Halloween

It's been a busy time for me. And with Halloween tomorrow, I expect things to pick up even more.

Let me backup a bit.

I've sort of turned into the Ghost Whisperer, but with cooler hair. Not exactly like Jennifer Love Hewitt's character, of course. I haven't been able to see every ghost wandering the countryside. But in certain situations, I seem to be sensitive to especially strong spirits.

And like the Disney ride, one of them followed me home.

I have no idea who he is, but he's been making things really annoying for me. Rooms get cold. Crap moves around. Nothing dangerous, but like I said, annoying. One morning I woke up and found all my panties tied together in knots. Good thing I rarely use them, ha ha.

It also upsets the spirits at sites we investigate. Although it makes them easier to find, it's harder to communicate with them. The Prof is torn about keeping me while the spirit is still clinging to me. On the one hand, my sensitivity to spooks is helpful. On the other, whatever is attached to me drives the normal ghosts into a frenzy.

I've started to get used to him, whoever he is. I've even begun to call him "Casper." Makes me feel better thinking of him that way, as opposed to something spookier. But on the last investigation we were on, I began to feel that he really wasn't a "Casper."

We were in a home that had once been a civil war hospital. I'm sure the place was filled with restless energy, but we were investigating one in particular. A doctor who had gone crazy from all the war atrocities he had witnessed, and started putting patients "out of their misery" prematurely. He was stopped by a Confederate Captain who parted his hair with a pistol shot. Supposedly the ghost of the doctor was causing problems.

Half the night had passed, and we didn't see any sign of any activity other than an enormous cat that scared Raj half to death. I was taking some downtime, napping on a sofa. I began to wake slowly to the feeling of something moving across my thigh. I was wearing sort of a goth schoolgirl outfit, so my legs were bare, and it felt just like a hand softly moving across my skin. At first I thought I was having a dirty dream, you know how that goes. But the feeling moved up my thigh and around the curve of my butt, under my skirt.

"That better not be you, Raj," I said, and reached back to break a finger.

"You talking to me," shouted Raj from the other room.

Nothing was touching me. I opened my eyes and stared as the feeling squeezed my butt, and flipped my skirt up, exposing my panties (yes, sometimes I do wear them). I started to scream, then choked it back and paid attention, tried to see the spirit. Part of me knew it wasn't going to be the good doctor.

It wasn't. It was like a shadow filmed by a lousy cameraman. The shape flickered and jumped around, but he was there. Two red holes were his eyes, and they were looking right at me as his hand stroked me.

"Halloween," he said in a barely audible voice.

I kicked at the shadow, and just like that it was gone.

We didn't find the doctor. But I saw Casper. And he was looking forward to Halloween.

Quick Update

Sorry I haven't posted recently. Classes started, and I've been busy selling my organs to pay for this semester's text books. Gotta love a $90 book that you only use three time in your life, then can sell back for $3. In my next life I think I'll write college textbooks for a living.

Hitch hiking Ghost?

I slept in Mia's room that night. The Professor cracked open his laptop (he carries that everywhere, it seems) and spent the rest of the evening in our living room doing research.



By morning I had gotten only a few hours of sleep, and the Prof looked like he didn't get any. But at least no more ghosts came calling. I made a pot of coffee and set a cup in front of him, then set about making breakfast. I was shooting for omlettes, but ending up making scrambled eggs and salsa.

I sat down across from the professor, and he managed not to become overwhelmed by my morning lovliness. I was wearing an almost too small Batman tee shirt and a pair of sweats that were entirely too big. My hair looked like I had slept in a waffle machine, and the bags under my eyes had bags.

"So is this like the ride at Disney World?" I asked.

"What, 'it's a small world'?" asked the Prof.

"No, dummy. The Haunted Mansion. 'Beware of hitch hiking ghosts. They may just follow you home.'"

"Ah," he said, and closed his laptop. "well, that may be closer than you think."

The professor went on to explain that, although it was rare, sometimes a spirit found a human energy field that it found more interesting than whatever it was it usually did. It could change the location of a haunting. Or, as it seemed in this case, pull something from one location to another.

It might not last for long, but then again it might last as long as I lived. It might be tied to an area I spent a lot of time in, or it may be tied to me.

We'd know soon enough.

Party Ghost 2

Ok, where were we..?

