ghosts. // buzzfeed unsolved

ghosts.

Choices were never my strong point. Self-doubt and anxiety would plague my mind, even if the decision were something as simple as what to wear for the day. I would second-guess my tentative decisions until it was more like a seventh or eighth torturous revisit to such a meaningless thing. Like trying on clothes and spinning endlessly in the dressing room mirror. Did I like the fit? Was the style something I could work into my current wardrobe? Was the price fair? Did I really need it? All things people would mentally go over once, but I would beat that dead horse until it was just a stain on the ground. Or until I was asked to leave the dressing room because I was taking a suspicious amount of time.

Shane thought it was hilarious whenever I was obviously stressed by trivial things. "Stop thinking so hard," He would tell me with that stupid smile, "It's not the end of the world."

At times, it honestly felt like it was. Those times seemed to be whenever he was around me. Everything was more pressing, and I just wanted to do it all right. Whenever I fell short, he was there to laugh. He did usually try to help me correct it. He liked to stand back and watch me fight through my anxiety, probably wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

Unfortunately, most of my time was spent around him, and under that same pressure. It was no different on a chilly night in the middle of nowhere Alabama, standing in front of the silent husk of a little Presbyterian church. The only thing different on that clear, deep autumn night was that I didn't second guess for three distinct times.

Coatopa was the last place on earth I thought I would be, and not because it was just a stain on the map of the south. I proposed an investigation of this tiny church after receiving an email from one of the locals swearing on her life that it was haunted. The ghost that she said was trapped there was that of her mother, who spent hot summer nights being unfaithful to her father in the abandoned building. When her dirty little secret was exposed, she took her own life, leaving her family in confusion and grief.

The story drew me to beg Shane to travel out here with me for a number of reasons. One was that this church had no local draw of being "haunted" like many of the other places we visited, mostly just tourist attractions. Second, this woman was willing to expose a very tragic event in her family's lives because she truly did believe that her mother's spirit resided there. Lastly, the background she gave me.

We stood on the barren ground before the church, staring up the old white walls to the empty bell tower that lit up with the setting sun. I clutched my camera in one hand, and a flashlight in the other. Shane had both hands in the pocket of his jeans and looked bored. "It's puny." He said with a frown, glancing at me. "Don't we usually try to do like... Bigger things?"

"I feel like this could really have an attached spirit." I said firmly, walking up to the cracked concrete steps. The closer I got, the more eerie it felt. I got spooked easily, sure, but there was really something here bringing a heavy feeling down on my heart. "The lady in her email said that her mom went nuts before she died-"

"She was crazy with guilt." My partner dismissed. He was staring at the church with a constant unpleasant frown.

I shook my head. "No, she was talking about the spirits that floated around this church. This church! Why would she give away the location that she was being unfaithful at? She kept saying they put awful thoughts into her mind. She went from sanity to just... Paranoid."

Shane rolled his eyes, but didn't make any further arguments on that subject. "I don't see why we're here. There's no history to this place except this one woman's claim. We're not going to see anything. Not that we ever do."

I bit back the remark I wanted to make every time he bitched about ghosts not being real. Why are you here, then? He certainly didn't have to volunteer to come with me on every trip. He didn't get anything out of this except an excuse to travel and days on end holed up in dirty old buildings with me. Shane literally got nothing out of it except seeing me scared. Maybe he liked it in a weird way.