Carson Drew and Fenton Hardy had arranged to go to California, but Fenton and his youngest son, Joe, got the flu. They thought it would be good for Frank to stay away from the sickness, at least for a while.
Nancy and her father flew down to California and Frank did so too, but he was on another plane.
Soon enough they got to a hotel and stayed there. Luckily, there were two rooms that were connected together.
Being amateur detectives, Frank and Nancy wanted to look for a mystery, online, of some sorts. Although they couldn't find a mystery with murderers or thieves that would still be on the loose, they found a supposedly haunted place called The Baley House.
"Are you sure about this, Nancy?" the young woman's father, Carson, asked, looking at his daughter when he heard the news about Frank and Nancy's decision to go.
"Why wouldn't I? It should be safe… Wait, are you a skeptic? That explains so much!" Nancy teased her father.
"I just want you to be safe, that's all." he responded.
"I won't let anything bad happen to your daughter, Mr. Drew." Frank told Carson, trying to calm his nerves. "Besides, it probably isn't as dangerous as some of the cases Nancy's solved." he grinned at Nancy.
Carson, at first reluctant, finally agreed with some persuading. "Okay, you guys can go, but you guys need supplies."
"Joe and I have always wanted to be ghost hunters." Frank said confidently. "We always pack stuff in our bags that can allow us to ghost hunt."
Nancy giggled at Frank and he looked down at Nancy, his face a pink-ish color, and walked toward his room to get his bag.
Soon they had everything set.
"Bye, father!" Nancy said.
"Bye, Carson." Frank said, bowing his head and then lifting it back up. He was about to open the door when Carson said something.
"Before you leave, can you please promise me two things?" Frank and Nancy looked at each other, shrugged, and said sure. "First of all, you have to promise to be safe." Carson said and as soon as he saw Frank and Nancy nod their heads he continued. "And you have to promise to try to record any evidence you get and show it to me."
Nancy giggled for what seemed like the hundredth time that day.
"Will do." Frank said, opening the door and walking out with Nancy.
ON THE CAR RIDE
"I can't believe the owners said that we could investigate on such short notice." Nancy exclaimed.
"That's one of the perks of having famous fathers and being famous detectives ourselves." Frank winked.
They drove up to the place, the gravel crunching under the wheels of their rental car.
"This place is kind of chilly." Nancy said, stepping out of the car and zipping up her sweatshirt.
"Not to mention creepy." Frank added, doing as Nancy did with her sweatshirt.
"Yeah…" Nancy said, unsure of the place already. "Let's get the stuff out of the trunk." Nancy suggested quickly, opening up the trunk and grabbing a duffel bag and a few flashlights.
Frank grabbed the cameras and everything else. Soon they set up the outside and were on their way to the actual inside of the house.
"They said the gate in the back should be open and so should the back door." Frank said, walking over to the gate.
With her free hand Nancy opened the gate.
They were both inside the fenced off area when they heard a sound.
"It sounds like an animal." Nancy said, quietly.
"Turn on a flashlight Nancy."
The young woman turned on her flashlight and saw a goat. "Do you see that go-goat too?" Nancy asked, unsure if her eyes were playing tricks on her or not.
"Definitely not… I see it too." Frank answered.
Nancy walked up to it and pulled the bag a wee bit further up her shoulder. "Hey. Hey. It's okay." she told the goat, soothingly. "Are you real or just a figment of our imaginations?" she asked it, acting as if it could answer her questions.
She went to pet it and succeeded. "It's a real goat!" Nancy called towards Frank, waving him over to her.
"Cute goat." Frank said quickly and with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Now let's get inside. It's freezing out here."
The walked towards the door and before they could open it, it opened itself. A loud creaking noise came from the door and it scared both of the detectives practically senseless. They both almost dropped everything they were holding, but, luckily, they were sensible people who didn't believe in ghosts… Or did they?
Nancy waved her arms toward the door, trying to make Frank go in first.
"Uh-uh. No way." Frank shook his head. "I believe the expression is, 'Ladies first'." he chuckled.
"It's times like this that actually make me realize that Joe is your brother." Nancy joked, trying to blow some hair out of her face.
She walked in and gripped her flashlight even tighter. "Here take one." Nancy tossed a flashlight over at Frank. "Now let's go set up our equipment." she said, already walking away from Frank.
"Be safe!" he called after her. "Remember what your dad said."
Soon everything was set up and they met again. "I think we should stay together." Nancy suggested, she looked as pale as a ghost.
"What happened? What did you see?" Frank asked, his voice hoarse.
"Nothing. Nothing. It was probably just my imagination. I'm just paranoid."
"Nan, tell me what's wrong. What happened?"
Reluctantly, Nancy gave in and told Frank. "I set up the camera on the tripod and I felt this cold gust of wind and then the tripod fell over. It's fine and so is the camera, but it scared me."
Truthfully, they were both scared, but neither of them wanted to admit it to the other. They were teen detectives for goodness sake! Little things like "ghosts" shouldn't effect them in any way. They should keep on going.
"Yeah, we should stick together." Frank agreed. "I have the EMF meter and the voice recorder."
"Okay." Nancy said.
As Frank started walking towards the room, she grabbed onto her hand and, in her mind, she told herself to stop being such a scaredy-cat.
Frank started walking toward the camera and tripod and put the EMF reader up to it.
"It's 8.4, Nance. That's kinda high up there on the scale." Frank said, concerned.
"We should-" before Nancy could finish her sentence she was cut off by a screeching noise. "It sounds like the back door." Nancy said, her voice barely even a whisper.
"Who's there?" Frank asked boldly, right after he turned on the voice recorder.
They didn't hear an answer, but Frank decided to interrogate this "ghost" and everybody ten seconds after he asked a question, he'd ask a new one.