Everyone was in my room, I was wrapped around HArry Potter, and the room temperature had dropped cold enough for us to see our breath.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked the Prof.

"I'm not sure," he said, slowly looking around the room as I adjusted my top to cover my boobs a bit better. I was still nippling something horrible, but at least I was now covered. "Some cultures believe that a spirit can attach itself to someone with a stronger energy field than the one to which they had previously been attached, but I've never seen it."

"No way could she be more attarctive to the dead dad than his own daughter," said Raj. "No offense, Liz."

"None taken," I muttered.

Raj's girlfriend stuck her head in the room and looked confused. "What are we doing?" she asked.

And then I screamed.

Although everyone jumped about a foot, and Raj's girlfriend almost pissed her pants (if she ever wore any), it wasn't them. It was a shadow I saw out of the corner of my eye. It darted across the room in a way that shadows really shouldn't. And when it crossed into my direct line of site, it looked at me. Then it was gone.

The room began to warm up immediately.

"It wasn't the waiting father ghost," I said, trying to be heard over the pounding of my heart. "But I don't know what it was."

Party Ghosts

Image via Wikipedia

It was not your traditional Saturday night. It started normally enough, with the team and a few other folks from around campus meeting over at our apartment for some merrymaking. Doug's friend (*ahem*) Harry Potter was there, as well as Raj's big boobed dancer. Even the Professor was there, at least for a little bit. We had all the makings of a casual party. Wine, pot, and a collection of movies and music that would be able to entertain anyone not involved in something more exciting.

Harry and I were well into exchanging spit when I started to notice it was getting cold. "Someone turn down the AC," I muttered.

I noticed I could see my breath.

"That's not the AC," said Harry.

"Professor!" I shouted, and within an impressively shorttime the Professor, Mia, and Raj burst in to my room.

"What the hell?" said Mia? They all noticed how cold the room was.

"It's like at the haunting last week," I said.

The Professor pointed to my window. It had frosted over...

Strange Dreams

I've been having strange dreams lately. I see the music box ghost and the waiting father ghost. They're just hanging around the apartment. Watching TV, getting high. Weird.

Feedback

Thanks for everyone who emailed me about my douchebag ex. Some people felt I should have pressed charges. I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe I was too emotionally wrecked at the time. Maybe I wasn't sure if I'd be believed. I had dated him, after all. It could be his word against mine. Too much hassle.

Besides, I thought maybe shooting him would be less paperwork...

Return of the Douche Bag

Ok, this one isn't paranormal, but I thought it was the sort of thing I should share. It's a little disturbing, in a "crazy ex-boyfriend abuses our star" kind of way, so be warned. But I survived, so no crazy plot twists coming, a la The Sixth Sense.

A year and some change back I started dating a gorgeous guy named Zack. He was an English major (that should have tipped me off) in his sixth year as an undergrad (again, tip off). He wasn't terribly good in bed, about low average, but he managed to do ok because he was so friggin beautiful. I thought it was only women who could get by as a lame lay if they were beautiful, but I guess I proved myself wrong.

Anyway, Zack had some issues. I ignored them at first, for the obvious reasons. But after a while the dominating and bossy personality got old, his lack of depth got old, and I wanted to move on.

One of Zack's issues was fear of abandonment. Another was a borderline personality disorder. The two combined made the breakup extremely nasty. He didn't take rejection well, and we had a screaming match in the middle of the student commons. About a dozen students broke it up, and Zack vanished into the crowd.

Until two nights later.

I didn't even know he had a key to my apartment. But right as I closed the front door, there he was, standing in the foyer less than a foot away from me. He punched me twice, and I was out like a light.

I woke up gradually, in my bedroom, with Zack on top of me, grunting like a drunken dog. The side of my face hurt, and my left eye was swollen shut. I was scared to death, but I pretended to still be out, and he was otherwise occupied so he didn't notice. I let my hand bounce like a rag, but guided it closer to the nightstand where my sketchpad was. When I was pretty sure he was getting close to fire off his load, I wrapped my hand around the pencil I had there, and jammed it with all my strength into his shoulder.

He screamed like a girl. It shook him enough that I was able to get my legs free enough to put him in a scissor hold that I learned from an earlier, much more productive relationship. I squeezed my thighs around his neck as hard as I could, then yanked him over onto his shoulder. He landed on the pencil, driving it in further and snapping it off. He let out a bellow like a wounded sea lion. He managed to get one hand between my legs and was working his way out, so I flipped him off and rolled the opposite way, towards the night stand on the other side of the bed.

