what? writing fiction? No way!

If you were to talk to my family, or any of my friends, ‘great listener’ is not in my skill set. If you asked me if I could speak with the ‘dead’, I would assume you had meant ‘deaf’, and answer that yes, I do know some sign language. I learned when I started losing my hearing in my early twenties.

So with that said, you can imagine how startling it was when I first realized that I could hear spirits.

Now, this is by no means a skill I was born with. As far as I can tell, it’s all thanks to my digital hearing aids. I got them after a few years of waffling about whether or not I needed them, when I finally got sick of asking people, “No, say it again, I still didn’t hear you.”

Well, they work. Turns out that by their electronic nature, I can use them to hear EVP.

(if this was a tv show, I know that this is the part where the camera would cut to Lead Investigator Guy. He would then calmly explain how EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena; which is when a voice or sound shows up in a recording, but the natural human ear can’t pick up on it. Have I seen a few too many ghost hunting shows? Hell yeah! It’s what finally helped me realize I wasn’t crazy.)

The first time I heard something weird was when my partner Claire and I were hiking at a state park not too far from our house. We had been walking for a while, and hadn’t seen any trail markers recently. I’m honestly not sure if we were even still in the park when we found an old concrete hut out in the woods near a stream. I don’t know if it was an old mill house, or someone’s home, or what. It was creepy, though, and Claire loves horror movies, so nothing would do but for us to go in.

The place was small, what looked like a single room, with a rusted metal door and a dusty metal table shoved against one wall. The door had been chained shut, but long enough ago that the lock was broken. It was as dirty, musty, and moss covered as I had expected, with broken tile and bits of concrete strewn across the floor. “There’s no spider webs, at least. It’s actually weird how few bugs are in here.” I remarked as we wandered around.

“You’re right, Lily, this is way too clean. What kind of self respecting ax murder sweeps the floor this well!” Claire said with a wry grin as she wiped a grimy hand on her pants. One of the filthier windows had been turned into a 4 panel stick figure comic, detailing the grisly end to a pair of either women or men carrying melons. As dirt doodles went, it wasn’t her best.

We poked around a bit more, me taking pictures of the contrast between the rust and the moss, her drawing creepy faces in the dust. Then the sun hit a window just right, and then it was her taking pictures of the sunbeams, and me crouching and taking pictures of her ‘art’.

Eventually, I stood and asked, “Well, what should we do now?”

“Get out of here.” Was the whispered answer.

“Well, yeah, that part was obvious.” I was a bit irritated, honestly. Even with the hearing aids, whispers with your back to me is the worst way for me to hear anything, and Claire knows that.

“What?” Claire turned to look at me, obviously distracted by reviewing the photos she had been taking.

“You said, ‘Get out of here’. That’s obvious. What do you want to do after that?” I asked, a bit pointed.

By now, Claire was eyeing me sidelong. It was her, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but you’re amusing’ look. I got that one a lot. “I didn’t say anything. What did you think I said?”

“Get. Out. NOW.” No longer a faint whisper. It was clear, close, and really fucking creepy.

I could feel my eyes getting wider and wider as I stared at Claire’s face. Her mouth wasn’t moving. She wasn’t responding to the terrifying voice in the same room.

“NOPE! Fuck this. Fuck this truly,” I said as I marched out of that hut as fast as I could without tripping on a rock or breaking my ankle. Claire chased after me, demanding to know what was wrong.

She didn’t like my answer.

Part 2? weird.

 

 We stood outside, some distance away from the hut as I explained what I had heard. Predictably, she immediately wanted to go back in. “I didn’t hear anything, I wanna check it out!” 

“Well, *you* can go into the creepy haunted murder hut that hates me, but you will do it alone. No way in hell am I going back in there.” I eyed her as I went on sternly, “You realize, this is the most basic Stupid Horror Movie decision. This is how side characters die.” Talking about how we would die if our lives were a movie was a long running joke between us, but this was the first time it felt unfunny. It was the first time it felt real.

“Fuck you, I’m a main character!” She laughed, flicking me off as she walked back towards the hut. To her credit, she didn’t charge right back inside. I trailed behind her as she checked the woods surrounding the hut, making sure there was no one there. “Besides, maybe the reason there’s no bugs is because someone really does live here. Maybe there’s a basement or an attic we didn’t notice, and a hobo lives in there.”

Exterior cleared, she went back inside. I watched from the doorway and tried not to wig out. I wasn’t going to go in, but I also wasn’t ashamed to admit I didn’t want her out of my sight. She poked around a bit more, checking the ceiling and every corner for some hint. “Maybe you heard a park ranger? You said it was pretty quiet, there was that chain on the door. You must have heard someone outside. I must not have noticed, because I was focused on taking pictures.”

That’s the thing about Claire; she loves to watch horror movies, loves to play horror games…but she has never believed in anything supernatural. She has always been the world’s most skeptical skeptic. She could tell I was genuinely upset, so she believed I had heard something, but she had decided it was someone hiding from us, or someone in the woods who had seen us. 

“Hey, Claire?” I said nervously.

“What? Did you hear something again?” She glanced furiously around the room.

“No...but look at your dirt doodle.” The last panel of her little window comic had been replaced by what looked like a handprint. She had drawn the thing on the inside of the window. There was no earthly way that someone could have wiped it away without one of us noticing. 

“What the hell? Did you do that?” she asked, I could tell she was starting to doubt that I wasn’t playing a prank on her. 

“YES.” It was the same voice as before. I was legitimately freaking out. 

This time, Claire actually seemed to hear it, startling and glancing around. “Did you hear that? I didn’t catch what it said.”

“It said, ‘yes’. As in, ‘yes, the same thing that is making the creepy sounds is making handprints from inside the hut’. As in, ‘yes, it is time to get the hell out of here’.” It was a little surprising to me how normal my voice sounded as I went on, “Also, I suddenly feel the need to remind you that my hearing aids have *directional* microphones, so the only way I should be hearing anything is if it is *in front of me*. Where you are. In the hut. I think I want to go home now.”

Thankfully, it was weird enough that Claire agreed. We hightailed it out of there and kept going until we found the trail back to the car. I could tell that breathlessness from running was the only thing keeping her from laughing, but I personally was glad of the time to process. It was a hell of a lot to process.

“Dude, that was awesome!” was her first comment when we were both able to breathe again. “I have no idea what that was, but it was freaky cool.”

“A little more freaky than cool, as far as I’m concerned. That was… I don’t know what that was. I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know a lot of things, suddenly.” It’s not every day your understanding of the world around you is so radically shaken.

“But, hey,” Claire joked, “At least we know your hearing aids work well!” 

“Yeah, maybe a little too well. I would ask my audiologist, but I feel like this is not what he meant when he said I would probably hear better than I ever have in my life.” I huffed a laugh, “Think I should ask to turn them down?”

“What? No! That was awesome! I just wish I could have heard the same stuff. Then we could figure out what you were hearing.” 

“What, ‘my hearing aids give me the power to hear ghosts’ isn’t a satisfactory answer to you?” I couldn’t even tell if I was joking anymore. 

“Yeah...fuck that. Lets get home. I want to do some research” 

So that’s what we did.