In broad daylight, the Maison Dormeaux was not very impressive. It was, as expected, a straight and rectangular house, but less imposing than in front of her car lights. Adja filmed once again the wall covered in ivy and walked around the house to get better shots. Unfortunately, the path surrounding the mansion was almost impracticable because of brambles.

'I can't go on anymore, I will go back to the entry hall like yesterday.' she commented.

She found the first room of the house in the same state as the day before: dark and rather empty. The entry hall only consisted in a badly shaped carpet and wads of papers scattered on the floor. Adja grabbed some of the sheets and read out loud:

'Proposal for a night in a haunted mansion, first experience on November 18th 1982... There are tables and names of families who slept here, and the words 'departure' or 'failure' have been added by hand on the side. They wanted to turn this house into a touristic attraction but people were too scared to stay more than a day, apparently. We're going to do better, I promise!'

Adja couldn't help thinking about poor Sylvana who had most likely spent this whole 1982 night trying to get attention from the tourists. The horror! Alone in this house for decades... It gave her chills. Adja put her camera on a tripod to film the hall while she would visit the other rooms.

'I will record what's happening here and explore the rest of the house. Sylvana Dormeaux, I hope I'm not bothering you.'

Adja waited for a sound or a change in temperature, but nothing came. She stepped cautiously over the rubble encumbering the floor, and a thick layer of dust stuck on her black shoes. She coughed a few times while entering one of the three rooms of the ground floor – the biggest one.

'I guess this is the living room, and there's a small kitchen in the back... Everything is in a good state, I could even sit here.'

Adja pulled one of the chairs placed around the big wooden table and heard a sinister creak.

'Oh... The wood is completely rotten, I won't touch it. It seems like the chairs were not as well taken care of as the door.'

She left the chair alone and walked around the room.

'There is nothing to discuss here. I hope I can find some clues in the bedrooms, otherwise... Otherwise I will need to disturb Sylvana Dormeaux to know more about her family.'

The two other rooms were an unimportant storage place and an abandoned bathroom. Nothing seemed particularly spotless nor ghoulish, but maybe the daylight was to blame. Man, I wanted to record nice footage, but everything looks normal! The only thing I have left are supernatural events that look forged! Her "mansion exclusiveness" was turning into unusable content.

'I'm going upstairs, and I hope the stairs won't crumble under my feet...'

Adja glanced quickly through each door. She could distinguish beds between the dark and the dust.

'So, there are five bedrooms... and that's it! Six chairs, five rooms, so I guess there's a couple. I will start with– '

Adja froze. She was entirely sure she had heard a scraping sound from the ground floor.

'Did you hear this?' she whispered while tiptoeing back downstairs.

Adja looked for something that had moved, something unusual. She was breathing louder and louder, anxious. She entered the living room and immediately saw that the chair she had moved was now perfectly aligned with the table. She couldn't help laughing, both amused and relieved that it wasn't a stranger. Maybe she was naive, but Adja couldn't imagine one second that this wasn't a paranormal event.

'Sylvana, are you the one who put this chair back into its place? Wait, I'm going to use a more adapted device.'

She took out of her bag a black machine with multicolored diodes.

'This is a K-II. It captures electromagnetic fields and will help me communicate with you. Try to make the small diodes flash.'

Adja turned the K-II on and watched it closely without letting excitement drown her thoughts. At least, this device would show everyone that she wasn't cheating! Skeptics would analyze the raw footage and see that there was nothing fake in it. Suddenly, one of the diodes winked three times. This is absolutely exceptional...! The Maison Dormeaux was the only place where she felt at home: instead of fleeing, spirits were looking for her. It was fantastic.

'I sincerely thank you for making contact with me once again! Please make the diode flash once for 'yes' and twice for 'no'. Do you understand?'

The left diode winked once. Adja checked with many repetitive questions that her experiment worked.

'Good. Sorry for asking you the same things thirty times, but I needed to make sure that it wasn't just luck. Are you Sylvana Dormeaux?'

'Yes.'

'Great! Did you move the chair... and are you a little fussy?'

'Yes. Yes.' Then all the diodes went crazy.

'Oh!' Adja laughed. 'Sorry for criticizing you, it's not that bad to be a perfectionist. Did I upset you?'

A small hesitancy, then 'no'.

