"What if I told you there was a branch of the government specifically designed to vanish and reappear like the very things that they hunt? Gone but never forgotten. Anywho recall them are left haunted by the hazy and distant memories of their experience. A brave few have offered their testimonials to the internet and a few in their ranks have leaked documents to their known existence. The Guys in White were propagated by myth and internet folklore. Let's separate fact from fiction. The myth from reality."

A deep gravelly voice like that found in Hammer-House horror growled, "Welcome back fellow creatures of the night—"

"Oh my god! Chill out, Captain Cornball." Wes was practically cringing, writhing in second-hand embarrassment.

Abruptly falling into laughter, Dash coughed, "Aw, dude! You made— made me lose it!"

"Thank god." The basketball player rested a hand on his chest, in faux relief. Wes then explained, "For those of you at home, I know it might be hard to imagine. If you were to see Captain Cornball in his staggering six-one broad-shouldered excellence you would think that he would sound like y'know— a man. Instead, you have—"

"Helium-tank-Hank," Dash interjected.

Bumping the mike while gesticulating, Wes offered, "Hey, hey— In Justin's defense, the coach called you that first."

"Welcome back everyone," Dash's leading man smile was interlaced with his opener, "We missed you."

"He doesn't speak for me." Wes chuckled, swatting the quarterback's shoulder.

"I'm His-dude-Friday!"

"I'm Atlas-dunked."

"And this is…"

Simultaneously the pair declared, "Amity Park Anomalies!"

They tried to keep from laughing and ruining the live stream, though they were fourteen-year-old boys who had a case of mountain dew under their desk— how composed do you expect them to be with that much sugar?

Before Dash could speak, Wes fired off with a drumroll, "So, what nonsense do you have for us today?"

Dash retrieved his school folder, the purple one was now designated as the official Amity Park Anomalies research compendium. Also doubled to hold all of his math homework that conveniently went 'missing.'

"Oh, it's gettin' real, folks, he has a dossier now," Wes smirked, resting his chin on his fist.

"Don't make me laugh! I'm serious," The king jock could be heard trying to stifle the rest of his giggling.

Wes being the youngest brother out of three didn't exactly take orders well. The shooting-guard pulled up at his nostrils, and used his other hand to fish-hook his lower lip, using his first two fingers to yank at the corners of his mouth. Exposing his lower teeth and gums.

Dash bit his cheek to keep it cool, "You're so unprofessional—"

"Thank you," Weston released his face, "it's the ADHD. Or as I like to call it my high definition personality."

"Okay, stop me if you've heard this one before," Dash scooted forward to the edge of his rolling chair, "Husband and wife ghost hunting duo—"

"No!" A loud monotonous groan nearly blew out the speakers, "Please, tell me we're NOT covering the Fentons?"

Baxter wore a large smirk affixed to his face as he quietly said, "No."

"...No?" The basketball player was a touch shocked by that. The Fentons were something of an Amity Park staple. A sideshow that sort of took on a life of its own.

Rather optimistically, Dash assured him, "No. This is a very different husband and wife ghost hunting duo. The Wickets. Edna and Louis Wicket."

Wes thinned his mouth at this.

"Oh," Dash registered his ignorance of the topic. He sucked in his teeth like he had made a mistake, speaking lightly, "Right, you don't go outside."

Pert offended, Wes, slouched— his elbows hitting the desk, "Point. Find it soon, Baxter."

Jeez, he sounded like Mr Lancer. He raised his hands in sheepish surrender, "Okay, okay—"

Dash found his notes again and searched for his jumping-off point, "The Wickets were the leading experts in the paranormal in the seventies, and up until their deaths. They helped found the non-scientific study of demonology. They had about a few dozen case-calls in Amity Park through the eighties."

"Oh, so, these were, like, competent insane people? They're like—" His cohost chuckled, "the Fentons but on Prozac?"

