This is an essay on electromagnetism and EMFs I wrote for physics class, but it's really more of a fiction than a research paper. I thought it was kind of fun, so I decided to post it. Tell me what you think!

P.S. My last name has been edited from this work because I am paranoid, and I truly believe that if you were to discover my surname you would hunt me down and molest me. SICK INTERNET PERVERTS!

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An Informatively Scientific Ghost Story

By the experienced ghost hunter Amanda H.

Every good ghost story has a fascinating hook: that first, conspicuous sentence that jumps out of the page and screams in your face, “READ ME! I AM WORTH YOUR TIME! NOT ONLY AM I FRIGHTENING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING, BUT ALSO WELL-WRITTEN AND EXCELLENTLY WORDED!” In most stories, that hook goes something like this:

“It was a dark and stormy night in the remote countryside of Transylvania, where Dracula’s castle cast a looming shadow over the land and a werewolf howled mournfully off in the distance…”

That right there would have been a quite nice hook for this story. Unfortunately, our tale has nothing to do with werewolves or Dracula and, in fact, happens on the exact opposite side of the world from Transylvania. So, so much for that idea. As it happens, the slightly misplaced hook for this story is as follows:

“Ms. Gwinn, I am signing up to do my paper on EMF detectors and ghost hunting.”

Those are the words of I, Amanda H., as I proposed my topic selection for this very paper to my physics teacher, the lovely and, hopefully, easily flattered Ms. Beth Gwinn. They aren’t particularly enthralling words, but, nevertheless, they were the first step towards the commencation of the mind-boggling and slightly unbelievable tale that I am about to weave.

Yes, you heard me – this tale may be a little hard to accept. But trust me when I tell you that EVERY WORD IS TRUE. My friends, you are about to hear the first-hand account of a true-to-life (and, at the same time, incredibly informative) ghost story.

Since you now know how it begins, I’ll just transition right along into how it continues.

(Author’s Note: For maximum scariness, the story will henceforth be told in third person so as to sound more authentically ghost-story-esque.)

---

Once upon a time, the great, fabulous, and in all other ways wonderful Amanda H. returned to her cardboard box after a long, grueling day at school. Well, actually, it wasn’t exactly a cardboard box, by definition. It was just a really, really pathetic excuse for a house. It was crumbling. It was peeling. It was molding. It was also infested with small, annoying, squeaky creatures that came up to Amanda and snipped at her heels as she trudged through the doorway on this particular day.

Oh, wait, those were just her younger sisters.

Amanda’s sisters were almost, almost as entirely spectacular as she – but not quite. Emily, the baby of the family, was loud and obscene, but an all-around cheerful kind of person. Allison, the second oldest (or second youngest – refer to the age-old “half-empty or half-full” debate) sister, was snippy and blunt and generally didn’t like people. Amanda loved them both anyway.

“We are so poor,” Amanda said as she took off her shoes and set them on the termite-infested landing. Said landing immediately collapsed away underneath said shoes, leaving another aesthetically anti-pleasing hole in the H. girls’ floor. Emily quickly covered it up with a spare rug and made a mental note to add it on to the sisters’ three hundred page compendium entitled, “Things That Need Fixing in Our House.”

“Very true,” Allison agreed, as a fungi-plastered chunk of their wall cracked and crashed to the ground. “If only we had a way to make some money…”

Suddenly, a tiny lightbulb appeared above Amanda’s head in the traditionally idea-indicative manner.

“Oh, I have an idea!” she announced unnesecarily, since the lightbulb had already made that much obvious. “I think I know how we can make some money to fix up this trash heap!”

“Dating service?” Emily piped hopefully. “But for the cute boys only?”

“Sell blood?” Allison suggested. “Of course, not our own blood.”

Amanda stared at them weirdly. “Sometimes, I worry about you guys,” she said.

“Actually,” the eldest sister continued, “I was thinking about this assignment I got from physics class today. The beautiful and talented Ms. Gwinn commissioned me a paper about EMF detectors and ghost hunting – cool, huh? So, I was thinking that we might be able to start a little ghost hunting service ourselves! Then, not only could we earn some much-needed cash doing something totally awesome, but I could also get some info for my paper! How about it?”

Both sisters looked intrigued.

“Hm,” Emily said. “I’m intrigued.”

“Yeah, me too,” Allison concurred. “But what about this – we don’t have an EMF detector. Where are we gonna make the money to buy that?”

