The Old Mill Connection

Matthew gives a small chuckle. “You’ll love this. Jessica says she had a dream about the old mill back in the 1800s. She saw the man arrive at the mill and everything that happened right up until he was killed and taken away by soldiers. Then she saw the Johnsons talking about the gold they still had, and Mrs. Johnson hid it in the house when the sheriff arrived.”

Brenda stares at him. “Back up. What man arrived at the mill, and what gold?”

Jessica explains what she discovered while researching the Johnson property, including the green notebook and its mysterious disappearance when she left the records room to use the bathroom.

Instead of clearing things up, the explanation leaves Brenda even more confused.

“That research was put together for me,” she says.

The group falls silent.

Brenda explains that she is the woman who asked Dorothy to gather information about the old mill. She has been planning another investigation of the property because she was never satisfied with the one she conducted as a teenager. The stories she heard about the mill while growing up were what first drew her towards parapsychology. Now that modern electronic equipment is so much more accessible than the equipment she had as a teenager, she wants another chance to investigate the property.

“There definitely wasn’t a green notebook in the material when I went to the archives,” she tells them. “I wanted to learn more about the property’s history before I investigated it again.”

Then Brenda pauses.

“There’s something else you should know. My father’s last name is Waters, but my mother’s maiden name was Johnson.”

She looks from one stunned face to another.

“My family built the old mill.”

Nobody speaks.

For nearly a minute, the only sound in the room is the faint background noise of the house.

William finally breaks the silence.

“And in your family history, you never heard about a man who stole Union gold for the Confederate Army and was captured at the mill?”

“No,” Brenda replies. “We were always told the family’s wealth came from travellers heading west and buying supplies. There is an old town legend about gold being stolen from a train, but nothing has ever substantiated it. There aren’t any records of a train carrying gold through here.”

Jessica thinks about the missing notebook.

“Maybe it was mixed into a box of old documents that were donated to the archives and nobody ever read it. Maybe Sherry-Anne really did keep the secret.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Brenda says. “But how could something like that stay hidden for all these years? You’d think someone would eventually have found and read the notebook.”

“There was a box of old receipts and invoices on the floor while I was going through the research material,” Jessica explains. “I was pulling papers out of it. Maybe the notebook was buried among them and somehow fell behind the box. I can’t imagine many people being interested in old receipts and invoices unless they were historians.”

William looks at her. “That makes sense. But where is the notebook now?”

No one has an answer.

Brenda turns back to Jessica.

“Have you ever had any other psychic dreams or impressions?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

“Just curious. Some people believe dreams can contain psychic impressions, but most dreams are forgotten almost immediately after waking. Since you remembered this one so clearly, I wondered whether you’d had others.”

Brenda glances at the group.

“But why are you convinced the apparition was the traveller? You said the video only showed a light.”

Jessica opens her purse and removes the printout they brought with them. She hands it to Brenda.

Brenda studies the image for several moments.

“Where did this come from?”

“It’s a cleaned-up frame from my video,” William explains. “Actually, it’s the negative of the frame I extracted.”

Brenda looks at it again.

The image appears unmistakably human. Even the suggestion of a moustache is visible.

For the first time that evening, Brenda seems genuinely overwhelmed. She sits quietly, trying to absorb everything the group has told her and the evidence now sitting in her hands.

After a moment, she sets the photograph down.

“I think we need to change gears for a while. I promised to show you how I prepare myself when I’m trying to use my psychic abilities. It’s also a good way to calm your mind when it starts getting overloaded—which mine definitely is after everything you’ve told me.”

The group immediately becomes interested.

Brenda asks everyone to sit comfortably and close their eyes.

“A lot of people believe energy flows into and out of the body through different points,” she begins. “Whether you think of this literally or simply as a visualization technique, the idea is to focus your attention and relax.

“Imagine energy entering at the base of your head, where your neck meets your skull. Picture it flowing slowly into your body. If it helps, place your hand near that area and concentrate on any sensation you notice, such as warmth or tingling.

“Now imagine any excess or negative energy leaving through the right side of your head, just above your temple.

“Keep visualizing the energy flowing into you. Feel it moving over your face, through your torso and arms, down past your waist, through your legs and all the way to your feet.

“Once you can picture that clearly, imagine the energy gathering at a point in the centre of your forehead, directly above and between your eyes. Some traditions call this the third eye or focal centre.

“Now imagine that energy flowing outward from your forehead and into the universe.

“As it leaves, picture a large screen appearing in your mind at that focal point. Don’t force anything onto the screen. Just pay attention to whatever appears. Treat it as your first impression.”

For a while, the room is silent.

Alexis is the first to speak.

“All I see are clouds.”

“I see trees,” Jacob says. “It’s like I’m lying on the ground looking up at the sky in a forest.”

William keeps his eyes closed. “I see the house at the old mill.”

Jessica speaks next. “I see my mother talking to a stranger.”

Matthew sounds more surprised than anyone.

“I see a river with sunlight glistening off it.”

Brenda smiles.

“Not everyone sees something meaningful the first time. And whatever you see doesn’t automatically mean it’s paranormal. It might be a memory, something you’ve been thinking about, your imagination, or something that later seems significant. The important part right now is learning to focus.”

She lets them sit quietly for another moment before telling them to open their eyes.

