exist.
The first few years of being a paranormal investigator were kinda easy actually. By and large I didn’t have much to do. All I did was take a camera and go into ‘haunted’ places, say a few words and conclude swiftly that the place wasn’t haunted. It paid well too. By the time I was thirty I had already paid off my mortgage and student loan, was taking regular trips abroad and I was driving around in a Lexus.
Of course, holding to the view that I don’t think ghosts or such like exist is bad for business, so in interviews I would frequently… speculate upon the existence of such spiritual and supernatural beings. This allowed for a bit of... negotiating here and there if someone needed a bit of encouragement for ghost tourism at say, a dilapidated Edwardian water tower.
Look, you might think that making a little on top of my salary is unethical, but when someone wants to help bolster the economy, I need to have my fair share too. Besides, bankers take bonuses by trading your savings with debts, but I’m not hearing you gripe about that.
The oration of my memoirs however are not to highlight my illustrious career, nor is it to complain about bankers. Instead, it’s to tell you about the day I retired. It was last year whist I was wrapping up an investigation that seemed to like going cold. I had received a call to investigate a possible supernatural hotspot on the coasts of Maine, North America. This particular investigation had me chasing clues for several years; from Stonehenge in England right into the centre of the Bermuda Triangle, passing the Pyramids along the way. The investigation had begun to cost me into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, sapping away almost all of my income and savings as I dashed across the world in some sort of Easter egg treasure hunt.
I was aware of my surroundings when I reached JFK airport in New York and got into a colleague of mine, Joe’s car as he took us up towards New Brunswick, Southern Canada. It was the only place where we could get a boat back down, across the border and onto the island which was known locally as the Machiasport. We arrived at around 4pm and since it was the middle of winter, January to be exact-it was already getting very dark, very quickly and the choppy water would only get more unstable the longer we waited in port.
Nobody ever tells you just how different it feels being cold on land in comparison to being cold on a boat. Even when I try to tell myself how it was I can’t describe it in it’s entirety. It was freezing. So cold in fact that it felt invigorating. There was a constant mix of condensation and ice marring all of the metal surfaces- like the frames of the windows and the doorknobs. The frame of the ship had not gone unscathed either and ice had begun to form in a rustic pattern on the outside of the hull.
It was the wind that caught me by surprise most though. It wasn’t strong enough to make the ship sway, but it did send a ripping cold through every crevice of the ship. Nowhere was safe and any gap in any door just made the room feel like a human refrigerator. Hot drinks didn’t make the situation any better either, because the boiling surface of the kettle felt like it was burning your hand upon touching it. It was like someone took a hot knife and used it to scrape off your fingerprints from your fingertips. The chill made your bones ache too and it seemed like no amount of wrapping up or huddling together would make that feeling go away. Even now that I’ve experienced it it’s such a hard thing to describe; your bones feel like they’re being held together with something other than your own flesh. Like you’re being held up with sheer will as your knees are made of rubber balls that only connect right at the centre of your leg. The rest of your knee may as well be non-existent because your thighs already feel like jelly and your toes are numb from your body sending most of the blood to your torso to protect your vital organs. It’s hard to think when it’s that cold too. It’s exceptionally hard to remember simple things like how to tie a shoelace, let alone make another hot drink.
Then the fog came in. That’s when things got particularly tense. The fog was so dense it gave the air weight. Like the fog was sitting on your eyelids. Everything you could see was only a metre or so in front of you because of the dark and what you could see was behind this layer of thick, smoke like fog. It only intensified the cold too. Now the cold felt alive, like ants or termites had crawled all over your skin from head to toe and was eating your flesh. Stabbing you with their tiny pincers and moving to your hands and feet as if your body were on fire. I hated it, every second of that seven-hour trip I hated. So much so that I have since been convinced that there are torture methods that do not last as long and are nowhere near as painful.
But as daylight began to crack through the veil of darkness and lift the grey cloud of fog from our eyes, the light fractured the cloud it like it were a broken plate. Sight of the island had began to creep forth. It did not, however, stop the morning wind.
It howled and whistled though the gaps between panels all over the ship, making it creak and groan as we began to sway in the water. It was disorientating as nobody could find their feet on the moving ground.
I held onto tables, doorframes and even tried sitting down, but none of it helped. The constant movement made me feel like my brain was moving slower than the boat was shaking. It’s like playing hopscotch on a merry-go-round or walking down escalators when they’re stopped. I felt stuck in this floating metal prison that danced between islands further and further away from the mainland.
That’s when I blacked out. I can’t remember how I passed out or how long I was out for, but when I woke up we were docking the ship by beaching it on the mixture of a sandy and rocky shore. Now we had a chance to examine the damage of our boat. Luckily, there were only a few scratches on the hull of the boat and they weren’t too deep. Cosmetic damaged we called it. What was strange however was that we had now moved into the centre of the fog it seemed. The ‘eye of the storm’ as we could see the thick wall of fog encircle the island, hiding the landmass like a child behind a curtain playing hide and seek.
The island seemed desolate. There were a few houses, all abandoned for one reason or another; which you could tell by the evident cobwebs on the window frames and the empty driveways. It was clear that these were not holiday houses either since personal effects such as family portraits had been left over fireplaces and cups were still on tables. Perhaps what we had come here for had driven the residents of this miniscule island away for now, or perhaps their move was permanent. Either way, people left this place in a hurry.
The road had even begun to crack too where the tarmac began to show it’s age from zero maintenance, plus the effects of the chilling cold and fast, wild winds picking up the upper layers of gravel from the tarmac. This fine layer of dust gave the island’s air a musky, low hushed feel to it, darkening the sky in addition to the low sun and lingering fog.
After looking over our clues as to why we were here, we then took a moment to begin looking for what we came here for. First on the list was a tent, located on the northern ridge that overlooked the sea. The reason why we believed it to be a tent was because of several engravings on pieces of rock that we saw at each of the three ‘mystical’ locations. Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza and even a piece of debris in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, all had this same, strange; tent like engraving somewhere on their clue. I would tell you more about the engravings we saw, but it took me so many years to compile my research, so why on earth would I give it all away in a line or two?
We set up camp for the night after a fruitless search and decided to rest on dry land for one evening before heading back. Another reason we waited was that the wind and waves would be on our side if we left in the morning also, hopefully making our trip back a lot easier.
The night, which I still remember to this day was exceptionally dark. So dark even that I couldn’t see around the campfire. I knew they were there though since I could see their toes point towards the flickering flames.
It couldn’t have been any later than 1am or so when I saw a second campfire start off in the near distance, say around one hundred metres or so in front of us. I can’t accurately describe the panic of such an event since I could still see t
he campfire so far ahead of me but not my friends right next to me.
I can tell you that I panicked and so did the crew. We rushed into our tents to unclip the equipment that we had locked into carry crates and we began to rush over the grassy field towards the campfire. We knew that if this was what we came here for, we wouldn’t want to miss any of it. But as I ran ever closer- thoughts of what could be hidden within this secret, somewhat paranormal tent began to engulf my thoughts. It was like all of my regular pessimistic go-to thoughts had been collectively caught and ensnared in a trap at the back of my mind and sheer awe and marvel had come to the forefront.
I was eager. No, greedy to get to the tent first and as I ran ever closer. As I desperately tried to pick up speed I couldn’t help but feel frustrated as the box slapped against my thighs and strained on my arms. My heart and breath began to pulsate faster and I could feel my skin perspire on the inside of my coat.
I don’t know if any of you have ever felt the rush of excitement you get when you’re about to accomplish something you’ve spent almost