The Seekers Page 2

  Not sure if she should take his hand and smile or run as far as possible from him, Keri stood.

  “The exceptionally lovely Keri Wolf, known for her The Way It Happened series, is here to join us for this investigation. Keri can tell us a little more about the history of this inn, her area of expertise, and why she found herself so fascinated by Pennsylvania Dutch hex stories—which led, we’re told, to the events of 1926, and our paranormal search of this tavern tonight.”

  Keri still felt uncertain, but she found herself standing in the pool of light in front of the camera, taking Brad’s hand.

  Carmen had assured her the group really searched for the explainable—before determining if anything was paranormal.

  Everyone knows Carl Brentwood! And Brad Holden is great. His video feeds of The Seekers garner millions of views. Between them, they have a huge audience. If we’re lucky, we’ll sell a tenth of their numbers in your books!

  So, here she was.

  She tried to smile as charmingly as Brad before speaking.

  “We’re between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh here, Brad, and as you said, there are many stories that go with the tavern, but the main story is this—on the night of June 27, 1926, a killer came in and brutally took the lives of seven people, among them Mr. Newby, the proprietor. The coroner, who was also the sheriff of the small county at the time, brought in five men to help with the inquest. In their thorough search of the premises, they discovered Newby had kept a torture chamber in his basement, along with all manner of paraphernalia dealing with witchcraft and Satanism.”

  “So, folks,” Brad continued, “we’ll be doing a thorough, room-by-room investigation. Our cameras are set to record throughout the tavern, including the infamous basement chamber, where it is estimated Newby tortured and killed at least ten young men and women, covered the remains with lime and buried them beneath the floor.”

  He was about to cut the introductory segment, so Keri spoke up quickly. “It’s a complex and incredibly sad story, whether ghosts do or do not inhabit the tavern. It’s believed Hank Bergen, the father of a young serving girl who had disappeared, lost his mind in rage and committed all the killings when he suspected Newby wasn’t the respectable man he pretended to be. Bergen was caught by a lynch mob, and his guilt or innocence was never determined in a court of law.

  “This story is further complicated by the fact the term Pennsylvania Dutch comes from Pennsylvania Deutsche and actually refers to the German population that settled this region. At the time of the incident, some locals had a strong belief that some of their neighbors were practicing witches. It was known Newby was of this creed. But until his chamber of horrors was discovered, it wasn’t known that he’d also been an avid student of Aleister Crowley, the British occultist, taking to extremes the tenet do what thou wilt.

  “As I said, the belief at the time and in the region in certain kinds of witchcraft—and the ability of one man to hex another—were broad. But the concepts espoused by Crowley and Newby’s actual practice of Satanism were not in any way general. To this day, we don’t know if Hank Bergen was the killer, or why he would kill the innocent guests at the tavern if he believed Newby had been the one to kill his daughter.”

  “And of course,” Brad said, “you’re researching that crime at this moment, with us here at the tavern. The spirit of Beatrice Bergen is one that many guests at the Miller Inn and Tavern have reported seeing. A young woman in a white dress, weeping. She’s trapped between worlds, seeking justice for her death. Maybe the ghosts of the dead will come out, as so many guests have believed, and help you on your quest. Thank you, thank you... And now!” Brad turned from her. “On to our man of the hour, the amazing Mr. Carl Brentwood.”

  Carl joined them in front of the camera. Keri was ready to slink back to her chair, but Carl grabbed her hand. “So, friends, rumor thus far, but true—I recently purchased the tavern, and that’s how we’ve come to be here today. The historic value of this property is immense, and the possibility of it falling into disrepair was appalling to me. But since I’ve discovered so much lately about the paranormal, it seemed we needed to discover all the truths behind this fantastic place before doing a bit of upgrading and opening it to travelers from around the globe again.

