*record scratch noise*

Teddy nodded. “Makes sense,” he tosses his flashlight back and forth between his hands. “I guess I want the same thing. And the credit for my degree.” he shrugged and shot her a half smile, hopefully signaling that he was joking (sort of).

“But seriously, I just…I mean the attention is nice and all, but…” he trailed off, avoided her gaze. 

I have to find out the truth. I have to know I’m not crazy. I have to know that these aren’t some weird dreams…

“Nope, I guess that’s what I’m mostly here for,” Teddy forced a chuckle. “The, uh…fame.” He flicked the flashlight on and off. “Hope that doesn’t make me sound like a douche…”

   So, there was more under all those tacky Hawaiian shirts after all. Not that it seemed like he wanted to share exactly what he was hiding with Sofia, which was fine. But it was clear that Teddy was keeping something close to his chest, she could hear the doubt in his voice.

   “Oh, it definitely makes you sound like a douche,” Sofia said, her smile back in place so he’d know she was joking. She turned her flashlight away from him, relieving Teddy from the spotlight. “But that’s probably why you make such a good social media director. If the show doesn’t get any hype than we’re kind of all out of a job.”

 “It’s fine, it’s not like I know anything about all that techie stuff. I mean, who knows, maybe you’re actually picking up some ghost-boy gossip.” Tamsin wiggled her eyebrows a couple times at the suggestion, but deep down really hoped that Sofia actually had. Even though Tamsin didn’t want otherworldly spirits popping up next to her, she really wanted something noteworthy this episode. Thankfully, even if they did run into something spooky, it was always far more comforting to be around someone else. Tamsin started to wonder why she wanted to go off alone in the first place. Regardless, she felt some of her tension worm its way out from her shoulders as she turned to look at the graffiti, which was honestly priceless. Lopsided pentagrams and what she could only imagine were genuine dicks from back in the day. A few of the Latin phrases unnerved her, though. Did teenage boys know that?

 “Also, I officially need to meet your grandma when she’s mad, because…” She petered off as Sofia spoke up. Her name definitely was not common. Tamsin scurried over to where Sofia crouched, her eyes hungrily exploring the wall. As soon as she saw it, written clear as day, all the tension that’d previously left her ran right back up her spine. Tamsin knew she may not have been the most popular person in the crew, but to write her name on the wall of an abandoned dormitory was pretty fucked up. “I-it’s gotta be, right? This is an all-boys school. There most likely wouldn’t be anyone named Tamsin who went here.” 

  Tamsin let out a trembling laugh, knowing that it wouldn’t fool Sofia for a second, but trying at least to maintain some composure. What had she been thinking before, about wanting something noteworthy? Yeah. She took it back. “Ha! Very funny, guys. I’m soooo spooked. ”

   Immediately Sofia regretted calling Tamsin’s attention to the graffiti, guilt making her shoulders slump as Tamsin tried to play it off like it was a joke, even when it was obvious she didn’t believe it was. Sometimes Sofia forgot that the others weren’t as ready as she was to brush these kinds of things aside. “It’s definitely recent,” she tried to reassure, patting her on the shoulder. But on the other hand, Sofia couldn’t name anyone cruel enough on their team to single Tamsin out like this. Well, maybe Jesse, though this seemed too petty for even him. Sofia knew some people on the crew found Tamsin aggravating sometimes, but did anyone actually hate her? Sofia hummed thoughtfully and stared at the name written on the wall.

   After a moment, she reached into her bag of equipment and took out a marker of her own, one she usually used to mark locations for cameras when Jude was stretched thin. She uncapped it and wrote Tamsin’s name again, thicker and darker so it lay over the jagged red X someone had placed over her name originally. Then, after a split second of hesitation, she circled it with a clumsy heart. “There,” she said, recapping the pen triumphantly. “All fixed. Just don’t tell anyone I did that. Leo would probably say I was destroying evidence.” And maybe she was, but if evidence made her friend feel unwelcome, then it probably deserved to be destroyed.

 DATE: December 28th TIME: 10:45 PM LOCATION: Somewhere in Preston Castle AVAILABILITY: Open

With the dead of night fast approaching, Jude figured it was best to do one last check on the cameras, making sure they were all on and at the right angles. There was part of them that wished to take their time wandering through the halls as they did before when they set up the cameras in the first place, taking it all in, and that part battled the other side of them wishing to get to the cottages as soon as possible, eager to possibly encounter one of the boys of Preston Castle. For someone as hot and cold as Jude could be, however, both sides came to a surprising compromise, for Jude couldn’t sacrifice their love of filming and the quality of the videos nor their excitement to really get into the investigation. So, while they walked briskly and quietly through the halls, they didn’t rush through their inspection of the cameras, stopping to check that the angles were perfect and that the batteries would last as long as the investigation needed them to.

