The Art of Paranormal Activity

By Ashli Miles

It was a wet day in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Perfectly normal, no one would suspect anything weird going on the day of July 1st, 2020. Hazel Adler, the mother of Khaleesi Adler, would be dealing with something not many people would understand. Unless you sat down and heard the story. 

The earth was shaking up bad thunderstorms all day. Hazel, a 35 year old woman with brown hair, dark beautiful green eyes, a fit caucasion body, and a bright personality was getting rid of her dead husband's stuff. Duston Adler died 11 months ago with pancreatic cancer. She and Khaleesi just got over Duston's death, not so much as sad but still emotional over the fact of what happened. 

While Hazel was packing Duston’s keepsakes in boxes, she called for her daughter, “Honey, I need you to help me pack the heavy stuff, please!” Khaleesi is a 14 year old girl who has a body just like her mom; she has black hair, light icy blue eyes, always sweet, and is mixed because her dad is African American. 

“Sure,” Khaleesi responded while making her way down the stairs. She and Hazel both live in a 2 story house on Amity Street in Eureka Springs that is yellow, has a white door, with the kitchen, dining room, living room and one bath on the first story. On the second story there are 3 beds and three bathrooms. As they were rummaging through Duston’s clothes, Khaleesi found a paper so she asked her mom, “What’s this? It looks interesting.” 

Hazel lightly took the paper and carefully read it. That's when she started to smile and she chuckled while saying, “ Oh I forgot about this! It’s a contract stating that if either of us died then we would have to haunt the person that is living. But I haven’t gotten haunted so this is trash.” Hazel got off her knees and went to the trash can in the kitchen, threw away the paper and sat back down.

“Wait! between you and dad?” Khaleesi wondered.

“Yeah, it was a silly thing we did right before I had you. I was 21 and your dad was 23 so we were just being funny is all,” Hazel explained. Khaleesi thought that was amusing and laughed. That’s when suddenly the lights turned off.

“I’ll go check the breaker panel. It was probably just the storm. It's getting pretty bad out there,” Hazel said in a shaky voice. She got out her phone and turned on her flashlight. She headed towards the garage since they didn’t have a basement. “Clash Clash” Khaleesi nearly jumped out of her skin, but it turned out to just be a branch clanking against the window near their grey couch.  Hazel passed the kitchen and opened the door to the garage. Khaleesi opened the panel and they were stunned by the sight they saw. 

“It looks like something just smashed the switches,” Khaleesi guessed. Khaleesi was correct. Something did smash the panel, but what or should I say who? That was going to be a mystery later solved.

Khaleesi and Hazel both were confused by what they were looking at, so they set up a bunch of candles around the kitchen and the living room.

“I will call the electric company just not today because we are busy, so I will do it tomorrow,” Hazel insinuated. As Khaleesi and Hazel headed towards the living room where Duston’s stuff was, they noticed that the boxes were gone.

“Um where is Dad’s stuff?” Khaleesi questioned. She was scared out of her mind. Khaleesi didn’t want to believe it, “Mom, what if we’re getting haunted? No one else is here with us and all of dad’s belongings are gone.” 

“As I think about it the more I believe that it’s a possibility that something is haunting us,” Hazel acknowledged. As Khaleesi sat on the couch, all of Duston’s stuff fell from the ceiling.

“AHHHHH!”they both yelled.

Khaleesi came to  a conclusion, “We’re most definitely being haunted.” She then kept thinking about what’s happening. “The contract! What if Dad is haunting us, or maybe something bigger?” Khaleesi explained.

“Honey, I think you might be correct,” Hazel agreed. When Hazel was a little girl she witnessed a ghost at the end of her bed, so she believed in the paranormal activities. How else would you explain what’s happening? “But honey I don’t think this is your dad. He would never harm you. I’m pretty sure this is like a demon or something,” Hazel explained.

Khaleesi went on her phone and looked up, “How to get rid of a demon or a ghost?”  I mean when something weird is happening you want to figure out how to get rid of a ghost, so Google might help.

“I looked up how to get rid of a demon. The internet says that destroying something that you think the demon is connected to would get rid of it for good, and if you get sage it would not get rid of the demon, but help with getting rid of the paranormal activity,” Khaleesi told her mother.

“I don’t trust Google but it’s worth a shot, but we don’t have sage so we can try destroying the connection,” Hazel said.

“What about the contract? You and dad signed it, what if it conjured something up, and let a demon in when dad died?” Khaleesi pointed out.

“It’s worth a shot, I threw the paper away. I will go get it. Honey, you get the matches and we’ll burn the paper and hope we get rid of this demon,” Hazel advised.

Khaleesi flew up the stairs almost tripping into her room. She grabbed the matches that she used for her candles. Hazel trudged to the kitchen, opened up the trash can and found the brown wrinkled paper. She picked it up and set it carefully on the white table. Khaleesi came running down the stairs with matches in her left hand. She handed them to her mom. Hazel took the little square box, took a match out and lit the stick.

“Here we go.” She put the match near the edge of the paper, and the contract quickly lit on fire with sparks going everywhere. They then heard a weird shriek like something dying. A blue and purple portal opened up near the white table, and a black mist got sucked into the neon colored circle. They both looked at where the contact was, but it had dissapeared into thin air.

Khaleesi and Hazel finally had gotten rid of the scary and annoying ghost. Hazel knew that she would never make a contract like that ever again.