Ghostfacers Face Surly and Snarky, for just_ruth
Title: Ghostfacers Face Surly and Snarky
Recipient: just_ruth
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Word Count: ~3,500
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta for the beta! Helped me
Summary: Ladies, gentlemen, and classless unwashed masses: it’s finally happened. We had the great misfortune to meet a pair of so-called hunters even more unbelievably awful than the Winchesters. Hereafter, we’ll refer to them as Surly and Snarky.
Ghostfacers Report: 7/8-7/10
Ladies, gentlemen, and classless unwashed masses: it’s finally happened. We had the great misfortune to meet a pair of so-called hunters even more unbelievably awful than the Winchesters, and they nearly ruined one of our most intriguing and dangerous cases to date. If we weren’t such consummate professionals, their interference could have led to tens if not hundreds of tragic deaths. Fortunately, we’re awesome enough that we saved the day despite these two old guys trying to get everyone killed.
If we knew these guys’ names, we’d publish them so all of you could know to avoid these ancient hazards (and we do mean ancient. Picture the oldest person you’ve ever met, then add two decades and a lot of overcompensatory anger, and you’ll be pretty close to how cranky these two were), but they wouldn’t tell us who they were and even went so far as to call each other things like “lazy lyin’ asshole” and “bitter old codger” to keep their identities a secret. Hereafter, we’ll refer to them as Surly and Snarky.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s back up a little and start at the beginning. It all began, like so many terrible things do, in Florida.
We got the following email from a source. [Note: Do you need the Ghostfacers to face your supernatural troubles? Send us an email through the link at the bottom of the page!] Our source sent us this cry for help on July 6th:
Ghostfacers, help!
I work at [a large amusement park in central Florida] and I think we have a ghost! Equipment has been breaking down left and right, people are complaining about us having too much air conditioning on OUTDOOR rides in the middle of summer heat, and some of our mascots have been spotted walking around when no one is supposed to be in the costumes. Even our security staff is freaking out, maybe because their boss has been missing for three days!
I know our corporate overlords are going to pretend nothing’s wrong, but thanks to your site, I think we’re dealing with a haunting or worse! Please, won’t you come help? I can comp your tickets, just please save us!
Of course, we had to help. We couldn’t make it out to Florida until that Friday, but we gave our source some things to look out for and precautions to take. On our advice, she deployed salt to some key points and kept us updated until we could reach the scene of the haunting. Thanks to our help, no one got hurt before we arrived.
Once we got on scene, the first thing we did was check in with our source to see if there was any news. We learned four important things:
It was on the way from investigating one ride to seeing if the abnormal EMF readings extended to the food court that we first encountered the two men who would come to be known to us as Surly and Snarky.
There was no reason to find them remarkable in any way, but we do distinctly remember two old men standing in the middle of the pathway and arguing-as we would later learn they never stopped doing. That time, as far as we can recall, it was about the exact time of the sunset and whether it starts when the sun is above or below the horizon.
If we’d known then that they were also trying to find the ghost of the amusement park, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble and sent them on their way then. Really, what kind of amateurs think that sunset has any effect on ghosts?
Anyway. After checking out the park grounds, we were able to get a look at one of the damaged costumes thanks to our source.
As we’ve said, the costume was supposed to be for a tiger, but every single part of it, including the creepy fake eyes and the zippers, had turned pitch black. Our source told us that even the stripes, which were black to begin with because duh, tiger, weren’t the right shade of black anymore.
Sorry, evil corporate overlords, we know that’s not just dye. It also smelled a little like burnt hair, even though there was obviously no fire-related damage to the costume. Our source said that was the case for all of them that she’d seen or, in this case, smelled.
By then it was getting late, so we rechecked all the protective measures our source had taken and had to leave the park. Since our source lives nearby, we took over her apartment for the duration of the investigation. We spent some time going over the pictures and videos we’d taken to see if there were any ghostly images lingering in the background, but it had been a long trip and we needed to be fresh for the next morning’s work.
Some of you, our astute fans, will probably notice that this is taking the form of a blog post instead of a video, despite our mentions of all the footage we took around the park. Part of the reason for that is that the location would be way too easily identifiable from any images, and our source is relying on our discretion. Another, bigger reason is that Surly and Snarky destroyed all of our cameras. We’ll get back to that later.