As far as I know, there's only one weapon in the apartment that was built as a weapon. It's a collector's item my father gave me when I was entering college. It's a black powder pistol; an 1860 Army revolver, .44 caliber, nickle and gold etched. It's very nice looking, and my daddy taught me to keep it that way, and to keep it loaded. It's totally unregistered, and probably very illegal. I never really checked.

I keep it in that night stand drawer.

I pulled it out and aimed it at Zack, in a kneeling aim. I'm a pretty bad shot, and I've only fired it a few times. I can't hit the side of a barn from inside the barn. But Zack didn't know that. And that gun is big. Google a black powder pistol and you'll see. It's big in Clint Eastwood's hands. In mind it was ginormous.

"Stop," I said to Zack. He looked at me like I was crazy.

"I'll fucking kill you!" he roared.

I fired. It was like a grenade going off in a submarine. I thought it was loud outside, inside it was just plain nuts. I had tried to aim at his foot. The bullet whizzed past his right ear, taking off about an inch of it. He grabbed his bleeding ear, while trying to also hold his bleeding shoulder. With his pants around his ankles.

"You cunt!"

"Zack," I said, my voice rising. "If I see you again I'll kill you. If you come here, I'll shoot you. If I see you on the street, I'll run you down with my car. If I see you in a bar, I'll bribe the bouncer to crack your spine. I'm serious. You better vanish from my life. As of now."

I gestured with the gun. Then I shouted, "I fucking said NOW!"

Zack, crazy as he was, got the message. He started penguin walking backwards, then when I pulled the hammer back again, he hightailed it out of the apartment.

When Mia got home from work, she found me in the kitchen crying. I think I threw up a couple times, too. She put some ice on my face, brought out some chocolate ice cream we save for relationship problems, poured us both some Bacardi and coke, and we watched a Phineas and Ferb marathon until I started to psycho analyze Candace on the show. Mia's the best.

I didn't see Zack for a year.

I briefly saw him yesterday, at a bookstore. He looked up, locked eyes with me, and ran from the store like his hair was on fire. Made me feel good.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 4

To wrap up, all we caught on the camcorder was a phone falling out of its cradle, and the Prof blowing fog (although the fog seems to part around something). The EMF spike was certainly noteworthy, as well as the sudden and marked drop in temperature.

What I think was the most interesting were the vocals we recorded and enhanced. Most of it was indistinguisable whispering sounds. Really hard to tell for sure what Bill was saying. But when he pointed and got angry, the volume and clarity increased. He sounded like he was saying, "Get out of here! Go! Get out of here!"

Mia wondered if that was meant for us. Were we invading his territory and his grief? I don't think that's it, though. When he looked at us, he didn't seem upset. It was when he looked away that he got angry. Something we weren't paying attention to, or couldn't pay attention to, was more of a threat than we were.

Something else was in the room with us.

If anyone has any guesses or ideas, feel free to share them.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 3

It was cold as balls in the upstairs room. Doug was right, the windows had frosted over. Since it was the middle of August, this was pretty odd. But sometimes the appearance of a spirit is a process that draws a lot of energy, and by doing that it drops the ambient temperature. I'd never seen one drop a room this much, though. And the EMF was through the roof.

Something was in the middle of the room.

It wasn't showing up on the camcorder, not exactly. But when we swept the room with the infrared thermometer, there was a pocket in the middle of the room that was colder than the rest of the room. The Professor leaned in close and blew softly on the pocket, and the fog of his breath seemed to seperate in the middle, forming a vague outline.

"Holy fuck," whispered Raj. The Professor held a finger to his lips, shushing him.

"Is that you, Bill?" he asked.

Something prickled across the back of my scalp. Like I had almost heard something.

Suddenly, I was scared to death. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I was stomach-churning afraid. I felt like something utterly horrible was about to happen, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

"Guys, is anyone else scared shitless right now?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

"A little amazed, but not really scared," said Raj.

"I'm terrified," I said.

The Professor looked at me. "Are you afraid of the ghost?"

"I'm not sure. I don't think that's it."

"Does it feel like you're about to find out something really bad, like a loved one has died?" he asked.

