Libraries are good places to study. They're also good places to meet people. Including ghosts.

After that thing with the vampire, my reputation, and the reputations of Dr. Lewis Tully and his team, have just continued to grow.

That became painfully obvious when I made my way to the student dorm where Dr. Tully got me a room to stay in for the duration of the event. There were about three dozen people by the gate, apparently waiting for me. At least they were polite enough, but as soon as they saw me, they started badgering me about how it felt to fight the “malevolent” ghost in the movie house, or how I killed the vampire.

I didn’t know how to respond, and had to wonder where they’ve been getting their information. I asked them this point blank, and they said they get the Parapsychological Association’s quarterly newsletter. One of them handed me the latest one, and I leafed through it and found the piece about “the real ghostbusters” – obviously, it was about us, though it didn’t mention anyone by name except for Dr. Tully.

Before I could do anything except scan the article, the girl who handed it to me asked me to autograph the magazine. I didn’t know how to turn her down so I just signed it and gave it back.

My “fans” couldn’t follow because only residents were allowed in, so I had a bit of a respite, and I had time to prepare for this shindig. Any excuse to wear a dress, you know, lol – one gets tired of pants all the time. I even got Dr. Tully to reimburse me for the one I just bought… I’m attending this thing for him, after all. The least he could do was buy the dress for me, heehee.

Per instructions, I got my camera and fitted one of the special lenses – guess he wanted to show off his tech. I picked the 80-125mm - a good walking-around lens. The camera incongruously hung around my neck, and didn’t complement my haute couture dress. Oh, well.

I met up with Helen, Lucy and Jackson in the university’s Dana Barrett Memorial Library, a very large library whose walls were lined with shelves full of books, and appointed with rich carpeting, expensive-looking vintage lamps, fixtures and furnishing, and large, expensive-looking oil paintings. (I wasn’t enough of an art connoisseur to recognize the names on them.) With the study tables and chairs removed, the place was big enough to play basketball in.

Dr. Tully and I, Jackson, our electronics guy, Helen, the tall, giggly blonde who’s our designated hacker, and Lucy, our ass-kicking brunette, made up doc’s own little ghostbusting team.

We didn’t use proton packs or like that, and except for my camera lenses with the greenish glass, we had nothing in the way of ghostbusting tools. Nevertheless, after taking down that vampire in the cemetery, rescuing that ghost from that movie house, and “properly” documenting them, we were at least genuine ghostbusters. The guys were jazzed about that, whereas I tried to keep a low profile to maintain my reputation as a legitimate photographer and newsperson. No one had twigged yet except those who read that damn newsletter apparently and, to use a phrase, that lunatic fringe didn’t count.

Anyway, here we were, standing around in this fancy library and sipping drinks. Mine was just Sprite in a tall Collins glass so I could walk around and not get drunk and fall on my ass. Walking around in a tight dress was a skill I hadn’t mastered yet.

This was the university’s little yearly fundraiser, when the faculty brought out their pet projects and paraded them to potential patrons and sponsors. This year, it included Dr. Tully and his electromagnetic detection and ranging technology. The technology jumped weather detection, radar, ECGs, and X-ray imaging by at least a generation, and, incidentally, allowed us to see ghosts and other paranormal stuff through the doc’s funky camera lenses (other than that, though, they worked pretty fine as regular EF lenses).

So we smiled and shook hands with the academics and captains of industry that filled the place, and we listened to the boring speeches. Dr. Tully’s speech was the best of the lot, but that didn’t say much.

Instead of just standing around and pretending to have a good time, I thought I could actually be useful. An undergrad had been drafted to be the event’s photographer but he clearly didn’t know what he was doing, so I decided to help out.

So as I took pictures of the speakers (with special attention to Dr. Tully, of course) and the VIPs, I noticed one particular woman across the room.

She was very beautiful, in an aristocratic kind of way. And was dressed vaguely like Jackie Onassis when she was still Jackie Kennedy. She was so drop-dead gorgeous, that I wondered why the PHDs and doctoral candidates and CEOs and VCs weren’t all over her and vying for her attention.

She noticed me and smiled in delight, and started vamping and primping for me. I laughed and started taking lots of pictures of her.

She clearly enjoyed the attention, and acted like it was a fashion shoot just about her.

And as I happily clicked away, and she laughed and primped and giggled, I slowly made my way across the room to get close to her. The people who kept walking in between us were irritating me, and I needed to get closer since I only brought the 80-125. I should have brought the super-zoom one.