Saturday morning, we got in as soon as the park opened so that no one would be in danger without us there to help them. Our source had to work, but was able to check in with us by text every few hours (the park has super strict rules for its employees’ phone use). The first hint of something big happening was when she told us that visitors had stopped complaining about the lack of the tiger mascot character being around, and started instead complaining that the person in the tiger mascot suit was scaring children.
This was clearly our ghost at work. The park hadn’t been able to get replacement costumes, so they didn’t have anyone going around dressed as the tiger. According to our source, it was being seen most frequently near the tree where the security guy had been found, so we rushed over to see if we could spot it.
We only caught a glimpse before it straight-up vanished, proving its ghostly origins, but what we saw was so completely unexpected that we’re pretty sure it’s actually a first in ghost history. Are you ready? Brace yourselves:
The ghost wasn’t wearing a tiger character costume.
Still braced? Here comes the big one:
The ghost WAS the tiger character.
That’s right. We were dealing with the ghost of an animated, anthropomorphic cat that definitely hasn’t died in any officially sanctioned way.
If you’ve been with us since our Hell Hounds days, this might sound familiar to you as something other than a ghost, but trust us, it wasn’t a tulpa. This was 100% certified ghost, as evidenced by its susceptibility to salt, its overall behavior, and the way we ganked it.
But more on that later.
This event was important to our case for two reasons. First, it gave us the information we needed to start hunting the specific ghost, instead of a generic ghost. Second, that was when we first realized that Surly and Snarky might be a problem.
See most people, people who don’t know what’s really out there, don’t pay a lot of attention most of the time. This was a crowded park and we were surrounded by families, but none of them noticed that the tiger character had just walked right into a concrete tree and disappeared four feet away from them.
But Surly and Snarky were there, and they were both frowning right at the spot where it had vanished. Snarky pulled something like an old-school dictaphone out of his pocket and pointed it at the tree, then he and Surly argued about something before grumping off towards the park office.
We sent our source a heads-up that they might be coming and asked her to report back, since we didn’t want them interfering in our investigation. We found out later that this is where our trouble started, because she didn’t get the text in time and unintentionally gave them the wrong idea about what was going on. That really wasn’t her fault, though. They were in a hurry to jump to the absolutely wrong conclusion.
Apparently Surly and Snarky very quickly started to focus on one of our source’s coworkers, who had quit unexpectedly a few days before. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving and no one had heard from him since he’d left. The old guys thought that was weird, we assume because they’re too old to realize that no one keeps in touch with old co-workers these days. Besides, as far as our source knew, he’d never been involved with the tiger character.
Unfortunately, they also got interested in the first ride that had started malfunctioning, which is how we found ourselves facing them again after sneaking past security to get into the closed ride and do some investigating. We had just set up the cameras to document our investigation when we heard two angry male voices from the staff-only area under the ride.
Fools that we were, we got excited. There weren’t supposed to be any staff members around, and arguments mean high emotions, which have a lot to do with ghosts. This could have been our break!
We’ve foreshadowed it enough, though. You know where this is going.
That’s right.
Surly and Snarky.
They were standing there swearing at each other about we couldn’t tell you what, looking like they were about to get into a crotchety old man slap fight.
“If the poor bastard got done in here,” Surly bellowed, “then he’ll be all over the goddamn tracks. You wanna burn the whole joint?”
“You wanna just leave it here to keep on getting worse until some kid dies?” Snarky shot back. “What am I saying, of course you do. That’s what you do!”
“Oh screw you!” Surly yelled, then there was a lot of nonsense and something about Omaha, but that doesn’t really matter. The point is, as they got madder and madder, the EMF spiked higher and higher.
When our meter topped out with a really unfortunate squealing sound that we’ve never been able to get it to stop doing, they finally realized we were there. But before we could give them a lecture about riling up restless spirits and usher them away to somewhere harmless, there was a whole lot of screaming from pretty close by.
Naturally, we ran towards the danger while everyone else was running away. Surly and Snarky did too, but we didn’t have time to worry about them. We also didn’t have time to tear down our camera setup, and we didn’t want to be slowed down while rushing over to save lives, so all of the equipment we had on us at the time got left behind. This is an important point, remember it.
The source of the commotion turned out to be a roller coaster kind of ride meant especially for little kids. You know the type, with the little cars and the track that never gets more than six feet off the ground. It had totally collapsed, fortunately just after offloading so no one was on it.