Amanda furrowed her brow and thought very hard. “Well, I suppose we could earn some money doing a little ghost hunting –“

Allison growled unpleasantly and gave her sister a rightly deserved smack on the head. “YOU MORON, WE NEED THE EMF DETECTOR TO DO THE GHOST HUNTING! I SWEAR, DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE SIMPLIST OF EVERYDAY EXCHANGES JUST SO YOU DON’T BLOW YOURSELF UP? YOU HAVE NO LIFE SKILLS, I DON’T KNOW WHO PUT YOU IN CHARGE OF BEING THE OLDEST, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH…”

Allison continued her lecture to Amanda, which no one was actually listening to. Emily and Amanda discussed among themselves what they were going to do about the EMF detector.

“Maybe we don’t really need this EMF detector to go ghost hunting,” Emily said.

“Oh, no, that’s not possible!” Amanda insisted. “The EMF detector is the most important piece of equipment to bring with you when going ghost hunting! You see, ghosts – and many other things, such as computers, TVs, GameBoys, palm pilots, you, me, Allison over there, and even the fungus on that wall – emit something called an EMF, or electromagnetic field. It’s a field formed by the electric currents inside of us. Because electricity and magnetism are inseparable entities, much like Allison and her infinite lectures, this electricity produces a magnetic field. The EMF detector would allow us to pick up the subtle fluctuations of a ghost’s EMF, thereby allowing us to hunt the ghost with more effectiveness than any other method permits!”

“Well, all I just heard coming out of your mouth was, ‘Yadda yadda yadda,’” Emily informed her long-winded sister. “But I think the gist of what you were trying to say is, ‘We really, really need an EMF detector.’”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Amanda agreed.

“Then why didn’t you just come out and say that?” Emily asked.

“Because my paper needs to demonstrate how magnetism plays a role in my topic,” the elder sister admitted.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What are you two blabbing about now?” Allison interjected.

“Oh, have you stopped lecturing?” Emily observed.

“Ya think?” snipped Allison. “So, how are we gonna get this EMF detector?”

“Well, how do we get anything that we can’t afford?” Amanda prompted.

“Steal it?” guessed Emily.

Amanda frowned condescendingly at her sister. “NO,” she said firmly, because, as everyone knows, stealing is WRONG. “Any other guesses?”

“Eh…borrow it without asking?” Allison suggested.

Amanda let out an exasperated sigh. “NO! Isn’t it obvious?” she cried. “The tried-and-true method used by children everywhere, most especially needy teenage girls such as ourselves?”

Looks of dawning comprehension came over the younger sisters’ faces.

“Aha!” they said in unison. “Make our parents buy it for us!”

“Now you’re thinkin’,” Amanda said with a knowing grin.

---

As everyone knows, the hardest part about earning money off of a service that only 1 of the population wants is that only 1 of the population wants it. Which, in turn, means that it is very hard to snag a gig. This was the problem faced by the H. sisters, who, despite having put up flyers to promote their business, had received not one phone call from a prospective customer. The girls had thought they had been such great flyers, too – they said “The H. Sisters’ Efficient, Effective, Fail-Proof, Ghost TERMINATING Service” in big red letters at the top, with the word “terminating” capitalized to stress the fact that the ghosts had no chance of surviving once the H. girls took on a job. Underneath that they said, “With a mathematically incalculable success rate!” – which was true, since they had performed a total of zero ghost hunts and succeeded at exactly zero of them, and zero over zero is an unreal solution. And inside a bold and eye-catching yellow kind of shape that is usually accompanied by the word “BOOOOOM!” in all of the comic books, the flyers displayed the phrase, “EMF DETECTOR INCLUDED!” This was also true, because with their irresistible feminine wiles they had convinced their father to buy his sweet, darling daughters that very detector, willing that they would record the cost in the second-largest compendium in the H. girls’ cardboard box, entitled “Loans Our Parents Gave Us, Which We Will Have To Pay Back The Very Day That We Get A Decent Job, Young Ladies.”

Anyway, these flyers were out and about around the Kentridge High School area for several days. Maybe you even saw one of them stapled to a telephone pole, or glued to your front door – because, seeing as how this is a completely true and in no way fictional story, those flyers were actually plastered around here for the past week. There might even still be some hanging around. Look for them on the way home from school today. And if you happen to have any sort of spirit infestation, give the H. sisters a call!