Then I got it. "Yeah. Is it the ghost projecting?"

The Professor said he thought it might be. So I tried to calm myself down. It wasn't a real emotion, at least not MY real emotion. It was something someone else felt years ago coming back up, like a bad piece of fish. A father worrying himself sick over what he would find out about his daughter. I felt so bad for the man, the ghost, whatever. To go through that, it was horrible. A parent should never have to lose their child.

Then, like someone flicked a switch, I could see him. In the middle of the room, like a smoky shape that kept trying to move in and out of focus. Bill. He was wringing his hands and shaking his head. He was distraught.

Then he turned and looked at me. His mouth moved, and although I didn't hear anything, my skin prickled again.

"I can see him. He's trying to say something," I said.

Then his head snapped back straight ahead. He pointed at something I couldn't see, and his mouth moved again. This time, angrily. He was shouting something and pointing. I couldn't see anything else, but whatever it was had Bill's panties all in a bunch.

Then he was gone.

"EMF dropping," said Mia.

"Temperature coming back up," said Doug. "Looks like it's over."

"Yeah, but just what the hell IS it that's over?" asked Raj.

I knew we had witnessed a true haunting. I don't know what the data will say, but I knew what I knew.

But it also seemed to be something more.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 2

It was around 11:30 when we got our first bite, as it were. The EMF detectors started spiking in both rooms. That didn't necessarrily mean anything, as there were power lines running past the house, and the EMF had been a little high the whole time. But sometimes a spike can represent an increased spiritual presence, or a doorway opening between here and there.

At exactly 10:33 pm, the time when the father had received his call many years ago, the phone receiver on the kitchen wall fell off the hook. I'd almost say "jumped" off, but when it did I definately jumped. The professor look at me and raised an eyebrow in that Mr. Spock way.

"Are you here, Bill?" asked the Prof. I just kept my eyes open. "We know you must be going through a bad time right now. WOuld you like to talk about it?"

Nothing. The phone stayed on the floor spinning gently where it fell. It rotated once or twice from the inertia of the fall, and then stayed still.

"We're sorry about your daughter, Bill," the Professor said, again trying to establish communication. To me he whispered, "It might just be a residual."

"I'm sure your daughter misses you," I said in a shaky voice. "If you move on, I'm sure you can join her."

Nothing.

Then Doug burst into the kitchen, out of breath. "You guys should come upstairs. Something big is going on."

"How big?" asked the Prof.

"The windows just frosted over," said Doug. The Prof and I exchanged looks, then ran upstairs.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 1

There were two main locations in the house where the waiting father ghost (we decided not to share any real names at this time. The family of the deceased have had enough of a spotlight for all the wrong reasons). One location is the murdered girl's bedroom, which is now an office used by the husband living in the house now. The other location is the kitchen, where the father was when he received the last phone call of his life.

We set up cameras in both rooms, as well as digital recorders and EMF detectors. The professor and I took the kitchen, and Mia and Raj took the upstairs room. Doug was the runner, who would go between us if we needed anything.

The little girl (Angie) had been half way through her first year of kindergarden. She had been adorable, and in her school photo she was all smiles and pony tails. In those days a parent was required to be waiting at the bus stop, and the girl's house was only a few blocks away, so she always hopped off the bus, waved to the bus driver, and walked the short distance home.

The last time she waved to the bus driver, a car had been parked at the corner. A car no one gave a second glance. But, according to the police report, the driver of that car was somehow able to intercept the little girl, and no one who loved her ever saw her alive again.

The kidnapper was never found. Angela was. Her horribly mutilated body was found tied to a tree in a wooded area only a few miles from her home. Police called her family as soon as they had identified the body. Angie's mother was asleep, having been taking tranquilzers for the last few days. Angie's father, who had been frantically doing everything he could to find his daughter, answered the phone. His heart wasn't up to the news, and it felled him right there in the kitchen.

The mother moved away eventually to try and forget.

It seems the father still hasn't forgotten.

New Gig - The Waiting Father Ghost

We've got a new one. We've been invited to take a look at a home that has a spirit in need of help. At least that's how we look at it. The ghost is the father of a young girl who died under difficult circumstances, and seems to be having trouble moving on. The home's current owners aren't bothered by the ghost, or whatever it turns out to be, but wondered if we could produce any evidence of the haunting. They probably want to use it as a second income. You know, "See the real ghost house for $5" or something like that. You'd be surprised how many people get greedy over the dead (or maybe you wouldn't).

