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For Willow it would have been a challenge to sneak into this rickety old building that it probably wouldn’t be long before the city decided it needed to come down. However, the urban explorer and ghost hunter she was; wasn’t about to let that stop her from getting inside and investigating. Largely because she had a secret weapon that she wasn’t sure other explorers had. . . .

The camera equipment had all been set up and adjusted, the microphones were tested. Sailor Halley stood pretty damn proud of her work for the night. Looking around she looked at the time and was calculating sun set “I think that’ll do.” She pondered how she should do her live stream. She had two channels one for the vigilante that she did her best to hide and one for her normal self. All the cameras were remote and she knew she left strategic angles uncovered so that she could power down safely without compromising her identity. She’d set up enough cameras in her days now that she knew where she wanted the hiding spots to be and where she wanted to be just 100% coverage of the whole particular area.

And after some thought Halley disappeared from the camera’s view and powered down. She decided she really didn’t want this to become a battle royale area, though . . . her hand drew to her chin, it was an interesting idea. Set up a stage and battles here? Some sparring. The old building was certainly a good place though maybe a bit too close to the city. She could see some party crashers just waiting to happen.

Willow smoothed out her dress for the night’s activities. She dressed perhaps a bit too ‘witchy’ for her exploration but it was as far as she knew what her subscribers expected of her. Classic little purple dress, paired with a pair of leggings for moveability. And boots that had little star and moon charms on them. She included the hat as well and once the sun began to sink lower so it was sunset she smiled. “Well, it’s time to begin then.”

Were ghosts real? No one really could answer that question paranormal things happened all the time. Willow turned on the cameras and stepped into frame. “Tonight, explorers we’ll be looking at one of Destiny City’s oldest structures. I doubt there’s much time left for this building before it’s torn down to make way for something new, apartment buildings or another strip mall. Obviously just what we need right?” She chuckled faintly as she sighed.

“But that doesn’t matter, because tonight? Tonight, we are exploring and hunting to explain the paranormal that exists in this building!” She clapped her hands together her nails painted black. “Join me on another episode of the Voltaire files.” She smiled to the camera as she walked away her foot steps echoed in the otherwise empty forayer as she walked off camera into another room.

The camera view took a moment to switch as she was doing everything by remote and had well to teach herself all the technicalities. She’d taken up some film making classes while she was deciding what her major was going to be in college. And as the camera view finally swapped, she smiled faintly proud of managing to get it work. “So a little bit about the property here. . .“

Willow was actually adjusting a go pro on a gimble that she could wear on her shoulder so her hands were free to look at her notes. “It’s an older Victorian home, slated for demolition within the next few weeks to make way. I think it’s a shopping mall and some condos that’ll be built here. There’s I think acres to the property because it’s not in the heart of the city. Rumors have it that someone had been shot here and died, a couple of decades ago. The old home owner was a widower and also died on the property. Some of the records needed different permissions so I couldn’t get those; and most of the people that know more about the property have moved on, most in nursing homes.”

She paused tapping a finger to one side of her lips in thought, “I mean honestly the house is in pretty rough stages of decay I wouldn’t recommend anyone go through this without a buddy at least.” There was a pause as she thought about what she just said and shrugged softly she had a secret no one watching would know about so she was fine. “Anyways, this is the living room you can tell some vandals have been in here based on the graffiti and broken mirrors.” She was looking at the old fire place and how fairly detailed it was. “The Victorian fireplace is still in pretty decent shape if you ask me. I wonder if they’d let me salvage that. . . .“ Willow paused, “Anyone watching know how to salvage such a beauty?”

She was here to hunt spirits but also, she was documenting the house, giving it one last tour before it was demolished. Though her few followers probably wouldn’t be able to help that much it gave Willow a small comfort knowing that at least someone could appreciate the craftsmanship of the place. “The furniture was left as well, though most of it has seen better days.” She mused as she softly touched an arm chair which was dry rotted by this point.