The next ride over, on the other hand, was full of parents and little tiny kids spinning around, and they were still trying to get to work on the emergency stop. The ghost was right there with them, tripping anyone who came near the failsafe button. The sight of a real ghost must have been too much for Surly and Snarky (we think this might have been their first haunting), because they scampered off back to the safety of the closed ride.
Us being the fearless, hardened ghost hunters that we are, we quickly saved the day with an unusual but effective weapon: salted soft pretzels. Granted, with all the wind the ghost was causing it took several tries for us to get some of the delicious, warm pastries through the tiger character’s ghostly form, and the actual salt content was low enough that he didn’t flicker out until we’d pegged him with at least four, but vanish he did.
It’s a good thing we got rid of him when we did, because the two old lunatics had apparently decided that, while we were saving lives and holding off the ghost, they should go through with their unbelievably stupid plan of setting the closed ride on fire.
We’re not kidding you.
If it weren’t so reckless and terrible, we might actually be impressed at how they’d managed to get flames all over a couple tons of steel.
Also, remember what we said you should remember earlier? About us leaving all our equipment back in the staff area of that very same ride? Yeah. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars, plus hours and hours of footage, all up in smoke.
Now, you might be thinking we can’t possibly be telling you the truth. You would have heard about something like that! Well, you didn’t, for two reasons.
First, again, it was a steel roller coaster. The paint and other decorations ended up worse for wear, but the structure itself didn’t get too much damage.
Second, it’s the same reason you didn’t hear about any of this, despite this being a very popular amusement park. The corporate owners are very good at keeping things quiet when they want to. If we were actually naming the park or the character here, they’d find us and sue us for four times more than we’ve ever owned.
So, Surly and Snarky’s pyro tendencies got everyone in even more of a panic than the collapsing ride or the ghost did, and of course the park was evacuated. Since so many people freaking out would get the ghost all ramped up, that was good. Even though it meant that we got kicked out, too.
The parking lot was total chaos, but somehow we managed to run into the banes of our existence anyway. They were standing near our van. Arguing. No surprise there. From the sound of it, Surly wanted to warn us off something (probably still thought they were going to solve the haunting, despite all evidence to the contrary) and Snarky thought it would be better for us to spend more time at the park. Obviously, Snarky was right. But that’s not the point.
See, we Ghostfacers pride ourselves on being calm and rational in the face of death, danger, and the downright weird. We keep it pretty cool most of the time.
We went off on those grumpy old men.
We couldn’t tell you now all the topics we covered, but there was a lot of yelling about fire and innocent bystanders and responsibility and senility and Surly and Snarky knew just how much they had messed up, because they just stood there listening and looking shocked, like it hadn’t even occurred to them that they were putting people in danger.
In our ire, we may have also given away the truth of the ghost’s identity. They were surprised, to say the least, and asked a lot of questions about how we’d figured it out and what we were going to do about it.
Their awe was understandable. Not everyone would have made the connection as quickly as we did; Surly and Snarky definitely didn’t. Since they seemed so eager to know more, we thought we’d throw them a bone and offer them a chance to help out in a way that couldn’t get anyone hurt.
A brief explanation, first:
You all know, or should know by now, that the best way to get rid off a restless spirit is to burn the remains. Usually this means bones, but sometimes you need to find other remains: hair, teeth, sometimes even important objects.
Now, a fictional tiger character obviously isn’t going to have a corpse. But it does have a whole bunch of archival footage, from movies and so on, that gave it ‘life.’ It looked like we were going to have to track down every last scrap of it to burn our malicious ghost away, so we gave the old guys the task of helping us find it.
At first they just stared at us, like they didn’t even understand the words. We started to explain again, louder and slower-again, they’re super ancient, we figured their hearing just wasn’t great. But the two of them just started cracking up! Old people have the weirdest senses of humor, playing the deaf card to get a reaction from compassionate and sympathetic young men. Whatever.
When they finally stopped, Snarky told us he didn’t think they’d be able to find the information we were looking for about where and on what all the original images of the character were stored. “We’re too old for all that internet crap,” he said with an embarrassed grin.
“Don’t lump me in with you, you jackass shut-in. I know what the hell I’m doing, I just don’t want to,” Surly said.
And so on.