According to our research, the young girl was abducted from her bus stop. The father was distraught, as would be expected. When they notified him that they had found her body, he had a massive heart attack and died before help could arrive. Supposedly he still waits for his daughter to come home.

Bleck

I'm sick as a dog with some horrible tummy bug. Since late Saturday I've been in the bathroom doing things that are so unladylike that I'm even grossing myself out. With luck, I'll either be better by tomorrow, or dead.

Just so no one gets bored, I'll throw in a little something I read about as an undergrad that is often confused with a ghostly visit (or, much farther back, a visit from a demon like a Succubus. Although a Succubus visit was also often explained away by wet dreams). It's a type of sleep paralysis that feels like someone is on top of you, holding you down. I had this happen to me once when I was in high school, and let me tell you, it scared the shit out of me. It really felt like

someone was on top of me.

It usually happens when you're just coming out of sleep, and it's your body's muscles "turned off". As they turn back on, it feels like someone getting off of you. It's also called Hag Phenomenon. About.com has a good description:

So what causes it? Dr. Max Hirshkowitz, director of the Sleep Disorders Center
at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston, says that sleep
paralysis occurs when the brain is in the transition state between deep,
dreaming sleep (known as REM sleep for its rapid eye movement) and waking up.
During REM dreaming sleep, the brain has turned off most of the body's muscle
function so we cannot act out our dreams - we are temporarily
paralyzed.

"Sometimes your brain doesn't fully switch off those
dreams - or the paralysis - when you wake up," Hirshkowitz told ABC News. "That
would explain the 'frozen' feeling and hallucinations associated with sleep
paralysis." According to his research, the effect only really lasts from a few
seconds to as long as a minute, but in this half-dream half-awake state, to the
victim it can seem much longer.

Friday

Going to try not to think about ghosts tonight. Mia and I are going clubbin'!

Ok, On A Light Note...

Just a little ha-ha.

Residuals

The professor gave me some reading material on residual energies. Sometimes, when an event or an emotion is so powerful, it leaves a shadow of itself behind. This residual will usually repeat itself at a certain time and seem more or less unaware of anyone or anything around it. It's like watching a movie.

Except for one thing, the music box ghost was a textbook residual haunting. It goes off at a little after two in the morning, the same time the cousin died from her cancer. I don't know if she ever actually played the music box, or if it was something she strongly craved as she lay dying. The old lady who owns the house told us that she frequently played it for her cousin, who was way too sick to get out of bed. The prefessor says a lot of hauntings are probably just residuals. Especially in older buildings, which often are made from iron, quartz, and slate, which are supposedly good conductors of energy.

The one thing that was strange about the music box ghost, is the way I saw it while half asleep, assuming I really did. The woman seemed to smile at me. That shows interaction.

The Professor thinks I just dreamed her. Maybe I did. But then again, maybe real ghosts don't show up on film. Maybe they can only be seen when you're in some kind of altered state. That would certainly explain why there are so few ghost recordings, and so many freaking fakes. I'll have to do some research on that.

The Music Box Ghost Wrap-up

From a scientific perspective, we didn't get anything useful. No EMF changes, nothing on the camera or infrared, other than us bounding around like bulls in a china shop. We do have a recording of the music box playing, but that on its own doesn't really say much. It could have a sensitive trigger, or any of several other possible explanations. No one else saw any ghostly woman, or dreamed it, as the case may be.

So is the house haunted? The Team couldn't say "yes," as we had nothing empirical to base that sort of statement. Did it freak us out? Hell yeah it did.

We debriefed the old lady, and she answered our vagueness with another shrug. "I guess if she needed something from us, she would have said so," she said.

The Professor says it may not be a ghost, per se (he talks like that a lot). It could just be some sort of remnant, or residual energy. Like the smell of chocolate after you've finished eating cookies. Something left in passing through. He told me not to worry too much about my dream. People are very suggestible, and we were in a tense situation. But to let him know if it happens again.

But it certainly felt like something happened. There's nothing to base that on other than a purely irrational feeling, but it's there all the same.

We'll see how the next one goes.

FUBAR

As scientific endeavors go, this one was a bust. But I think we found us a ghost.

Let me back up a bit.

