Are you afraid of ghosts? That may be a estrange question for some people, after all, ghost aren't real, right? That's just logical, but even yet, when you're in the night and hear a weird sound in the darkness and no matter how much you look you can't see anybody nearby, don't you wonder?
Spirits, monsters, demons, ghosts, they aren't real, but yet here are so much information about them, how find them, how to summon them, how to capture them, it's really possible to have so much information, to have so many stories about something not real?
So let me ask you a question, if there's something strange in your neighborhood, if you're seeing things running through your head, and you're all alone, who you're call? Well in the city of Fantomille in Louisiana, there are some options.
Swamps in the outside of the city, almost midnight
"I can't believe we're doing this!" Officer Victor complains while walking through the vegetation, using his flashlight to make sure of not tripping on anything .
"Oh don't by a cry baby Vic; this can't the worst thing you had done." Officer Amelia tried to smile while avoiding the branches in the ground, the last thing she needed was to fall in the water.
"Cry baby? We're following a bald guy doing some voodoo thing, trying to find a dead body, and you expect me too alright with this?"
"Now, now, Charles had help us many times in the past, his methods can be a little weird-"
"He's shaking a bag with bones!"
"-Listen, we had been having troubles with this guy for months now, he had killed at least 7 persons already, and no matter how much it bother us, we don't have any clues of how to find him. Charles has a unique way of help, true, but he's a good person and he does a good job."
"Well dat is a very nice thing to say Amy cher." A voice said just from behind of Officer Victor.
"JESUS CHRIST!" Yell the officer while jumping a little, immediately he aims his flashlight at the source of the voice, only to find his guide, Charles Leroy, with a big smile in his face, his dark skin making it easy to hide in the shadows.
"Be de way Vic, ain't bald, I shave my hair, is more fresh dat way." Charles keep smiling while putting a hand on the shoulder of the officer.
Amelia gives a sigh of frustration after making sure nothing bad had happen."Chalers! Please don't do that! And I'd told you before, while working I'm Officer Amelia".
The young man raised his arms in sight of defeat. "Alright, alright, Officer Amelia, but you were so slow, that I wanted to make you shake you a little bit" He walks to the front of the group to keep guiding them, while keeping a little smirk.
"Never the least, that's not a excu-" Amelia scolding was interrupted by another yell from Officer Victor.
"How the hell did you do that!? You were in front of us! How did walk from behind!?"
Charles just keeps smiling. "When you spend so much time like me in the bayou, you learn how to move thought it, you learn to listen."
"Oh more of that voodoo thing? That's not real kid, no matter how creepy this place is, there's nothing super natural about it" The officer grunts, annoyed for getting scared that easily.
For a second Charles smile dropped, but it came back almost as fast. "This ain't 'voodoo' Officer, just a little respek for de swamp. And it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not, voodoo, hoodoo, magic, spirits, dat's all real, beware of de things dat live in the dark is what my mama always said, and you should follow dat advice too."
"Yeah right, I will believe it when I see it."
Before the discussion could continue Amelia interrupts both of them. "That's enough you two, we're here looking for corpses, remember?"
Charles could help but scratch the back of his head sheepishly. "Right, well, we should be nearby, here's a huge concentration of dark energy very close."
Victor looked properly scolded too. "Ok sorry, but come on Flores, you can honestly say that you beli… Holy Mother of God." The Officer's flashlight had pass over one the trees and the he couldn't believe what was on it.
Amelia and Charles too have stopped to look in what had startled the man, and what a horrible view it was, the tree in front of them have at least 9 people hanging front its branches, some kids, some adults, men, women, it seems like the murder didn't care as long as they were human.
Amelia fells sick with just seeing it, how could someone do something like this? What kind of horrible human being could do this?
Charles had seen some pretty creepy things in his live, but he has to admit that this thing is probably in the top 5.
Victor, Victor just wants to get away from this fucking forest.
A horrible yell from deep into the swamp startle the three of them out of their thoughts.
"Ahhhhhh! GET AWAY FROM ME, GET AWAY FROM ME YOU DEMONS!" A man suddenly appears, running through the trees, running away from, what it looks like silhouettes of different people, floating in the air.
The silhouettes begin to surround the man, closing any route of escape for him, and then they start getting closer and closer, all of them whispering strange things.
"No, please no, I don't want to die."
"Please, I beg you I have a wife a kind."
"I'm scare; please go away, I WANT MY MOMMY!"
One after other, the 'people' keeps whispering.
Amelia finally recovers of the shock and begins to walk right to scene of madness. "We need to get man of there."
But before she could get any closer Charles grabs her from behind and hold her in place. "Whoa, whoa, Cher dat's not a good idea, I tink we're watching a little bit of ghost justice right there, it seems dat de victims wanted a little bit of vengeance, you don't want to be between a ghost and dey reason of existence, believe me."
"Wait, so you're saying that that's the murder? That with more reason we have to go, we have to arrest him, right Vic?... Vic."
Officer Victor Jones had seen a lot of thing in his life, from the simple of thieves to the crazy of murders, but never in his life he would had thought of say what he was about to say. "I think we should listen to the voodoo guy this time."
The ghosts have finally reached the murderer -that had been yelling all this time- then they begin to raise him in the air, right to tree with all their bodies, one the kids took a rope that wasn't been use and put it around his neck, then all the ghosts pulled his body down.
