After passing along all the biographical information she's collected to Barry (who thanks her profusely but seems distracted by some new project he's started), Iris starts branching out her research into the paranormal. If researching how Wells died wasn't enough to explain how he became a ghost, she'll have to tackle the question from another angle: namely, how are ghosts formed?
It is, she quickly discovers, an exercise in perpetual frustration. She has no idea which sources are credible and which aren't, and she doesn't have anyone she can turn to for a recommendation. Not yet, at least.
However, as a side-effect of all her fruitless searching, Iris has been thoroughly exposed to all manner of ghost stories on a daily basis, and she sometimes imagines she can feel the repetition eroding her skepticism. She finds that, when she goes looking for it, there is a lot more evidence of ghosts than she'd previously thought: YouTube videos that make all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on-end; photographs that give her goosebumps the moment her mind registers that something is out-of-place, is not where it should be, is impossible; and an endless stream of "I heard footsteps/crying/screaming/sobbing but there wasn't anybody there."
But explanations of the whys and hows of ghosts are much scarcer. Most paranormal websites don't address the questions at all, or else give the same stock answers for how a person becomes a ghost – violent death or unfinished business (or both, in the case of vengeful spirits). Nothing that answers 'why this violent death, and not that one?' And no one can seem to agree on what ectoplasm actually is, or what its properties are.
After two weeks of dead-ends and wasted hours, her meandering search finally lands her on a forum that looks more promising than most, in that it does not immediately bombard her with desperate, fervent assertions that ghosts are real, and instead treats their existence as a matter of course.
Girl13 points her in the right direction for books to seek out. She lists the pros and cons of each, and also gives Iris a basic rundown of ghosts and their attributes. She also has a lot of tips on how to spot fakes, and debunks misinformation with a certain panache that Iris really admires. Yxes-kigam may be an arrogant asshole, but Iris has to begrudgingly admit that his pointers on where to buy occult paraphernalia seem very spot-on. Both of them hesitantly pass along the name 'Constantine,' saying that he's the most knowledgeable demonologist, but that under no circumstances should she give him her credit card number. Ever. Iris thanks them, and mentally files Constantine's name away as a last resort.
She is reassured to learn that while ghosts might fade over time, especially as they become forgotten by the living, they don't automatically become evil if left alone for too long, which had been a concern of hers. However good or evil a person was in life, so they remained after death; ghosts were not any more intrinsically evil or prone to violence than the next living person. Still, when weighed against all the unanswered questions she still has about who Wells was and why he became a ghost, this small fact does not amount to much.
Three days after embarking on his task and halfway through his fifth reel, Barry finally meets Caitlin (whom he's heard so much about from Cisco), when she finally gets back from her honeymoon. She hangs out at the Cortex sometimes, but like Barry, her chosen field does not allow her to contribute much - and as someone just returned from vacation, she has a bit of catching up to do and doesn't have time for tachyons (does that count as a pun? Barry's going to count it as a pun).
Then there's Ronnie, who's an engineer and would definitely be a big help on the project, except he's terrified of ghosts and buys into all the 'doom and gloom nonsense' Hartley fills his head with (because Hartley is an asshole who likes to mess with people). So it's usually just Cisco and Barry working on the tachyon generator, while the twitterpated newlyweds make doe eyes at each other upstairs.
Dr. Wells continues to be focused with almost single-minded determination on getting them to finish the tachyon generator, which Barry supposes is understandable, for a ghost. Barry doesn't mind the long hours, and Cisco doesn't either (there's a sort of energetic gleam to his eyes that's absent when he's not working on the project). Sometimes, they do get distracted and start goofing off – they have a whole laboratory all to themselves, after all, to play in unsupervised. One truly bizarre effect of Dr. Wells' ghostly presence is that liquids tend to float upwards if left in an open container; Cisco keeps an assortment of novelty plastic straws on hand for drinking with. So it is inevitable that Barry and Cisco should come up with a variety of games they can play with zero-gravity beverages – after half an hour of 'Astronaut Pong,' Wells brings their shenanigans to a literally screeching halt when he drags his chalk across the board so that its shrill squeaks grate against their ears.
Barry doesn't particularly like the feeling of 'being scolded by a principal' that he gets whenever Wells feels that their antics have gone on long enough, and shouldn't they be getting back to work soon? Cisco always seems to take the rebukes particularly hard, so Barry tries to do his best to keep the distractions to a minimum.
*clunk!* [*hsssss*] Journal log entry number twenty-eight. The date is March 24th, 1952.
The Cosmotron at Brookhaven has been turned on – we wish them all the best with their new particle accelerator. However, we remain confident that the path to tachyons does not lie in accelerating normal particles up to light speed. The necessary energy to do so is, as demonstrated by Einstein's superb formula, infinite. Instead, we will attempt to circumvent the laws of relativity by reaching beyond the fabric of spacetime, to particles that already exist at superluminal velocities…
It becomes routine. Each day, after Barry has finished with his assigned tasks as a forensics intern, he heads down to the Cortex to help Cisco and Dr. Wells, and sometimes Caitlin, with the Project.
Sometimes, they fire up the projector to watch movies. Cisco says it's to educate Dr. Wells on contemporary cinema, but Barry doubts that is the only reason. For one thing, in addition to cult classics they also watch Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood that were definitely around in Dr. Wells' time. And for another thing, it is a straight-up transparent excuse to goof-off, watch movies, and eat popcorn. Barry isn't sure what their resident ghost thinks of their movie nights; Dr. Wells' lack of physical presence often makes it hard to judge what he feels about a lot of things. But his comments seem to be generally positive, as though he doesn't mind their intrusion into his space for something as superfluous as watching movies. Barry supposes that Cisco had at some point in the past impressed upon Dr. Wells the fact that mortals could not be productive 24/7.
*clunk!* [*hsssss*] Journal log entry number four-eighty-three. It is August 4th, 1955, at two thirty-five pm. Tessie has developed a new method of splicing together composite insulation capacitors. She wants to call them SQUIRLS, Sustained QUantum Isometric Resonant Lightwave Storage. I have tried to dissuade her but Jessica is on her side and I am outnumbered.
(Jessica is not allowed to do crossword puzzles without supervision anymore.)
Meanwhile Gideon tells me that the renovations to the lab won't be completed until later next month; no word on how we are expected to continue our work in the meantime. Maybe we'll all just go on a family holiday – Jessica has been clamoring to go to that new park that just opened in California; how she expects us to afford to go to California, I have no idea. Her grasp of mathematics is usually much better than this, though she is only seven. I hope she'll be content to visit the planetarium instead…
As the project nears completion, Barry finds that he and Cisco are spending more and more time in the Cortex. One, he swings by in the early morning, an hour before he's required to be in the forensics lab, only to find Cisco already there, tinkering away, and he realizes that Cisco has been sleeping in the lab. Barry shudders at the thought of doing the same; Barry gets along with Wells, and knows he's harmless - but there are some unavoidable side effects of being in a room with a ghost (namely the cold spots, chills, and back-of-the-neck prickles), and Barry thinks he wouldn't be able to get a wink of sleep in such a haunted room.
A/N: The Brookhaven Cosmotron really was turned on in March 1952. And a rather significant theme park did open in California in 1955 ;D
All that nonsense about SQUIRLS is complete technobabble, however.