I still hear the humming. From the moment we stepped into that horrible factory, it's been growing louder and louder at all hours of the day. I can't sleep, I can't think... I can't escape it because it is coming from within my own head. I can feel its vibrations echoing off my skull, calling me, compelling me to... to do what?
I've been at this ridiculous ghost hunting schtick for so many years and not once have I ever found any true, undeniable evidence of the paranormal. I thought I'd lost all my faith, but no matter which way I look at that picture, at that whole night, I cannot explain what it was. When I close my eyes all I can see is that haunting figure. That man, the ghost of a man who's still alive. How? How did I see him?
Something is wrong, I can feel it as if it's in my very soul. Like an itch, hives that reach deeper than the skin down to my bones. I think I must have angered some force beyond this life and now I must live with the knowledge that I have done so much harm with my stupidity and selfish desires.
Perhaps it is all a metaphor, my sins of the past coming back to haunt me. I treated the deceased with so much disrespect without considering how it might hurt their memories, their legacies, their still-living loved ones. Now the memory of the ghost of a still living man plagues my every moment.
But no, that feels too simple. It's something more, something greater than a single man. It feels too big somehow, I fear I'm missing the forest for the trees. This itch, this dizziness, it makes it hard to breathe and I can't focus on my own thoughts long enough to fully realize what I've done without the humming in my head interrupting and scattering them away from me.
Francisco, Jess, Grant, none of them hear the humming. They still believe, even after all the nothing we've captured they still believe that an afterlife exists. I do not. I think I must be losing my mind, I do not believe in ghosts. Not anymore. There was nothing at that factory, there's never been anything anywhere we've gone. Nothing but radio chatter and flashing lights from cheap shitty maglights. But I have to be sure. If this is all simply in my own head, if I'm walking into my own madness, I don't want to drag anyone else down with me.
I have to go back. I have to be sure. I have to go alone. My friends, my teammates, if you're reading this before I have returned: do not come looking for me. There is nothing at the Bartlebee Factory, nothing but dusty machines and overgrown plants and faded paintings of a forgotten mascot.
I just need to be sure.
- Ethan