Chasing the Ghost Wave

Chasing the Ghost Wave

by Renee Freeman

Copyright 2017 Renee Freeman

Smashwords Edition

Chasing the Ghost Wave

was originally published online under the pen name Shadowriter.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

About the Author

Truth vs. Fiction

Contact Renee Freeman

Monday, October 12, 2026

5:30 a.m.


I woke up to the shrill beeping of my cell phone. More than half asleep I stumbled towards the pair of jeans I had left just inside my bedroom door and wrestled the phone off its clip.

Jarvis. I yawned as I identified myself.

Samantha, it's Jason. Wake the hell up.

I was tempted to just say no and drop the phone and my professor in favor of going back to bed. Instead, I rubbed my eyes and yawned again. What the hell time is it, Jason?

Five-thirty, Sam.

I groaned. Damn, I didn't mean to sleep the day away. I'll get dressed and come in as soon as I can.

You didn't, and don't bother. It's five-thirty in the morning, and I need you on a plane at nine.

It was hard to comprehend exactly what he was saying. Five -- in the morning? I glanced over to the curtains and saw there was no light coming in. Just to make sure, I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the time. Five-fucking-thirty. A.M.

Jason, my flight didn't arrive at LAX till eleven-thirty last night. I didn't get home till past two. Why am I now awake three hours later?

Like I said, I need you on a plane at nine. The arrangements are made, and Rhonda and Kelly will be meeting you at the airport.

Oh, hell no. Like I'm heading back down to LAX after just getting out of there? No. Uh-uh.

Relax, I got you tickets through Burbank. And you can sleep on the plane.

I sighed. If he'd already purchased the tickets, there was no way of talking him out of this sudden trip, even if it meant I didn't give him a timely report on the previous case. Not that there was much to report on that anyway.

With a yawn, I headed toward the bathroom and the shower I hoped would wake me up. Wanna tell me where I'm going?

San Francisco, city by the bay.

Why am I going there?

Someone saw a ghost at Alcatraz.

I paused. Jason, are you nuts? People are always seeing ghosts at Alcatraz.

Yeah, but how often does someone come back with a picture of Al Capone?

After I picked my jaw up off the floor I turned on the shower. Give me an hour to wake up and then call me back, cause there's no way in hell I heard that right. With that, I turned the phone off and dropped it to the floor. At least I was awake enough to make sure it hit carpet instead of tile.

I had been so asleep I'd forgotten to turn on the hot water, but the plunge into the cold forced me fully awake and right back out of the shower.

No fucking way did I hear that right, I muttered while I waited for the water to warm. Al Capone indeed.

I don't know how well the mainstream public remembers the show Ghost Hunters. It started right after the turn of the century, about 2003, and featured a group of people attempting to use scientific means to either prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. What was unique about them was their unwillingness to simply call a place haunted because someone felt something, or someone saw something. They went in with an attitude to debunk hauntings and many times they succeeded.

Of course, the longer the show went on, the more they were willing to say that the slightest unexplained sound or shadow was paranormal. This meant that even when a piece of evidence from their show seemed very strong, it still wasn't considered by the scientific establishment. But shows about ghost hunting and paranormal phenomenon filled the television channels until the American public bordered on believing. Scientists, however, thumbed their noses at the entire subject.

By the time I was old enough to watch television the original Ghost Hunters was in reruns, but many more shows had taken its place. They all used something called an EMF detector, meaning they could detect electromagnetic fields. If they couldn't find a reason for the field to be there, it was considered evidence of the paranormal. The problem was that there are several types of electro-magnetic waves, including radio, micro, ultra-violet, and gamma rays. A tiny EMF detector could tell you that there was energy, but not what kind it was.

The breakthrough came in 2018, when an engineer at UCLA became determined to prove that whatever electro-magnetic field they found was natural, and therefore not paranormal. To do this, he started by examining the most common types of EMF detectors used by paranormal investigators, and then he combined a more powerful EMF detector with a portable wave reader, the kind an electrician uses. In this way not only could he detect an electromagnetic field, he could also immediately see the length of the wave and where it fell on the chart.

Once he was sure the machine worked, he contacted a well-known parapsychologist, an alumni of UCLA, Frank Moran. Though Moran knew our engineer was a skeptic, the machine intrigued him so he agreed to help test it. Together they'd taken the machine to the Whaley House in San Diego, which many experts agreed was one of the most haunted places on the west coast. To Moran's delight and our engineer's shock, the EMF detector lit up, but the wave reader could not identify the type of electro-magnetic waves. They were longer and slower than radio waves which were thought to be the bottom rung on the EM wave frequency spectrum.

That was the key moment. Through Moran, word of the discovery quickly spread. With this knowledge in hand, and the new ghost waves verified by other key scientists, parapsychology became a new science. Eight years later, while not yet fully accepted by older scientific establishments, there were newly created programs popping up at several universities, one of which was Antioch University, where I had completed my Bachelor's degree and had been accepted into Graduate work under Professor Jason Taft.

