Standing below the hay loft, Julie Bukovich listened to the heavy grunts and creaks of the old barn as the sun set outside and the evening grew colder. She’d been living with her boyfriend on the 19-acre Chesapeake farm for long enough that the sounds were familiar. But the feeling she’d recently been getting — a sense, like an invisible presence, something hovering, something watching her — was new. On this March evening, she watched the expert she’d called to investigate go to work.
The lanky, blue-eyed teenager strode through the barn, past rows of hanging tools and between stacks of horse feed. He held a bundle of smoldering sage above his head like an Olympic torch and left a trail of scented smoke.
“Thank you. Thank you for being here,” Bukovich said, opening a side door and pointing into a hallway, fumbling to find a light switch. “In there is where there’s been a lot of activity.”
Ghost hunter William Abbitt, 18, took a deep breath, pulled out a bottle of holy water that had been blessed by a Catholic priest in Virginia Beach, and stepped into the darkness.