We got them to stop by asking them for their ideas (it’s always good to humor old folks), but they didn’t want to return the caring and giving spirit we’d extended to them.
Instead of answering, this was the point at which Surly realized, and told Snarky, that working with us would’ve been less of a headache than working with Snarky. Snarky agreed that we knew more about the supernatural than Surly did, and Surly said some very rude things to that. We almost had to break up what would’ve been a very sad little old man shoving match. Fortunately, we talked them down and sent them off for an early bird dinner or bingo or whatever it is ancient guys do.
They never admitted defeat, but that was the last we saw of Surly and Snarky, so either they dropped dead of simultaneous heart attacks or they decided to let the professionals work and left.
We went back to the park after midnight, prepared to lay the tiger ghost to rest once and for all. Unfortunately, our source wasn’t able to get us access to the grounds after hours, so we were going to have to risk life, limb, and clean arrest records to get in.
We would’ve, of course. You know when you get into the Ghostfacing business that sacrifices must be made, and we had to think of all the poor, innocent children who would be in danger if we left the park in its haunted state.
But you also need to be clever and creative to do this, and we came up with an even better plan. Through our encyclopedic knowledge of all things ghostly and unnatural, we realized that, since the ghost was of an animated tiger to begin with, we could burn it symbolically and not have to go inside at all. Please keep in mind that this won’t always work! The circumstances here were very special, and in other conditions we might have had to break in and destroy all the archived film and paper and hard drives that had the tiger on them.
In this case, we had a stuffed toy of the tiger and used that. They make those things as inflammable as they can, but with a lot of lighter fluid we made it work. As experts, we could tell immediately that it had worked and the tiger ghost was gone. We confirmed that there were no more EMF spikes coming off the park.
We had to hurry off for another urgent case before we could check in with our source, but she’s since told us that everything’s back to normal, just like we knew it would be.
That’s it for now, Ghostfacer fans! Check back next week to hear about what we’ve been up to since then.
Recipient: just_ruth
Rating: Teen/PG-13
Word Count: ~3,500
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta for the beta! Helped me
Summary: Ladies, gentlemen, and classless unwashed masses: it’s finally happened. We had the great misfortune to meet a pair of so-called hunters even more unbelievably awful than the Winchesters. Hereafter, we’ll refer to them as Surly and Snarky.
Ghostfacers Report: 7/8-7/10
Ladies, gentlemen, and classless unwashed masses: it’s finally happened. We had the great misfortune to meet a pair of so-called hunters even more unbelievably awful than the Winchesters, and they nearly ruined one of our most intriguing and dangerous cases to date. If we weren’t such consummate professionals, their interference could have led to tens if not hundreds of tragic deaths. Fortunately, we’re awesome enough that we saved the day despite these two old guys trying to get everyone killed.
If we knew these guys’ names, we’d publish them so all of you could know to avoid these ancient hazards (and we do mean ancient. Picture the oldest person you’ve ever met, then add two decades and a lot of overcompensatory anger, and you’ll be pretty close to how cranky these two were), but they wouldn’t tell us who they were and even went so far as to call each other things like “lazy lyin’ asshole” and “bitter old codger” to keep their identities a secret. Hereafter, we’ll refer to them as Surly and Snarky.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s back up a little and start at the beginning. It all began, like so many terrible things do, in Florida.
We got the following email from a source. [Note: Do you need the Ghostfacers to face your supernatural troubles? Send us an email through the link at the bottom of the page!] Our source sent us this cry for help on July 6th:
Ghostfacers, help!
I work at [a large amusement park in central Florida] and I think we have a ghost! Equipment has been breaking down left and right, people are complaining about us having too much air conditioning on OUTDOOR rides in the middle of summer heat, and some of our mascots have been spotted walking around when no one is supposed to be in the costumes. Even our security staff is freaking out, maybe because their boss has been missing for three days!
I know our corporate overlords are going to pretend nothing’s wrong, but thanks to your site, I think we’re dealing with a haunting or worse! Please, won’t you come help? I can comp your tickets, just please save us!
Of course, we had to help. We couldn’t make it out to Florida until that Friday, but we gave our source some things to look out for and precautions to take. On our advice, she deployed salt to some key points and kept us updated until we could reach the scene of the haunting. Thanks to our help, no one got hurt before we arrived.
