EDIT: Link to Part 2.

I hadn't thought about Jared for five, six years, until yesterday. The only memento I have of our entire relationship is a polaroid photo of the two of us, buried in a box in my closet, somewhere.

As I put my socks away, my mind flashed to Jared, who always stuffed his socks between the bed and the nightstand. One of those cute, weird little memories you have of someone you were in a relationship with. Moments later, my phone buzzed from the nearby dresser. It was an email from Jared.

Wow, that's serendipitous, I thought, before scanning the subject line:

The Ghost Experiments. [HELP!]

Spooky! Or at least, it would be, if I didn't get loads of emails with variations on the word 'ghost' in the subject line. Let me give you some background before I dive in to the content of the email:

Background

Jared and I met back in college in our school's tiny Forensic Investigation program. He wanted to join the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is like Canada's FBI), and I wanted to join a Forensic Image Analysis lab. I was passionate about two things: Photography, and True Crime. Forensic Imaging seemed like the perfect fit. When we met, I was in my early 20s, Jared in his late 20s. He had been volunteering as a firefighter and EMT for a few years before going back to school. He thought a Bachelor's degree would look better on his RCMP application. It took me a while to realize he had any interest in me: the quiet woman that kept to herself. Jared always said my sense of humour is what he first noticed, though I never tried to be funny. My friends suggest that my bluntness can be charming. Perhaps that was it.

To make a long story short, Jared asked me out for coffee one day after class, and we ended up dating for about a year. We were both quite logical people, and suited each other well. We both enjoyed our own spaces too much to ever live together, but we were happy for a while. Things ended when Jared had to report for RCMP training in Regina, Saskatchewan, whereas I remained in BC to finish up my studies. Jared wasn't sure where he would get posted after graduation, so it was reasonable to end things. In retrospect, Jared was the kindest, most level-headed man I've ever dated. Though I haven't exactly been pining for him all these years since. Relationships come and go, and I started my career shortly afterwards. Six months after college I got a job as a Forensic Imaging Technician in a small private lab. I toiled away as a technician for years before getting promoted to Image Analyst. Analysts are the ones that perform things like image authentication, and photogrammetry. They also get all the best software, and coolest toys.

Aside from seeing the absolute horrors of mankind on a regular basis, I enjoyed my job. The work was fulfilling, my hours weren't too bad, and my coworkers ranged from tolerable to excellent. In my findings that is above average for a workplace. One month after my promotion to Analyst, I woke up to an email telling me that I got laid off and no longer had a job. I felt gutted. YEARS of hard work down the drain. I'm still bitter about it, if I'm being honest. Even worse still, there were no comparable jobs anywhere in my area. I hated the idea of leaving the Vancouver area, expensive as it may be, so I got a full-time gig as a server in a restaurant. I found a smaller apartment with my new coworker Sara, and things were starting to look up. Despite that, depression was kicking my ass, and I was sad I wasn't doing lab work anymore. After wallowing in sadness, I did what any over-educated, broke millennial would do: I started a YouTube channel.

I made videos on forensic imaging techniques, and spotting common photography tricks. I'm proud of my videos, but nothing exactly paid my rent or broke the algorithm. That is until one October, Sara encouraged me to do something spooky for Halloween. I've always enjoyed ghost stories, but I'm an absolute skeptic, which I wanted to make very clear. I released a video debunking "paranormal" or "ghost" footage. Taking five different videos of "paranormal activity", I broke down their rational explanations. There were a lot of strings pulling doors, or drawers. Plenty of poor quality cameras make 'ghosts' for various reasons. Certain cameras have low shutter speeds, or poor quality codecs that cause all manner of aberrations. Spotting computer generated imagery (CGI) can be tricky, but there are plenty of tells if you know where to look. Sometimes, 'ghosts' were actually dust near the camera lens, and so on. Frankly, this was my least-technical, lowest effort video on the entire channel... so of course this was the video that blew up and got loads of views. Getting ad revenue and sponsorships was exciting, so I decided to make a few similar videos. I could have kept making those videos, but ghosts weren't something I was passionate about. I went back to making my regular content in November, and the well dried up quick. The whole ordeal left me feeling depressed once again. I had no lines on another lab job, my channel was dying, and I was going through the motions in my day-to-day life. Until the email.