Shrugging the interruption off Baxter continued, "The Wickets were supposedly the second generation of the spiritualist movement. They were relatively reserved compared to their peers which lent more authenticity to their findings. This didn't mean they stayed completely out of the spotlight. The Wickets were infamously called into court trying to justify a man who was allegedly possessed while murdering his landlord."

"I mean you don't need to be possessed to want to kill a landlord," Wes said under his breath. There was a moment of silence followed by Weston gasping— slapping the other's arm, "Wait— Wait— Wait, I think I have heard about these two nutbars. They were the ones who had the defective baby doll that, like, spat fire and caused car crashes, right?"

Dash clicked his tongue, "Genevieve: A cursed BananaBread doll."

"My mom had one of those." Wes exhaled humorously from his nose, "Though I imagine instead of smelling like banana bread, Genevieve smelled like— what? The souls of the damned?"

With some reluctance, the quarterback admitted, "Actually, it was sulfur."

"Is that right?" Punctuating this non-question, Weston cracked open his fourth soda of the evening. He tutted, "The movies always made that seem scarier."

"Either way, we're not gonna go too far into the Wicket's closet of skeletons. We're going to be talking about Edna's testimonial about her encounter with the Guys in White."

Cicadas outside the bedroom window could be heard, as well as the delicate humming from the lamps around the desk.

"No comments, or quips?"

"It's very polite of you to give me the opportunity, but you can't rely on me to carry your show for you, dude."

"Not the phrasing I would use, but… sure." Dash retrieved another series of printed-out notes, "The first Guy in White sighting dates back to nineteen-forty-seven in Ohio. A man claimed to have been hearing voices while taking his boat out on the water. At eight am as the sun was rising, as he was coming to, he claimed to have seen a woman in a nightgown floating above the water just off the bow. After the man had tried and failed to court the local newspaper into the story. He came home one afternoon to meet a man in a three-piece white suit and black gloves. The man in white produced a black business card with a seal of cadeus embossed on it. According to him he blurred the photo until the woman was rendered to an incomprehensible orb, and warned him to never speak of the incident again."

"So," The shooting-guard pursed his lips, "When you say nightgown…"

"Dude, I don't know." Bewildered by the devious expression on Wes' face, Dash futilely shrugged, "Probably something era-appropriate?"

"I'm just curious. There isn't a lot of detail with this story and I'm just trying to paint a picture." Wesley picked at the fuzz on the mike's windsock.

"Let's just say it's floor-length because as I said the photo was blurred to hell and back." Dash folded back a page and pinned it back with his thumb and index finger. He twisted his wrist against the desk slightly to show the image in question. It was grainy and had texture on the film.

"Are you slut-shaming the spirit right now?"

"You don't even believe in ghosts! I— Let's just move on."

"That wasn't a denial."

"It's Ohio! It's freaking cold there! I'm just saying a conservative flannel nightgown seems reasonable."

There was a beat of silence again as Wes watched Dash flush with irritation. The shooting-guard figured if it was that easy to push the elite Dash Baxter's buttons, it would be cake scaring the crap out of him. Weston toyed with the cord attached to the desktop, "And she could be a sexy orb, for all we know. I'm sure there are some… eligible ghost ax-murderers for her."

"Wes."

"Like on the orb scale, this is a high six, solid seven material. This is a good orb."

" Jesus Christ ." Baxter's eyebrows furrowed in exasperation, he pinched his tear ducts— snatching back the papers and photo from Wesley. Just say it's bad evidence and move on.

The quarterback would need something more convincing to prove that ghosts are real. Though really, it was like Wes was denying reality. The guy always seemed to be missing or sick whenever ghost stuff happened at school. Wes' immune system was a complete joke! The day the meat monster attacked? Conveniently Wes had food poisoning from his trip abroad the week prior when those ewwie-gooey octopus and screechy bats kept trying to eat the debate team. Or that sketchy-ass counselor lady… She still gave Dash the hives. Wes' dad thought the idea of mandatory school counselor sessions when he already had a psychiatrist was unnecessary.

Unconsciously Dash spoke through his hands which now rested on his face, "Wait is it octopus or octopi if it's plural?"