Once we got on scene, the first thing we did was check in with our source to see if there was any news. We learned four important things:
- Even from the parking lot, our EMF (ElectroMagnetic Field, read about the importance of those here) readings were showing irregular surges. These increased in both size and frequency in certain areas of the park.
- The head of security had been found inside the park, unconscious next to a large tree, with no memory of the past few days.
- All the mascot costumes for one character in particular, let’s say a tiger, had turned completely black overnight. The park management suspected someone had maliciously dyed them all, but our source knew better.
- The passes our source had arranged for us not only got us into the park for free, we could also skip to the front of every line. For research purposes, of course.
It was on the way from investigating one ride to seeing if the abnormal EMF readings extended to the food court that we first encountered the two men who would come to be known to us as Surly and Snarky.
There was no reason to find them remarkable in any way, but we do distinctly remember two old men standing in the middle of the pathway and arguing-as we would later learn they never stopped doing. That time, as far as we can recall, it was about the exact time of the sunset and whether it starts when the sun is above or below the horizon.
If we’d known then that they were also trying to find the ghost of the amusement park, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble and sent them on their way then. Really, what kind of amateurs think that sunset has any effect on ghosts?
Anyway. After checking out the park grounds, we were able to get a look at one of the damaged costumes thanks to our source.
As we’ve said, the costume was supposed to be for a tiger, but every single part of it, including the creepy fake eyes and the zippers, had turned pitch black. Our source told us that even the stripes, which were black to begin with because duh, tiger, weren’t the right shade of black anymore.
Sorry, evil corporate overlords, we know that’s not just dye. It also smelled a little like burnt hair, even though there was obviously no fire-related damage to the costume. Our source said that was the case for all of them that she’d seen or, in this case, smelled.
By then it was getting late, so we rechecked all the protective measures our source had taken and had to leave the park. Since our source lives nearby, we took over her apartment for the duration of the investigation. We spent some time going over the pictures and videos we’d taken to see if there were any ghostly images lingering in the background, but it had been a long trip and we needed to be fresh for the next morning’s work.
Some of you, our astute fans, will probably notice that this is taking the form of a blog post instead of a video, despite our mentions of all the footage we took around the park. Part of the reason for that is that the location would be way too easily identifiable from any images, and our source is relying on our discretion. Another, bigger reason is that Surly and Snarky destroyed all of our cameras. We’ll get back to that later.
Saturday morning, we got in as soon as the park opened so that no one would be in danger without us there to help them. Our source had to work, but was able to check in with us by text every few hours (the park has super strict rules for its employees’ phone use). The first hint of something big happening was when she told us that visitors had stopped complaining about the lack of the tiger mascot character being around, and started instead complaining that the person in the tiger mascot suit was scaring children.
This was clearly our ghost at work. The park hadn’t been able to get replacement costumes, so they didn’t have anyone going around dressed as the tiger. According to our source, it was being seen most frequently near the tree where the security guy had been found, so we rushed over to see if we could spot it.
We only caught a glimpse before it straight-up vanished, proving its ghostly origins, but what we saw was so completely unexpected that we’re pretty sure it’s actually a first in ghost history. Are you ready? Brace yourselves:
The ghost wasn’t wearing a tiger character costume.
Still braced? Here comes the big one:
The ghost WAS the tiger character.
That’s right. We were dealing with the ghost of an animated, anthropomorphic cat that definitely hasn’t died in any officially sanctioned way.
If you’ve been with us since our Hell Hounds days, this might sound familiar to you as something other than a ghost, but trust us, it wasn’t a tulpa. This was 100% certified ghost, as evidenced by its susceptibility to salt, its overall behavior, and the way we ganked it.
But more on that later.
This event was important to our case for two reasons. First, it gave us the information we needed to start hunting the specific ghost, instead of a generic ghost. Second, that was when we first realized that Surly and Snarky might be a problem.
See most people, people who don’t know what’s really out there, don’t pay a lot of attention most of the time. This was a crowded park and we were surrounded by families, but none of them noticed that the tiger character had just walked right into a concrete tree and disappeared four feet away from them.
But Surly and Snarky were there, and they were both frowning right at the spot where it had vanished. Snarky pulled something like an old-school dictaphone out of his pocket and pointed it at the tree, then he and Surly argued about something before grumping off towards the park office.
