Unsolved Case File: NC89429

Extract ...

The young man, Peter X, a student of Newcastle University, had been found with his severed head resting on the keyboard of his laptop and his body slumped on the floor. Thick, dark blood had pooled between the keys and the flow from his neck had grown to a stain some eight feet in diameter around his body, seeping between the library's ancient wooden floorboards. The word 'imposter' had been written using the young man's blood on the screen of the laptop.

What follows was reconstructed from the MSN chat logs found on the laptop's disk, along with testimony and data from Amy Y who the deceased had been chatting to at the time of his death. There was no record of cam images on either computer.

   -:-

There had been a lull in the chat. Peter sent, “Don't look behind you!”

“Stop!” Amy sent back. “That scared me!” There followed an animated, crying emoticon.

“Sorry,” sent Peter. “I was only kidding.”

Amy's font grew larger and turned blood red on Peter's screen. “Perhaps it would be unwise for you to turn around, young man,” came the message.

Another message quickly followed in Amy's usual small black font.“Thanks for creeping me out, you pusillanimous arse!”

Peter sent, “Is that supposed to alarm me in some way?”

“What?” sent Amy.

The font on Peter's screen turned large and blood red once more. “Do you believe in ghosts and ghouls, young man?”

The message was immediately followed in Amy's small black text with, “You know that library is supposed to be haunted? And you're that last one there ...? Muhahahaaa.”

“No, I don't believe in the paranormal,” sent Peter.

“Ah, yes,” sent Amy, “the eternal sceptic.”

Peter did not reply.

“The story goes,” sent Amy after a short pause, “the Library is haunted by the decapitated ghost of an ignoble and fanatical Victorian Doctor who's study of headless chickens led him to believe humans could live without their heads too!”

Amy continued, “The guy actually existed, a genuine fruit-loop who chopped off his own head in a bizarre experiment! In his notes he claimed only genuine descendants of man – people not tainted with the DNA of Neanderthals - would survive the procedure.”

“You're the uni-brow Queen,” sent Peter. “So I must be pure Homo sapien :)”

“Pure homo more like,” sent Amy. “Hey! I think we've managed to cover racism, sexism and homophobia in less than five seconds! A new record!”

“BRB.” This was Peter's his final message.

“What are you doing?” sent Amy. “The picture's very dim. But I can tell you, your arse looks huge in those jeans. He he.”

“Does that gesture mean hold on one second?”

“What is that?” This was Amy's final message.

     -:-

Follows is a partial transcript of Amy's testimony:

“... and there was this thing, this ethereal, transparent spectre thing, it came from nowhere and ... engulfed him ..”

Sounds of crying.

“Thanks. I'm okay ... It sort of spun him round and he seemed to fly back towards me and his face .. God, his face ... like, filled the video and he looked as if he was screaming .. and the fear ... ”

Sounds of sobbing.

“And then it went blank ... what's that? Sorry, I can't ever sit with my back to the room now... can I go?”

   - : -

The Investigating Officer's report follows ...

Mag E. Moody died too young, yet her spirit lingered out of spite. In life, Mag E. could not be bothered with trivial matters such as ghouls or the boogeyman. Paranormal phenomenon, even God, simply did not interest her. When presented with otherly-world things, she was skeptical to say the least. Though she could dismiss the niggling what-if’s in the back of her mind, they made her disinterest feel slightly imposturous. Alas, it did not matter how she once believed or did not believe as it were, her pusillanimous body could no longer contain her roaming spirit and off it went to find its own adventure. In hindsight it is easy to see how it never could be entirely comfortable within a contradiction of self and thusly needed a good stretch.

Left to its own devices Mag E.’s specter decided, most ignobly, to explore the hidden doors of ethereal misdelight once denied so adamantly by its keeper. It was convinced there was a world, where it truly belonged, hidden on the other side of the forbidden passages; a ghostly carnival of sorts. Passages that led to lands filled with gnarled trees for forgotten childish dreams to climb and silly aspirations to swing upon. Vast areas where teenage fanaticism ran amok and parents looked on alarmingly but with love from just the right distance away. Houses full of nonsense cookies baked by the sweetest grandmothers’ one never had but seen on television or read about in books. The world would be such a different place for the freed apparition or so it believed.