"Weren't you in the middle of a rant?" The basketball player was starting to worry about the guy, all those horror movies were making him a total space case. His brains were atrophying before their very eyes.

"Right! Right, thanks. So the important thing about the Guys in White is that they only talk to those who have paranormal experiences or people who research them. The Guys in White always seem to present themselves as a part of a larger organization. From this encounter in forty-seven, we skip to nineteen-sixty-seven. Richard Robinson told the authorities that after his car got into a collision with a ghost taxi, in Lafayette Indiana. On impact the other vehicle vanished and so did the other driver. Robinson managed to get away unscathed and with the driver's glasses. Though as he was returning to his home, he was met with two agents in— you guessed it! White! The agents demanded the immediate return of the glasses. When Robinson refused, they threatened his daughter. Saying, and I quote,"

Coughing, Dash lowered his voice to what he thought an adult would sound like, "Your daughter has a recital coming up, right? If those glasses do not come back into the government's possession your girl may not be dancing for long. If you don't want child services here, first thing in the morning. Then you'd better hand over the glasses."

"Robinson never saw the men again after turning over the glasses, and only came forward with his experience after his daughter moved away."

Weston sighed with the faintest breath of disappointment in his tone, "So obviously, we can't take anything he says seriously. His testimony is completely invalid!"

"Aw, is someone bummed?"

"No way," Wes blew a raspberry, "I'm just saying you're gonna have to try harder than that Baxter. It sounds like the guy was drunk and hit a tree, and then didn't want to admit it."

"Okay— how about this?" Dash combed through his papers to pull up another grainy photograph on film, though instead of being a black sea, this image was an urban cityscape. In the alcove of a building next to a column, a large white bald man was in the shadows reading a newspaper. His eyes were shrouded with pitch-black sunglasses giving no illusion that the man had any kind of soul to gaze into. The quarterback tapped the paper, "Nineteen-sixty-eight, a woman in New York claimed to have been stalked by a man in a white suit after reporting her previous dwelling as haunted. Her apartment where she had been living with her fiance had then been ransacked. She managed to sneak pictures of this agent. This image matches all known descriptions of Guys in White."

Frowning at this Wes studied the image carefully, he laughed from his nose, "It also matches all known douche-bags. Seriously, sunglasses at night, and a fedora? The dude could've been a pimp. Correlation is not causation."

There was a beat. With that vacant look behind Dash's eyes.

Big words hurt Dash.

Wes clarified his opinion, "Just because she saw a man in white doesn't mean he broke into her apartment. Plenty of other people could have done that."

"I knew that." Dash deflated, "You could try to suspend your disbelief a little bit."

"T-then what are we doing here?" Wes explosively blustered, the pen in his hand bouncing off the desk. He repeated, "What are we doing here? You have your little stories, and I have my stone-cold logic."

"Didn't you stick your knife in the microwave because your butter was cold?"

"It was Lancer's microwave, but that's hardly relevant." His cohost dismissed with a wave, collecting his pen from the floor.

"I think I've built enough suspense here. Let's get to the real reason why we're here. Edna after her husband's death last year, two-thousand-n-one, was visited specifically by a man in a white suit. She readily identified as the man in the suit as an operative of the organization called the Gentlemen in White. She also identified the organization by another name, the Milk Men—"

There was a loud thunk, of the back of Wes' head hitting the underside of the desk.

"Are you okay? Wes, oh my god!"

The mighty Atlas seethed, "I-I-I'm good— I'm great!" The pain briefly subsided as the smile on his face only grew, "But you're totally making that up. They're not called the Milk Men."

"According to Edna, that's how the man identified the organization." Dash rustled the paper, "The Milk Men. She also claimed he didn't tell her this verbally, she had received this information through a telekinetic interception. In her words, they had something called 'a battle of the minds.'"

"... You've lost me, Baxter. You've completely lost me."

"You draw the line at telekinetic interception?"

"Were there mind lasers?" Asking excitedly, Wesley reached across the desk to see the rest. He impatiently, pounded on the table with his fist, "Please let the record show that there were mind lasers in the battle of the minds?"