But this is no time for business promotion. We have a story to finish.

Just when the H. girls had almost given up hope of finding a customer for their service, they received a mysterious phone call during the darkest dredges of midnight. As most people are during such dredges, the girls were asleep. We’re talking log-sleep, here. Cold out. But not even the most proficient of sleepers can snore right through a telephone ringing in her ears, which was what Amanda was enduring at the time. After three blaring rings, Amanda’s brain could no longer pretend to ignore the pesky phone. In an unpleasant and grumpy way, her brain jostled Amanda awake and ordered her to answer that ringing.

Amanda reached over to her moldy nightstand, on which the phone had been inconveniently placed the day before after Allison had finished shaking the earwigs out of it. It ceased its ringing as soon as she pressed the “Talk” button.

“Huwwoh?” Amanda slurred groggily.

A dark and silky smooth voice poured out of the earpiece like syrup. “Hello, Amanda H. I have been watching you and your sisters for quite some time now. I have learned much about you.”

“Oh really,” garbled Amanda. “Then you probably know that we usually enjoy sleeping at twelve-o’-clock at night.”

The syrupy voice ignored her pointedly. “I think you’ll be pleased to hear that I have a job for you.”

Amanda’s brain, which was getting to be in a considerably bad mood, perked up. “What? A paying job? With money?”

“Yes. A ghost hunting job for you and your sisters. And it pays quite well.”

Amanda’s eyes sparkled over as visions of three square meals a day and completely holeless floors danced through her head.

“We’ll take it,” she blurted. “Whatever it is, we’re your girls.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the voice purred. “Here is my request – I would like you to exorcise a spirit from the Le Haunte Mansion.”

“Le Haunte Mansion?!” Amanda gasped. “The one down past Fairwood?”

“The very same.”

“Wow,” she whispered breathlessly, “that’s supposed to be the most haunted place in all of the King County Area!”

(Just a note to the reader: If you have never heard of the Le Haunte Mansion, it is not because it doesn’t exist – since, of course, all the people, places and events in this tale are semi-verifiable facts. If you don’t know of it, that’s because you are ignorant. You should really read up more about your local culture.)

“Yes, that very well-known and entirely tangible mansion is thickly riddled with spirits,” the voice confirmed. “But I want you to take care of only one spirit, and one spirit only – the particularly troubled one that haunts the master bedroom on the third floor. I want you to send him to the next world, so that he might finally achieve closure from life, and thereby find eternal peace. It should be easy enough to detect the ghost’s field using an EMF detector. From there on, I leave the task up to you.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” Amanda said. “Now, when do we get paid?”

“Attached to the bedroom is a walk-in closet,” the voice explained. “Once you have escorted the ghost to the world beyond, the closet door will unlock. In there, you will find your payment.”

“Super,” Amanda said. “It’s been great doing business with you. Uh, wait – didn’t catch your name.”

The voice paused for a moment. “My name is Jacques,” it answered finally.

“Great,” chimed Amanda. “Well, nice speaking with you, Jacques. I’m going to collapse on my pillow in an abrupt attack of exhaustion now.”

And so Amanda let the phone drop out of her hand in a most careless manner. Before it hit the floor, she was asleep.

The voice on the other end did not hang up immediately, however. It stayed on the phone and sighed a strange sigh, a long and tired and old sigh.

“I wish you luck, H. sisters,” it hummed.

Then, the line clicked and went dead.

---

“This is great!” Amanda raved, smiling like an alligator that had just gotten his lips stretched. “We’re gonna be rich! I bet we’re gonna get, like, a hundred dollars from this job. Man, I don’t even know what I would do with a hundred dollars!”

Her sisters stared at her in disbelief.

“Aren’t you even a tiny, teensy-weensy bit uncertain about all of this?” Emily asked.

“Nope,” Amanda said.

“We don’t even know who the guy is who gave us this job,” said Allison.

“We know his name is Jacques,” Amanda pointed out.

“This could just be an elaborate scam to make us look like fools,” Emily hypothesized.

“Or, it could be a quick way for us to make at least a hundred dollars,” countered Amanda.

Emily bit her lip and glanced sheepishly at Allison. “Well, a hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

“You are both morons,” Allison said bluntly.

“Soon to be rich morons,” Amanda quipped.