(I've removed some identifying information, but otherwise will preserve as much content as possible.)

The Email

To: Marnie [REDACTED] From: Jared [REDACTED]

Subject line: The Ghost Experiments [HELP!]

Hey Marnie,

It's Jared, from our days at [College name], I hope you're keeping well. I heard what happened to your lab last year, sorry to hear about that.

The reason I'm writing is we've had some unusual things happening in our home. I've set up cameras and audio recorders to try to figure it what's going on, but I'm working such long hours these days. I don't have as much time to look into this as I would like.

I've attached an explanation video, and all the raw files in a Google Drive for you to review at your earliest convenience. If you're interested, we would pay you $2000 to come over to our place in [town] on Vancouver Island for a few days. You can run whatever experiments you see fit, and use the content for your channel as long as you don't show our faces. We have a guest room and plenty of space for you to work in. Our second baby is on the way, and I'm willing to do anything to reduce our stress.

We're really scared.

If I don't hear from you in the next two weeks, I'll assume you're not interested and I won't bother you again.

Warmly, Cpl. Jared [REDACTED]

P.S Apologies for the dramatic subject line, I thought it might get your attention.

---------------------------------

I have to admit my initial thoughts focused on the wrong things: Wife? Second baby on the way?! Clearly I hadn't creeped him enough on social media over the last few years... Bad thoughts, Marnie. Put those away! I definitely didn't know what to make of the fact that they were scared. Was he pranking me? I had to admit the proposal was interesting, though. $2000 in Vancouver was... well, one month's rent. But getting one month of rent for a few days of work and some fodder for another video was tempting.

I opened up the attached Google Drive. I was surprised to see over 70 gigabytes of content in the drive. In the main folder was a video labeled "EDITED_EXPLANATION.mp4", followed by folders labeled "RAW FOOTAGE", "AUDIO RECORDINGS", "HOUSE", "RECORDS" and "FINDINGS". If this was a prank, it was an elaborate one. To determine if any of this was even worth my time, I clicked on the explanation video first.

The Video

I let out a small gasp when I saw Jared's face. He was talking at the camera from the middle of a kitchen island in a modern, fancy looking house. The years had been kind to Jared, his shoulders were more broad than I remembered, and his stubble had grown in. His facial hair used to be a lot more patchy, he kept it clean-shaven back in college. The video buffered for a second, and then started playing.

"Hey Marnie." Jared was smiling, but he sounds tired, "I'm recording this because there's some unusual stuff going on in my house. Jenny's really freaked out, and I... I don't know. If you had asked me 2 months ago if I thought ghosts were real, I would have said 'No'. No way. But now I'm so sleep deprived I'm not even sure anyway. I saw your ghost debunking videos and I'm hoping you can be a voice of reason here. I need help to figure out what exactly this is."

Jared cleared his throat. "Okay, I'll start from the beginning. We moved into this place here in [town] two months ago, super nice home, brand new development. The very first night, we woke up to a loud banging noise at exactly 3:24am. I shot out of bed, grabbed my sidearm, and cleared each room. Nobody was inside or outside our property, and there was no sign of an intruder. No forced entry or anything like that. I grabbed Simon -- that's my son, Simon, he's 11 months old now, so 9 months old at the time -- from the nursery and came back to bed. We weren't sure what it was, but we went back to bed after I was certain there was no immediate threat to my family."

"Then it happened again the next night. The exact same time, 3:24am. Bang bang bang!" Jared made a knocking gesture in the air, "Simon was co-sleeping with us that night. I cleared the house again, I checked the yard, I walked around the property. Nothing. Now it was a pattern, and after two shitty sleeps in a row, I decided to leave my phone recording all night. I'll play the clip now."

The screen cut to black, only the date and the timestamp was visible. 3:24am, like before, followed by a startling loud noise. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. Two sets of five knocks. I jumped in my chair at the volume of the noise, cursing under my breath. You can hear baby Simon start to cry and the commotion of his parents getting startled awake. The video cuts back to Jared in the kitchen.