Shoving the basketball player back to his side of the desk— Dash narrowed his eyes at his notes, "That's what it says, Edna confronted the man in a battle of the minds, but she was so frail by that point in time that she lost. The agent then 'stole' her husband's research and a few cursed artifacts that she had been cataloging. She identified her attacker and died several days later after this man broke into her home without a warrant. Her son attests that his mother may have been slightly agitated because she hadn't been taking her medication."

Snapping his fingers, Wes haughtily declared, "Competent insane people! You can go a long way just pretending you know what you're talkin' about."

"Edna and her son, Jeff, have conflicting testimonials of that day. Edna says that Jeff was there but he had been hypnotized by a… coin?" Eyes flitting back and forth with disbelief, Dash muddled through the rest of his notes, "The agent had made her son look at a coin for a few minutes and he completely forgot about the encounter. Jeff claims that he found his mother collapsed in Louis' study, there was no break-in, and there was no one else there. He was very sure that the door was locked because he had the key for it."

Wes rubbed his head, resting his face on Dash's keyboard, "Do I even really need to say why this is insane? She's claiming that Milk Men came, performed some close-up magic on her son, and stole her life's work. You can understand why I am…" Wes sucked in his lower lip causing his chin to wrinkle, "Suspicious."

Sitting up, he adjusted the mike towards himself, "But hey, if being great at close-up magic is all that's required my brother Kyle would be a great candidate for the dudes in white. Can I give a shout-out? Is that, like, allowed?"

"Sure?" Dash adjusted the tautness of his headset, unsure if the pressure, the copious amounts of sugar he just ingested, or the ginger mess in the next chair over was to blame for his sudden migraine. Digging his fingers into the skin above his temple, Dash leaned back in his chair for a moment.

Leaning in extremely close to the mike, about a nose distance away. The basketball player put forth a very solemn and stoic expression, "... Fuck you, Kyle ."

With such a small and serious voice worming its way into his ears, Dash's chest compressed like a shotgun with a sudden breathless laugh, "Jesus—"

" Dad bought you megablocks instead of legooooos ."

"Kyle also went to magic camp, and you didn't." Dash collapsed his notes onto his chest, with a deep and tired breath.

Twisting around in his rolling chair, Wes tugged on the jock's sleeve. Yanking him towards the equipment, wanting to hear the end of the story. Chuckling Wes identified the fugue-like state his cohost was in, "Whoa, sugar crash."

Pawing under the table between their chairs, Weston retrieved another can. He cracked it open, with an impish smile, "Have another soda; you'll hate me later."

Getting his second wind with a sip, Dash lightly slapped himself to realign his focus. Grunting, he stretched his jaw, "Okay so— yeah while this initially sounds like ramblings of an old ghost hunter past her prime, but on record, she's self-identified as a clairvoyant and had for many years. She had written numerous books about her exploits in a spiritual world much like our own called the 'elsewhereness.' Edna and her husband Louis had also compiled a comprehensive list about the hierarchy of ghosts."

"According to the theories, all ghosts are derived from the original seven deadly sins, so there are seven different types of ghosts. The default residents of the spiritual plane are known as Shades."

"It always seems to come back to seven, huh."

"At the bottom of the list, we have Omens. They manifest as coincidences, deja vu, bad luck, suspicious animals, oddities in nature. While this might seem like a weak one— the idea behind these ghosts is less about what they can physically do to you, and what they can do to you mentally. Omens act to weaken your mental fortitude. Powerful omens can alter reality around their desired target."

"Next we have Poltergeists. These assholes can supposedly take control of inanimate objects, harvesting electrical pulses and manipulating radio frequencies. In tandem with other ghost powers, Poltergeists are known for being loud— legit their name directly translates as 'noisy ghost'. These ghosts typically have the most of their personality intact for better or worse."

"After Poltergeists, we have Wraiths who are the manifestations of rage are extremely goal orientated. They're commonly associated with violent hauntings, scratches, burns, bruises. They seem to be attracted to rage, so some of you should check your aggro thoughts."