'It's okay, then. I would like to have answers about... many questions, now. Does the Ouija exhaust you more than the K-II?'

'Yes.'

'Okay. I will use it in priority, then. Were the furniture from the living room replaced in 1982?'

'Yes.'

Adja learned that the bedrooms had not been transformed at all, apart from the mattresses that had rotten and the parquet that was old and dangerous. Tourists were supposed to sleep in four of the five bedrooms, Sylvana's being barricaded. Adja had been able to peek inside, because the wooden planks barring the way had decayed in thirty years.

'Will I find something interesting in your bedroom?'

The diode winked twice. 'No.'

Adja raised an eyebrow. Really? Her bedroom won't make me understand anything? All of a sudden, the K-II was activated a few times.

'Oh... Did you say 'yes' twice, instead of 'no' ?'

'Yes.'

Adja sighed in relief. Sylvana had not lost her mind, fortunately. She went back upstairs, K-II in hand, and stopped in front of one of the bedrooms. I don't know what to expect... She continued her narration.

'I will now enter the room of... someone. Let's see.'

Unsurprisingly, the room was decorated in the same antiquated style as the rest of the house. Adja tried to open a huge wardrobe to search it through, but it was locked by a big padlock. She hurt her fingers trying to remove it and banged her fist against the wardrobe, frustrated.

'Sylvana, is there something to see inside?'

'Yes.'

'Too bad... I don't have anything to open such a padlock, it would break my paperclips!'

Adja was thinking of melting the lock with a blowtorch when she heard a jangle. She darted her eyes on the padlock et saw it move a little.

'No... Sylvana?'

The lock fell loudly with a thud, leaving a mark inside the wooden floor. Adja was too dumbfounded to worry about it.

'Sylvana, how did you do this?'

She repeated the question in five different ways, but Sylvana didn't answer. The K-II stayed desperately off. Adja could only find one explanation to this mystery.

'I think Sylvana is exhausted... Thank you for helping me.'

After this last sentence, Adja realized violently what she had just seen and recorded. She decided to be honest with her subscribers, as always. She put on the solemn look that automatically appeared on her face when she was stressed out.

'I have just witnessed a completely crazy event, and you did too. It was a supernatural demonstration, a very clear action from a ghost, Sylvana Dormeaux... I don't even find the words to...'

Adja felt a lump in her throat.

'The Ouija and the K-II, it was already something, but now... An object moved by a spirit's strength, in front of my eyes... I'm sorry, I'm panicking a little, well it's not actually fear but...'

Adja took several breaths, but she felt too oppressed to breathe deeply. Her ribcage almost couldn't move. I'm having a panic attack... Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm! Not in front of the camera! Adja thought that she could always cut this from the editing, but this moment was way too important to be removed.

'I'm letting you see these difficult times because it's the most important event of my career as a ghost hunter... Sorry to scare you, Mom, if you're watching this...'

She laughed nervously, louder and louder, and remembered the numerous videos picturing naive people possessed by demons. Failed seances.

'I know what you're thinking about, and I should reassure you: I only feel over excited, no more. It's not a curse from the Ouija board, I assure you. I'm freezing, I'm burning, maybe it's the aftermath...'

Adja puffed lightly until her shaking stopped. Still standing in front of the wardrobe, she cleared her throat. Go on, Sylvana didn't do all of this for nothing!

'Okay, I feel better, but I don't know if I will investigate for a long time. On one hand, I must seize the day because I won't see anything in the dark tonight, but on the other hand... I want to sleep so bad! It was extremely violent, I assure you! That's what you get when you go ghost hunting, especially when nothing ever happens and suddenly... Sorry, I'm babbling. I'm opening the wardrobe.'

The door leaves grinded and dust escaped from the stuffy-smelling wardrobe. Inside, Adja found several imposing account books and a metal box.

'I do know that you all want to be what's inside the box, and as I am mean... we're going to start with the big books.'

Adja described the four works, all handwritten.

'This is an account book. Someone wrote down all the family spending in the margin, and what they were corresponding to. It's hard to decipher, everything is written with a feather-like pen, and it's tilted! I will try to shoot this page as well as possible, tell me in the comments if you can read it!'

She filmed as neatly as possible the account book and narrowed her eyes to understand something.