After we set up the camera and the mics and stuff, we had a twenty minute debate on whether or not we should wind up the music box, so it would be easier to play, wind it down so playing would be more impressive, or leave it the hell alone. We asked the old lady what she normally did, and she shrugged. "If I listen to it I wind it up," she said. So we gave it a couple winds, listened to make sure it worked, and put it back on the table.

We took shifts watching the box. I had the first shift, which was pretty uneventful, other than Doug having some mighty nasty gas which could scare even a dead lady away. A little after midnight Raj and Mia were on deck. Doug went upstairs to check his email, and I streatched out on the sofa. I didn't think I was sleepy yet, so I just watched Raj and Mia do their thing (you know, trying to coax the ghost out, talking reassuringly, and trying not to giggle). A little after 1am I dozed off.

And then it got a little freaky.

I was just sleeping lightly, sort of the way when you have time between classes but not enough to call it a day. I wouldn't have thought I was in REM sleep yet, but I dreamed. I dreamed I saw a twisted old woman in a hospital gown stand up in the middle of the room. She smiled at me and went over to the music box. She sort of glided, as her legs were too bent to walk. When she opened the music box she transformed into a young, healthy looking woman.

I woke up to music.

Then a crash as Raj knocked the camera over and cursed. The music box was playing something I'd heard before, I think it was Moonlight Sonata. I think it took Raj by surprise as he kicked the camera over. Mia was watching the EMF and the recorder with an equal look of surprise on her face. The light was dim, but not completely dark due to the kitchen light upstairs and the light from equipment and a downstairs clock, but there was no ghost that we could see, bent woman or young woman.

Raj leveled the camera again and said, "Not getting anything. Liz, if you're awake can you check out the music box?"

I went over to the music box. I didn't feel any chills or weird disturbances, and nothing seemed to be around the box. I waved my hand around the air a few times; nothing. "Ok to pick up the box?" I asked. Raj and Mia gave me the all clear. I picked up thebox. It played a few more notes then was silent.

"That was strange," said Mia.

Right now, sitting in the dark typing away, I think it was a ghost. In the morning I may feel differently. We'll review what we have around lunchtime with the Professor. I need to get some sleep.

We're Here

We've just arrived and I'm testing the hardware by making sure my laptop is working. Obviously, it is.

I was a little nervous about what to wear. I wanted to be comfortable, as I was going to be at the lady's house for a while, but I didn't want to scare her or look unprofessional. I could have gone all Matrix, but that was a little too theatrical for me. I ended up just wearing some black tights, my pink Supergirl tee, and a dressy looking jacket over it. I wore some neutral Target brand sandals instead of my traditional combat boots.

The old lady is nice, if a bit scatter brained. She's not worried about whether or not she has a ghost, just whether or not the ghost is stuck here. She was with the maybe ghost when she died, and wants her to move on.

We'll be taking shifts in the room the music box is in. It's a moderate sized den with a comfy sofa, afireplace, and a wall of old books. The TV is probably about fifty years old. The middle of the room is clear except for carpeting, but that's where the hospital bed used to be. The old lady's cousin died from bone cancer here.

She just brought me pepsi and some lemon squares. :)

A Haunting We Will Go

Tonight we're visiting an old lady with a maybe ghost. We don't think it's very likely, but we figure it will be a good trial run for everyone, as it's our first time working together. The lady lives alone; her husband is in assisted living with Alzheimer's. She keeps hearing a downstairs music box playing at night. Her guess is that it's a relative who died from cancer in the room with the music box.

So we'll be checking it out tonight.

Typical Grad Night

Ok, so we got truly messed up last night. It was a Sunday night, none of us had a regular job in the morning we had to go to, and we don't have to seriously study for a while. So the Team (minus the Professor) and Raj's girlfriend (she wants us to call her "Starfire," I shit you not) and a friend of Doug's came over to watch a movie, play the Wii, and get high.

Doug's friend, who I pegged for gay early on, looked like a buff Harry Potter. He was undergrad, so I guess that's in or something, at least among the geek chic. His name was Pete, or Peter, or something like that.