"I'll spare you more of this, but if you check the audio recordings you can find 19 individual recordings. All loud bangs, two sets of five knocks at exactly 3:24 in the morning. There would be more, but, we got kind of... numb to it after a while, and, well, you'll see."

At this point I started wondering, why me? I'm an imaging specialist, not an audio expert. Much to my annoyance, video-Jared seemed to read my thoughts:

"Now I know you're more of a video expert, but if you do have any contacts in forensic audio feel free to send those along." You presumptuous bastard... I do have a friend like that. "I haven't told anyone at work about what's going on... Not sure how I'd even begin explaining this. After 3 days of these noises, I picked up a bunch of home security cameras that do night vision, and audio. I put them all over the house: Interior and exterior. Aside from the bathroom, the only room I didn't put a camera in was Jen's studio. She's a professional seamstress and didn't like the idea of a camera staring at her while she worked. She caved and you'll notice in the recordings that footage from her studio pops up around day 24. to catch anyone creeping around, I had large motion sensor lights installed outside. Oh, and I put some small motion sensors in the hallways."

The camera cuts to the kitchen, the master bedroom, nursery, two hallways, guest bedroom, garage, front yard, and back yard.. One thing was clear to me: This house was nice. Like, 'how on earth does a Corporal and a seamstress afford this' level nice. Does Jen come from money? Jared certainly doesn't, it would take me years to save up for a place like this with my old analyst salary.

"After installing the cameras, I managed to capture something the very first night." The video cuts to several exterior night shots, the motion lights are off, all is still. 'Day 3' displays on the screen, and the timestamp is visible in the corner. In the hallway closest to the bedroom, the clock now reads 3:23am. The motion light turns on, illuminating the hall, but no one is in frame. The hallway is silent. As the clock changes to 3:24am, the sensor light switches off. A pause, then two sets of five knocks. My ears ring at the sheer volume of the knocks. On the footage, Jared springs out of bed and comes out into the hallway in a t-shirt and boxers, his gun drawn. The hallway motion light turns on as Jared yells for anyone to make themselves known. The video follows him as he searches through the various rooms of the house. Jen stays in the bedroom, clutching their baby to her chest. The video cuts back to Jared narrating in the kitchen.

"As you can see, right before the knocking sounds, something set off our motion sensors in the hallway. I scanned every scrap of surveillance footage from that day, and I can tell you, no one's entered our house. All the footage is there on the drive if you want to review it for yourself. Now I know what you're thinking: It could be a faulty motion sensor. I thought the same, so I replaced [brand X] motion sensor light with [brand Y] the very next day to be sure."

The video cuts to Day 4, 3:23am. The new [brand Y] motion light is in view. Jared sits awake in an uncomfortable looking wooden chair in the hallway, phone and gun in hand. The light in the hallway is off as another set of loud pounding noises go off as the time changes to 3:24am. The noise sounds further away now, distant. Jared springs out of the chair and whirls around with his gun, trying to discern the source of the sound. The camera angle switches to Hallway 2, closer to the guest bedroom. At 3:23am, the new motion light turns on, and the guest door starts shaking with the knocks at 3:24am.

"So here's the thing..." Kitchen-Narrator Jared continues, "the knocking noise comes from a different spot every night. The noise happens at a consistent enough time that this could a hoax with a wireless speaker. But the fact it moves from room to room without anyone getting caught on camera is perplexing. You can confirm this with the attached raw surveillance footage. My phone's audio recordings have similar results if you check those out in the google drive. Some nights the knocking's loud, other times we can barely hear it. We're actually starting to sleep through it, now..." His voice was weary, almost resigned to this fact. In that moment I felt bad for Jared, though I wasn't sure how I could help.

"I wish I could say we were only dealing with loud noises in the middle of the night, but here's where you come in. On Day 14, I captured this." We cut away from Jared and are now watching Jen playing with baby Simon in the kitchen, the timestamp reads 10:35am. It's the middle of the day, light is pouring in from the beautiful framed windows. The house looks serene like this, much less spooky than the previous few nights worth of footage.