Chills down the spine were welcome to Jude, the eerie sensation sought out by the director. While they wished they could be everywhere at once to truly enjoy the nature of the castle, they could not, so they simply relished in the sensations as they walked down the hall - that is, until they noticed something that really had them doing a double-take. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a ghost, but a camera completely obstructed by a large plant, shriveled up in its giant, dusty pot. “Hold up,” announced Jude, hoping one of their fellow investigators was nearby as they went over to the pot and squatted down in front of it. “Who the hell put this plant in front of the camera?”

   The howling wind that Sofia had recorded earlier had died down, leaving behind a silence that seemed to fill the second-floor dormitories. If Sofia didn’t know any better, she might say that the castle was holding its breath, waiting and watching as the Visitation investigators crawled around on its surface like ants. But Sofia did know better. It was a quiet night and nothing more. It would be disappointing for the others, since this was their first episode of season two and they’d never strayed so far from campus, but she was sure they’d find something to speculate over endlessly. Maybe she’d tell them about all the interference she’d been getting since she got here, and they could spin it somehow. It wasn’t exactly what Sofia would have preferred, but they had to keep the lights on in this operation somehow.

   She sighed, leaving one of the dorm rooms to go and find Teddy, Charlie, and Amna so they could plan out their investigation. Then she heard a voice down the hall and gravitated towards it. Jude was there, investigating a… potted plant? “Maybe Miss Anna is camera shy,” Sofia suggested as she approached. Realistically, it had probably just been one of the others. “I would be too if I had my skull bashed in.” She reached out and took one of the brown, brittle leaves between her fingers and watched as it practically turned to dust at her touch.

   Even Sofia had to admit, the room they’d picked for their first EVP session of the night was by far the most unsettling of any of the other’s they’d explored on the second floor. It was passed where the boys would have stayed, in the hall that housed the rooms for the various staff that had resided here. Rusty had told them that this is where Anna Corbin’s ghost had been seen most frequently. While many of the other rooms had been picked clean of anything worthy of value, this room still held the metal frame where a mattress might preside, a vanity with a mirror so streaked with dust that only shadows could be made out on its surface. For some reason, scavengers had avoided this place, and it was their job tonight to find out why.

   Sofia had suspected that it was nothing but superstition, but as she entered the room, it felt like something was watching her, just past the dim, pale light cast by the moon as it shown through the singular window in the room. The shadows in this room were like physical things, still and waiting. “Alright guys,” she announced to the others, putting the recording device down on the metal bed frame. “Everything’s set up. You can start whenever.” She hit record on the handheld camera, its night vision casting everything on screen in dull greens and blacks. Amna was usually the one to take charge in these scenarios, but she was hovering just outside the doorframe, her eyebrows scrunched together like she was confused. Sofia swung the camera around to Teddy and Charles, waiting for them to start instead.

He accepted the microphone without hesitation, knowing better than to question Sofia’s methods. Though he knew a thing or two about sound editing and the inner workings of post-production, he was smarter than to overstep his own territory, sticking mainly to the visual stylistic choices and left audio to her. “Sure thing.” He brought the microphone to his mouth, watching as she fiddled with her equipment before turning her attention to him fully. Speaking directly into the microphone, he answered her question with a simple “no” before continuing. “Check. Check. One, two, one two. Ahem. Jesse Espinosa can suck my dick. That’s right! Jessie Espinosa, if you’re listening. I’d like you to suck my entire dick.”

He stopped talking to look at her, raising his eyebrows in search of approval. “What? Too much?”

   Sofia barked out a sudden laugh at Marco’s outburst, covering her mouth with her hand before her laughter could draw the attention of the others. She let him go on, grinning behind her palm, her eyes crinkling up as she tried not to laugh more. “No, no. Super classy, Marco,” she commented, taking the microphone back from him. The weird readings she was getting weren’t affecting vocals so that was good at least. “How much attention do you think it will get if I autotuned that, posted it to youtube, and have Teddy retweet it?” It was an idle threat, which she was sure Marco knew. He’d always been super cool about never focusing the camera on her more than she was comfortable with, so she wasn’t about to turn around and do him dirty.