And off it went to find the land that did not exist outside poor Mag E.. For everyone knows that adventures, memories and longing exist entirely in one’s own mind. Everyone, it seems, except Mag E.’s wraith which left her so hastily in death. Thus, we have the saddest ghost story of all… a specter’s nightmare of self-abandonment. For when the ghost went looking, it found the doors and windows had all disappeared. And despite its ardent attempt to listen for the faintest laughter or the squeak of a memory, it could not find a single one. Days passed into months and months into years and years into decades and Mag E.’s spirit did not even recall anymore who it once belonged to in life.

Stuck in the house where Mag E. once lived but stripped of every affirmation that it belonged, the ghost cried excessively. Moaning and thrashing about it scared the bejeebers out of every single tenant and there were quite a few for no one, it seemed, wanted to stay long in a house filled with such racket of no discernible cause. And so it stayed empty, the house, mostly with the spirit crying and carrying on, until they moved in.

A romantic couple of modest means stumbled upon the quaint, yet discordant, house and knew it was just right. They felt it settle in their gut, the way everyone who lives by intuition does. They bought it expediently despite the ghostly stories told to them by everyone they encountered. And love filled the house in a way that calmed Mag E.’s spirit like nothing had in centuries. Not even one season passed before they grew pregnant and thought to decorate a nursery. They wallpapered and carpeted and hung pictures with love for this child was meant to be here with them. Months passed as the woman rocked and sang to the baby within, soon to be in her arms. And the specter watched longingly with intent.

Finally, the baby arrived but the mother seemed distraught for the baby’s eyes were empty and lifeless. Weeping, she asked, “Where is this child’s spirit?” and suddenly it all became so clear. Without hesitation Mag E.’s spirit jumped into the baby and her little eyes sparkled soothing her inconsolable mother for the first time. The mother held her tiny infant so close to her, rocking and content, and Mag E.’s specter belonged once again.

And this is the story of the spirit of Mag E. which will always end and begin again and again and again for curiosity is infinite and we all feel like we are missing something, sometimes but Mag E.’s ghost will never stop chasing what it wants.

“Billy, do you actually believe that there is something in the Jacobson Mansion?”

            Back then I was what you would call a skeptic.  I always doubted anything that I could not explain; things like crop circles and ghosts were dismissed as unreal.  So when Billy Newman, my next-door neighbor and a paranormal fanatic, suggested that the Jacobson Mansion was haunted, I thought he was crazy.

            “C’mon Janet, don’t be like that.  I just know that there’s something freaky in there, I can feel it.”

            “Are you sure that it’s not just your hormones?”

            “Ha ha, very funny.  Look, I know I sound nuts right now, but I’m serious.  I just know something ethereal in that house, something creepy”

            “What makes you so sure?  And besides, if you’re right, how are you going to prove it?”

            We have known each other since preschool; so when I saw a smile creeping onto his face, I knew he had known I would say that, and what he would say in return.

            “Easy:  I’m going into the Jacobson Mansion, and you’re coming with me.”

              We meet again latter that night near It.   We managed to climb over the fence that walled the rest if the world from the Jacobson Mansion.  I know Billy would expect to see some sort of specter, while I expected to see nothing. But I didn’t want him to think I was pusillanimous or ignoble, so I came anyway.  If I knew what would happen, I still would have.

                The door was unlocked, so we let ourselves in.  Everything looked burned, like a fire had been started when someone actually lived there.  I thought came into my mind when I saw this.  Maybe an imposter came here.  Ate with them, sat with them, read with them…

            Tried to share their bed, but her husband cast him out before he could.  Set anything he could with his match.  Refused to acknowledge the fact that she loved her husband and not him…

            A scream brought me back to reality.  I had no idea where it came from.  Until I looked around.