"Ghouls are a logical progression. They can manipulate the physical environment and impose their will onto others."

"Shadows feed on their hosts until nothing remains."

Dash yawned, looking at the red numbers shutter on his digital clock, "Then finally we have Familiars, typically they hone in on a single target, in attempts to assimilate themselves into the living world."

"What do you mean 'finally'?" Wes cocked a brow, "That's only six? Like Omens that's sloth, Poltergeists that's greed, Wraiths are wrath, Ghouls are pride, Shadows are gluttony, Familiars are envy. You're forgetting lust."

"... I don't wanna say it on air," Bashfully Dash scratched his ear.

Wes elbowed the quarterback in the ribs several times, "Bro— do it."

Shaking his head with a tiny scowl on his face, Baxter eventually repeated from his notes, "Succubi."

"AH!" Triumphantly spinning in a tight circle, Wes exclaimed, "I knew that one!"

"Of course you did."

"Does that scale say anything about Phantoms and where they fall?"

Dash awkwardly chuckled, "Oh— uh… nah. I mean this scale is more of like, a loose guideline for where some spirits fall. I don't think the Phantom actually fits anywhere on this scale… maybe he's like an angel or something? It doesn't really…" he wrung his hands together, "Accommodate for protective spirits."

"Pride seems likely. Maybe he's a ghoul?" Wes hypothesized before he glared at his reflection in the dimmed computer monitor, "Not that I think he's real, but from what you said about him he seems like a real showboat."

Fidgeting with a hangnail Baxter stayed quiet for a moment, "...Yeah, a showboat." He dryly swallowed, "Er… anyway. A few months ago an anonymous user online with the handle Milk-Underscore-Monster-zero-zero, on the r-slash-amity-horrors forum, leaked a very similar chart complete with illustrations by Louis Wicket with what appear to be amended notes censoring some of the information. Claiming that they were a Gentlemen in White operative. They leaked the file to ensure people knew the signs of the hauntings in Amity Park."

Face falling, Weston deadpanned, "... Baxter I don't want to be that guy to break it to you, but people lie on the internet."

"I'm just saying it's a weird coincidence," Dash flipped to the last page of his notes, "Some closing notes: Men in White operatives can be identified by their sunglasses and three-piece white suit with black tie and matching gloves. They're relatively hairless, the only skin they leave exposed being their scalps and lower face. The texture of their skin has been debated from being extremely leathery and dry to upsettingly plastic. It is unknown if the agents are trained in psychological torture or have esp-like abilities, though what is clear is that they don't need a warrant to break into your home to confiscate your ghostly findings."

"Do they have a number? Like a tipline? Or a place to register complaints about annoying ghost hunters?" Grinning the shooting-guard added, "Asking for a friend."

"Hey," Dash flicked him, "if you report the Fentons the Fentons might report us, and then we'd be black-bagged in a government van."

"Nah." Shirking away, Wes poked his cohost in the cheek, "You'd be black-bagged in a government van, you're a ghost hunter— I'm simply a known associate."

"I'm not a ghost hunter… I just think they're… cool," The quarterback then posed an unexpected question, "So if I went missing, you'd look for me?"

Wesley scanned his acquaintance up and down. Amused. Throwing a fake punch, his knuckles resting on Dash's cheekbone, "If I'm not busy— sure. I'd look for you."

Beneath Wes' fist, he could feel Baxter's smile inching its way on the quarterback's face, "and that's our time, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Sleep tight. I'm His-dude-Friday."

"I'm Atlas-dunked."

"We'll see you next time Amity Park." Simultaneously the pair signed off. Taking a moment to hydrate themselves with their energy drinks, they didn't feel the need to say anything else. Stretching out, they muttered back and forth that it was too late for Weston to go home.

The bedroll was a bit of a headache to find in the dark attic. Dash removed the spare blankets from the hall closet, but when he came back to his room Wes had already passed out on the floor, spread eagle. Snoring away.