The following is Chapter Two from the novel, “Hunting For Witches — Salem’s Burning”
Tyler stared at the faded wallpaper in his hotel room, still wondering where Ashton had disappeared. They were arguing in the local Chili’s when Ashton excused himself to go to the bathroom, and he never returned.
The two amateur ghost hunters had only been in Little Salem for a little over a day, and Tyler was already getting the feeling his loyal amigo was growing sick of him. So far he'd found reasons to complain about everything: how the town they chose to visit was dull as dishwater, how the residents looked like they stepped out of a 1950s TV program. Most significantly, he complained about how there was only one place that served alcoholic beverages in the vicinity, and it closed at 11 (Eleven!). The contention that Little Salem was “the most haunted town in America” or the legend that Aleister Crowley had visited the hotel where they were staying offered very little consolation. He wished he could be anywhere else for a week, and that they’d chosen to spend spring break in Cabo instead.
For the past several weeks, Tyler had been looking forward to vacationing in Mexico, surrounded by hot babes in tiny bikinis pouring ungodly amounts of tequila down their throats. The plan changed once Ashton became convinced they should try spending the week in a more haunted locale instead, with the explicit goal of capturing prime footage for their fledgling paranormal YouTube channel. Tyler had been against this idea, arguing they should use the break to enjoy themselves. However, the fact that they’d been doing ghost hunts for over a year and still hadn’t captured anything remotely mind-blowing was problematic, and there were two events that helped convince him to go along with the change of plans.
The first of these events involved a conversation the boys shared a few days earlier. They were enjoying coffees at a diner following a riveting ghost hunt that Tyler was certain had been their most successful investigation to date. He was smiling with excitement while reviewing the grainy night-vision footage on their camcorder—footage of him standing at the bottom of a stairwell while trying to coerce the stubborn spirits into revealing themselves.
“Dude—right here. I love this part,” Tyler had said. “I just want to stay up all night, upload all this stuff to our profile on YouTube. Ghost Bros, bitch. Coming at ya.”
Ashton looked more subdued, his earlier enthusiasm notably soured as he glared at an image on a digital camera—the supposed evidence that amounted to their long-awaited entry to the big time.
“Yo, what’s wrong?” Tyler asked him. “It’s the name, isn’t it? You still don’t like the name.”
“No, it’s not the—I mean, I still think it’s a dumb name.”
“Ghost Bros! You said we should pick a name that was, you know—”
Ashton grimaced with irritation. “The name was a joke! When we were talking about picking a name for ourselves, all I said was when you look at those long-running ghost shows, it’s always a bunch of bros, and they’re looking for ghosts. Ghosts, bros—it was an observation!”
“Right, and you want us to be successful, right? To turn this amateur ghost-hunting thing into a full-scale enterprise?”
“Yes, exactly. That’s why I’m feeling a little disappointed—”
“Disappointed?”
“Yeah! Yes! Disappointed! With this. With this.”
Ashton gestured impatiently to the digital camera and slammed it on the table. The viewscreen was displaying the image that had gotten Tyler so pumped.
“Dude, it’s an orb.”
“I know what it is, Tyler.”
“Dude, this is legit paranormal stuff. Proof the investigation was a success.”
“But was it? Was it?”
Tyler furrowed his brow, thinking this over.
“When we started doing these ghost hunts,” Ashton recalled, “it was because you and I both know the supernatural is something real, right? It is seriously out there, and we wanted to get up close and show the world. But does what we captured do this? Us calling ourselves ‘ghost bros’ and running around haunted houses like a couple of fools—this is all we get from it? It’s not enough.”
“It was only one investigation,” Tyler grumbled.
“Yeah, I know.”
“It was our most successful investigation to date, but…”
Ashton stared out the window, looking introspective. “All these crazy stories you hear from people. Ghosts, demons, witches—”
“Yeah. Horror movie stuff.”
“There has to be something to it, don’t you think? Proof that those things are more than just stories and that they exist in the modern-day?”
“Dude, witches don’t exist. That’s just…cosplay for bored housewives and mallrats.”
Ashton wasn’t listening, still yearning for something more.
“I’ve always had the feeling there’s something more out there. We’ve both had…experiences.”