Behind Jen, the utensil drawer slides open on its own. I've seen plenty of shots like this in fake paranormal videos. I leaned in, hoping to spot an obvious sign of a hoax. Usually they put one string on the drawer, and one string on a utensil, then pull on it hard. This rips the object across the room and makes a little jump scare. What happened instead took me by surprise.

A silver spoon gently floats out of the drawer, twirling upwards into the air. It rotates, spinning in a few different directions - not impossible to fake with strings, but quite difficult. This could be CG, but it seems real at first glance. The levitating spoon spins higher into the air, and baby Simon starts grabbing towards it. You can hear him giggle on the tape, he's excited by the flying spoon. Jen turns her head over her shoulder to see what Simon's looking at. Exactly the moment she does that, the spoon drops back down into the drawer with a loud CRASH. Jen startles at the noise, and gets up to look at the utensil drawer. She seems confused. We're then brought back to Jared in the kitchen.

"If you check the footage, you'll see I had left for work hours before, and Jen was with Simon all morning." For a moment, video cuts to Jared walking out the door in full police gear at 4:45am. "The spoon's on the raw footage too, in case you think we did that with computers or whatever."

I found myself annoyed at how well Jared was predicting my reactions. Was this an elaborate prank? Why would a family man want to get one over on his ex from college? It's not like we had a falling out, in fact, he ended things with me! It didn't make any sense. Before my thoughts could catch up to my feelings, the video carried on:

"Loud noises and floating silverware are one thing, but this next clip is the real reason I--we wanted your expertise." Interesting Freudian slip there, Jared. The video takes us to night vision footage of the nursery, with "Day 35" and the timestamp of 2:13am. Little Simon stirs from his sleep, and wakes up in his crib. He makes a few cooing noises as he gets up and tries to prop himself up on the sides of his crib. His lets out a little giggle, looking in the direction of the closet.

Then, rising up from the ground, a shadowy figure emerges from the floor. The shape gets taller, and taller, until it looms over Simon's crib. It's in the rough shape of a man, has no distinguishable features, and is semi-transparent. My immediate reaction is this has to be CG, but the effect looks…good. The shadowy figure’s hand reaches out towards Simon, and holds its arm in position. Simon laughs and makes grasping motions towards the figure's "hand". The figure remains motionless for a moment, and Simon bobs up and down with excitement.

The other arm reaches out towards Simon. Both hands are now inching closer to the baby, who seems thrilled with his dark visitor. Long black figures grasp Simon’s sides, like how any parent would pick up their baby. The figure starts to slowly lift little Simon off the ground, his toes no longer touching the crib. Suddenly, Simon winces and lets out a sharp cry of pain. I recoil at the noise.

The figure stops lifting Simon, and holds him motionless, arms stretched in front. If the being had a face, I’d say it was staring at him.

Simon starts squirming in the figure’s hands. I fight the urge to look away from the screen…

Then the door opens.

Light bursts in from the hallway. The instant that happens, the shadowy figure drops into the floor, disappearing completely. Simon drops almost a foot down into the crib, stumbling. Jen rushes over to the crib and inspects Simon. She picks him up, and takes him out of the room.

Skeptic though I may be, it's hard to describe how unsettling that moment was. I found myself peering over my shoulder to make sure no one was behind me. Nothing but my empty apartment, still, had to check. The video comes back to Jared in the kitchen one last time.

“There’s something you should see.” Jared’s face looks strained, intense.

Two pictures appear on screen. Both photos are of baby Simon, his pyjama shirt pulled up. He’s bruised across his chest, sides and back. Dark bruises, in the shape of hand prints with long, slender fingers.

"I don't even have words." Same, Jared. Same. "Simon’s staying over at Jen’s sister’s place for now. We rushed him to the hospital right after this. Doctor says he’ll be fine, I’m hoping he doesn’t call CPS on us.”

Jared stares off into space, and there’s a pregnant pause. I catch myself impatiently moving my mouse to skip over the moment of silence, but it’s not needed. Jared speaks again.