We sent our source a heads-up that they might be coming and asked her to report back, since we didn’t want them interfering in our investigation. We found out later that this is where our trouble started, because she didn’t get the text in time and unintentionally gave them the wrong idea about what was going on. That really wasn’t her fault, though. They were in a hurry to jump to the absolutely wrong conclusion.
Apparently Surly and Snarky very quickly started to focus on one of our source’s coworkers, who had quit unexpectedly a few days before. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving and no one had heard from him since he’d left. The old guys thought that was weird, we assume because they’re too old to realize that no one keeps in touch with old co-workers these days. Besides, as far as our source knew, he’d never been involved with the tiger character.
Unfortunately, they also got interested in the first ride that had started malfunctioning, which is how we found ourselves facing them again after sneaking past security to get into the closed ride and do some investigating. We had just set up the cameras to document our investigation when we heard two angry male voices from the staff-only area under the ride.
Fools that we were, we got excited. There weren’t supposed to be any staff members around, and arguments mean high emotions, which have a lot to do with ghosts. This could have been our break!
We’ve foreshadowed it enough, though. You know where this is going.
That’s right.
Surly and Snarky.
They were standing there swearing at each other about we couldn’t tell you what, looking like they were about to get into a crotchety old man slap fight.
“If the poor bastard got done in here,” Surly bellowed, “then he’ll be all over the goddamn tracks. You wanna burn the whole joint?”
“You wanna just leave it here to keep on getting worse until some kid dies?” Snarky shot back. “What am I saying, of course you do. That’s what you do!”
“Oh screw you!” Surly yelled, then there was a lot of nonsense and something about Omaha, but that doesn’t really matter. The point is, as they got madder and madder, the EMF spiked higher and higher.
When our meter topped out with a really unfortunate squealing sound that we’ve never been able to get it to stop doing, they finally realized we were there. But before we could give them a lecture about riling up restless spirits and usher them away to somewhere harmless, there was a whole lot of screaming from pretty close by.
Naturally, we ran towards the danger while everyone else was running away. Surly and Snarky did too, but we didn’t have time to worry about them. We also didn’t have time to tear down our camera setup, and we didn’t want to be slowed down while rushing over to save lives, so all of the equipment we had on us at the time got left behind. This is an important point, remember it.
The source of the commotion turned out to be a roller coaster kind of ride meant especially for little kids. You know the type, with the little cars and the track that never gets more than six feet off the ground. It had totally collapsed, fortunately just after offloading so no one was on it.
The next ride over, on the other hand, was full of parents and little tiny kids spinning around, and they were still trying to get to work on the emergency stop. The ghost was right there with them, tripping anyone who came near the failsafe button. The sight of a real ghost must have been too much for Surly and Snarky (we think this might have been their first haunting), because they scampered off back to the safety of the closed ride.
Us being the fearless, hardened ghost hunters that we are, we quickly saved the day with an unusual but effective weapon: salted soft pretzels. Granted, with all the wind the ghost was causing it took several tries for us to get some of the delicious, warm pastries through the tiger character’s ghostly form, and the actual salt content was low enough that he didn’t flicker out until we’d pegged him with at least four, but vanish he did.
It’s a good thing we got rid of him when we did, because the two old lunatics had apparently decided that, while we were saving lives and holding off the ghost, they should go through with their unbelievably stupid plan of setting the closed ride on fire.
We’re not kidding you.
If it weren’t so reckless and terrible, we might actually be impressed at how they’d managed to get flames all over a couple tons of steel.
Also, remember what we said you should remember earlier? About us leaving all our equipment back in the staff area of that very same ride? Yeah. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars, plus hours and hours of footage, all up in smoke.
Now, you might be thinking we can’t possibly be telling you the truth. You would have heard about something like that! Well, you didn’t, for two reasons.
First, again, it was a steel roller coaster. The paint and other decorations ended up worse for wear, but the structure itself didn’t get too much damage.
Second, it’s the same reason you didn’t hear about any of this, despite this being a very popular amusement park. The corporate owners are very good at keeping things quiet when they want to. If we were actually naming the park or the character here, they’d find us and sue us for four times more than we’ve ever owned.
So, Surly and Snarky’s pyro tendencies got everyone in even more of a panic than the collapsing ride or the ghost did, and of course the park was evacuated. Since so many people freaking out would get the ghost all ramped up, that was good. Even though it meant that we got kicked out, too.