“Up a couple of stories there’s some water damage so I’ll probably have to wear a mask to avoid mold exposure. Make sure you guys always carry proper safety equipment.” She quipped as she walked back through the foyer and to the library. “So, this was once a grand library, a lot of books are gone but there’s still a good amount of reading material still here, look.” She said as she stepped towards the book cases and pulled out a few books and softly turned the pages, “What year is this . . . it’s pretty old.”

She paused as she heard a noise. “Who’s there?” She asked looking around trying to see if she heard anything else. “Hm, maybe the house was settling?” She asked it’d sounded as if a floor board had creaked and she placed her foot and pressed around here as she questioned the noise. Mainly to see if she’d caused it to start with. “Interesting . . . “

“I think the person shot, if I remember my research correctly. Had been shot around the library area or the kitchen. There were a couple of conflicting details on that particular incident.” She paused again as she pondered and moved towards the desk to pull a few items out of a bag she had with her. “So, I actually want to do some readings in this room. I’ve brought my EMF meter . . .“ she said as she pulled it out of her bag and sat it on the library desk. “I’ve also got an EVP recorder, I’ve got an actual voice recorder, I’ve got something they advertised as a spirit box with a speaker – I don’t know it’s new I figured I’d give it a shot.”

She chuckled, “Oh yeah and my thermal camera, incase we get any crazy temperature spikes I’ll switch to that in a bit.” She continued to pull out some other stuff, “I also have flashlights two of them that are very easy to turn on and off so if someone is here and interested in talking to me, they can always answer yes, no questions. Assuming it’s an intelligent entity and not one that just kind of plays on repeat.”

There was a pause, “I want to get an REM pod but that’s a bit out of my price range still.” With a small shrug Willow continued. “So anyways let’s see if I can make contact with anything or if I was just hearing things.” Willow left everything but the EVP recorder on the desk as she went to sit on the couch.

“Hello if you’re here and can hear me please make a noise.” Willow sat there quite listening for a little bit, she shrugged softly, “My name is Willow, if you can hear me. I’m not here to hurt you.”

Willow gave another beat, “Could you tell me your name?” She didn’t know if there was anything interacting with her but she’d give it time to answer if there was something. She’d go back and review the footage when she was done. “There are a few flashlights on the desk over there, if you want to touch those. It’s where you can easily turn them on and off. You could also use that to answer questions if you wanted.”

Willow was watching the flash lights to see if they lit up or anything on any of the meters changed. She wasn’t getting anything. “Well, I’m going to leave that stuff on the desk, if you are curious about it, it won’t hurt you. Feel free to interact with it.”

She sat still for just a little bit longer before she slowly stood up and headed towards the kitchen. “So, the kitchen is interesting, a lot of the house has various stages of disarray. It’s unfortunate but what’s amazing about this is the kitchen goes out to what would have been a small green house. It looked like they used it as a breakfast room as well. The kitchen though . . . “

She paused as she walked into the room, making sure the camera angles swapped to follow her and she smiled. “Look at this, it’s an old stove looks like either wood or coal burning. I’m not completely sure. They would heat this up and it would work the burners and other things. I don’t think this is original to the house though, it doesn’t fit the era but it is old and interesting that someone would still use this as possibly recent as a few years before the widower’s death.”

She was looking at the floor and the details carved into the wood work of the rest of the kitchen. “I do really like the designs here. It looks like the cabinets were painted as you can see some of it is flaking off. Years of use and kitchen grease and grime. Looks like there’s two or three layers here.” She said as she was taking a closer look at the cabinets.

Willow opened up a few cabinet doors to see if there had been any items left inside. “Oh, is this a recipe?” She mused pausing to look at the inside of one of the doors. There were measurements and conversions which wasn’t surprising. But the recipes inside there was a pound cake maybe; and a stew of some sort. “Oh these sound delish, I feel like these should be saved. . . . “

Willow made sure to zoom into each of the recipes that had been on the cabinet doors. “If you guys try these let me know. I’m interested in knowing what they taste like. I might try my hand at cooking though it’s not my strong suit.” She let out a half nervous chuckle as she moved on. “This is the greenhouse, possibly breakfast room. Some of the plants didn’t make it others look like they need to be repotted if you ask me.”