"What's your name?"
"What year is it?"
"How old are you?"
"You do realize that you aren't alive anymore, right?"
"Here, let me try." Nancy told Frank. "Hello. My name is Nancy Drew and this is my good friend Frank Hardy. We're teenage detectives who sometimes team up and catch bad guys, like murderers and burglars."
Hiss
"Was that you?" Nancy asked, leaning closer into Frank. They couldn't hear any answers so Nancy continued again. "We're not here to harm you… in fact," Nancy started while looking around, "we're here to help you."
There was silence and Frank looked down at the tape recorder and pressed "End" and then looked up at Nancy. She nodded in agreement.
They started it and then heard Frank's voice.
"'What's your name?'" Frank asked.
"'The Devil.' said whatever the thing was."
"'What year is it?'"
"'A year.'"
"'How old are you?'"
"'Older than you.'"
"'You do realize that you aren't alive anymore, right?'"
"'You're the one who's not living!'"
"What the hell?" Frank asked, obviously distraught.
Both he and Nancy shivered as they felt a gust of cold wind.
"It's not the devil." Nancy replied. "I don't know what it is, but it certainly isn't him."
"Let's do what we do best." Frank proposed.
"Investigate like detectives?" Nancy asked Frank in surprise.
"Exactly! The voice sounds kind of familiar. And whether we know it or not, it doesn't matter. At first it sounded like something from another dimension, not from our world, but now it doesn't. It sounds like a guy our age, if not a bit younger. We should go look for him."
Frank started walking off, but Nancy grabbed him by the wrist and he turned around.
Nancy stood on her tip-toes and leaned into Frank. Much to both of their surprises, Frank leaned into Nancy too. All things easily remembered were forgotten. For the moment it was just the couple who was kissing.
They pulled away for two seconds, trying to get a breather, and then they crushed their lips together yet again.
Nancy pulled back and said, "For good luck." She looked at him and, despite the dark and eery night, you could easily tell that he was blushing. "You're gonna need it." Nancy teased before she started walking away.
"We're going to need to finish that later." Frank mumbled to himself.
Before Frank had even taken a step, he heard Nancy yell his name.
He ran over to where she was, his flashlight shining in front of him, and he saw her trying to open a door.
"This door looks like it's been opened or closed recently, that would explain the noise we heard when we thought it was the back door and didn't investigate." Nancy said.
Nancy pulled on it again and, this time, with the help of Frank, she managed to get the door open.
They saw two people inside. "They're alive." Nancy and Frank whispered quietly to each other in unison.
Frank kicked one of the figures and they screamed, "Ouch! Frank!"
"Joe?" Frank asked. "Dad, I know it's you. You better get out of here."
"What are you doing here?" Nancy asked Joe. She looked like she was about ready to pull a limb off his body.
"Not gonna tell you." he retorted.
"We're going to talk about this after we pack everything up." Nancy demanded.
They put everything in the trunk of Carson's rental car.
"How did you find us and figure out it wasn't a ghost?" Fenton asked.
"We found out that you weren't a ghost because there were two different voices that I noted and each of them sounded familiar." Frank said. "Plus, there probably aren't any ghosts, they're probably just myths." Joe glared at his brother. "But, if there is, The Baley House may not be one of those 'haunted' places."
"Frank helped me realize that there weren't any ghosts talking to us and that it was humans. I remembered hearing a door creak. At the time we thought it was the back door, but that, along with Frank, got me to thinking. I asked myself, 'What if there's another door that makes that sound?' When we separated our ways I decided to look for another door and sure enough I found one." Nancy said.
"Nice work you too." Fenton congratulated Frank and Nancy. "It's time to head back to the hotel."
"Yeah, congrats." Joe said, pretending to be annoyed. Frank slugged his brother in the arm. "What was that for?!" Joe half-yelled and half-asked.
"For trying to scare us." Frank replied. "Now Dad said it's time to go so let's get a move on."
Fenton and Joe went in their rental car while Frank and Nancy went in Carson's rental car.
"You know we never really finished the kiss…" Frank said.
"Well, in that case…" Nancy started before she kissed Frank on the lips. They pulled away, content with what happened.
They started to drive in an awkward silence. Frank turned on the radio and that lightened the mood.
Fenton, Joe, and Carson were in Frank, Joe, and Fenton's bedroom while Nancy and Frank were looking over their evidence in Nancy and Carson's room.
"There's really no point in looking through all of this if we know that it was your Dad and Joe." Nancy said, putting down the voice recorder down, accidentally leaving it to play.
"I know." Frank replied, his eyes glued on the screen.
Out of nowhere, or so it seemed, Nancy kissed Frank.
Just at that moment Joe walked in and glanced at the screen.
His mouth fell open as Frank tried to go further into the tape.
"Was that what I thought it was?" Joe asked in disbelief.
"Well, that depends. What did you see?" Frank asked.
"Nothing…" Joe said.
"Don't speak a word of this to anyone. Do you hear me, little bro?" Frank asked, partially angry.
Joe nodded and Nancy felt the tension in the air. "Why don't we go join our fathers?" she suggested. The boys agreed and they all walked out of the bedroom.
Little did they know that Nancy accidentally left the voice recorder on. Pretty much as soon as they left the room there was a voice that was unlike anybody's that they'd ever heard before. "Nancy Drew and Frank Hardy?" the voice asked. "Hello?" it asked again. It's voice was creepy, but it was never to be heard by the Hardy's or by the Drew's or by anybody else for that matter. Nobody even knows about it but you.
I have actually been to The Baley House and it is quite fascinating and creepy there. You can look it up on Google and read about it and possibly even some ghost hunts there. There are also some pictures on Google Images, but there are barely any