   “You know, if you talk to Lilian, I bet she’d let you switch teams. She seems kinda like she likes you.” His outburst about Jesse had reminded Sofia of the little tiff between the two.

Teddy let out a small breath of relief and chuckled. She was right. It wasn’t anything. “Hey, those shirts are amazing and you know it,” Teddy refuted in a half-joking but half-serious way (those shirts are priceless and no one could tell him otherwise).

“Hey, remind me again,” he unlocked his phone, checking to see if the reception status had changed (it hadn’t.) “You don’t believe in ghosts, right? Like, you don’t think they exist at all?”

“‘Cuz like, why are you here then? Not that I don’t like you or anything, I’m just…well, you know most people on the show want to investigate the existence of ghosts because they think they exist.”

   Sofia was a little startled by the question, the smile falling from her face. They’d already done a whole season together, and Sofia had thought after that people would stop wondering why she was here. She stood back up, kicking idly at the broken bed frames and mangled pieces of metal. “Its not that I don’t believe exactly, I’d just like a little more proof than some psychic who makes their money off people being gullible telling me that there’s a presence in the room, you know?”

  Oh, thank god it was just Sofia. Sofia and her sound box that sounded like it housed the devil if the devil was going through castration. For a moment, Tamsin mistook the feedback for a high-pitched wail coming from a certain murdered woman and was just about to make a Tamsin-shaped hole in the wall. She was more than ready to Looney Toons her ass out of there. Fortunately, Sofia’s laugh was far less threatening than any screeching spectre and it actually managed to settle her nerves a bit. “Your grandma wishes she could cuss like me! …Wait, shit, that didn’t make any sense. Forget I said that.”

  “If I hear that sound again, I’m not wasting time on prayers.” Speaking of which, there must’ve been a reason Sofia didn’t see her before. And, unlike some others she could mention, it didn’t seem like Sofia’s initial response to seeing her would be to rip her headphones out of their jack out in the cruelest prank known to mankind. Or, at least, the cruelest prank for someone who thought they were going to get haunted in a matter of seconds. Was she too honed in on her equipment? A jolt of fear ran up Tamsin’s spine once more, too afraid to ask and get an answer she didn’t like.  

   Sofia got up off the ground, dusting off the seat of her pants and removing her headphones so that they were left dangling around her neck. She was still grinning as she approached Tamsin, grateful at least for the lift in mood she’d received by watching Tamsin nearly have a heart attack. “My grandma cusses like a sailor when she’s mad, but she’s usually much more apologetic afterwards,” Sofia explained. She looked down at the graffiti stained wall Tamsin was leaned up against. It was the usual stuff: pentagrams, dicks, paired names circled in hearts.

   “Anyway, sorry for scaring you, my audio equipment’s been acting up all night. I can probably edit it out later, but its gonna be a pain in the ass.” She sighed and crouched down to look at some of the graffiti up close.  There were a few creepy phrases written in a shaky hand, probably put there to scare tourists. Or to scare gullible ghost hunters. Suddenly, her eyes caught on a familiar word. “Hey, your name’s on here, Tamsin.” She pointed to where it was, written in what looked like black sharpie. Someone had crossed it out with jagged, violent red lines. “That’s weird, I didn’t think your name was that common. Do you think it was one of the others trying to freak you out?”

SEEING IS BELIEVING, RIGHT?

DATE: December 28th TIME: 11:07 PM LOCATION: Nerve Command STATUS: Open to all

With a click the mouse of the laptop in front of her, the screen shifts from one camera to the other, zoomed in on the library now instead of the basement. A routine check, that’s all it is. A shift between the stationary cameras, a glance at the hot spots within Preston Castle, but if she’s being honest, she’s bored. She wants to see something, wants to experience something. Lilian Zhou would give anything to witness a haunt, to see a ghost, even just to hear a faint whisper. But tonight, the entire place seems to be dead. Ironically. After a few switches to different cameras Marco and Jude had set up, after checking up on her students, something catches her eye. The darkness, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what was her eyes playing tricks, but this, this she was positive was real. A six-foot-something shadow standing in the doorway across from the room. On any other night, Lilian wouldn’t have given it a second glance nor a second thought, but it was followed by footsteps, light but filled with determination. And with that, the hair on the back of her neck stood straight up, goosebumps protruded along her arms, and a chill ran down her spine. 

