Nightmare by Robin Parrish

walking again, shining our flashlights all around and
talking quietly. "Jordin, you need to understand what gathering
evidence means before you commit to it. Imagine long, often
boring hours of wandering through haunted places, well into
the early hours of the morning, shooting video and recording
audio of what more often than not turns out to be absolutely
nothing, all in the hopes that some small out-of-the-ordinary
thing might be captured on tape."
    "I can do that," she replied, indignant.
    I wasn't finished. "The problem is, if something paranormal is captured on tape, at least fifty percent of the time, you don't
know it at the time that it's recorded. Gathering evidence means
that all of the recordings you make have to later be reviewed,
and it's a very tedious process. We're talking about staring at
hours upon hours of video footage that never moves or changes
angles, and listening to endless hours of audio, usually trying to
pick out the tiniest of unnatural sounds from static and silence.
It's a huge commitment that's usually unrewarding, and would
probably cause your schoolwork to suffer."

    "I'll do it," Jordin volunteered. "I'll review all the recordings
by myself. My course load is light this semester anyway."
    I sighed, wondering if she truly had any inkling where these
early steps might lead her. But her countenance was not one of
impulsiveness. She appeared resolute, her shoulders set.
    She really wants this, I thought. She wants it bad. And again I
wondered what was behind that need.
    "Teach me everything, Maia," she said. "Everything. That's
what I'm paying you for."
    "All right ..." I said, steadying myself. I allowed my senses
to reflexively become alert, listening, feeling for anything and
everything that might be out of the ordinary. My words came in
whispers, as if to keep from disturbing the silence, but mostly out
of reverence and respect to those who'd died here. This wasn't
some museum or roadside attraction. It was a mass graveyard.
    "First lesson," I said as we walked carefully through the black
hallways. "True hauntings are nothing like what you see in the
movies or on TV. There's no CGI effects, no creepy soundtrack,
and actually seeing a genuine apparition with your eyes is the
rarest of occurrences."
    "Hmm" was Jordin's only reply.

    "Second lesson. There are three classifications of hauntings.
Residual, intelligent, and poltergeist."
    "That movie freaked me out," Jordin admitted.
    I shook my head, frustrated at how quickly she fell back into
a pop-culture frame of reference. "It was an escapist flick that
had no basis in reality. Poltergeist hauntings are typically subconscious manifestations of intense emotional trauma in the
living. They're almost always caused by the living, inadvertently,
and usually have very little-if anything-to do with the dead.
But they can be very dangerous."
    Jordin was openly surprised. "Have you ever seen a poltergeist?"
    "Four times," I told her. "It's uncommon, but less so because
most people mistake it for a ghost."
    "And the other two kinds of hauntings?"
    "Those occur more frequently. Residual hauntings are the
most common type of all, but they're the hardest to classify,
because no one really knows what they are. They're like recordings of past events, playing themselves out over and over again.
The `ghosts' in these instances are usually full apparitions, but
they're unaware of the presence of the living. There's no intention or responsiveness about them.
    "If you've ever heard someone describe a ghost that doesn't
know it's dead, the residual haunt is what they're referring to.
Some people don't even consider these haunts to be spirits at all,
but some kind of mental or spiritual imprint left behind after
death. It's as if the traumatic event that lead to their death caused
some leftover part of them to become unstuck in time, and the
act of that death-or sometimes even just mundane acts from
the dead person's