We learned that she was the mysterious woman who was researching the old mill. We also learned that she investigated it herself when she was younger.”
“That’s right,” said William, “And we did present her with our evidence of a ghost at the mill and she seemed really surprised and intrigued. Perhaps since we found more than she did during her investigation, she was confused as to why it never appeared to her during her investigation.”
Jessica was now more disappointed than annoyed, “I know you guys are right. I’ve always been good at giving advice, just not following it myself. Guess that’s something I really need to work on.
Matthew then said to the group, “So what if that meeting was nonchalant?”
The group stopped walking and William looked at Matthew, What did you just say?”
Matthew repeated himself, “I said so what if the meeting was nonchalant. You can’t always expect stuff to be extraordinary.”
Everyone laughed. Matthew had a knack of using words in sentences that really didn’t suite the context they were used in. They had a meaning close to what he meant, so he’d just throw it in. You could get what he was trying to say, but you sometimes had to think about it a bit.
Sarah was staring at Jessica for a moment before she remarked, “Did anyone else notice how much Miss Waters looked like Jessica? I mean she could pass for Jessica’s big sister, or at least her cousin.”
Jessica just glared at Sarah, as Samantha said, “You’re right. I thought Miss Waters looked very familiar, but I just thought I must have seen her around the school or around town. Maybe since she looks similar to Jessica that must be why my mind felt like I already knew her.”
As the rest of the group was making comments about the similarities between the two, Jessica was getting quite angry. “She looks nothing like me. You guys should all get your eyes checked.” Then Jessica stormed off ahead of the rest of the group.
William ran to catch up to her and asked her what was really bothering her? Jessica explained that she had realized the similarity between her and Brenda from the first day, and that it bothered her. She never saw this woman before, now she can’t stop thinking about the similarities between the two of them. The fact that their personalities were a bit similar and that they both were interested in ghost hunting and the paranormal didn’t help either. William just smiled at Jessica and told her that he has heard that everyone has a double in this world, and he figures she just happened to meet the older version of hers. Jessica just smiled at William and stepped in front of him to put her arms around him. As she was hugging him she whispered in his ear, “Thank you, you’re my voice of reason when I need one.” She then kissed him on the cheek and turned and continued walking. She looked back at William and cracked a bit of a smile.
William looked at Jessica and with a bit of relief in his voice said to her, “There’s those smeyes that I love to see on your face.” Smeyes was what he called a certain look in Jessica’s eyes because even if you couldn’t see her mouth, you’d just know she was truly happy by the look in her eyes, like they were smiling.
As the kids were all heading to their homes, they decided to meet up at school a little early to try to determine what the next course of action for their investigation should be.
Back at Brenda’s, she was sitting in her study looking at the list of notes she had made, and then printout of the “traveller” that Jessica gave her, still a little stunned with the quality of the photo, and wondering how this could have been faked, especially by a teenager with freeware software he downloaded off the internet. Brenda pulled out her lap top and opened a photo of her study. She was sure she’d be able to replicate the photo on her own. After all, if a teenager can do it, surely a well educated adult would be able to do it. She had multiple licensed photo editing software on her lap top from the courses she took in college. One of the specific tests in her parapsychology course was to create a ‘fake’ ghost photo, and to try to convince others in the college that it was real. Then the class was to try to determine how it was done. She received a ninety eight percent on the test, so she figured she should have no problem creating something similar.
She tried blurring an object and pasting it into the photo, she tried taking a ‘ghost’ photo off the internet and putting it into her photo after making the edges less defined. She tried everything she could think of without being able to duplicate the negative image she was given. She tried a few other different things, even searching the internet for ways to edit or fake a photo. She had no luck at all. She had no problem creating ghost images, but not one with a negative view that didn’t show lines of the editing. After a while, she decided to give up and accepted the photo could actually be authentic. She had never seen a ghost photo that appeared clear in a negative, and began to wonder if any other photo’s she had taken in the past would have been able to produce an image if she was to view it as a negative?
She put the notes and photo into a drawer, and went back to her lap top to finishing working on her class assignment she was creating for the next day.