With a kick to her chair, she grabs the hand-held camera on the table in front her and pressed record before even aiming it at where she’d seen the black shadow-y mass. But then a loud clash sounds behind her, the toe of a shoe hitting the foot of a table, and she gasps. Heart racing a mile a minute, Lilian whips her head around to document the noise, to see if she can finally witness something. But instead she’s met with a familiar face.

“Did you see that?” she asks, foregoing any introductions and instead inquiring validation for what she’d just seen. “Please tell me you did.”

   Maybe it was the batteries? It sounded implausible, even in Sofia’s own head, but she couldn’t figure out what else could be causing the interference she’d been getting all night. Sometimes it was there and then, just as quickly, it was gone. Sofia had switched out her recording devices three times now, and nothing seemed to change. The batteries were her last-ditch effort before she’d have to give up and tell the others, leaving them to suggest it was something paranormal. Sofia barely repressed a sigh. Audio equipment malfunctioned all the time, but of course no one was going to tell that to the audience.

   She made her way back to Nerve Command, where a fresh supply of batteries would be waiting, and tried to come up with what she’d tell Lilian. Sofia would like to think she’d have a reasonable reaction, because she was, after all, a reasonable woman. But as she was approaching the command center, she heard a crash—the sound of a chair being thrown to the ground, and instinctively she ran towards the sound.

   The table was closer to the entrance than she’d remembered when she’d seen command being set up. Her left foot caught on one of the table’s legs, and a throbbing pain shot up her leg. “Fuck me!” she cursed as the table slid across the floor a few inches. When she looked up again, Lilian was there, pointing a camera in her face. Sofia immediately scowled. “See what? My own death via table?” Uhg, she’d really thought a trip to a castle would be cool. Turns out, its not even a real castle! She dropped her sound equipment on the table and sighed, going over to pick up Lilian’s chair. “So, I’m guessing you saw something? Or did you just bring our your camera to show the internet that I’m a clumsy idiot?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

Cooper had spent the last half hour in the dormitories, trying desperately to find a personal belonging or anything they could latch on to. Every room so far had either been empty or completely unattached to spirits, but still their fingers grazed over every object, clutching the walls when worse came to worst. Deciding that it might be time to find a more fruitful activity, Cooper wandered down the second floor hallway and kept their ears perked. 

The voice came from the opposite end of the hall, but Cooper recognized it immediately. Unsure of how urgent the call for help was, they scurried to assist as quickly as they could. “Are you alright?” They asked as they entered the room, almost completely out of breath. So, maybe it wasn’t necessary to rush there like someone was dying–but they were glad they didn’t risk it. They took a moment, a breath, and glanced over the room. “Oh, did you find something?”

   Of course, it was Cooper. Sofia smiled, amused. Who else would run over here like something was on fire? “Nah, not yet,” she said, kicking at the book case, to which it responded by creaking ominously. “I just need some help lifting this. I wanna see what’s on the other side.” Realistically, it was probably just more dust and cobwebs, maybe a colony of rats, but Sofia figured it was still worth checking out. She waved Cooper over, already knowing they would agree to help.

   “I’ll bet you ten bucks that there’s just a bunch of weird, old timey porn in there. Just the gnarliest things those teenage boys could get their hands on.” Sofia couldn’t remember if it was your back or your legs that you were supposed to lift with in these kinds of situations, so she went with a little of both, and as expected, it didn’t work out great. The bookcase groaned again, and lifted about half a foot off the ground, but Sofia couldn’t get the leverage to get it any higher.

“Holy shit! Ho-lee shit… Christ, that scared me half to death…” It took all of Tamsin’s strength not to scream. Wandering into one of the boys dormitories for a second in order to organize her thoughts was somehow turning out to be not the smartest idea.

Tamsin ran her hands through her hair, letting them rest at the crown of her head. These dark corridors and dismal rooms were putting her on edge, so much so that a mere pindrop could’ve made her shriek and bolt five feet in the air. She slumped against the wall and waited for her heart to return to it’s normal pace, unknowingly leaning on some extensive graffiti that adorned it. “Do not. Ever. Do that again.”

   The stupid interference Sofia was hearing in her headphones was still there, and she was beginning to think maybe it was her equipment that was the problem, which was bad because they’d used so much of their budget on this trip already, its not like they had a lot of spares. She sighed, sitting down on the dirty floor to try to get a closer look at the readings she was getting, and only barely noticed that someone was approaching. Whoever it was, they probably saw Sofia, right? That’s what their flashlights were for.