  “We won’t be leaving here tonight. We’ll be taking turns grabbing a few hours of sleep upstairs in room 207, where two of the victims were killed. Soon, all the rooms, including 207, will be available for those intrepid travelers who want to take a detour into a little piece of history—and mystery!”

  “And that’s it for our intro. We’re working on our setup,” Brad said. “Please join us again tonight, when we’ll be showing live feed from the tavern as we turn on our screens from every room. With Keri and Carl, we’ll investigate records and do our very best to discern the truth—and allow Carl to restore this place to its Colonial heritage.”

  “With upgrades, of course. Wi-Fi in every room, and private showers,” Carl said.

  “Historic and modern,” Brad said. “Join us tonight!”

  Mike Lerner, who had started Truth Seekers with Brad, knew when to cut the video. He smiled at them all. “Great, guys. I really think this will be one of our best.”

  “We’re really thrilled you’re here,” Carl told Keri. He looked over at Spencer Atkins. “I mean, she is a voice of reason and history, right?”

  Atkins stood. He was a dignified man of about fifty, with a lean, straight build, and a cap of snow-white hair. “She is,” he agreed. “And I’m glad to see you all here and happy—even if I admit I think it’s a little crazy. I’m so pleased that Carl intends to do what I just couldn’t quite manage, modernize while keeping the integrity of the place as an inn. Anyway, I must go, but...” He paused and turned to Carl. “Any real questions that we might not have covered, please, call me.”

  They bid him goodbye. He smiled and waved, and then he was gone.

  Brad turned back to Keri with an immense smile. “Seriously, so glad you’re here.”

  “Grateful!” Carl said.

  “I’m honored you asked me,” Keri told him. “I’m curious, though. I don’t think ghosts are going to pop up and tell us how they were killed. What are you hoping to find here?”

  “Oh, Keri,” Brad said. “There are so many reports of activity at this place. Lights going on and off. One lady woke up screaming. Spencer had to do some major damage control because she woke up in the middle of the night to see a man standing over her bed with an ax. She left in the middle of the night, and the closest hotel is miles and miles away. Some people began to believe that the inn was haunted—and others feared that a real killer was alive and well and ‘haunting’ the place with a real axe. Unfortunate circumstances.”

  “Sounds like she might have been the victim of a terrible nightmare or sleep paralysis,” Keri said.

  Carl shook his head. “Furniture moves around. Water just starts running. The ghost of Newby has been seen behind the bar. Trust me, I spent a fair amount of time talking with Spencer Atkins before I bought the place. He wouldn’t sell if he didn’t believe in the buyer. He loves this tavern, but he didn’t have the backing he needed to restore and update. He told me about all kinds of things that supposedly happened here. There’s a story of a ghost in 210, as well. A young woman who took her own life when she learned her fiancé had been killed in a duel. There was another murder out in the woods, that was about 1840, and... The inn is rich in paranormal activity, trust me.”

  Brad took up the story. “People have seen things... Before Spencer restored the basement, it was used for storage. Bar workers refused to go down alone or at night. They felt cold hands on them. One woman swore she was pushed down the stairs, and she was convinced only her screams brought help before the ghost could kill her.”

  “Keri, I have experienced things personally,” Carl said earnestly. “Honestly, what I’ve seen is what made me buy this
place. I saw the ad for it right after I left Savannah. I saw very strange things at McLane House there, and somehow, through it all, real, contemporary murders were solved.” He gave her his famous boyish smile. “And we’ll have fun, too. I had caterers bring in all kinds of food. Room 207 is all set up for us to talk and rest and whatever.”

  She’d heard about the events at McLane House in Savannah. But she didn’t know what had been the result of good detective work and what might have been imagined or embellished by the media.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t open to possibilities—she was. But especially in her research, she had met so many people who were out-and-out shams that she naturally entertained the concept of finding ghosts with a great deal of skepticism.

  “You know how we work, right?” Brad asked her, as if reading her mind.

  Carl spoke before Keri could answer. “I chose these guys very carefully.”