“If you want to analyze this footage, and give me a rational explanation for this, PLEASE do… Please. If you go through the drive, you can see I've tried to track down every explanation I can think of. I even bought an EMF meter (No idea how this thing works, to be honest). I downloaded the original plans for the house, every permit relating to this property, the history of the land, everything! It's all there in the drive. There's nowhere in our house someone could be hiding. I've checked the attic, the crawlspace, and the ventilation system. I even checked to make sure our house wasn't on sacred [local Indigenous tribe] land. I confirmed no recorded murders have ever happened here, and we're the first people to ever live here. I've tried to summarize everything into the 'FINDINGS' folder but honestly... I don't have any concrete findings, at all. "

"You might laugh at this, but... We're really scared, Marn. Scared for Simon. Jen wants to cleanse our house with white sage and crystals, and I'm ready to call a priest. We've sunk all our savings into this house, and the market sucks right now. We won't be able to move for a few years, at least. You know me, I'm a rational person, but this has shaken me to my core. We'll pay you for your time, and get you any equipment you need." Jared pauses, searching for anything else to say. "I guess that's it. Thanks, Marn. Please get back to me once you get this. Please."

The video ends. I stare at the screen, reeling. I'm not sure how long I sat there for, exactly. All I know is I jumped out of my skin when my roommate Sara opened our front door. After she finished laughing at my expense, I told Sara about Jared and showed the video. When she got to the clip of the shadowy figure playing with baby Simon, she gasped and covered her mouth. we remained silent by the video's end.

"Are you going to help him?" Sara asked.

"Maybe." I said. That's the best answer I had.

"Do you think this is a hoax?"

"Maybe! No. I don't know. I'm going to look over the drive first."

Sara agreed that was a good idea, and left me to it.

The Drive

The drive contained everything Jared said it did, and more. There was 2 months worth of unedited security footage taking up the bulk of storage. I scrubbed through as much of it as I could, paying special attention to the days leading up to the Spoon Incident, and the Shadow Man. At no point did I see anyone rigging up wires or sophisticated lighting rigs, and both events were on the raw footage exactly as Jared presented them. I even found other moments of lights turning on, and objects moving around the house on their own! I watched those moments over and over, looking for any signs of digital or physical trickery. I didn't have all my sophisticated tools I would have back at the lab, but as far as I could tell: There was none. No evidence of file tampering, the files came directly from the security cameras. The lighting was also very consistent in both clips, not a pixel was out of place. Aside from the spoon not obeying the laws of physics, it all looked perfect. I decided to send the clips to my friends at the Forensic Imaging lab for further analysis. But my current educated guess is: If this is fake, it wasn't done with computer effects. Even the Shadow Man. Maybe.

I also reviewed the house documents, and the history of the place. This wasn't my area of expertise, but with some Google-Fu I was able to determine the documents were legitimate. Jared even made a map of cell tower coverage in his area, in an attempt to track electromagnetic interference. His home had cell coverage, but not an unusual amount of towers nor traffic. I also reviewed most of the audio files recorded from his phone. The knocks were audible in all of them. I bundled up those files, and sent them to my friend who specializes in Forensic Audio Analysis. If nothing else, he should be able to give me a rough idea of what could be making the sound. Hopefully he'll get back to me sooner or later.

Aftermath

It's the next day, and I'm sitting in my kitchen running on barely any sleep. Sara's already left for work. I've typed up an email telling Jared I'll take the job, but I'm having a hard time bringing myself to hit send. I've even bought myself a ferry ticket to take me to Vancouver island tomorrow. To shake myself out of my funk, I decided to take a shower.

A hot shower was exactly what I needed. It felt like all the fear and uncertainty washed right off me, and went down the drain. I decided I would take the job, and confidently marched out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel to hit send on the email. Then I stopped in my tracks.

Resting on my laptop's keyboard was a polaroid photograph. The photograph that had gotten buried in a box somewhere. The photograph that wasn't there when I left to take a shower.

The photograph of Jared and I from college.

Link to Part 2.