@malcolmgaunt // Closed Starter!
Cadence is a strange place.
For a town they've lived their entire life, nothing they've done has made any kind of dent in the growth of the paranatural here. It teems with anything inhuman, and more seems to find their way here as time goes on. For sure, Cadence is a veritable hot-spot, one they try to keep safe for the average person. Thankfully incidents are minimal; they keep a tireless eye out, and make sure of that.
This old cottage has had maybe a dozen different hauntings of different kinds of spirits in the last decade. Today there was, yet again, something seeking refuge in the aging structure. They'd felt the resurgence of energy when on their rounds, and slipped through an old window they kept open for a closer inspection. It doesn't seem to be malicious as far as they can tell from the air of the place, but it doesn't hurt to double check. They've made assumptions before and it ended in quite the mess.
The dust hardly scatters beneath Artair's boots, and the light from their arm aids their own acute vision, allowing them to take in all the details with ease. They observe the space with a thoughtful hum.
This spirit has made the walls leak with some unknown substance, glimmering and gelatinous and dribbling downwards at random intervals. It's clearly not ectoplasm, but definitely what someone would think that should look like. The walls and floorboards moan and a wafting breeze rattles like whispers dragging through the house. There are probably seventy-five percent more cobwebs than last time in stringy threads of white over everything, and the thick layers of dust have their own coating now too. The flickering lights that shouldn't even be on hum with electric pulses and the looming, grasping shadows almost catch on the fabric of their pants. Runes are drawn everywhere on the wall... but they're mostly nonsensical scribblings. They're honestly kind of prepared to see those little hanging ghosts and jack-o-lanterns around at this point.
It's really all a painfully typical occult aesthetic, without the substance.
Maybe it's all to keep the more faint of heart from delving deeper? They would almost assume it was faked stuff to sell a haunting, if they couldn't tell there was some kind of presence. So whatever entity is here now, it either wants to keep the riff-raff out, or to really ham up the haunted dramatics. Maybe both.
When the floorboards creak and there's a shuffly scuff of movement though, it's a surprise. It isn't exactly outside the realm of possibility for some more ghostly apparitions to be corporeal, but that's unlikely when the ambiance is based in modern stereotypes. They can tell if they focus, beyond vague echoes that have layered the aura of this place to nonsense; someone else is definitely here.