  “We always check first for what we can explain,” Brad said. “Shorts in electricity that make lights flicker, nearby train tracks that make furniture rattle...”

  “Of course,” Keri said, smiling.

  “We have to get going. Setting up our cameras and all that,” Mike said. He smiled. “So, Keri, we’ll get you into the little room off the bar there, and then, Carl, you might want to come with us. We’ll be setting cameras just about everywhere and our monitors right there, at the table, where you two were sitting while Carl talked.”

  “Great,” Keri said.

  The rest of Brad’s crew came into the room. She had to admit, she liked them all. Mike, of course, was the first of them she had met. He was the oldest member of their crew at forty, and resembled something of a modern-day pirate—bald with a gold hoop in one ear. Serena Nelson was in her midthirties, slim, blonde, bubbly and filled with ideas. She had worked as a production assistant for music videos before their ghost-hunting venture had started paying so well that they all worked only for Truth Seekers. Eileen Falcon was their steadfast rock, in her late twenties, and serious as the light of day. Pete Wright and Eileen were apparently a couple; Pete, in his early thirties, was a grounded man.

  “Super intro, watched it on my cell phone,” Serena said. “This is great. Carl, have we thanked you enough? Just the intro is flying off the charts. You wouldn’t believe the viewers.”

  “Wonderful,” Carl said.

  “Okay, let’s get to camera setups.”

  “I’ll be here, setting the video feeds,” Mike said.

  “Pete and I will take the upstairs rooms,” Eileen said.

  “Okay, Mike, you’re setting up here,” Brad said. “I’ll get the museum room, and Serena, if you wait, you and I will do the basement together. Carl, you’ve got to see it. Spencer did have a good plan for a horror house—he just didn’t have the backing to get it going, but what he’s done with the basement is damned eerie. There were all kinds of police photos from the day, and he’s restored the basement so it looks just like it did in 1926.”

  “Creepy. I’m not going to be doing a horror house,” Carl said. “I really do respect the history of this place, but I guess for the show...”

  “For a paranormal investigation, a reproduction of a horror chamber is super,” Serena said.

  “Come on. I’ll get you started in the museum,” Brad told Keri.

  A door behind the old wooden bar led to a room that was about twelve feet by twelve feet. The previous owner had, at the least, done his best to preserve what he had known about the property.

  “The broadsides and guest books are copies, of course. The real ones are in real museums,” Brad explained to her. “But the newspaper articles are real. Knock yourself out in here, okay?”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  Keri looked around, studying the various broadsides kept as posters on the walls; it was true the inn had a rich history.

  “Hey, is that stuff true about the Pennsylvania Dutch believing in witches and witchcraft?” Brad asked her as he worked.

  She nodded, admiring a poster from the 1940s, advertising a sendoff for a young man heading into the army and on to the battlefront.

  “There have been a few bizarre cases. One took place not far from here, in Stewartstown in 1928. Three men murdered Nelson Rehmeyer—they were all convinced he had hexed them. They went to his home hoping to get a lock of his hair and his spell book. They wound up beating him to death, and then they tried to set him on fire, but he didn’t burn.

  “There were all kinds of spell books out at the time—most for ridding the harvest of rats and to bring about a mild winter. That kind of thing. One that Rehmeyer owned was a book published in 1820 by a man named John George Hohman called Pow-Wows or Long Lost Friend. And in it, there were all kinds of spells and words to the effect that the man who carried the book would be safe from his enemies, that he couldn’t die or be burned up in any fire. Well, Rehmeyer did die, but he didn’t burn, and the three men were tried for murder and convicted. But one man in particular was so convinced that Reymeyer had hexed him, because he’d fallen inexplicably ill—he’d gone to another witch who had told him this was so, and what to do about it—that he still believed he’d done the right thing. He was going to prison for murder, but he wasn’t sick anymore.