Experiences—this was something that Tyler couldn’t argue with, and the conversation would be on his mind the following day. He agreed with Ashton on most things, but he refused to write off all of their minor successes. There was no question he was just as eager to capture something that provided conclusive evidence of the paranormal, but he didn’t fully understand why his friend seemed so hell-bent on encountering something so horrifying. Like there was something Ashton wasn't telling him, and he was secretly seeking out this type of experience for highly personal reasons.
Despite the ongoing disagreements between them, Tyler had high hopes that their latest video would bring them one step closer to worldwide fame and celebrity. The footage from their investigation was still flashing in his mind when he arrived at the hotel in Boston—a posh metropolitan joint just a few miles from campus. After finding parking, he exited his SUV like a champion, as a tired and cynical voice droned on on the other end of his smartphone.
“Mr. Watts, I’ve told you a dozen times. Our company doesn’t represent self-proclaimed YouTube celebrities.”
“Well, maybe that’s where your company’s missing out, babe.”
Phone pressed to his ear, he trekked across the lot with his chest puffed out and a slight bounce in his step. He was putting forth an extra effort that day to show off his inherent star quality.
Perception is reality, he recalled (he heard that in a movie once).
Not everyone held as flattering an opinion of the would-be paranormal superstar. To his surprise, he discovered he was being wall-eyed by every other posh and jaded hotel guest as he shuffled through the lobby in his ratty, dollar store flip-flops, cargo shorts, and a wrinkled baseball tee he pulled straight from the bedroom floor.
Geez, haven’t any of these people seen someone who just pulled an all-nighter? he thought. However, he was more distracted by the weary tone of the publicity agent he called.
“I’ve seen your channel. You’ve posted a total of eight videos, all with under 10,000 views, OK? And with viewer comments I can only describe as…uniformly negative.”
“Don’t be so quick to brush us off, your babeness. ‘Ghost Bros’ is going to revolutionize the ghost hunting format. This is exactly how the Wright Brothers started!”
“I honestly fail to see any similarities.”
“Just calling it like it is.”
“Have a good day, Mr. Watts.”
With that, the call ended—and not in the way he expected.
Oh well. One minor setback wasn’t going to stop him. Tyler knew he was a star in the making, and it would only be a matter of time for the rest of the world to know this as well. The lyrics to a popular Taylor Swift song cycled through his head as he arrived at his destination—a large, spacious ballroom with a sign outside reading:
PARANORMAL CONVENTION // ENTER HERE.
As Tyler navigated his way through a sea of empty chairs, a clunky video projector cast a dusty beam of light on a portable movie screen. He found a seat next to a burly neck-bearded fanboy, watching the footage of a film crew exploring an abandoned building. The young man was a paranormal enthusiast named Leon who was only a few years older than him but acted old enough to be a wizened Zen master with all of the vast knowledge of the world at his fingertips. In other words, he was just as overly confident and arrogant as his Ghost Bro counterpart.
“Yo, what I miss?”
“Video on poltergeist phenomenon,” Leon mumbled cynically.
On-screen, there was a loud crash, accompanied by a few choice expletives as a brick suddenly appeared out of nowhere and hurled itself at the film crew.
Tyler grinned with wry amusement. “Sa-weet.”
After the fluorescents were flipped back to full, a frumpy-looking presenter in baggy clothing took his place at the podium. “As you can see, pretty heavy poltergeist activity on display,” he muttered nervously. “Clearly possible demonic activity…”
Tyler was barely listening, still thinking about his successful ghost hunt from the previous night. “This is what I'm gonna do,” he whispered. “I'm gonna have my very own TV show.”
Leon frowned wearily, having heard it all who knows how many times before. He kept his eyes forward when the presentation was interrupted by a loud, booming voice from somewhere in the room.
“Shenanigans! You could see the friggin’ strings!”
Tyler and the rest of the small crowd of audience members began to scan their surroundings, and his eyes eventually landed on a man in a black T-shirt. The man was a swollen, muscle-bound jock with short, dyed black hair and was accompanied by a scornful-looking posse of hanger-on bros all dressed in black as well. Their leader was clearly admired and respected, even if the company he kept was bargain basement, and Tyler knew the disgruntled bomb thrower and the reputation that preceded him.
“Holy crap. That's Eddie Specter from Ghost Warriors!”