   She took the headphone jack out of the recording device, and instantly a high pitched, staticky screech that hadn’t been there before emitted from the black box in Sofia’s hands. Quickly, she powered the device down, but not before Tamsin started cussing up a storm from a few feet away. It startled a laugh out of Sofia and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand to hide that she was grinning. “Oh my god, you cuss like my grandma. Are you going to start doing Hail Mary’s next?”

“Sl-sleeping bags?” Teddy’s head turned towards Sofia, but his eyes stayed on the wall where the shadow once was. It didn’t seem to be there. Maybe it was just his imagination.

Hopefully, it was just his imagination.

“Um, I wasn’t looking for luxury,” he moved his light towards the rat. “But you have to admit, the rats are a bit of a health hazard. I can’t promote the show if I die from rabies or something.”

He watched Sofia fiddle with the device. “Are you, uh, getting anything?” He asked, a small bit of hope present in his voice. He was praying she wouldn’t find anything…

   “Don’t worry, that’s what they’ve got rabies shots for,” she teased, pushing past him and going into the room, crouching near a pile of debris and looking over it with her own flashlight to see if she could salvage anything interesting from the pile.

DATE & TIME: December 28th, 10:04 PM PST LOCATION: Main Castle Hallway, bottom of a staircase AVAILABILITY: open to all

If anyone had asked Marco where he was hurrying off to after the group broke apart, he’d have said something casual and flippant, nothing practiced or rehearsed, but thought of on the spot. ‘I left a bag of equipment by the stairs and just need to double check the batteries before we get started.’ In all actuality, he’d gone to sulk, displeased with his team assignment, needing a moment to himself to mull it over. He was rustling through the dark black bag of audio and camera equipment, trying to find something, when he heard footsteps approaching from behind him. Looking up at the source of the noise, his facial expression bore obvious warning signs of disinterest, and all he mustered in response to their presence was a quick lowering of his eyebrows.

   The first thing Sofia liked to do when they got to a new location was to test the acoustics of various rooms and spaces. The stone walls here made everything echo just a little, but that wouldn’t be much of a problem—it might even help the general atmosphere. Still, there seemed to be some kind of interference that she couldn’t find the source of. She wandered over to where Marco was by the stairs, wordlessly handing him a mic. “Hey big guy, I’m getting some weird interference and I wanna see if its gonna affect vocals. Can I get you to speak into the mic for a few seconds?” Finally, she looked away from her equipment to note his broody face. It seemed broodier than normal, but Sofia couldn’t tell the difference. “You still carsick from the ride up here or something?”

   Sofia had given up trying to record anything interesting when the wind had picked up outside, howling and moaning as it slammed into the castle’s stone walls. It was good audio, something to play in the background of B-roll, but Sofia didn’t want to capture too much of it in case someone tried to listen to it for so long they convinced themselves they could hear voices in the wind. So, instead, she’d taken to exploring some of the dorm rooms, one by one. Most of them had been picked clean and were covered in layers of dust, but there was one that interested her. There was a heavy bookcase in it, the middle smashed in like someone had taken a sledge hammer to it, and splinters littered the surrounding floor. It was shoved up against a closet door, almost like it had been left there to intentionally block anyone from getting through.

   Sofia heard someone approach the room she was in, and she called out. “Hey, could I get some help in here?”

“Wait…we’re like…sleeping in these tonight?” Teddy asked, shining a flashlight in one of the rotting rooms. “Please tell me we brought a blow up mattress or something because that floor is disgusting.” He moved the light down the long hallway quickly, his eyes almost missing a soft shadow escape from the beam. Teddy froze for a moment, stared straight ahead…

“Uh…”

   Sofia barely glanced in Teddy’s direction as she joined him in the second floor hallway. “I think there’re sleeping bags in the vans,” she said absentmindedly, fiddling with one of their recording devices. There was some odd interference here, and she couldn’t get the readings to stabilize. “If you wanted luxury, you should’ve picked Chem for your science credit.”

Sofia's never been sure why it was so easy to get along with Tamsin from the start, especially considering the type of person she is and who she claims to be. But Tamsin always seems to know just what to say, almost like she's predicting Sofia's moods and reacting before even Sofia can. It was deeply unnerving the first few times Sofia noticed it happening, but maybe that's what being a real psychic is all about. Sofia believes that if there is proof out there of the supernatural, Tamsin might have the best shot at finding it, though she's not quick to share this opinion with anyone. In Sofia's mind, if Tamsin did find proof, it would probably be by stumbling upon it, and not because she desperately wanted it to be true like some of the other cast members do. So, if Sofia does believe in Tamsin, she’s not going to let her know that.