  “You must remember that wherever immigrants came from to the New World—be it Europe, Asia or Africa—we all came with superstitions and fears and beliefs. In this area—except for a few bizarre incidents, such as what happened to Rehmeyer—people were basically just hoping for better harvests, less snow and good luck.”

  “It’s amazing to me how strongly people believed these things,” Brad said.

  She nodded and grimaced. “Hey, John Blymire went to another witch to get help because he was so convinced he was hexed. The witch he went to see was the one who told him to get the spell book and a lock of Rehmeyer’s hair. It’s a very well-known incident. Several documentaries and books have been done on the subject. The trial was an embarrassment to many people in York County, and the men who killed him did go to prison, but among many people, old superstitions die hard.”

  “Now, I’ve heard Newby called a witch, but did people really believe he was?” Brad asked her.

  “From what I know, he started out adhering to a lot of the hedonistic policies of Crowley and then took them a bit further. Something of a prelude to men like Satanist Anton LaVey,” Keri replied.

  “I read about Newby before coming here. But I must admit, I’m originally from Manhattan. Now, Manhattan has its own weird stuff, but I thought the witchcraft thing died out with the Puritans,” Brad said.

  “We stopped hanging people on spectral evidence.” Keri shrugged.

  “Ah, yes, a ray of hope for humanity,” Brad said. “Okay, well, the camera is set in here. All the cameras feed into the computer Mike has set up in the tavern area now. He’ll be on guard there as soon as we have the rest of the place rigged. You’ll be safe wherever because someone will always be monitoring the screens.” He grinned. “In honesty, we’re the only ones here. The cameras are for paranormal activity. You should be safe, no matter what. Unless the ghost of Newby is running around, or the ghost of the killer. Oh, sorry! I mean, I shouldn’t joke—but I’ve never heard of a ghost killing someone. Although, who knows, through the years, maybe a ghost has given someone a heart attack.”

  With a grimace, he left her.

  Keri grabbed a book from the shelves. This was an incredible opportunity. While many of the posters, guest books and other paraphernalia in the room were copies, the newspaper articles from the time of the killings were the originals—along with magazine articles on the subject, and the several books that had been written about them. There was a bounty of resources. Keri found herself absorbed in a book written by an attorney, a man who swore that if Hank Bergen had the chance to defend himself in a court today, he would have been freed.

  Keri thought she
could spend days in the place, there was so much information to comb through. But as she read, she heard her stomach growl. Embarrassed, she looked around—she was alone. Hopefully, the hint she was hungry hadn’t been picked up by the recorder left in the room. She’d arrived from her home in Richmond, Virginia, early in the afternoon—it was now after eight.

  Brad’s team was good at what they did—a catering truck had been in the drive, right in front of the massive Colonial columns that lined the front of the tavern. A delivery crew had brought in boxes of food, and Carl had seen to it that the kitchen had been inspected and cleaned. The people with the catering company—Rod and Milly Kendall, and Stan Gleason—had been enthusiastic. As they’d chatted and brought all their boxes from the van to the kitchen, they’d obviously been hoping for an invitation to stay. Carl and Brad assured them they could have a tour the following day.

  There was definitely a well-stocked kitchen, and Keri was sure she could scrounge something.

  She stood, leaving the book on the massive old desk where she’d been sitting, and popped her head out to the bar area. She was sure Brad and his team were engrossed in what they were doing, but someone else had to be hungry by now.

  Mike should have been watching the big bank of screens that had been set up in the tavern, but she didn’t see him.

  Or anyone.

  She glanced at the screens. One caught her attention—it showed the infamous basement. There was a block like an altar in the center. She knew that real torture had once been practiced down there and that the previous owner had tried to come up with the resources to create a good haunted house attraction. Terror-inducing implements lined the wall.

  For a split second, she thought she saw a strange shadow there. Then it was gone. She gave herself a shake—she was letting the power of suggestion get to her.