I continued clicking away, and as I did, one of the guests – the academy president, I believe – approached her, and actually walked through her!

I stopped in shock, and as I looked at her, she looked at me with incredible sadness, and faded away.

Later, after the event was over, Dr. Tully and the team met with me in a nearby bar, and I told them about it.

The guys looked at each other with expressions that said, “Ohhh! So that’s why Debbie was taking pictures like that!” Because all they saw was me taking pictures of nothing.

Everyone took their turn with my camera and looked through the pictures I took, the doc being the last.

“You know,” Tully said, “I think I know her.”

He brought out his big valise and got out what looked like a thick, glossy catalog, but instead of being a fashion catalog, it was the Barrett Conservatory’s newsletter from last year – which was all about the institute and the programs it was helping to fund.

He opened it to an article about the Dana Barrett Memorial Library, and along with text describing it as a “haven for brilliant academics and intellectuals,” there were several pictures of the library. In the beginning of the piece was a portrait-picture of Mrs. Dana Barrett, the young wife of the patron and benefactor of the library, former Senator Barrett, who passed away in 1966. The ghost was Dana Barrett.

We agreed to meet up in the library later that night, and per the doc’s instructions, I brought my camera with the doc’s widest wide-angle lens attached, and a gorilla pod.

Having changed into something lots more comfortable, I rushed over. I was the last to arrive.

The guys had arranged five chairs on one side of a large table, and a big projector and screen on the other, but about five meters away.

Dr. Tully had me mount my camera on my little tripod, put it on the desk on the opposite side from the chairs, and facing away. I set the focus-point midway between the camera and the screen. And switched on live-view. Jackson then attached the camera to the projector. And we saw Jackson projected on the large screen, with the picture-in-picture-in-picture effect that you get when you focus a camera onto a TV screen. I adjusted my angle so we only saw one Jackson instead of dozens.

Belatedly, I noticed a laptop on a coffee table near the screen, as well as a monitor on the table.

We took our seats and waited. And after 15 minutes of waiting, we started to feel silly.

“Mrs. Barrett?” I called, a bit impatiently. “I’m Debbie Delaney. I was the one who took your pictures earlier. Do you remember? I’m with Dr. Lewis Tully from the university, and my friends Helen, Lucy and Jackson. Please don’t be frightened. We mean no harm. We just want to meet you, maybe get to talk to you. Please come out…”

After minutes of cajoling, the ghost relented and her image faded into the screen. And with a good angle to and from the screen and the camera, it was like we were looking at her in real life.

She waved and said hello. We could tell by the lips. And then she said something longer and we couldn’t understand it.

“Mrs. Barrett?” Dr. Tully said, “we cannot hear what you’re saying. Can you see if you can type on that keyboard over there? Maybe we could talk that way.”

She went to the laptop and typed, but clearly it wasn’t working.

“Oh… that’s too bad,” he said. “Well… anyway, let’s forget that for now. I’m Lewis, as Debbie said, and we know who you are. But… do you know who you are? I mean what you are now? That you are a ghost?”

She nodded sadly.

“Well, how long have you known?”

She held up her hands, palms facing forward and fingers splayed.

“Ten? Ten years?”

She closed them into fists, then splayed them again.

“What… oh, you mean another ten. So twenty?”

She popped her hands again two more times.

“My God, you’ve been stuck here for forty years?”

She nodded again, sat down and cried into her hands. It was sad to see her like that. The fact that there was no chair for her to sit on…

“But Mrs. Barrett,” I asked. “Why? Why stay here? Why not move on?

She held her hands palm upwards and shrugged. She said some more but we couldn’t understand it. Still, we understood from context.

“She doesn’t know how,” Lucy said to Helen. Helen, the most emotional among us, started to cry quietly.

Over the next few days, we learned some more about what happened, about her plane accident, and, for our part, we updated her on current events. None spent more time with her than Dr. Tully (I think the doc had a crush on her, heehee). In fact, a PC with a modified Airbar, adopted to work on the doc’s EM tech, allowed her to surf the net, update herself with the latest news, watch movies and TV shows, and, most importantly, allowed us to communicate with her more easily.

The doc had it set up in a secluded part of the library where no one would notice, and during nights and on weekends, the guys and I could spend time with her and learn more about her and about ghosts and, ummm, the ghostly realm. Lol

More than that, it was pleasant chatting with her, and we all became close friends. We only noticed that we’d been “chatting” the whole night because the sun started to come out. I guess our little team had acquired a new member. I can’t imagine how our next ghost case will go.

Note - The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of the Sena Kashiwazaki character and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.