The murder keep yelling just for a few seconds more, then, here was only silence in the bayou.
…Silence that Charles broke after a few seconds. "Well, do you believe now Officer?"
Victor took a moment before answering. "Kid… You can release Officer Flores now."
An apartment in the middle of the city, a few hours before noon
Lisa was a simple old lady, with her kids never visiting her and her husband dead, she lived her days in a simple routing, wake up, go to the bathroom, prepare food, them watch some TV, then maybe talk with neighborhoods a little, prepare dinner and go to sleep, a simple life to a simple old lady.
One morning though, she wakes up to a very strange surprise, the ghost of her dead husband sitting at the kitchen table, the poor dear immediately go to the phone to call for help, as soon as she recovers from passing out of course.
When she was already at the phone she stopped, who would she call? Should she be calling someone to begin with? Sure the ghost of her dead husband was there –if she wasn't going crazy anyway- but he wasn't doing anything bad, or anything at all honestly. Suddenly inspiration strike her, she remembered a commercial that she heard some while age very late at night, something about soul music, she couldn't remember the name, but the numbers were another story, it was like they were jumping to her mind.
She pressed the number and wait for a few second before a smooth voice answered in the other side.
"Hello this is Soul Music, how can I help you?"
Lisa waited a hour in front of the door of her apartment –a very far of her kitchen- then she heard a knock at the door, she open it as fast as she could.
At the door was a man that looked at his thirties, with a long jacked and a guitar at his back, he had a serene smile at his face, his brown eyes showing empathy for the old lady in front of him.
"Hello, are you Lisa?"
"Ye… Yeah" She could help but to be a little nervous, after all, even if he wanted to her help, she didn't know what he was going to do to her husband's… ghost.
"My name is Gaston, you don't need to worry I promise that everything will be alright." He said keeping his smile all the time.
In the end Lisa let him in and brings him to kitchen.
The man begun to watch the ghost from different angles, moving all around the kitchen, stopping to hum and murmur a little, then suddenly he clapped with a little. "Aha!" Preparing his guitar to play, he asked Lisa a question. "Lisa, do you know why ghosts exist."
Of course she could only shake her head; she didn't even know that ghosts were real after all.
"Well, there all different reason honestly, but the most common one is if the person died with unfinished business, the strongest the desire for complete it, the stronger the ghost, now your husband ghost is very weak, I assume that he simply wanted to be with you always."
Lisa covered her mouth with her hand and begun to cry. "Oh dear, will always be with you."
"Don't worry, the good thing about this kind of is that they can be helped to move on with a little of harmonic magic." As soon as he said that he began to play his guitar.
Lisa for some reason found the song nostalgic, she was sure that she had never hear it before, and event yet, she could stop thinking of old memories, memories that she share with her husband.
She was in trance by the sound for a few minutes, when she noticed that the ghost was suddenly shining, she had to cover her eyes for a moment and when she opens them he was gone.
Gaston stopped playing. "Now he can rest in peace."
An old fire department, high noon
Expensive suit, very realistic wig and a red face; those were the characteristics that the old business man Isaac Spengler has at the moment. "Ophelia Athena Spengler! Did you waste all the money that I give you in this!?" He said opening his arms to signal all the machines and equines that were all around then.
The young scientific answered without looking at her uncle, too busy making sure that everything was in working condition. "It wasn't a waste uncle, the parts that I needed to make my inventions were quite expensive, but in the end it will all worth it."
"Oh? And what invention cost more than fifty thousand dollars?" Asked Isaac, the red in his face was fading a little, his mind to busy trying to find the logic in her niece obvious madness to be angry.
"My ecto-generator of course." Was the answer of Ophelia, her tone was simple; she has been waiting a long time to finally create her best creation.
"Ghosts… Did you waste all that money in ghosts!? I thought we had been over this! I thought you were going to follow your father legacy!" His face was even redder than in the beginning.
She couldn't help but to sigh in frustration, finally stopping to watch his uncle right to his face. "This is our family legacy uncle; the only thing that my father did was create a better type of smoothie for your company, what grandpa Egon was investigating could change the world!"
"The invention of your father helped our whole family, really helped! The only thing that my father accomplished with his wild fantasies was to put us in a horrible debt, and it was thanks to your father that we could keep going!" He yelled getting more close to Ophelia.
The young woman wouldn't give up that easily though, she would prove everybody the genius of her grandfather. "They weren't fantasies! Is all in the books, the equations, the analysis, ghosts are real! And if we can capture and harness their power we could solve the energy problem of the world, forever!"
Isaac took a big breath. "Your parents aren't coming back honey, I had done my best to try to give you all you need, I didn't yell at you when you decide to cut your hair that short, even though you looked just like your mother like that, but if you think that you could see them again with this ghosts thing the-"
"Isn't like that!" Ophelia yelled, interrupting her uncle. "I know they're dead, I get that, is just… I want our family name to mean something more than just smoothies, dad only did that for the money to help us, you now that he was very smart, he could had done something amazing but now he will only be remember as the smoothie genius, I don't want that as our legacy, and I only cut my hair because I almost burn it." She whispered the last part, her eyes getting a little misty.
Isaac hugged her niece, petting her head.
"One chance… give me one chance to capture a ghosts." The young woman was doing her best to not cry, but she couldn't stop her voice to weaver a little.
"…Very well, one chance."