Out of Bodies

I sat in a dusty, wing-backed chair wedged between the autopsy table and a cold storage locker with enough room for twelve bodies. Once, a girl, presumed dead, got stacked in that locker, only to revive a few hours later. She tried to claw her way out, but to no avail. When the doctor opened it the next day to toss in another cadaver, she had become one herself, bits of her fingernails embedded in the back of the door.

“See where he’s sitting?” James asked, pointing to me. Everyone looked. “Just last month an Iraqi War vet, a big guy, not the kind who scares easily, sat in his very place. Suddenly, he sprang out of that chair. Just left the room, me in mid-sentence. He didn’t say anything until after the tour. He came back and apologized. He felt something, or somebody, tap on his shoulder, from behind.”

I remembered that this was the second Iraqi War vet we had heard about having a ghostly encounter on this, the “Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour.” The first one saw a child running through the halls. Or was he the guy tickled on the ankle, or the one who saw the apparition that looked like Abraham Lincoln? I couldn’t remember. Point is, even soldiers who fought in wars might lose it in this place.

Everyone still looked at me, as if they expected me to jump up and yelp. I wanted to scratch an itch on my cheek. I didn’t suspect a paranormal experience with this itch. I firmly believe that I itch my face more than any one else on the planet, especially since I gave up cigarettes. When I just continued to sit there, wanting very much to scratch but not, the other people on the tour stopped their appraisal of me and went back to photographing corners of the old morgue. The Crescent now used this basement room as a work area. Janitors ate their lunches on the autopsy table and stored tools in the locker that once held the cadavers. Even though it no longer resembled a morgue, my compatriots scanned the room with their digital cameras, checking for glowing orbs or streaks of light after each click.

In the past, people had seen more complete forms of “out of bodies”: a little boy in the hall, a hippy in the lady’s bathroom, and the guy who looked like Lincoln. But at the beginning of the tour, James told us that most people encounter the paranormal in the forms of orbs of light. You can’t see these with the naked eye. In fact, he said, if you do see an orb without the benefit of a camera, it’s probably just a dust mote reflecting the overhead light.

“If you get a sudden feeling that something’s there, take a picture. Even if you don’t see anything.”

The orbs show up in different colors, and each color has a meaning.

“Green is the most pleasant,” James said. “It means ‘Love.’ That means a happy out of body. But if you see a red one, report it immediately. ‘Red’ signifies intense anger. We don’t want any reds. If you see one, we’ll do something about it.”

He never explained what he, or anyone else, could do about an angry orb not visible to the naked eye.

At every stop of the tour, guests snapped photographs. Occasionally, someone showed James the back of his or her camera, claiming there was an orb in there.

“Good one,” he always said, but without much enthusiasm. I got the impression that none of the orbs in the photos of this tour were “real.”

Early in the tour, a woman in the group suddenly stopped, closed her eyes, and asked James, “What can you tell me about someone called Abigail?”

The group turned and looked at her. She apparently was having a “moment,” had connected to some spirit in the hotel. Did she fancy herself a medium? I had recently read Mary Roach’s book Spook, which made me wonder if this woman...