Jason was thirty-two, the youngest full professor at Antioch. He was also a former student of Dennis Kincaid, the engineering master-mind behind the discovery of ghost waves. Kincaid, with aid from several sources and groups, had established the first official Para-physics Department in the country at UCLA. Offering strictly a graduate degree, they were an offshoot of both the social science and technological areas, and so had students from both aspects. Jason had been in the founding class, coming in with an engineering degree. He'd received his Ph.d from UCLA at the age of 26, and had spent another two years working with the newest EMF technology before moving to Antioch as the leader of the technological side of the new Para-physics Department. Less than a year later he was head of the whole department.

I'd been working with the man for just over two years and I still didn't get him. Sometimes I didn't think Jason believed in ghosts, and at other times I thought he had to be a true believer. I supposed that made him human. Everyone wants to believe that we go on after our bodies die. Most research, however, was making this less and less certain.

Yes, there appeared to be something behind ghostly phenomena. However, the most recent acceptable theories said that human emotion, which had been scientifically proven to produce energy of its own, was the source of ghost waves. Released human emotions would imprint on a space and become electro-magnetic waves, creating a field that then played back the ghost waves at certain scientifically definable times. Scientists just tried to find the right times and triggers that created the ghost waves — not that they'd managed to do so very often.

This theory left little room for the idea that ghosts were the souls of people who had passed on before us.

I didn't really know what to believe yet. My undergraduate degree was in Liberal Studies, but I was at heart a historian. While finishing up at Antioch I'd been introduced to Jason, who'd asked what I was going to do after college. I'd shrugged and told him with a smile that something would come up. He said something already had, and handed me the card for the Para-physics department with the instruction to be at his office at nine sharp the next morning. Having nothing better to do, I'd shown up. Within days I'd submitted my application for graduate studies in his department.

It wasn't that I had a firm belief in ghosts. And it wasn't that I wanted to be on the cutting edge of para-physical science, which is what Jason was all about. Heck, I didn't even understand the science half the time. Nor did I have a desperate need to discover where ghosts came from.

I just wanted to see one.

I was a history major. When Jason told me he'd open up a new world for me, I didn't care. When he told me that he'd open up a window to the past, I was intrigued. Besides, at the very least, it was better than asking people if they wanted to supersize their food order, and I kept reminding myself of that on a chilly October morning while I took the bus over to the Burbank airport.

7:15 a.m.

I called Jason back while on the bus, grateful that the vehicle was mostly empty.

Are you awake?

Yeah, or as awake as you get me this morning. What flight am I on? What airline?

Southwest, flight 713. Rhonda and Kelly are already waiting. You're at Gate 12.

Right. Now, tell me again why I'm flying to San Francisco after just getting back from Ohio?

How was the cemetery in Ohio?

Dead, mostly. What happened at Alcatraz?

I heard a rattling hiss as he took a breath and rolled my eyes. Jason had smoked when he'd been a teenager and when he quit he still needed something to do with his hands. When studies began to show that vaping didn't have the same health risks as most tobacco products, it had become more popular and slightly more accepted. Jason had joined the vape crowd, though he wasn't as obnoxious about it as others I'd seen. He always said he was going to quit that as well, but he still hadn't, and I didn't think he ever would.

Didn't mean I couldn't tease him about it occasionally.

Is that chocolate or raspberry?

Neither. Would you concentrate, please?

Fine. I'm listening.

Good. A group of visitors were touring Alcatraz. They went down to the shower room. You remember the legend of Al Capone playing his banjo or something down there?

Yeah, after the syphilis had started to affect his brain.

Right. Well, one of the visitors, this guy from Chicago, thought he saw something, so he stayed behind for a minute when everyone else left. He went further into the showers and started to hear music. When he turned around, there was Al, grinning and strumming a guitar or banjo or something. The guy took a photo and ran.

And the photo came out? I was skeptical, but Jason was obviously hooked.

Well enough that you can see the scar on Al's face.

Have you actually seen it, or just heard about it?

He took another breath, and for an instant I could almost smell peach scent of his favorite vape flavor. Frankie emailed me the picture.

I shook my head, hoping he wasn't serious. Frank Weston? Seriously? He's always trying to sell fake pictures and stories. Are you sure it's not just another of his stunts?

No, which is why I'm sending you and Kelly. I figure if there's anything to the story, the two of you will find it, and if there isn't, well, you always wanted to go to Alcatraz anyway.

He had a point. Why are you sending Rhonda with us?

Because neither of you have any tact and I don't feel like apologizing for you again.

Another point. I decided I wasn't going to argue anymore. Did you have to send me right after I got back from Ohio?

Sorry. Wanna make sure we beat Leo and that damn girl he's been working with.

Leo Danten was another protegé of Dennis Kincaid, and had taken over the program when Kincaid moved on two years ago. I didn't know the full story behind it, but Leo and Jason had been rivals for a long time. That made UCLA our rivals in the field. That 'damn girl' was Amanda Prescott, who was the strongest and most eager investigator on the UCLA team. She was also a pain in my ass, though for a totally different reason. If Jason thought my early flight could put us a leg up over that program, I'd do what it took to make it happen.

But