Willow had stepped out into the green house paying close attention to make sure she wasn’t seen if anyone was near by because there were parts of the green house windows that weren’t covered and they had a fairly expansive back yard area. “It goes out into the backyard of this house. However, the steps down aren’t stable so it’s not safe to go out there and explore. I think there’s a small cemetery back there too which is fairly customary with this age of a house. Before I leave tonight, we may go out there and check that out. We’ll see if we have time.”

Willow walked back into the house, “So, lets upstairs to the second floor. It’s where the master bedroom is and several others, there’s a red room; purple room and blue room on that floor as well.” She paused, “You’ll understand when you see the rooms.”

Willow made sure the cameras followed her and switched as she moved through the house, “I love the stairs, look at this newel post.” Willow was showing the craftsmanship of the stairs as she walked up, “I’m not sure what kind of wood they used, but you can see that they used wood for the main parts, the spindles are metal that’s been shaped.”

This was where Willow ended up on the next floor. “Okay so, second floor.” She walked around the landing, “So there was a little sitting area here, kind of a place for conversation, I guess. You can see into the foyer kind of. It’s not a house that would host grand balls and the lady and lord of the party walk down the stairs style staircase but it’s impressive enough.”

“Hm, left or right wing first . . . left wing, yes, I think that’s a good way to start.” Willow turned to her left and headed down the hall way. “The first room we get to is going to be the red room. The master is on the other wing.” Willow wanted to make sure she gave enough information to her viewers as she walked.

“Unfortunately, the right wing is also the slightly more damaged wing on this floor. A couple of windows were knocked out or taken out. So, there has been some water damage over the years. It’s why I’m taking this one first.”

Willow walked into the red room, “So as you can see, the reason this is the red room . . . is its red.” She chuckled, “I mean it’s not brilliant. But most of the rooms have an obvious color theme. Which is very common for Victorian and larger homes that had been built. Anyone been to the Biltmore? Yeah, that’s very traditional. There’s no agreeable gray here. It just won’t be found.”

There was a pause as she looked around, “So I was surprised there was still actually decent furniture in here. It doesn’t look cheap either.” The four-poster bed with curtains were still there. However, the curtains had been shredded and just disrespected. “It’s a shame that the curtains are in the state that they are.”

The bathroom for this room wasn’t terrible. Willow noted, the toilet was odd with the tank way up in the air but that was also a very accurate for the time type of thing. She continued through the other two rooms, the purple and blue rooms which were similar layouts to the red room. In similar states of disarray, the purple room had obvious water damage.

Willow put on a mask as she entered the master bed room. “So, this room . . . has the worse of the water damage unfortunately.” She sat down on a small chair near the vanity. She was watching the wind softly breeze in the windows that had been busted open.

“How does this make you feel?” She asked looking around the room, hoping she’d get some sort of response. “The house in this state of disrepair. Someone having come in here and broke the windows, spray painted the walls.”

She was trying to invoke an emotional response from whatever might be here. “Does it make you sad?” She gave a few beats between each question, long enough for some sort of response.

She sighed softly; she heard the EMF reader down stairs give a faint whistle. Willow looked around softly as if she was interested in seeing if anything showed up. There were a few things that could make it whistle like that so she didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “I’m here if you want to pass a message along to anyone. I have a recorder right here; you could speak into it.”

After a little while longer Willow finally stood up, looking around. “Hm . . . it feels like something’s changed in the air.” She couldn’t explain it but she knew when to call it a wrap. “Well . . . I think we’ve done enough for the night lets call it here. Maybe I can come back before the house is demoed and explore the rest of the grounds.”

She wrapped the filming there and turned off the live stream. Plucking down the cameras and equipment and putting it back into its bags. She powered up and headed out with her equipment having been fairly pleased with the night’s work she did.