Grosvenor Lane Ghost
By Jeremy Tyrrell
Book 1 of Paranormology
Copyright 2014 Jeremy Tyrrell
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is also available in print. Please visit www.jeztyr.com for more in the Paranormology series and other works by this author.
Dedication
For my guide, instructor, bag of laughter and brother, Kieran.
The Professor
It may be some time before this manuscript sees the light of day, perhaps well after I am long gone from this world. As such, I have decided, given the frustrating rate of progress, to write down this story so that my experiences might not go with me.
I was only a young lad when I first met the Professor. It was probably for the best, since it meant my preconceptions were limited. Maybe that was why he hired me.
As I think back, I was barely a man, dressed as well as my few remaining coppers would allow, sitting at the bench receiving a private lecture. For the past week I had been settling into my new found occupation, learning quickly about this and that, applying whatever skills I had learnt previously.
It was late in the day when I had been called aside from my duties. The Professor had been rabbiting on about his personal theory pertaining to other-worldly phenomenon.
“Are you listening? It's the light, you see. Something about the spectrum, something about the higher end in particular. Exactly what it is, I don't know. That's something I'm hoping to find out.”
I shook my head, not quite sure what he was getting at. Truth be told, I had not really paid attention over the past hour and I had not the foggiest idea of what he was going on about.
“Well, it's not just that, but it certainly plays a part in it. I mean, from what I've read, you can banish them in the twinkling of an eye with a strong light. It's anecdotal evidence, of course, but it's compelling. I've been meaning to set up a few experiments, you see, that will allow me to figure out whether it's a threshold, or a particular colour, or even a combination of colour or if, in fact, it has nothing to do with nature of the light at all, rather the intensity.”
I held up my hand in a bid to slow him down, but he continued unabated. He has that habit, as I would find out, of continuing on whether anyone was listening or not. It is like he has a bladder in his brain, swollen and distended, and once the valve is released his thoughts gush out to relieve the pressure within.
For a while I sat, listening to the ramble in a quiet hypnotic state, letting his words flood about me. It was only after a few minutes that my brain decided to catch up with current events.
“...and that brings under the microscope all manner of questions, such as how the light interacts with them in the first place or if there is some kind of unknown effect that plays a part in it. It's a doozy, I'm telling you, what with all the possibilities it opens up,” he cried, his engine revving, “Because then you have implications upon Momentum, that mighty stone of science, and Force and Energy! Energy!”
“Energy,” I nodded.
“Yes, Energy. And if there is such an interaction, then the Laws of Physics as we apply them today would then need to be applied to all events, otherwise they aren't Laws, now, are they? And if they cannot be, in certain circumstances, applied, what then?”
“What then indeed?” I asked, doing my best to keep up.
I failed. There was just so much to comprehend, so much that seemed simply unreal that my mind gave up making sense of it all and concentrated on something small and tangible. I needed something I could hold onto. He was looking at me expectantly through his circular glasses, wiggling his eyebrows, swirling a pair of marble-balls in his hand.
“So, um, Professor?”
“Yes?”
“Can I see them?”
“Who?”
“The, um, the ghosts.”
“I don't know. Can you?” he asked, wiggling his dark eyebrows harder, shaking his pointed beard and looking around, mockingly, “Is there one in here right now?”
“I don't see one.”
“How would you know if you did?”
“I, um, I guess that I should discern a face or a body or, I don't know, something.”
His eyebrows stopped wiggling and dropped back down over his eyes like a canopy. He was growing frustrated, I could tell, that I did not understand what he was driving at.
“That's your problem there, lad, hoping for the obvious to show up. That's the problem with the whole damn field. Everyone wants one they can sit and chat to, that they can relate to, that they can put a ruddy face on. And the clairvoyants and soothsayers have just made a complete mess of it. Now the only thing that people want, what they demand, is a half exposure of someone in a white sheet.”
He tugged at his goatee beard in vexation.
“That's the problem. It's expectations, is what it is. It's you projecting what you want to see and hear and feel over what you actually see and hear and feel. It's a farce. It's a shambles,” he remonstrated, rifling through a drawer and bringing up a handful of photographs.
“And it always comes down to the visuals. Well, so be it. There!” he announced, thumping his finger on the pile, awaiting my reaction.
After a couple of seconds I timidly reached forward and took up a few, flicking through the grainy images of walls and doors and floors. On each was a series of glowing dots.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“I'm not sure if I'm supposed to see anything,” I admitted as I squinted, “It looks like a couple of doorways. I can see some paint peeling there...”
“You've got an eye for detail. That's good, that's commendable, but look first, lad, for the obvious.”
“Oh,” I said, squinting and looking closer.
He sighed, pulling my head back from the photograph and circling the picture with his finger.
“The obvious first,” he growled, pointing to bright circles on the pictures, “These! In the air, floating about here.”
I shrugged, thoroughly confused, “And is this what I am looking for?”
“No! No! No! This is simply what others look for! These blobs of light are nothing more than dust specks in the air, nothing more! They act as tiny reflectors, catching the camera flash and shining light back onto the lens, looking for all the world like floating points of light. And they can be created at a whim, and discredited just as fast, for they are well known in the field,” he said, taking the photographs back and taking his time flicking through, “And I would not waste my time chasing dust, now, would I? No. I wouldn't, let me tell you. But what I might chase is this!”
The last photograph of the pile was placed under my nose. It looked very similar to the rest, with a glowing dot positioned a little off-centre, somewhere near the door covered in peeling paint. I expressed my indifference, expecting another lecture.
“I thought you would say that. Everyone says that. But here, here is the thing. That dot there is not a piece of dust.”
“It's not?”
“No. Does it look like the other floating specks?”
“Well, yes.”
“Does it have the same intensity?”
“No. No I guess it doesn't.”
“Look closely. I instructed you before to look for the obvious first. Now I want you to to look for the nuance, the subtlety, the obscure, the latent little clues that will yield the answer.”
He handed me a magnifying glass so I could get a better look. I was only an assistant, back then, and I was still quite raw. What could I possibly see or say that would be of use to the Professor? Still, I looked closely and compared the tiny ball with the other photographs.
“It's certainly, um, subdued, isn't it? I'm not sure if t
hat's the right word. And it does look different to the other pictures that you have here. But surely brightness is not...”
“Is not what I would base a discovery on, no. But look closer. These photographs, this one, and this one, all of them, are taken with a flash. You can see the reflections here, easily enough, on the opposite wall, on that door. The light, you see, is coming out from just above the camera and reflecting back to the lens. That's the flash,” he said, sounding a little giddy, “Whereas with this one, the light is coming from the orb itself! See? Look again!”
I looked once again at the photograph. It was true. The only reason I could see the paint peeling on the door was from the light coming from the point that hovered just next to it. The shadows caused by the paint flecks were also at a different angle. The Professor nodded sagely as I pointed this out.
“Plus, the point of light was not blurred and close to the lens, as with these dust specks, this is further away, right next to the door there and, if you use this,” he instructed while impressing upon me an even larger magnifying glass, “You can see that the image is quite well defined, not hazy and fuzzy like these, and