Chapter 8: Research

Alessa was flooded with relief as she climbed the steps to Zeta Epsilon Pi's front porch. Between the exam that morning and her lunchtime rendezvous with the ghost, she was wiped. Her ethics seminar had dragged on interminably, Alessa yawning and drooping in her chair, wishing she was back in one of those massive lecture halls so that she could sink into the crowd.

Instead, she had spent the better part of the last hour with the professor's affronted expression boring through her as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She was glad to put the class behind her.

Pushing through the front door at last, relief swelled in Alessa's chest - that is, until she noticed the group of seven or so sorority sisters gathered around the coffee table in the living room. They alternated between nodding furiously and looking intently at Lizzie's laptop as she spoke rapidly about something, gesticulating enthusiastically as she went. Alessa caught wind of the words "party" and "delegate" and quickly scurried up to her room before anyone noticed her presence.

Alessa switched on the light and flopped onto the bed, letting out a deep sigh. It had been a long day. She hoped she'd get a little time to recover before Isaac made another appearance - she ached with exhaustion right down to her bones.

Rolling over to face the wall, Alessa pulled her knees toward her chest, her long hair strewn out behind her. She rested her head on her arm and closed her eyes. She still hadn't fully processed everything that had happened earlier, the emotions that had tugged at her from every direction. She wondered if there was any validity to Janie's theory that they were actually the ghost's emotions being projected onto her.

She didn't like the idea of some foreign entity hijacking her emotions, making her feel like someone she wasn't. It was troubling to think how little control she had over her own faculties during those moments. And now it was hours later and she was still feeling the effects.

With a weary sigh, Alessa rolled back over and swung her legs to the floor. She needed to get to the bottom of this.

She pushed herself out of bed and over to the desk. Sinking into the chair, she snatched up her backpack from the floor and slid out her laptop, dropping it onto the desk with a clunk.

Alessa wasn't even sure where to begin. She decided to start broad and entered "ghost stories" into the search engine. 120 million results. Perhaps she was going to need to be more specific.

This time she tried "real ghost stories." That narrowed it down to 5 million. She randomly opened the first few pages.

They were all forum posts with stories from people who claimed to have experienced a ghost encounter, but the only emotions they reported feeling were the expected ones: that something was "not right," like they weren't alone, and of course terror, anxiety, panic. It sounded pretty similar to Alessa's first few experiences.

She tried entering "ghosts projecting feelings" which narrowed it down to 3 million results, but still nothing seemed quite right. One of the top results was a general information page about ghosts, so she decided to check there. Scanning the page, she noticed that the words "projecting" and "feelings" were there but nowhere near each other, which didn't really answer her question. However, there was a list of alternative hypotheses attempting to explain the existence of ghosts, so she decided to read further.

Of course there was all the usual theorizing about the existence of spirits on another plane, a soul caught between life on earth and whatever might come next. This was generally thought to be caused by "unfinished business" on the part of the deceased or a great trauma experienced at the time of death. Both scenarios seemed reasonable enough to explain Isaac's presence, though Alessa didn't know enough about him to be sure.

There was also plenty of scientific skepticism. Carbon monoxide poisoning, air pressure changes, and mistakes interpreting peripheral vision were all cited as rational explanations behind what one might interpret as a ghost sighting, but none of these rationalizations seemed to hit the mark in Alessa's case.

There was also some discussion of a phenomenon called infrasound, sound waves emanating at a low enough frequency that they're inaudible to humans but still detectable in other ways. Alessa read one article about experiments where people reported seeing things and feeling uneasiness and even sorrow when exposed to sound at these frequencies. However, in those experiments 20% of the tested population was affected by the presence of infrasound, which meant that if there was some sort of infrasound source affecting her house, at least a handful of her housemates should have experienced something similar. As far as Alessa knew, no one else had, so that didn't seem like the culprit.

Other theories hypothesized that ghosts were projections of the viewer's own emotions, some sort of low-level telepathy that resulted from stress. Alessa thought this theory might have some merit, especially given her difficulty coping with the recent loss of her parents. However, that didn't explain why her emotions might take the form of a guy from the early 1900s. Shouldn't it be her parents she was seeing if in fact her stress over their death was the root of all this?

Yet another set of theories considered the possibility of a time warp. In these cases, by some unknown process the fabric of time was momentarily folded in such a way that someone in the present either got a glimpse of a person from the past, or - in the case of what was called a "time slip" - was fully transported into the past for a few moments. Besides the usual "lost soul" hypothesis, this theory seemed probably the closest of everything Alessa had read. But even if this theory was correct, Alessa didn't understand how it was possible or why it was happening, or more importantly, what to do about it.

Alessa closed her laptop lid in frustration, snapping it a little harder than she'd meant to. All in all, she was disappointed with what she'd been able to turn up. None of the various theories seemed to quite match her experiences, and most of the information online seemed like it was written by either lunatics or dedicated skeptics, neither of whom she trusted for a reliable opinion.

Most troubling was the fact that she wasn't able to find anything related to the emotional disturbance that had accompanied her recent encounters. She had truly expected to find something that might help explain what was going on, or at least accounts from other people who had experienced similar sensations. Instead, her search had left Alessa feeling more alone than ever.

Glancing at the pile of textbooks on her desk, Alessa remembered the slowly accumulating mountain of reading that she had yet to tackle. She didn't even want to try to calculate the number of pages she had due in the next week. Alessa weighed the possibility of powering through some text tonight, but it was just more than she could bear at the moment. The reading would have to wait.

Alessa grabbed a hair tie off the desk and pulled her locks into a low ponytail. Fishing out a comfortable pair of old sweatpants, she tossed her discarded jeans in the laundry bag and headed for the bathroom.

In the hallway she passed by a sophomore housemate that she'd barely traded ten words with all year. Sara, was it? Alessa forced a quiet smile, a gesture that maybe-Sara returned with a quick wave.

Reaching the bathroom, Alessa was grateful to find it empty. She washed her face in the second of the triple sinks, splashing cool water over her skin until it flushed with pink. She looked up at the mirror as the water dripped off her chin, locking sight with her own greenish gold eyes, dark circles etching the exhaustion into her face. Janie was right - she looked like crap. She was glad she'd decided to get some rest tonight.

Alessa dried her face and reached for her toothbrush, bracing at the sound of footsteps approaching from the hall. She considered forsaking dental hygiene for one night if it would allow her to avoid another awkward exchange with one of her sorority sisters.

"Hey, Less." It was Janie.

Alessa breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey."

Janie was wrapped in a towel and headed towards one of the shower stalls. She closed the curtain behind her and flung her towel over the top of the stall as Alessa brushed her teeth.

Over the pattering of the shower, Janie asked, "So did you get a chance yet to look into my projection theory?"

Putting her toothbrush back in its holder, Alessa turned to face the shower curtain. "I wasn't very successful." Just thinking about her failed research attempt caused the frustration to well up in her stomach again. "None of the stories I found involved anything as intense as what I've been experiencing. There were some people who said they would be overcome with feelings of loneliness or grief, but there was no mention of anyone simultaneously feeling…" Alessa hesitated. She knew Janie was going to goad her for this. "… attracted."

Janie snorted. "Figures." She thought for a moment, then playfully added, "Well, maybe your loins know something you don't. Maybe this ghost was your lover in a past life or something."

Alessa shook her head with a begrudging laugh, out of frustration as much as amusement. Now that she was apparently seeing ghosts, how could she just write off other possibilities? Even reincarnation wasn't out of the question.

"You know what, Janie? At this point, I'm not ruling anything out."