Ghost Warriors was the show that sparked Tyler’s interest in the paranormal when he was just a kid. Each show featured Eddie and his co-hosts exploring haunted hot spots and hellholes, trying to bully the resident phantoms into revealing themselves. There were several TV shows of this kind running on cable at the moment, but Eddie was the originator of this type of series—as well as the paranormal subculture’s confrontational and controversial poster child, and a huge influence on Tyler in particular.
As the audience started to mumble in quiet recognition of the star standing among them, the frumpy-looking presenter awkwardly cleared his throat. He was no doubt feeling threatened by Eddie’s high level of influence.
“Clearly—clearly, we have some disagreement with the, uh—”
“A disagreement? Is that what we have?” Eddie seemed to have reached a brand new level of moral outrage. “You posers will never make it to the big leagues with half-baked pretenda-vids like this nonsense! I’m outta here! Clowns!”
With that, Eddie made his exit, swaggering out of the room with his monochromatic ghost gang right behind him. While he was leaving, the presenter attempted to regain control of the disorderly setting, but Tyler’s thoughts were somewhere else entirely. As the door was closing behind the infamous Mr. Specter and his sneering posse of cookie-cutter cohorts, Tyler and Leon exchanged muted expressions before jumping from their seats to chase after him.
“Ah, for cryin’—are you kidding me?”
Eddie was sitting at a giant computer monitor in his hotel room with Tyler nervously peering over his shoulder. Eddie’s resident fan club, and also Leon, were gathered in the room as well, all of them glaring with collective disappointment at a digital picture of an orb displayed on the computer screen. The evidence that amounted to Tyler's crowning achievement as an amateur investigator and the coup de grace from his riveting ghost hunt the previous night.
“Dude! It’s just a speck of dust!” Leon moaned.
Tyler scrunched up his face with disapproval. “Dust?”
“Look, I'll zoom in on it,” Eddie grumbled. “You see those edges? Talk about amateur hour.”
“Whoa! Who you calling amateur, Hollywood?”
Leon quickly tried to placate his incensed companion before a sudden interjection from Eddie forced Tyler to try to relax a little. His TV idol was facing him with a shining glint in his eye and a cold seriousness about him. Like he was about to take the would-be ghost hunter into his confidence.
“Look. I like you, brah,” Eddie said. “You’ve got that fire in your belly like I did when I was first starting out with things. Because of that, I'm going to show you something you're not gonna get from those losers back in the convention hall. You know what that is? I’m talking about the real…supernatural.”
Eddie clicked open a file on the desktop, and a homemade video began to play. It was the same type of video one would expect to see on any typical ghost show; a dark empty room, grainy night-vision footage. But right from the start, there was something different, and also palpably disconcerting.
The room the footage was shot in had a dreary and desolate atmosphere about it that was remarkably gloomy and unpleasant, the cramped and dilapidated space filled from floor to ceiling with piles of garbage and broken furniture. The environment reeked of tragedy and Tyler found it hard to imagine that anyone could subsist in such a setting. He assumed that whoever did must have had lives just like the furniture.
While pondering the disquieting state of the scenery, he suddenly observed the feature that Eddie had been so eager to reveal to him. In the corner of the room, a shadowy mist began to materialize. It was nothing alarming at first—Tyler had seen evidence just like this where something strange would appear and disappear just as quickly, and everyone would argue about whether it was something paranormal or just a glitch.
But the shadowy mist didn’t disappear.
It continued to spread.
As the seconds passed, the haunting paranormal anomaly continued to flood the room, and Tyler found himself in a state of intense unease. He couldn’t put his finger on it—whether his reaction was due to the apparition itself or the combination of the strange mist with the chilling environment. But whatever it was, the footage was definitively and without question the most unsettling piece of paranormal evidence he had witnessed.
“Whoa…” Tyler muttered, which was all he could manage.
Eddie seemed pleased, grinning widely as the eyes of his guest remained glued to the computer screen.
“You capture yourself a pretty piece of evidence like this?” he said proudly. “Everybody, and I mean everybody… They’re all gonna want a piece of you.”
Back in Little Salem, Tyler sat on one of the hotel room’s double beds, watching Eddie’s video on his laptop. The video and the conversation at the diner had intensified his thirst immensely when it came to capturing a piece of the paranormal that would catapult him to the starry realms of celebrity. This was why he agreed to make the trip to Little Salem, still not yet knowing and not yet comprehending that the quiet and unassuming town he landed in would make both his wildest dreams and most terrifying nightmares a reality.