Allison groaned and turned to glare at a lamppost on the street corner, imagining that it was Amanda’s head and then envisioning it exploding violently.

The sisters stood on the unkempt sidewalk in front of the Le Haunte Mansion. The mansion itself was decrepit and festering – much like the H. girls’ cardboard box, except this mansion had about twenty times more crumbling household mass than the girls’ abode. The pathway through the yard of the mansion was laden with weeds and old empty cans of spray paint from the previous escapades of local delinquents. Local delinquents who, it is pertinent to mention, were never seen again after said escapades. No one ever returned from visits to Le Haunte Mansion. Especially not annoying little bothers to society like local delinquents.

Which was why it was safe to say that the H. sisters had a zero to none chance of surviving this job.

Nevertheless, money is a powerful incentive for the penniless student. So the sisters plowed on.

After much reasoning with and a fair share of bribing Allison, the girls begin the trek down the long, winding yard path. It was long. It was winding. It was…yardy. But it eventually led the sisters to the front door of the mansion.

“Whew,” Emily whistled in relief. “We made it this far alive.”

“Yes,” Amanda agreed. “Now it’s time to actually enter the house.”

Allison rolled her eyes at them.

Emily pushed open the rickety door with some reservation. It creaked loudly, like this: “CREEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAK.” If anyone was in the house, they certainly knew they had visitors now. This either made things a little easier or immeasurably harder.

“Alright,” Amanda muttered to herself. “Alright, everything is okay, Amanda. We just come in here and go kick out some ghost, and then we’re gone. A hundred dollars richer. It’s no big deal.”

“I thought you weren’t scared,” Allison sneered.

“WHO’S SCARED??? I’M NOT SCARED!!!” Amanda snapped frantically.

The girls crept inside the house and were met with the sight of the sprawling grand staircase, which was now no grander than a twenty-foot high heap of elephant dung. Tentatively, they snuck up the steps, climbing to the third floor. As they made their way up, they begin to notice things. Things like shadows flickering in every corner of the house. Haunting voices whispering disturbing things in their ears, like, “By the time you can drive, gas prices will be up to ten bucks per gallon.” Bangs and clatters resounding from the floors above every few seconds.

“I’m scared!” Amanda whimpered, clinging desperately to her sisters’ arms.

“Shut up,” Allison growled.

After some painfully long amount of time, the sisters arrived at the third floor. Straight across from them was the looming door to the master bedroom, staring down at them dauntingly as if daring them to enter. Not being the kind of girls to turn down a dare, and also being the kind of girls to want a hundred dollars, they pushed open the door and strided in purposefully.

The room was covered with inches of dust and cobwebs. Even the pictures and paintings on the walls were too thickly coated to be seen clearly. The giant bed in the center of the room was covered in musty, stained bedding – the same bedding that had once been the last bedding some poor soul would ever sleep in. That poor soul was there with them now, invisible to the eye. The only way to sense it was to use the EMF detector.

Amanda whipped the EMF detector out of her spacious backpack of useful things to have while ghost hunting. Turning it on, she began to scan the room, watching the monitor for any inconsistencies in the room’s electromagnetic field.

“Explain something to me, Amanda,” Emily said. “Televisions and computers and such things produce an electromagnetic field because they use electricity. Humans produce EMFs because as living beings, we have electrical currents running through our bodies. Ghosts aren’t living, nor do you ever have to plug them in to anything. Why do they have EMFs?”

“Well,” Amanda begin, “it just so happens that –”

“OOOOOOO! I know! I’ve got this one!” boomed a smooth, ghostly voice that filled the entire room. “This is my area of expertise! When a human is alive, he or she will have electric currents running through them, right? Well, when that human dies, that electricity has to go somewhere! The law of conservation of energy tells us that the electricity can’t just disappear – something must happen to it. Many people believe that what a ghost really is is the electricity from a human’s body after he or she has died! And since electricity produces an electromagnetic field, so does a ghost! You see?”

“Uh, yeah,” Emily said. “Thanks.”

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be the particularly troubled spirit that haunts the master bedroom on the third floor, would you?” Amanda asked.

“Well, this is the master bedroom on the third floor,” the voice answered. “And I am a particularly troubled spirit.”

Amanda looked down at the EMF detector, and saw that it was indeed fluctuating like crazy. This voice here belonged to a spirit with a very strong electromagnetic field. She supposed that this either meant he was a very powerful ghost, or that he had once been a very massive human with a lot of room for electric current to run through.

