Page 1 of Haunting Salem

Prologue

Two yearsafter the Turnbull Canyon incident...

We’re waiting for you... Come find us, Simone.

The words echoed through my mind as I sat in the small screening room, the pilot for The Simone Hadley Files docudrama played out across the jumbo screen, but it might as well be blurred mush for all I cared. I couldn’t concentrate to save my life, and my stomach churned with anxiety.

It’s only nerves, I tried to tell myself.

I didn't expect the far left turn my life took two years ago when I decided to investigate the paranormal activity in Turnbull Canyon. I sure as heck didn't think I'd win a film award from Cal State Long Beach either. Nor a grant to continue my studies of the afterlife and if hauntings were, in fact, real.

Yet, here we were.

Two years ago, I went into the hills of Whittier to uncover whether the stories about Turnbull Canyon were true. For as far back as I could remember, I hated that place. I can't give you a rational explanation of why the place churned my stomach. Or why I hated riding the road with friends. Why I hated being near the switchback curves. My mother, on the other hand, loved the area. She'd take a trip up there just because. When I pressed for why, she'd never say. Only, she liked being there. Her infatuation with the place had been one of the bones of contention I had with her and the canyon. The second was the truth. She hid it from me all of my life until I went in on my own to investigate. I hate to say it, but sometimes, the truth is best left undiscovered.

I learnedthatthe hard way too.

FYI: I don't remember much about the night I spent up in the hills. Piecing together the footage I captured with Paul and Felix had been a bit of an out-of-body experience. I could hear my voice and see myself, but it was as if I wasn't physically there. Though I spoke in my normal cheerful voice while narrating, thanks to Nolan, my ADR—Audio Dialogue Replacement—guy, however, the vacant look in my eyes still haunted me.

I’d received several comments about it too. Some people were freaked out while others were sure I’d taken drugs. Peyote to be exact. The rest, well, they happened to think I was the shit. According to the glowing comments I received, I madetheBlair Witch Project and The Conjuringlook like B-movies played onElvira Mistress of the Dark—not that I had anything against Elvira, I only wished I’d look as good if not better in my sixties. I wasn’t bragging either. I believed in karma. What I put out into the world, came back to me. So, I tried to be the best person I could. I appreciated the compliments, and I allowed myself a moment to swoon when I received them.

Anyway, I digress.

The other thing I had to fix before I could present my findings, was the fact Kael, Ember, and Gaspar weren't visible. When I replayed the message left by Paul and Felix, it finally made sense. The screeching echo at the end, not so much. But, Paul and Felix saw Kael, Ember, and Gaspar because my guides wanted them to. However, they were also dead. Yes, you read that right. Kael, Ember, and Gaspar are dead. As such, they wouldn't have shown up in photos or audio or on film.

Must have freaked Felix and Paul out when they didn't see the guys in any of the photos or videos.

It also made for an interesting playback, because I, Simone Hadley, talked to myself. I laughed about it now. Dead-eyed me walking around in the hills above Whittier, California carrying on a conversation with three men who weren’t there—but were... I’m surprised my professor didn’t have me committed.

I snorted.

About the only thing keeping me out of a padded room was the footage of the ritual, and the fact, my professor was just like me. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

To be fair, most of the recording was grainy, almost too dark and shitty to tell what was going on. Nevertheless, it wasn't until Nolan cleaned up the audio, after promising he wouldn't ask any questions, and my professor, we'll call him Mr. GQ for now, watched it several times, did I realize I'd picked up the one thing others had tried several times to prove—chanting from the spirits of the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe. I couldn't believe what I heard. It hadn't been heard for over a hundred years and, at that, the phonograph cylinders used to capture their chants and songs were scratched, making their songs impossible to hear.

What separated my discovery from others? The chanting in my video was that of a death song. Something no one had ever heard before.

Pretty cool, right?

From the moment the video played in class, to the moment I sat in that seat in the small room watching myself discover the ghostly ghouls lurking in the Cecil Hotel, my life had become a whirlwind of activity. Sometimes, I had to pinch myself to make sure it was all real.

Of course, there were caveats when this whole thing started. I’d been okay with it, I mean, everyone always needed proof, right? The biggest clause was, The Adventure Channel picked the site we were going to investigate, so I couldn’t “tamper” with the place nor could I study up on the site before I arrived. I kind of liked the fact they sent me in blind. It made my discoveries and the emotional tension more authentic, something most of the other paranormal shows lacked.

So much shit went down in the hall of that hotel. For example, “The Night Stalker,” Richard Ramirez stayed there along with Elizabeth Short, also known as the “Black Dahlia.” In more recent history a student by the name of Elisa Lam went missing inside the hotel. A few days later, her naked body was found in the water tank on the roof of the building. And, the only reason they found her then, was due to the water running brown and a foul scent coming from the taps.

There were also suicides and murders in the establishment dating back to 1931, a scant four years after the hotel opened. The youngest victim; a minutes old baby thrown from a hotel room's window because his mother had a mental breakdown.

But, that's beside the point. With Kael by my side as my guide along with the very alive, Nolan, Jack, Lucy, and Owen—a second-year student of Mr. GQ, we investigated the hotel. The shit we captured... I didn't sleep for days afterward. The place left a creepy hairs-standing-on-end sheen coating my skin.

The same could be said for Jack as well.

Jack is like me in a way, he can see dead people and hear them, but he can’t speak to them. I, on the other hand, can do both. Sometimes, I can also relive a person’s death. It’s not something I enjoy, but it helps convey the story of their life. Nevertheless, I feared by the time we were done with our exploration of the hotel, Jack would quit. He experienced much more than I think he bargained for, all of us did.

While in the hotel, I connected with Elisa and Grace—the mother who threw her son to his death then committed suicide herself, Richard Ramirez, and a few others. Again, I'm not bragging or trying to name drop, that's not my style. Each one of the spirits who joined us left a lasting impact—trust me. The image of The Nightstalker's pentagram on the palm of his hand as he laughed after saying "hail Satan," was seared into my brain—and I believed we conveyed that through the editing process. We were also respectful of the dead. Because for those who replayed their fateful days there, that hotel was their graveyard. The rooms and halls and stairways were their tombs.

Nolan elbowed me, drawing me from my thoughts. “Well, what do you think?”

If the soft murmurs behind us were any indication, I suspected the production team was eating it up. "Should be interesting." I shrugged. As a pragmatic person, I never tried to look at the glass half full or half empty. I saw things as they'd either happen, or they wouldn't. I had several different podcasts, and online shows willing to work with me—us if this whole Adventure Channel thing fell through.

---