Free Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown by Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Cameron Dokey

pace with him. She breathed in the crisp winter air. There was an electric smell, likeon days right before it starts to snow. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
    Victor stopped in front of the archway of a building. The entrance of the arch was blocked with iron gates.
    “The dungeon is through there,” he said.
    “The dungeon… that sounds so much worse than prison, but that’s what it was, right?” Mark asked.
    “That’s right,” Victor said. “It’s always been called that, ever since it was built. The prisoners were kept in there. In the summer it was scorching hot. In the winter it was bitter cold. It wasn’t a good place to be.”
    Lyssa looked in through the archway. The hall behind it was shadowy. She had to squint to see anything at all.
    “What kind of paranormal activity has been reported in there?” she asked Victor.
    “Well, it’s hard to say. I don’t like going in there at night. I get this real bad feeling, like somebody’s watching me, like they don’t want me in there.”
    “Who do you think could be watching you?”
    “We have records of about thirty prisoners who died in there. Many froze to death, some starved. So I’m not sure exactly who it might be. But whoever it is definitely is not happy.”
    “Besides getting a weird feeling, have you ever
seen
anything strange in the dungeon?” Lyssa asked.
    “I… There was one time. Out of the corner of my eye. Ithought I might have seen something, like a figure of a man huddled over. But by the time I turned to face it, it was gone.”
    Without another word Victor sprang ahead. As if he had to get away from the dungeon.
    He led the team across a field to an old cannon next to a mound of dirt. In the middle of the mound was a crooked wooden door with a few rotting planks. Victor kneeled down in front of it. He put his fingers through a metal ring and pulled the door open. Tiny spiders scattered into the cracks of bricks as the door opened. A wobbly-looking wooden ladder plunged into the darkness below.
    “This is Casemate 11. It’s a new find. I discovered the door in the ground a few months ago. I was mowing the grass, and I saw it.”
    “What was this place used for?” Jason asked.
    “A casemate is a room used to store guns and ammunition. Soldiers used them as places where they would fire on the enemy. But this one was used a little differently. When a prisoner got in trouble in the dungeon, they sent him down here. This was a solitary confinement area. It’s quite a bit larger than just a single cell, though. There are a few different areas down there.”
    The TAPS group leaned over to get a look into the cavern. Loose dirt tumbled down the sides of the hole. Lyssa got a quick chill down her neck. She could imagine how awful it was to be a prisoner trapped inside. Like being buried alive.
    “Actually, the casemate is one of the reasons I called you all in,” Victor continued. “It’s safe to go down there—the roof won’t fall on your head or anything like that. But before we let tourists go in, we need to know if we’re going to have other problems.”
    “What kind of other problems?” Lyssa asked.
    “It’s like a maze down there. Lots of twists and turns. You basically have to walk single file. If something was down there—something frightening—there’d be no getting away from it.”
    Victor leaned over and gently closed the wooden door.
    “I’ve got one more place to show you, and then you’re on your own.”
    He led them back across the field to a yellow building. It had a large balcony hanging over a porch. The team stood silently on the stone walkway in front of the porch steps.
    “This was the officer’s quarters,” Victor said. “The fort’s commander lived in there. But some people believe that someone else lives here now. The wife of Sergeant Pratt. It’s a very sad story. Back in the 1800s, when the sergeant and his wife, Elizabeth, lived here, medicine wasn’t what it is today. They had a