“With practice, some people find they can direct the visualization towards particular subjects. When I was trying to decide what day might work for our meeting, for example, I pictured a calendar. In my visualization, the Thursday box seemed brighter than the others, so Thursday stood out to me.”

The students exchange looks, each considering what appeared in his or her own mind.

Brenda checks the time.

“It’s getting late. I think we should call it a night. Why don’t we meet again Saturday morning around nine at the old mill? That will give me time to go over everything you’ve told me.”

Everyone agrees.

As they prepare to leave, Brenda walks to one of her bookshelves and removes a book. She hands it to William.

He looks at the cover.

Easy Astral Travel.

“Thanks. I’ll bring it back soon.”

“Take your time,” Brenda tells him. “I read it quite a while ago.”

The group says goodnight and starts walking home.

Almost immediately, they begin comparing impressions of the evening. They are intrigued, but several of them had expected more. Brenda has listened to their experiences and taught them the visualization exercise, yet she has shared relatively little about her own paranormal encounters.

Matthew notices the book in William’s hand.

“What did she give you?”

William shows everyone.

Jessica frowns. “Well, at least somebody got something out of that meeting.”

William looks at her. “Why are you so upset?”

Jessica hesitates before answering.

“I guess I had all these expectations because of everything that’s happened in class this week. She seems so completely in control at school. But when we started talking about the traveller, she seemed almost out of her element.”

Alexis looks surprised.

“Didn’t you tell us not to expect too much from the first meeting? You said she might be uncomfortable if we asked too many questions or put her on the spot.”

“Yeah,” Matthew agrees. “You told us to go in and see what she had to say. We found out she was the mysterious woman researching the old mill. We also found out she investigated it herself when she was younger.”

“That’s right,” William adds. “And we showed her evidence from our investigation that really surprised her. Maybe because we found more than she did when she investigated the place, she’s wondering why none of it appeared to her.”

Jessica’s annoyance fades into disappointment.

“I know you’re right. I’ve always been good at giving advice. I’m just not always very good at following it myself. Guess that’s something I need to work on.”

Matthew thinks for a moment.

“So what if the meeting was nonchalant?”

Everyone stops walking.

William stares at him. “What did you just say?”

“I said, so what if the meeting was nonchalant? You can’t always expect stuff to be extraordinary.”

The group bursts into laughter.

Matthew has a habit of choosing words that are close enough to what he means that everyone can eventually figure out his point, even when the word does not quite fit the sentence.

As the laughter dies down, Sarah studies Jessica.

“Did anyone else notice how much Brenda looks like Jessica? I mean, she could pass for Jessica’s older sister. Or at least a cousin.”

Jessica glares at her.

Samantha looks from Jessica to the direction they have just come.

“You’re right. I thought Brenda looked familiar, but I figured I must have seen her around school or town. Maybe she reminds me of Jessica, and that’s why I felt like I already knew her.”

The others begin commenting on the similarities.

Jessica becomes increasingly irritated.

“She looks nothing like me. You guys should all get your eyes checked.”

She storms ahead.

William runs to catch up.

“What’s really bothering you?”

Jessica slows.

“I noticed the resemblance the first day I saw her, and it bothers me. I’ve never seen this woman before, and now I can’t stop noticing all the similarities. It isn’t just the way she looks. Our personalities are a little alike, and we’re both interested in ghost hunting and the paranormal.”

William smiles.

“I’ve heard everyone has a double somewhere in the world. Maybe you just happened to meet the older version of yours.”

Jessica finally smiles. She steps in front of him and wraps her arms around him.

“Thank you,” she whispers near his ear. “You’re my voice of reason when I need one.”

She kisses him on the cheek, turns and continues walking.

A few steps later, she glances back at him with a small smile.

William exhales in relief.

“There are those smeyes I love seeing.”

Smeyes is William’s name for a particular look Jessica gets when she is truly happy. Even if he could not see her mouth, he would know from her eyes alone that she was smiling.

As everyone heads home, they agree to meet at school a little early so they can decide what the next stage of their investigation should be.

Back at her house, Brenda returns to the study.

She spreads her notes across the desk and places the printout of the traveller beside them. The quality of the image still bothers her. She cannot understand how William could have fabricated something so convincing using free software downloaded from the internet.

Brenda opens her laptop and loads a photograph of her study.

If the image is fake, she intends to prove it.

She has several licensed photo-editing programs from courses she took in college. One assignment in her parapsychology studies involved creating a fake ghost photograph convincing enough to fool other students, who then had to determine how it had been produced. Brenda earned ninety-eight percent on the assignment.

Reproducing William’s image should be easy.

It isn’t.

She tries blurring an object and inserting it into the photograph. She downloads a ghost image and experiments with softening its edges before placing it into the scene. She tries several other techniques, then searches for additional methods of creating convincing fake paranormal photographs.

She can create ghostly images without much difficulty.

What she cannot reproduce is the way the figure appears when the image is viewed as a negative without obvious signs of editing.

Eventually, Brenda stops.

She is not prepared to declare the photograph genuine simply because she cannot duplicate it, but she can no longer dismiss it as an obvious fake either.

She studies the traveller one more time.

She has never seen a supposed ghost photograph reveal such a clear figure in negative form.

A new question enters her mind.

How many photographs has she taken over the years that might reveal something different if she viewed them as negatives?

Brenda places her notes and the printout carefully inside a drawer.

Then she turns back to her laptop and resumes preparing the next day’s class assignment.