Allison, being a let’s-get-down-to-business kind of person, spoke to the ghost directly. “Would you mind if we exorcised you?” she implored.

“Well, it has been a while since I’ve gotten a work-out,” he admitted.

“No, we mean exorcise you,” Emily clarified. “As in, send you to the afterlife.”

“Ah!” the ghost said, his voice becoming choked with tears. “Would you really? I’ve been waiting for so long for someone to come and help me along to the next world. Yes, you may begin the process.”

“Thank you,” Allison said.

Then she and her sisters just kind of stood there.

“Do you guys know how to do any exorcism?” Emily asked.

The elder H. girls shrugged noncommittally.

“It’s not that hard,” the ghost assured them. “Just say a few fancy-sounding things and think really hard about making me go away.”

“Alright,” Amanda said, rolling up her sleeves. “That sounds pretty easy. So…”

Amanda took a deep breath and uttered an incantation that went like this:

“Ashes to ashes,

Dust to dust,

Be gone to the otherworld,

So there’s money for us.”

“'Dust’ and ‘us’ don’t rhyme,” Allison whispered.

“Shut up,” grouched Amanda.

“Oh, thank the powers that be!” cried the ghost ecstatically. “I can feel my spirit slipping away to the afterlife! I’m so happy! I hear they have great bingo there!”

“Always glad to help a fellow vaguely human thingy find some great bingo,” Emily chirped.

“Thank you, H. girls,” the ghost called, his voice slowly fading away. “Together with the powers of electromagnetism, you have made a simple ghost very happy…”

The spirit’s last words echoed through the room, and as they died out, the last flickers on the EMF detector disappeared altogether, leaving the monitor placid and undisturbed.

“Wow,” Emily whispered breathlessly. “That was a transcendentally spiritual experience.”

“Yeah,” Amanda agreed. “Hey, was it just me, or did that ghost’s voice sound a little familiar?”

“Sure, whatever,” Allison said. “Now where’s that closet door?”

The girls snooped around the room until they caught sight of a grime-encrusted door they hadn’t noticed before. Approaching it carefully, Amanda reached out and tugged on the doorknob. The door swung open with a burst of filth, which showered over the sisters and sent them into fits of flemy coughing.

“Woo,” Emily said. “Dusty.”

The inside of the closet was actually a bit neater than the bedroom – at least, there was less crud covering every available surface. Racks of suits that had once been very nice hung against the back wall, and shoes were lined along the floor. But most importantly, in the middle of the closet was a big wooden chest, with the suspicious semblance of a thing that holds lots of money. The girls rushed to this chest and kneeled on the floor beside it, giggling like giddy schoolgirls who were about to strike it rich.

Amanda wiped of the top of the dusty chest to read the word that was carved on the top of the lid.

“Jas-kez,” she sounded out. “No, wait – Jacques! This is the name of the guy who gave us this job!”

Unable to bear the anticipation any longer, the sisters flung open the lid of the chest of gazed on the riches inside.

It was full of gold nuggets.

“WOW!” Emily squealed, running her hands over the mounds of precious metal. “THIS HAS TO BE AT LEAST A HUNDRED DOLLARS! NO, MAYBE EVEN A THOUSAND!”

“You moron!” Allison shrieked exuberantly. “This is millions of dollars!”

“Oh,” Emily said. “Well, I’ll settle for that!”

“We’ll be able to fix our entire house!” Amanda cried. “And pay back our crippling debts to our parents! And even after that, we might have enough money to buy a hot dog or something!”

“I don’t like hot dogs,” Allison grimaced.

Seeing as the rest of the sisters’ dialog is primarily concerning the veracity of the phrase “an edible hot dog,” this tale will no longer record it.

So here we reach the end of our story. Of course, there are a few loose ends that could use to be tied up. Who was the ghost in Le Haunte Mansion? Who was Jacques? Perhaps the answer will never be truly known. But consider this - some say that spirits, when driven by the insatiable desire to achieve final peace, will find ways to transmit themselves through a phone line to contact the living, and occasionally, to give them a well-paying exorcism job.

If nothing else, it does make you wonder.

But the moral of this story is something much deeper, much more profound. And that, of course, is this: if it weren’t for electromagnetism, talentless vagabonds such as the H. girls would never, ever make a living. So for that, electromagnetism, we commend you.