Chapter 06

The next morning after an obliteration of the hotel's breakfast bar by Shaggy and Scooby and an explanation of the plan to Mr. La Gorce, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby were in the first tour group at 9:00 AM. Daphne, Fred, and Elsie waited in the lobby for the 10:00 AM tour. Although Shaggy's suitcase seemed to only contain food, he had enough clothes to deck himself out as a stereotypical tourist complete with Washington Monument headgear. Scooby Doo had a small 'Commanders' pennant attached to the end of his tail. Velma rolled her eyes.

"Hi!" The voice came from a young man who had stepped out of the doors behind the reception desk. "My name is Michael and I'll be your tour guide…"

Shaggy's hand went up. "Ooo! Ooo!"

Michael held his composure at the unscheduled interruption. "Yes?"

"What does a tour guide do?"

The response was curt, "Guide tours." The guide did a quick head count.

If all of you that are scheduled for the nine o'clock tour will follow me." He turned and led them down the corridor from whence he had come while Velma violated her no-personal-contact rule by punching Shaggy in the ribs.

As the first group left, the lobby emptied except for the receptionist and Fred, Daphne, and Elsie. There were clusters of seats around the large room and Fred tried to sit between the two women, forcing Elsie to work her way around to Daphne's other side to be able to sit adjacent to her charge. She dropped another glare on Fred, hoping the kid would catch the hint. She, of course, didn't know Fred's inabilities at hint catching—especially when his blood was busy in places other than his brain.

xXx

As the tour dragged on, Velma was getting bored. She loved National Geographic and was a subscriber and frequent visitor to their website but there's only so much you can do with an office building. There were posters around about a proposed renovation and Velma entertained herself by pondering some of the improvements they might be planning.

Her boredom evaporated when the hallway ahead filled with smoke. Her first instinct was that there was a fire but then a figure stepped out of the fog. It spoke, "You owe me, National Geographic. You owe me! Douglas Chandler!"

The rest of the group was backing away from the sudden appearance but Velma stepped forward, "What does the National Geographic Society owe you?"

"For my expenses preparing an article about Albania which they cancelled without cause."

This haunting was a contract dispute?

Velma had read the Albania article. "That article was cancelled because you freaked out a visitor with all of your antisemitic nazi ramblings and he reported you to Oliver La Gorce. He cancelled the article because up broke the society's rules about remaining nonpolitical."

"How is one expected to remain apolitical when the dangers of the world are so apparent? We ignored them in Roosevelt's America but the Germans saw the problem and created an admirable new social order to deal with the problems."

"The solution to the problem required mass murder?"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures. Hitler understood that the times were desperate. Roosevelt was a fool."

Velma inched forward as they spoke, sizing up the ghost. He was about five foot nine inches tall, just a hair on the heavy side. His hair was grey and he moved with a graceless shuffle. Then the ghost backed away into the smoke and was gone.

When the ghost had disappeared, Michael raised his voice above the crowd. "Many pardons for this inappropriate prank, ladies and gentlemen. We'll have some staff here shortly and then we'll be able to complete the tour. Velma looked at Shaggy and Scooby. She had a solid clue. All records indicated that Douglas Chandler was over six feet tall. The ghost wasn't close to that.

Velma pulled out her all-access pass and motioned for Shaggy to do the same. They showed it to Michael and headed back to the lobby. Their tour was over.

Back in the lobby, neither Daphne nor Elsie had yet punched Fred. But it was not for a lack of desire on the part of either. Growing up with the internet and its endless availability of pornography, Fred had a completely corrupted view of what women wanted, were willing to do, and how he might get them interested in it. Everything he thought he knew about women was wrong and it was being proven in real time. He, of course, wasn't seeing it.

He was saved from a tazing by Velma bursting through the door, followed by Scooby Doo and then Shaggy. "We've seen the ghost and it doesn't match the physical descriptions or photographs of Douglas Chandler."

Shaggy was out of breath after the speed-walk through the corridors. "Does it have to? Like, does a ghost actually have to look like the person?"

This made Velma pause. "If it didn't look like the person, then what would it look like?"

Shaggy hadn't prepared for a scientific discussion on ghost dynamics. "I don't know… an amorphous blob, I guess?"

"This wasn't an amorphous blob, it was a person. And it didn't match the description of the nazi. Ergo, he's not a real ghost."

Elsie couldn't help herself, "Isn't that a given?"

Velma slid into lecture mode, "Nothing is a given. The scientific method calls for starting each investigation with an open mind. Just because we have disproven the supernatural in all previous cases does not mean that we have disproven the existence of the supernatural as a whole. Therefore, we must objectively disprove it each time. Otherwise, its sloppy science."

Velma looked around the lobby which remained empty except for the disinterested receptionist, She then laid her phone down on the table and started to replay the audio recording of the tour. Video would have been too obvious. She fast-forwarded to the part where the ghost appeared. The Gang and Elsie listened to her interaction with it. They listened again.

Daphne reacted first, "His statements aren't original, they're close paraphrases of things that Chandler actually said." Velma wasn't the only one that had been doing research.

Shaggy' in his role as defender of the supernatural, asked, "But wouldn't that make sense? I mean, like, one of the theories about ghosts is that they are, like, images based on the person and not really the whole person."

Velma responded, "That leads us back to the fact that, if he were such an image, he would bear a likeness to the original person. He does not."

Shaggy hated being sober. He was happier staring into space, lost in his mental wanderings, during these discussions.

Fred's turn, "So, it's a script."

Velma and Daphne both nodded.

Fred raised his darn finger in the air, "And, if it's a script, there is some end game or motive behind the haunting."

Daphne continued the thought, "And if we find the motive, we find the ghost."

Velma finished, "So, its time to start interviewing people that have free access to the building."