The parking lot was total chaos, but somehow we managed to run into the banes of our existence anyway. They were standing near our van. Arguing. No surprise there. From the sound of it, Surly wanted to warn us off something (probably still thought they were going to solve the haunting, despite all evidence to the contrary) and Snarky thought it would be better for us to spend more time at the park. Obviously, Snarky was right. But that’s not the point.
See, we Ghostfacers pride ourselves on being calm and rational in the face of death, danger, and the downright weird. We keep it pretty cool most of the time.
We went off on those grumpy old men.
We couldn’t tell you now all the topics we covered, but there was a lot of yelling about fire and innocent bystanders and responsibility and senility and Surly and Snarky knew just how much they had messed up, because they just stood there listening and looking shocked, like it hadn’t even occurred to them that they were putting people in danger.
In our ire, we may have also given away the truth of the ghost’s identity. They were surprised, to say the least, and asked a lot of questions about how we’d figured it out and what we were going to do about it.
Their awe was understandable. Not everyone would have made the connection as quickly as we did; Surly and Snarky definitely didn’t. Since they seemed so eager to know more, we thought we’d throw them a bone and offer them a chance to help out in a way that couldn’t get anyone hurt.
A brief explanation, first:
You all know, or should know by now, that the best way to get rid off a restless spirit is to burn the remains. Usually this means bones, but sometimes you need to find other remains: hair, teeth, sometimes even important objects.
Now, a fictional tiger character obviously isn’t going to have a corpse. But it does have a whole bunch of archival footage, from movies and so on, that gave it ‘life.’ It looked like we were going to have to track down every last scrap of it to burn our malicious ghost away, so we gave the old guys the task of helping us find it.
At first they just stared at us, like they didn’t even understand the words. We started to explain again, louder and slower-again, they’re super ancient, we figured their hearing just wasn’t great. But the two of them just started cracking up! Old people have the weirdest senses of humor, playing the deaf card to get a reaction from compassionate and sympathetic young men. Whatever.
When they finally stopped, Snarky told us he didn’t think they’d be able to find the information we were looking for about where and on what all the original images of the character were stored. “We’re too old for all that internet crap,” he said with an embarrassed grin.
“Don’t lump me in with you, you jackass shut-in. I know what the hell I’m doing, I just don’t want to,” Surly said.
And so on.
We got them to stop by asking them for their ideas (it’s always good to humor old folks), but they didn’t want to return the caring and giving spirit we’d extended to them.
Instead of answering, this was the point at which Surly realized, and told Snarky, that working with us would’ve been less of a headache than working with Snarky. Snarky agreed that we knew more about the supernatural than Surly did, and Surly said some very rude things to that. We almost had to break up what would’ve been a very sad little old man shoving match. Fortunately, we talked them down and sent them off for an early bird dinner or bingo or whatever it is ancient guys do.
They never admitted defeat, but that was the last we saw of Surly and Snarky, so either they dropped dead of simultaneous heart attacks or they decided to let the professionals work and left.
We went back to the park after midnight, prepared to lay the tiger ghost to rest once and for all. Unfortunately, our source wasn’t able to get us access to the grounds after hours, so we were going to have to risk life, limb, and clean arrest records to get in.
We would’ve, of course. You know when you get into the Ghostfacing business that sacrifices must be made, and we had to think of all the poor, innocent children who would be in danger if we left the park in its haunted state.
But you also need to be clever and creative to do this, and we came up with an even better plan. Through our encyclopedic knowledge of all things ghostly and unnatural, we realized that, since the ghost was of an animated tiger to begin with, we could burn it symbolically and not have to go inside at all. Please keep in mind that this won’t always work! The circumstances here were very special, and in other conditions we might have had to break in and destroy all the archived film and paper and hard drives that had the tiger on them.
In this case, we had a stuffed toy of the tiger and used that. They make those things as inflammable as they can, but with a lot of lighter fluid we made it work. As experts, we could tell immediately that it had worked and the tiger ghost was gone. We confirmed that there were no more EMF spikes coming off the park.
We had to hurry off for another urgent case before we could check in with our source, but she’s since told us that everything’s back to normal, just like we knew it would be.
That’s it for now, Ghostfacer fans! Check back next week to hear about what we’ve been up to since then.