            Billy wasn’t there.

            The thought of him in danger was alarming.  I called his name, searched everywhere; it was as if he vanished.  Then I saw it, something that I could never forget, something that, no matter how hard I tried to see it, would be unbelievable.

It was a ghoul, dressed in tattered clothes, his face scorched by flames, looking at me in a way that sent chills throughout my entire body.  

             It has been three months since then.  They found Billy a week after we went into the Jacobson Mansion.  A jury thought I was crazy when they heard what happened.  A judge thought I should get some help.  So here I am, in the same old room, with the same old view, in a place where the criminally insane live.  I know what I saw, and it wasn’t a delusion, nor was I hallucinating. 

            Everyone believes I killed Billy, but they don’t know how his death looked so peculiar.  I know who really did it, but that’s what got me here.  I’ll tell you what makes everyone so freaked out about it.

"Tell it again; your ghost story!" The man opposite demanded. I stared at his threatening ignoble face and, silently cursing my own pusillanimity, began to speak.

"I had been driving for hours, keeping to the back roads, and was becoming hungry," The other men in the room gathered around, all eager to hear the saga again.

"I saw a pub, brightly lit, and stopped to eat. I went inside; the fire was lit, there were people talking and drinking and eating. I ordered a steak, paid, and eventually began to eat." I paused remembering the scene,

"A man sat beside you," one prompted,

"His eyes bright with the fevered enthusiasm of a fanatic," said another, repeating my earlier words; his own vocabulary was unlikely to include any polysyllabic words!

I nodded. "He leaned close to me and said 'I think that the paranormal is endlessly fascinating!' he spat out the 's'es, and the moisture landed alarmingly close to my plate.

'I, sir, have no interest in the subject,' I told him, and pulled slightly away to continue my meal.

'Take the Grey Lady of Lythburgh Manor.' he persisted edging closer again.

'An ethereal apparition who leaps from the upper window to land on the fence below; impaling herself.  Legend says that she was murdered by her husband; and that he did it by throwing her from that very window.' 'Fascinating,' I murmured in a bored tone, eating as quickly as I could, he was not deterred.

'I often think that there must be thousands of such ghosts,' he continued, eyes shining, 'so many people die by violence every day; their souls must wander free, pointing bloody, accusing, fingers at their murderers, if only we could see them!'

I shuddered, 'You, Sir, are a ghoul,' I told him and, abandoning the last of my steak, I rose to leave.

He laughed, his head tipping back as he roared out his guffaws. Then he stood up and addressed the other patrons in the bar. 'Did you hear that, friends? He called me a ghoul!'

He stood in my way as I tried to leave, and I became aware that others had also got to their feet and now barred the exit. 'I think of myself more as a spectre,' he grinned, 'INspecter Carter, and you, Jonathon Ellis, are under arrest, for the murder of your wife Anne.'

I scarcely heard his words as a woman stepped from a shadowed corner that I had not noticed before, her raised hand pointing towards me, her eyes staring into mine, her shirt stained with the blood that ran from the gaping wound in her neck. 'Anne?' I gasped in shock. The men surrounded me, cutting off my view of the vision. Something struck my head and I knew no more until I woke, securely bound, on the back seat of my car.

The door opened, and uniformed officers pulled me from the vehicle. They had seen my car parked on the site of a derelict pub and come to investigat.

I learned later that the pub burned down twelve years earlier as a result of an arson attack. The dead included a local police officer named Terence Carter."

I finished my recital and waited for the reaction.

The men around me applauded appreciatively, as well as men can who are handcuffed. The van in which we travelled stopped as we arrived at our destination.

"It's a good story, mate," said one winking, "It may even work as an insanity defence."

I regarded him coldly, "I am no impostor, I will not pretend to be insane when I am not; every word was the truth." I said haughtily, my head high, as we entered the court building.