'I can at least tell you that they bought a lot of paintings and sold them for even more money... The Dormeaux were most likely a very rich family! Their house isn't very imposing nor luxurious, maybe it wasn't their main residence. I guess that they've had this house built to rest, away from everything, in the middle of a small forest, all six together. I'd like to find a family tree to know who lived here, and you?'

Adja opened the second book and found absolutely nothing: it was an empty book account that should have followed the first one. The third book contained a list of all family appointments, year after year, for at least a decade.

'There are appointment dates with the doctor, the solicitor, all the important masses in Toulon... This is huge! I'm going to turn the pages to see where it stops... 1884. We have found the Dormeaux family era, perfect! Well, now, the last book... and it's empty again, sorry.'

Adja put the four books back in the wardrobe and took the metal box.

'So, now, the most interesting! Let's see...'

What she found in the box pleased her so much that she let out a small scream.

'Pictures! That's perfect! Let's take them out, we're going to watch them together.'

She spread the pictures on the huge bed that enthroned in the corner of the bedroom and inspected them one after the other, describing them out loud.

'I like the first one, look. It's a man and his young son, at least I believe. It seems to me that the dad was a napoLéonic soldier! He looks thirty or fourty on this picture, so he must not live in this house anymore in 1884... His son, on the other hand...'

She looked at the back of the photograph and saw an inscription: '1806, with Father'.

'I was right! Now, onto the others...'

The second photograph showed a whole family – or at least six people.

'We have found all the Dormeaux! Two elder people, maybe including the man who was a child in 1806, two men in their fifties, a woman the same age and...'

Adja stopped abruptly when she saw the face of the young woman staring thoughtfully at the lense. She was pale and wore a lace dress adorned with a few ribbons. Long blonde hair framed her absent eyes. Adja couldn't say out loud that Sylvana Dormeaux seemed more alive as a ghost than on this photograph, but she believed it strongly. She's beautiful... but so weird! She looks like a horror movie girl who would come back for revenge... But maybe that was the case? Who was Sylvana Dormeaux, after all?

'I think you have recognized Sylvana Dormeaux as I did, the young girl who contacted us yesterday and this morning. Her parent must be among these three adults, but are there names behind the picture?'

Adja didn't find any indication. Ah, too bad.

'Do you think that they're all brothers and sisters, or that this woman is Sylvana's mother? I would like to find hints to understand better who lived in this house, it would be the bare minimum. And, maybe, who knows... this isn't even Sylvana! I will ask her the question when her spirit will have more strength.'

I hope she will come back. She put the picture back on the bed and paused.

'You know, this video is very strange. Usually, I'm very focused on what I'm filming to do great editing later, because I know that's the only thing I will be able to show you. Now, I hold my camera very randomly and blurt out information without any logic, I'm a complete mess! I hope you won't blame me.'

When she went back in the corridor, Adja felt a strong exhaustion fall upon her. She had lived way too many things in the same day, without a doubt.

'I will be honest: I'm going into the city to eat and rest a little. It's hard for me to stay in this atmosphere. It's not really heavy, I wouldn't say that, but it's strong. Very strong. I feel like I learned so much more about life and death within one morning than during the rest of my existence, do you get me ? I will edit all of this a little so I can show it to you before the end of the week. Oh, she thought, shaking her head, what I just said was very dumb... If you're watching this, it's already online...'

Adja rubbed her eyes and sighed.

'Such a state I'm in... I felt way better when I was with Sylvana, actually. Tell me in the comments if you see something different on my face before and after she left! I spend my time asking for your help, I know, but I don't think I'll look at most of the video before posting it. It's embarrassing to watch me break down like earlier, I don't want to see it... Now, I'm going to take the camera from the tripod, it's still there.'

With the mouth dry from talking so much, Adja took a hesitant walk to the hall. When she took her camera, she let out a surprised shriek.

'That's not possible!' she exclaimed, letting her Senegalese half-accent take the upper hand. 'The camera isn't even on! I'm sure you all saw me turning it on this morning, I filmed it... Am I going crazy?'

No, I couldn't be so absentminded... Did Sylvana turn the camera off on purpose? Or involuntarily, when she tried to use the K-II earlier? Adja held her breath while tucking the devices in her bag and dragging the tripod behind her. She was stunned.

And, she had to admit it, she was scared.