The funniest thing was well past the wine phase of the evening and solidly into the joint phase. We were passing around something like the second (or eighth) joint, and Starfie was laughing at something. I still have no idea what it was, and she couldn't seem to get the idea across to anyone. But she was laughing pretty robustly. Starfire, being a "dancer" with the best "augmentation" you could buy with a pile of ones, was dressed pretty slutty. Don't get me wrong, I've been known to dress pretty whorish if the mood hits me, but I at least like to make sure everything is structurally sound. Starfire wasn't so careful.

Have you seen that movie, the 40 year old virgin? It has a scene it it where the main character is doing speed dating, and this bubbly woman with big boobs kept bouncing out of her top without noticing. Starfire kept doing that all night. Which made me and Mia giggle, which made her laugh even more. I swear it was like watching two puppies fighting over a biscuit.

Raj and Doug were enjoying the hell out of the show as well. Both of them had turned from setters to pointers. Raj, always one to show off, just sat back without a care in the world, as if he were smuggling a nightstick out in his jeans. Doug was embarassed and kept trying to hide it, which would start us all giggling again. Harry Potter didn't seem to know what was going on. But he was pretty wasted. He thought every sound that came out of Mia's mouth was comedy gold. When she started hiccuping I thought he would wet his pants.

Anyway, around two in the morning we all started dropping. Raj and Starfire vanished into a bathroom, and God only knows what they were doing (although I have a pretty good idea), but an hour later they were both snoring. I peeked under the door and saw either a boob or an ass cheek squished against tile. Luckily we have two bathrooms, so we let them sleep it off until morning when they stumbled out wearing each other's clothes.

Doug fell asleep on the sofa, a Wii controller somehow in his pants.

Mia passed out on the floor next to the sofa, but just for laughs Harry Potter and I arranged her with her face in Doug's lap. Seemed hilarious at the time.

Harry Potter, it turns out, wasn't gay. And that's all I'll say about that.

The Team

The team isn't a for-profit group, like Ghostbusters, or anything. We're a bunch of academics hoping to make our scientific careers. We should probably come up with a name for ourselves, just in case someone wants to make a movie about us. Although considering this motley crew, it would probably be a porn movie.

There's me, Ghost Girl (and that's the closest you're going to get to my real name). I was born in Hawaii and was raised more or less like everyone else. I've been going through an "artsy" phase, which my brother calls my "Wendy O phase," but I've been thinking it may be time to go a little more conservative. Not sure yet, but I'd hate to scare the clients more than the ghosts. Anyway, I handle the computer hardware and a little bit of this and that. I'm not really an IT person, but I'm more of one than anyone else.

There's my roommate and partner in crime, Mia. She's a hottie, but then I've seen her naked. She's in charge of acoustics and sound recording.

Raj is the team horn-dog. He'll bang anything that moves, so he's our motion sensor guy. He's currently seeing some stripper (sorry, "dancer") who, swear to God, looks like that porn star who ran for Governor in Las Vegas, Mimi Miyagi. I'm not jealous. Raj and I dated briefly (I moved, so - bang!), and I learned two very important things about him. One: He's hung like a whale. Like the movie line goes, "What do they call telephone poles in France?""I dunno." "They call them Raj's penis."

And the other thing I learned was that, once you get over the package parameters, he's a one-trick pony. Granted, that trick made it hard for me to walk for a couple days, but after that, eh. It's over and done. But he's a good guy.

There's the Professor. He's our Phd (Piled Higher and Deeper), advisor, mentor, and boss. He's in his forties, but doesn't really look as old as that. Some grey on the side, like Mr. Fantastic, but otherwise ok. I haven't had to sleep with him for an A, but I wouldn't mind if it came to that. Just saying.

Doug carries all the heavy stuff, at least that's what I kid him. He looks a lot like Jack Black, although he's got almost no sense of humor.

Introductions are in order

To start with, I suppose I should tell you a little about myself. I'm 22 years old and a grad student at a fairly large, urban university. I have a B.S. in Psychology, focusing on social psychology. I have recently started working on my Masters in psychology, with Parapsychology and Dealing with Grief my two main focuses (parapsychology a tad more important to me). Some fellow students and I are part of a paranormal investigation team, headed by my professor. Think "Ghost Hunters" except with real science and no playing to the camera ("Did you hear that barely audible tink? It sounded like an 18th century flute cobbler dragging a chain across the body of his victims." "Yeah!").

I'm blogging about the coming year as we get into some - hopefully - cool investigations. I still need to talk to the others to see if I can use their names, or if I should stick with clever nicknames.