Ghostbusters: Port Huron (Episode 10)
Readiness report by Amber
Tomorrow, we set out for Eloise.
Okay, that may sound a little dramatic. Eloise was a poor house that, like a lot of poor houses, became an asylum and mental hospital that, like a lot of asylums and mental hospitals of the era, were the sites of some truly, truly awful shit. Lobotomies, state sanctioned torture, the silencing of women and inconvenient bastard children, and all of this under the auspices of helping those with mental problems that other medical facilities of the time would not touch with a ten-foot pole.
At its height, according to Bryan, Eloise was the size of a small city with dozens of wards and housing on site for the various medical professionals that worked there. At almost 10,000 residents during the Great Depression, the systemic horribleness of the place wouldn’t stop until it was defunded and shuttered in 1979. 19 years ago. I was alive when this place was open.
And now Wayne County is trying to do something, ANYTHING else with the property. They’ve tried to bulldoze the buildings, and they have gotten a few, but the main complex defies their efforts. There have been an almost infinite number of reports of equipment just stopping near those buildings, not breaking just… stopping dead. Even the wrecking ball they tried to throw at the place broke its chain and crushed the foreman’s mobile office. Nobody wants to go near the place now. It’s almost 5 square miles of cursed campus.
So, the Wayne County leadership decided to contract us. And not just us, but the Detroit and Flint branches as well, to sweep the place clean of spooks and bad vibes. Given how serious Mr. Kaye seems to be taking this, I’m sure we’re in for a hell of a week.
Jeremy and Eric are riding in the Ecto-908 while Bryan and I follow behind in my Ford Taurus. They’ll have the equipment while we’ll haul the luggage. We’ve got four rooms at a Best Western about ten miles away from Eloise itself, and every day is going to be exploring Eloise and trying to take the ghost level there down a peg. The Detroit branch is bringing a special ‘mobile containment grid’ for the occasion, and I guess Jeremy is excited to see how they put it together.
There’s this weird air of ‘life threatening situation’ combined with ‘team building exercise’ about this whole trip that I haven’t felt since my time at basic training. I’m either going to remember this next week as the best time of my life or need a lot of therapy to move past it. There will not be an in between. Unless it’s both. It’ll probably be both. Wish us luck.
ADDITIONAL: I’m giving up on research for the week. I have studied a number of sources, both non-fiction and actual fiction, on the source of our bat winged horse beast and come up with exactly jack and shit. I have a few more ideas, but honestly my brain is so full of unhelpful information at this point that I think spending a week in a mental asylum without other distractions sounds like a spa getaway. – Bryan
ADDITIONAL: I’ve been leaving this out of my reports to the home office until now, but I’ve been experimenting with some additions to the Proton Pack based on the suggestions of the rest of the team. The biggest one was integrating the nuetrona emitter into a gauntlet attachment. This took two weeks of experimentation and failure to accomplish, but I think we can field test it at Eloise and let Eric finally, as he put it, ‘punch a ghost’. I’m happy to let him test it because if it works, great, and if not, it will at least be worth a good laugh. – Jeremy.
ADDITIONAL: Stanley has been blowing off my attempts to contact him. I get the distinct feeling he knows something or has seen something he doesn’t want to share. That’s suspicious and I plan on digging deeper after this week-long ghost-cation. On a brighter note, I get to punch ghosts this week, Jeremy said! My excitement is hard to communicate in writing, but I’m sure it’s going to make up for having to listen to his abysmal mix CDs on the way to Wayne County. – Eric
ADDITIONAL: This week will be a real trial for the team, I fear. If reports are to be believed, it will take a herculean effort to render Eloise free of its ghosts. There is a real argument to be made that doing so may be more detrimental in the long run, I’m sure. Something to the effect of scrubbing the sins out of the land before its paved over and forgotten, atrocities and all. Still, this operation is under the direct management of Julius from the Flint branch. I hope my team doesn’t learn any bad manners from him or his crew. For my part, while my team is in Wayne County, I shall be pursuing a lead on our mounting problems in Port Huron. – Stephen Kaye.
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